Attention, Prospectors.

WELL TO ANYONE who is on the email blast list of the Canadian networks, this is a welcome -- and kind of strange sight.  CTV & Global have traditionally got into the habit of sending out press releases crowing about how so-and-so program beat so-and-so program.  What's weird, of course, is that most of the time they're crowing about shows that they had absolutely no hand in making.  Kind of like if, say, you sent out a bragging press release taking credit for Avatar cause you rented on DVD & everybody in the family enjoyed it.  Credit for the rental, yes...but anything more...ah....no.

But last night, two Canadian made comedies went head to head.  Now, the CBC show, 18 to Life, has sagged a bit since a fairly strong premiere.  And CTV is still high off everybody (and I mean everybody) watching their Olympic coverage for two weeks... but still, it makes for a much more satisfying presser:

CTV’s HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR Debut 

with 1.9 Million Viewers Each  

 

- Two new homegrown comedies win timeslots against HOUSE and THE BACHELOR -

– Inaugural CTV.ca live online chats a great success with almost 700 comments submitted –

- HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR latest to join CTV’s online line-up at CTV.ca -

 

Toronto, ON (March 2, 2010) – CTV’s newest homegrown comedies, HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR, premiered to 1.9 million viewers each last night, becoming the most-watched premieres of any scripted Canadian series this season. The two new series won the 8 - 9 p.m. ET timeslot against both HOUSE (Global/FOX, 1.3 million) and the season finale of THE BACHELOR (City/ABC, 1.3 million, 8-9 p.m.). Head-to-head, HICCUPS delivered 240% more viewers than 18 TO LIFE (CBC; 558,000) at 8 p.m. ET, while DAN FOR MAYOR delivered 374% more viewers than LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE PRAIRIE (CBC; 404,000) at 8:30 p.m. ET.

 

HICCUPS and DAN FOR MAYOR delivered a big lead-in to their counterparts in CTV’s Monday night comedy block, with both TWO AND A HALF MEN and BIG BANG THEORY winning the night with 2.3 million viewers each at 9 and 9:30 p.m. ET.

Now, leave the spin for the spinners. But there's a couple of things that bear pointing out here. The first is that the fact that both had the same rating - 1.9 million, means that Dan for Mayor retained Hiccups' audience, and the audience for Hiccups stayed through the whole show. That's very, very good.

The big-name U.S. shows that followed the block only drew 20% higher than the homegrown comedies.  Shades of the days when Corner Gas would draw the same -- or more -- as the U.S. imports that preceded or followed them.

And perhaps more importantly, let's leave corporate peeing matches aside altogether and look at the real picture.

Almost two million five hundred thousand Canadians chose to watch Canadian-produced comedies on the TV last night, in the eight o clock hour.  If you look at that in terms of Canada's population, that's about 10% of the people who speak English as a first language.  1 in 10.

So that would be equivalent to about 30 million people watching comedy at 8pm in the USA.

One in ten.

Explain to me now how Canadians don't want to watch Canadian TV?

So there you go -- Entertainment shows, Q, Dead Tree Journalists, Canwest Papers, CP, CBC Radio --whoever's listening...I dare ONE OF YOU to get that story out there.

Anybody.

Because six months from now we're going to have license hearings at the CRTC and the same old people are going to traipse up there and talk about how Canadians don't want to watch Canadian shows.

It sounds to me like that's just not the case. They tune in with hope, wanting to be entertained.  Wanting the chance to see something funny, and different, that's also theirs.

How about writing that -- for once?