First Period Numbers

Now that the second round is officially underway, I thought it would be cool to do a statistical analysis of the first round ratings and see which Canadian network did the best job attracting viewers to its telecasts. With each of the three broadcasters reaching a different number of households, I evened the playing field by dividing the average audience per series by the number of households reached by each network to arrive at an Audience per Household figure (or “APH”). The results, from best to worst, are below:


The clear winner is the Canadiens-Capitals series on French-language RDS, blowing away the nearest English-language competition (also the Canadiens-Capitals series) by more than a 2-to-1 margin. RDS only reaches approximately 3 million homes but was able to attract an average audience of over 1.3 million people for the series, yielding an APH of 0.446. English-language TSN, which is available in about 9 million homes, reported an average audience of 1.8 million viewers for the same series (an APH of 0.2), while CBC, which is available in approximately 13 million households, drew about 2 million people for its Kings-Canucks and Senators-Penguins matchups (APHs of 0.156 and 0.151 respectively).

Not surprisingly, the five series involving only American-based teams did not draw as well as their Canadian counterparts. Nonetheless, despite having the last two selections in the broadcast draft, all of TSN’s U.S. matchups had better APHs than CBC’s Bruins-Sabres series, and two of TSN’s three U.S. matchups reported higher APHs than both of CBC’s all-American telecasts.

So, to recap, excluding the RDS broadcasts, TSN had the highest APH amongst series involving a Canadian team and also had the two highest APHs for series not involving a Canadian team. Translation: TSN did a better job selecting its first round matchups than did rival CBC, and this despite having the last choices. Too bad for the specialty channel that the first round’s over.

THIS WEEKEND'S GAMES:
Tonight
Canadiens at Penguins - Game 1, 7 p.m. (CBC)/(RDS)
Saturday
Flyers at Bruins - Game 1, 12:30 p.m. (NBC)/(TSN)/(RDS)
Canucks at Blackhawks - Game 1, 8 p.m. (CBC)/(RDS)
Sunday
Canadiens at Penguins - Game 2, 2 p.m. (NBC)/(CBC)/(RDS)
Red Wings at Sharks - Game 2, 8 p.m. (TSN)/(RDS)