A glowing story the other day in the Ottawa Citizen gushed about Global’s evening newscast moving to Ottawa. (Coincidentally, the Citizen is owned by CanWest Global, which also owns the Global Television Network. Imagine the odds.)
The story claimed that Global National had more viewers than either CTV’s or CBC’s national evening newscast:
BBM Nielsen Media Research figures show that Global National attracts a total audience of 952,100 compared with the later CTV News with Lloyd Robertson (917,300) and CBC National with Peter Mansbridge at 626,400.
Er, not quite.
Turns out, Citizen reporter Chris Cobb was a bit, uh, selective in his reporting of the viewership. Cobb reported only numbers from a single airing. The National airs on both the main network and on CBC Newsworld over different times, to let people watch when it’s most convenient to them.
From Monday to Thursday of last week, for example, The National had an average viewership of 1.19 million — well past CTV or Global. The National is, in fact, Canada’s most-watched newscast.
The CBC sent in a letter to the editor correcting the erroneous story. The Citizen has so far refused to publish it. Again, imagine the odds.
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Somehow, this does not surprise me.
I’d still like to see a CBC-issue newspaper to level the national playing field in such things. *evil grin*
Not only is The National the most watched newscast in Canada, it is also the best in North America. Nothing else compares.
Wow - the CBC sees the conflict with the Citizen reporting on Global but misses the same issue with the CBC reporting on the Liberal party.
It’s a bit problematic to combine multiple airtimes into one number, especially when one’s a 24-hour news network. I’ve seen the same logic used to give The Hour ratings of a couple hundred thousand, with no note that that includes like six airings.
Any media outlet that doesn’t report incorrect or distorted conservative propaganda has a "Liberal bias".
Reality has a liberal bias, and all the Macleans’, National Post’s, and CanWests in the world will never change that simple fact.
Almost succumbed to the temptation to invoke that Stephen Colbert quote myself…
CTV’s supper time newscast almost always pulls in more than 1.5 million viewers…so you know…there’s also that.
most watched…bull
yes it is the most watched BECAUSE IT HAS THE MOST AIRINGS multple airings vs one national play for CTV and Global.
CBC’s the National is the #3 national broadcast and frankly somethings news on TSN does better.
Get a grip guys and stop drinking the koolaid. The National needs a remake.
Tuesday’s Citizen featured a front-page story on the arrival of Global National, with a jump to page 2, all of page 3 devoted to Global National and an editorial welcoming Global National.
The fact that two Canadians are going on a future space mission was relegated to a brief on page 4.
Why report the news when you can be it?
So…reality check, in saying "CBC…is the most watched BECAUSE IT HAS THE MOST AIRINGS multple airings vs one national play for CTV and Global", you’re suggesting that the same that the same 626,400 people are watching the show 2 or 3 times…is that correct?
On another note I discovered long ago that one can’t believe anything they read in the Ottawa Citizen. Case in point. I was a staffer at CBC Ottawa back in the 80’s. Another staffer’s husband had passed away over a weekend. The Citizen story, although brief, made a point of mentioning how he had died in a tragic boating accident, when the aluminum mast of his sail boat had somehow contacted some overhead power lines and he was consequently electrocuted. On arriving at work the following day I expresed my shock to a fellow employee only to discover that the Citizen story was bogus. The individual had in fact taken his own life with a hand gun. Huh? Why bother going into so much detail … electrocution … sail boats … yada … yada … yada, when it was a load of BS in the first place. I’ve never trusted that rag since … nor any other I might add.
Apparently the Citizen, CTV, and Global (the private media mentioned in posts above) suck. The CBC is the only media that gets it right. If only the other media had access to $1Billion a year of taxpayer money, maybe they’d get it right too.
@Techie: No, that’s not what I’m saying.
Simply put, more Canadians watch The National each night than any other newscast. Those 1.2 million people (all different people) watch it once, but choose what time to watch it.
The idea of calling the allowances for that fact "cheating" does grate at me.
Tod, ask your news department how many people watch The National on the CBC main channel and Newsworld in a typical night–they will tell you that this TV season on the 115 nights that The National has aired at its regular time, the combined average audience was 965,000 viewers, no different than Global’s audience. No network spins the numbers better than CBC and failing that, just make them up…
We can’t say with certainty that it is all different people watching each version. Common sense would suggest that the overlap is very small, so the National probably does squeak ahead of the competition, but that stil doesn’t justify your interpretation.
I have no doubt that people are watching the various plays. But CTV if they could air their news 5 times would easily beat the CBC. As would global. The test is the Prime play - CBC 10 vs CTV 11
@Tod: My question was directed to realtycheck. The point I was trying to draw him out on was answered by Kev(February 15th, 2008 at 11:48 am CST) a few posts later. "…the overlap is very small…", so it is, as common sense suggests, different eyeballs for the most part. Bottom line is…whether a news show airs once, or ten times on a given evening, it’s the total number of unique eyeballs that is the measure of its viewership and subsequently, its popularity.