After an amazing 2.1 million viewers tuned in for last week’s debut of Little Mosque on the Prairie, media watchers have been itching to see what would happen with episode two.

And CBC gave them plenty to talk about. Episode two was slated to air on Monday night, but to the confusion of viewers and pundits alike, the first episode was repeated instead. The replay pulled in 606,000 viewers, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Episode two ended up airing on Wednesday night instead, and drew 1.2 million viewers. (CBC employees: audience numbers for the past three days are available on the intranet.)

A decline from the debut was expected, and any Canadian series that pulls in over a million is good. According to the Globe’s Guy Dixon

A CBC spokesman said yesterday that “we’re very pleased with the way the program is doing.”

In comparison, CTV’s hit sitcom Corner Gas has drawn an average audience of 1.4 million so far this season.

But the big question being asked in the newspapers is, why the switcheroo?

Their consensus opinion seems to be that CBC didn’t want to put the second episode up against the Golden Globes and the debut of 24. (Who would? Those shows pulled in 2.5 million and 1.5 million for CTV and Global on Monday.)

The Toronto Sun posits this theory that CBC was surprised by the huge debut numbers, and worried about how to follow up:

But because Little Mosque opened so huge, the CBC is wary that the numbers for the second episode are going to seem disastrously small by comparison. They’re worried that practically every newspaper in the country is going to write about how Little Mosque went up against the Golden Globes and 24, and lost three-quarters of its audience, or whatever.

The article goes on to quote a response from CBC executive director of programming Kirstine Layfield:

“We knew it was going to confuse the press, and we knew some people would just assume that the CBC messed up, but this was a thought-out decision that was made for the benefit of the show,” Layfield said.

Another Sun article (they’re enjoying this) described the reaction of Carlos Rota, who stars in both Little Mosque and this season’s 24 (talk about a career year!)

“Are they out of their minds?” he said on the set of Fox’s 24, where Rota has a key role this season as CTU analyst (and Chloe’s ex-husband) Morris O’Brian.

Like all the Canadian critics on the press tour, Rota, who plays Yasir on Little Mosque, was flabbergasted by CBC’s programming strategy. “First of all, they premiere it on a Tuesday, then move it immediately to Monday, then show the wrong episode…?” Rota vented.

For the record, according to the Little Mosque website, the show will continue to air on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. (8:30 NT), with repeats on Mondays at 9:00.

Speaking of the web, the first episode of Little Mosque is making a bit of a splash on YouTube (even though it was not posted there by CBC; the online version starts two minutes into it, and includes commercials.)

The YouTube episode is broken into four parts. The first part has already had more than 30,000 views, with the other parts receiving over 17,000 each. Even the news story promoting the series has had more than 14,000 views.

Finally, the Royal Canadian Air Farce has plans to cash in on some of the Mosque mania tonight. According to the Sun:

Coincidentally, CBC’s long-running comedy program Royal Canadian Air Farce will continue the network’s unique tradition of making fun of its own with a short Little Mosque-themed bit tonight (8 p.m.).

The theme is that the CBC is so overwhelmed by the success of Little Mosque that all of the public network’s shows are going to adopt Little Mosque stylings (everything from Don Cherry and Ron MacLean to The National).

And Air Farce also points out that Little Mosque’s debut audience was “the equivalent of two years total of The Hour With George Stroumboulopoulos.” Funny stuff.

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	Little Mosque on the Prairie, Media Coverage