Stanley Still Lord in Canada

Here's another glimpse into a day at Wills & Co.  When there's a big thing happening on TV we do a little wager on who can guess closest to the actual audience.  The winner is verified with the overnights the following day.  Ususally one of us is almost dead on, but with last night's game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final none of us was even in the ballpark

 

Our guesses were all between 2 million and 2.6 million total viewers - the actual total viewers of the game last night was 4.7 million! 

But how do you estimate game 7 on a Monday night that involves a Canadian team that never seemed to get the country behind it one year after a locked out season and scheduled against Canadian Idol?  We don't know (obviously) and this situation's never happened before 

And in a rare moment, we feel a bit bad for the CBC because they didn't get it right either.  They still had spots in the game to sell yesterday and if you bought any you got the TV buy of the yearand covered your underdeliveries for the rest of the year.  CBC estimated the 25-54 audience at just under 1 million and it did over 2.3 million.  We only feel a bit bad because CBC also aired a Finals game last Monday with 3 million total viewers - guess they should have checked  

We're not sure when CTV pulled the plug on Canadian Idol for last night, but that had to affect the numbers somehow.  The final audition epsiode also aired last Monday and drew 1.7 million viewers.  Last night's replacement (Criminal Minds) only did 600,000.  We're not sure why CTV felt threatened

So will this year's huge game 7 numbers be good or bad for CTV when they take over Hockey Night in Canada and the playoffs?  Just wondering