Captive Heart topples top three

Knocking The X-Files, Friends and Seinfeld from their usual top spot on the Nielsen People Meters Toronto/ Hamilton index, Captive Heart, The James Mink Story ranked number one for the week of April 8 with at 14.2 rating, followed by X-Files at 14, Frasier at 11.9, and Friends at 11.6. Only hnic in eighth position with a 9 rating and America’s Funniest Home Videos in ninth with an 8.6 robbed CanWest of a top-10 sweep.

In Ontario, total audience numbers for Captive Heart ran to 1.6 million viewers 2+, with the 18+ demo at 1.4 million and the 25-54 target at 855,000.

Life’s House Hotline ishot

While most of the new specialties are loathe to release ratings numbers (‘it tends to freak the producers,’ says one exec), Life Network is stepping to the edge with its viewer response to House Hotline, which launched the week of April 8.

According to Nielsen People Metres, 148,000 adults 18+ tuned in for the April 10 premiere of the one-hour, live, call-in show which offers experts’ advice on home improvement at 7 p.m. An additional 65,000 watched the repeat at 1 p.m. on Saturday, bringing the cumulative audience to 213,000.

The plan is to have about 10 hours of live television on Life by the new fall season, says Life president Juris Silkans.

Good showing for ENow

Produced on a shoestring and all in-house, Baton Broadcasting System’s Entertainment Now, a semi-Canadianized Entertainment Tonight, is drawing respectable ratings since it launched this season in the Saturday night dead zone.

Strategically positioned behind Wheel of Fortune, which consistently grabs an average of 475,000 viewers in Ontario, ENow launched Sept. 23 to 289,000 total audience and is holding steady. According to A.C. Nielsen statistics, ENow’s season-to-date average runs 258,000, audience 2+, on the cumulative reach of 10 Baton Ontario affiliates.

The March Grammys special recorded its seasonal high with 386,000 viewers 2+. A Saturday scheduled Leafs game contributed to ENow’s seasonal low March 16 at 178,000 for the same demo, but we don’t have to worry about that anymore, do we. Other March weeks were better, with March 9 at 238,000 viewers, March 23, 302,000 and March 30 at 297,000.