Deciphering the ratings data coming from the networks is no walk in the park. Baton supplies audience numbers for Ontario. Global and wic offer ratings for the Toronto/Hamilton graph, and cbc and ctv get total audience figures for the whole country.

For the love of Pete, couldn’t Global and wic swallow the ‘n’ word for the purpose of A.C. Nielsen and subscribe to the Top 20 ‘Network’ Programs average minute index? Then we could do away with the highly useful Top 20 chart, which to date only incorporates ctv and cbc programs and has been known to list Due South as the number two program in the country, behind er.

Through the ratings clutter, one thing clear so far is that the transplanting of Global’s Traders to cbc is not what one might call a screaming success.

Numbers for the week ending Nov. 16 show the repeat broadcast of Traders maintaining less than one-third the audience set up by Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. An original episode of rcaf drew 1.3 million viewers 2+, the This Hour repeat just under one million and Traders 367,000. Nov. 7 was more of the same with rcaf at 1.4 million, This Hour, 1.1 million, and Traders at 305,000. The Atlantis Communications-produced drama reached a season high of 502,000 viewers on Hallowe’en following the cbc Jest For Laughs special.

Global reports its Traders telecast Thursdays at 10 p.m. is gathering 3s and 4s on the Toronto index, up slightly overall compared to last season. Between the two nets, the program is cumulatively reaching more Canadian eyeballs than last year, says Slawko Klymkiw, head of cbc English-language television.

‘But I’d be lying if I said we weren’t kind of disappointed with the numbers. We’re looking at whether we should leave it in that slot and at whether there’s something we can do promotions-wise with Global and Atlantis that will bring the numbers up.’

Other original drama falling into the not-exactly-sparkling category is cbc’s Riverdale, although Klymkiw says he’s more than willing to be patient with this one.

The premiere Sept. 22 drew an audience 2+ of 417,000 nationally, followed by 328,000 on the Tuesday. The replay of the two half-hours Sunday the 28th pulled 241,000, skedded behind two hours of Coronation Street, which peaked at 548,000 viewers and bottomed out at 407,000.

By mid-October, little had changed. The Monday and Tuesday telecasts the week of Oct. 13 pulled 315,000 and 362,000, respectively, with Sunday coming in at 193,000 and maintaining less than half of Coronation Street’s peak 400,000 audience. The weeks of Oct. 20th and 27th run 199,000/233,000/242,000 and 339,000/247,000/383,000, respectively, for the Monday/Tuesday/ Sunday broadcasts. Numbers were up the week of Nov. 17 after another national publicity run, yielding 482,000 and 415,000 for the Monday and Tuesday telecast of the Epitome Pictures-produced series.

Klymkiw says the three telecasts are adding up to about 750,000 viewers, a respectable tally for a first-run soap.

‘We never thought it would do a million people, particularly with horizontal programming which has never been done in this country. We’re not unhappy. We’re in fact quite encouraged by those numbers, which are trending up. Other soaps have taken decades to grow.’

Elsewhere on the drama sked, Due South is holding its own against 60 Minutes. On the Toronto/Hamilton skew for Oct. 19, Global’s 60 Minutes was a 5.2 while ctv’s Due South was a 4. Both are subject to getting clocked by Wonderful World of Disney, depending on the film in the offing. But for the eight weeks ending Nov. 2, ctv is reporting an average weekly audience for Due South of 548,000 in Ontario alone.

As for Alliance Communications’ Once a Thief, word that it’s no longer part of ctv’s Monday 10 p.m. lineup comes after ratings the likes of Oct. 27: Brooklyn South, 7.5, a movie from Citytv a 5.8, The National, 4.8, a Seinfeld repeat on Fox at 3.2 and Once a Thief, .9. In the short term, La Femme Nikita is in the slot. That frying-pan/fire analogy comes to mind.

At cbc, the Oct. 22 premiere of Black Harbour was 506,000 viewers 2+, increasing to 566,000 the following week, and up slightly every episode through to Nov. 12 when it hit 723,000.

On Friday nights, Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict at 10 p.m. is sometimes upping numbers for X-Files: The Originals in the opening hour, but isn’t managing to hold the premiere audience numbers. The Atlantis-produced Earth launched Sept. 22 with a 10.5 rating in Toronto/Hamilton, followed by a 4.6, a 3, 3.1, 2.4 and 2.8 on the Fridays between Sept. 22 and Nov. 7.

*Primetime peccadilloes

The status quo for the private networks eight weeks into the ’97/98 season breaks down into two sound bites: Audience share: bad. Advertising revenue: good.

Word is the main nets were registering share down as much as 20% in September and October due to an unprecedented amount of sampling. Revenue, on the other hand, is up across the board. Sales for CBC English Television and Newsworld, for example, are 11% over budget year-to-date and up 19% over last fall. The winter block is already up over last year by 12%, not including sales specific to the Nagano Olympics.

As for ratings and the u.s. contingent, none of this year’s new puppies are making the Top 20 People Metres on a consistent basis.

Mondays, although Brooklyn South is pushing 9s for Global and taking 10 p.m., the Aspernet is getting a run for its money from cbc and This Hour Has 22 Minutes earlier in the block. Oct. 27 ratings recorded a 6.3 for This Hour versus a 4.1 for Caroline In The City.

In Tuesday’s primetime battle of the comedies, Global is in front with established product versus a mainly new program lineup from ctv.

For Nov. 4, Mad About You registered a 7.1 at 8 p.m., followed by Dharma and Greg at 6.2, Frasier at 14.1 and 3rd Rock From the Sun at 10.6. ctv’s Soul Man did a 3.3 against Mad, Over The Top a 3.3 against Dharma, and Frasier lapped Home Improvement’s 4.4 in the 9 p.m. slot. (Apparently there’s no such thing as too much Frasier. Repeats are gathering outstanding numbers across the board.)

On Wednesday, the comedy vs drama turf war sees ctv’s comedy regularly overshadowed by Global’s drama lineup. Nov. 4, Beverly Hills 90210 came in at 9.8 for the 8-9 p.m. hour against ctv’s Spin City and Murphy Brown, which took a 3.6 and a 3.5, respectively. Party of Five, hitting its stride above and below the border this year, followed with a 12.9 in the 18-49 demo (an 18 in the female skew). The Drew Carey Show drew a 9 against Party at the top of the hour. Ellen followed at 5.7, although both sitcoms are finishing in Baton’s top five with eight-week average viewer numbers for Ontario at 850,000 and 790,000, respectively.

Thursdays: Friends, Seinfeld, Global wins. Zzzz. One bit of news: evidently it’s paying for Global to juggle repeats in the 9:30 p.m. slot across from wic property Veronica’s Closet. For Nov. 6, a repeat of Frasier managed an 11.1 against Veronica’s Closet, which recorded a 5.1. Exceeding ratings expectations in the u.s., Veronica is running a six-week average of 7.3 in Canada, although the numbers are a steady slide from the premiere. The launch the week of Sept. 22 landed an 11.8, followed by a 10.3, 6.9, 4.7 and 4.8 through the next four weeks.

To date, wic has lost Built to Last, something called Rewind, and the Tony Danza Show, the latter of which will return in December. At ctv, Hiller and Diller is on hiatus. Over The Top and Total Security have been canceled. Global has lost Visitor.

Other u.s. contributions just won’t go away. All can sleep better knowing David Hasselhoff has signed a three-year renewal with Pearson All American to continue as the star and executive producer of Baywatch. Production for season nine will begin next June.

According to the press bumpf, Hasselhoff says, ‘The past eight years have provided me with an opportunity to help craft a television series which has had a positive impact on viewers in every nation. Beyond its entertainment values, Baywatch has enriched, and in many cases, helped save lives.’ Must be the cpr demos.

*TSN crowns Dec. 8

TSN has scored the Canadian broadcast rights to the Academy Award-winning documentary When We Were Kings and will air it Dec. 8. Although word is the u.s. rights holder is planning a 1999 telecast, tsn is choosing a short-term release and will broadcast the doc in conjunction with the Holyfield-Morrow wbc match.

The broadcast is part of the effort to expand tsn’s traditional male 18-49 demo and pump up what are ebbing ratings for live sports. That being said, the Grey Cup didn’t fair so badly for cbc.

According to A.C. Nielsen, average viewership for the game was 2.8 million, peaking at 3.1 million between 6:30 and 7 p.m. It registered a 7.3 on the Toronto/ Hamilton chart, good enough for 17th place in the Top 20 programs for the week ending Nov. 16.

Boy, we sure know how to put on a half-time show, don’t we? Trooper: five old men wearing bad hats and singing one of their two hits, circa 1982. On the sidelines, the camera captured a middle-aged man painted green and wearing a Speedo, shaking various parts of his body to the beat of Raise a Little Hell. Surely a Heritage Moment in the making.

*TVOntario takes kids’ slots from YTV

TVOntario is edging out ytv as the number one broadcaster for kids aged 2 to 11 in the after-school viewing block, 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

With Arthur, Magic School Bus, Polka Dot Door, Tots tv, Paddington Bear, Bananas in Pajamas, Kratts’ Creatures, Bill Nye the Science Guy and hosts Joe ‘The Phenom’ Motiki and Patty Sullivan, tvo’s audience share numbers for English-language tv viewing in Ontario from Sept. 22 to Nov. 2 gave it 25.6% of viewing, followed by ytv at 23.4%. According to A.C. Nielsen, tvo’s percentage is up 8.5% over the same period last year. ytv’s is down 2.1%.

cbc runs a distant third with 6.1%, followed by Global at 5.7%, Fox, 5.2% and pbs, 3.9%.

Looking at the bigger picture, Global remains number one with the 2-11 crowd for the whole of the broadcast day (7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.) with a 19.3% share, but that number is down 5.2% over the same period last year. Actually, everybody is down overall except cbc, which is in at 7.7% of the viewing audience compared to 5.3% last year. ytv is down from 20.2% to 14.4%, pbs from 13.5% to 11.3%, Fox from 12.7% to 4.3%. tvo registers the slimmest erosion, slipping from 10.3% to 9.5%.