Canadian specialty channels increased their audience share by a whopping 27% this season over last, according to bbm’s spring numbers.

Comparing spring ’97 to spring ’98, the Canadian specialties moved to an English-language audience share of 14.6% from 11.5% for the 2+, full-week, English-language audience. The u.s. specialties also increased their share of audience to 6.1% from 5.2%.

In Quebec, pay-tv and specialty channels saw their market share rise to a 13% share of the overall (2+) extended French-language market, up from an 11% share in spring ’97 and a 10% share in spring ’96. The specialties had a 10% share in primetime hours while u.s. border stations (cbs, nbc, abc and Fox) combined for a 4% share of the primetime francophone audience.

Of the conventional Canadian broadcasters, only ctv managed to maintain its audience over the period, upping its audience share slightly to 15.7% from 15.5% last year.

chum and cbc took some of the biggest hits among Canadian broadcasters. chum lost 16.7% of its audience to claim a 3% share of the 2+, full-week viewers. cbc dropped 12.5% to claim an audience share of 7%. Global, with its wealth of primetime hits, still lost 3.1% of viewers to claim an audience share of 6.2% in the recent spring ratings. wic’s viewership fell 2.6% to an audience share of 7.5%.

The four u.s networks also lost Canadian viewers, a significant 14.6%. Over the period, their combined claim of Canadian audience dropped to 10.5%.

In Montreal, TVA Group station cftm-tv and Radio-Canada’s cbft-tv each had 15 of the top 30 shows during the spring bbm sweep period, entirely shutting out the third and fourth French-language tv network flagship stations, Television Quatre Saisons’ cfjp-tv and Tele-Quebec’s civm-tv.