While CBC broadcast journos are locked out, CTV and Global are taking initiatives to lure news junkies to their national products, and their efforts appear to be paying off.

With BBC World News running for a half-hour each night in place of CBC’s flagship 10 p.m. news program, The National, Global Television and CTV have taken out ads for their national newscasts in several metro dailies, targeting displaced CBC viewers. Global is also creating increased awareness of Global National with Kevin Newman by increasing the number of newsbreaks during primetime. Meanwhile, CTV is heavily courting Ontario and Quebec viewers via the print media, reminding people they can catch the Atlantic feed of CTV News with Lloyd Robertson at 10 p.m. on CTV Newsnet.

As a result, the 10 p.m. Newsnet broadcast is up in the ratings about 84% over its summer average to date, and 133% over its broadcast year average with adults 18 to 49, says CTV, citing Nielsen numbers. CTV’s national newscast, in its regular 11 p.m. slot on the network proper, increased 4% to 773,000 viewers per night in the overnight Nielsen ratings for the first week of the lockout, Aug. 15-19, up from an average of around 741,000 in the four weeks prior.

Steve Wyatt, Global’s SVP news, says that according to BBM numbers 18+ for the period May 30 to Aug. 14, Global National numbers are up as well. Airing during the supper hour, the newscast drew an average audience of 641,200 and received 788,600 viewers over the first week of the CBC lockout, an increase of 23%.

For the same May 30 to Aug. 14 period, The National on CBC pulled an average viewership of 774,000, according to BBM 18+ stats. The Ceeb’s first week of BBC World averaged 454,000 viewers per night, a 41% drop. Still, it demonstrates that more than half of its loyal National viewers seem willing to weather the storm early in the lockout.

Wyatt and CTV’s VP news Tom Haberstroh agree that after one week it is impossible to say the CBC lockout is completely responsible for the boost in their national news ratings, but they will admit it may be a contributing factor.

‘With the publicity and newsbreaks we’re hoping to get some new sampling going on,’ says Wyatt. ‘Clearly CBC is down because they have a lockout, but because we’re on at such a different time period (6:30 p.m. weeknights), I don’t know that you can necessarily conclude that our ratings are up because of the lockout.’

‘It’s likely a result of the CBC lockout, but we’ve got to see more numbers before we can get a definitive sense of what is going on,’ says Haberstroh. ‘But if it’s a coincidence, it’s a pretty interesting coincidence.’