CBC’s broadcast of what is being hailed as one of the most exciting Grey Cup championship games in CFL history brought in nearly 3.2 million viewers, according to the broadcaster. This is a huge number by CBC’s post-lockout standards, but the ratings for the game – which saw the Edmonton Eskimos defeat the Montreal Alouettes in overtime 38 to 35 – dipped from last year, when the Toronto Argonauts defeated the B.C. Lions before an average of four million viewers.

The audience for this year’s Grey Cup peaked at close to 3.8 million at around 9:30 p.m.

RDS carried the French-language broadcast and, thanks in large part to the presence of the Alouettes in the big game, reportedly drew 863,000.

Also on the football front, CTV’s original MOW The Man Who Lost Himself, about former CFLer Terry Evanshen, whose memory was completely wiped after a car accident in 1988, brought in an average of 1.5 million viewers. The movie, starring David James Elliott (JAG) and Wendy Crewson, peaked at 1.8 million on Nov. 15.

TSN aired a repeat to an average of 155,000 on Nov. 24. It is the first time TSN has aired a dramatic program, excluding its popular WWE RAW series, a genre unto itself.

CTV is trumpeting The Man as the most-watched Canadian-produced MOW of the year. It outdid CBC’s recent sports-themed MOW Waking Up Wally: The Walter Gretzky Story, which conjured 767,000 viewers on Nov. 6, and even outdrew CTV’s Terry, a biopic about Terry Fox that brought in 1.3 million on Sept. 11.

CBC didn’t fare nearly as well with its most recent MOW, Intelligence, from Da Vinci’s Inquest/City Hall creator Chris Haddock. The film’s Nov. 28 airing brought in 499,000 viewers despite strong reviews.

The Ceeb also had difficulty finding an audience for the first two episodes of its hockey mockumentary series The Tournament, which made its season premiere against The Man Who Lost Himself, with 237,000 viewers tuning in on Nov. 15. It saw a slight increase the following week with 241,000. The first six-episode season averaged 547,000.

CTV’s airing of Medium in 3D on Nov. 21 generated more than two million viewers, according to the broadcaster, which placed 3D glasses for the show in The Globe and Mail newspapers. The demand for the specs was so high CTV staffers in Toronto left their remaining stock with station security the day the show aired.