Always a big draw over the holidays, the first four games of the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship tournament featuring Team Canada averaged 1.2 million viewers on TSN, a 15% increase over the first four games last year.

Canada’s first match-up, on Boxing Day versus Finland, garnered 1.2 million viewers, while its game against Switzerland on Dec. 28 brought in 1.3 million. Canada versus Norway drew slightly more than one million fans the following day. Canada’s victory over the U.S. on Dec. 31 delivered a 1.4 million rating. It is the highest rated World Juniors round-robin game ever broadcast on TSN.

The 2006 games were hosted by Vancouver. Last year, when the tournament was held in North Dakota, the six Team Canada games on TSN averaged 1.6 million – a best for the IIHF games on the sports specialty – climaxed by a gold medal win against Russia that brought in 3.2 million viewers.

The 2003 World Juniors held in Halifax gave TSN its largest audience to date for any programming, with 3.4 million viewers tuning in for the tournament’s gold medal victory for Russia over Canada. At press time, the semis and gold and bronze medal matches were still to come, and Canada had yet to be defeated.

Meanwhile, Corner Gas’ Christmas episode – ‘Merry Gasmas’ – brought in 2.2 million viewers for CTV on Dec. 12. According to the network, the show peaked at 2.4 million, but 2.9 million viewers tuned in to the episode at some point during the half-hour. This bested Gas’ previous high of 1.9 million on Oct. 31, when Prime Minister Paul Martin made an appearance.

Speaking of Christmas, George Bailey edged Ebenezer Scrooge in the ratings when CBC ran the classic holiday films It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and Scrooge (1951) back-to-back on Christmas Eve. Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart, garnered 470,000 viewers on Dec. 24 at 7 p.m., while Alastair Sim’s turn as Scrooge brought in 459,000 at 10 p.m.