City’s Seed on Monday night had a modest start with 344,000 2+ viewers, up against stiff primetime competition, according to BBM Canada data.

The series premiere came up well short of the 890,000 viewers in overnight numbers that tuned into the lead-in sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and the 1.03 million viewers that watched the lead-out 2 Broke Girls.

Seed also went up against Bones on Global Television, The Big Bang Theory on CTV and the NHL’s Maple Leafs at play on Sportsnet.

City pulled in an additional 21,432 viewers when pre-releasing the first episode of Seed online and through the City Video mobile app at Google Play or via the App Store.

Rogers Media added the digital preview of Seed pulled in around 10% more unique viewers online than The Mindy Project, and about 20% more than Ben and Kate.

The network will be looking to buzz generated by PVR viewing to potentially bump up second-week viewership, similar to CBC’s Cracked drama which saw its second episode audience rise 43% to 791,000, from an initial 552,000 outing.

“New series take time to build an audience, and through the critical acclaim and buzz generated by the quality of Seed, we anticipate audiences will only increase as the series progresses,” Malcolm Dunlop, executive vice president of programming and operations at Rogers Media, said of the series premiere.

The slow start for Seed also underlines the limits of City’s national reach, against those of rival Canadian networks that stretch countrywide.