Of the three comedy pilots that aired on CBC earlier this month, Rabbittown fared the best, bringing in 251,000 viewers on Jan. 3 at 9:30 p.m.

The 30-minute comedy from Kickham East of St. John’s, NF, about two competitive friends in small-town Newfoundland, played by Sherry White (The Breadmaker) and Adriana Maggs, outdrew two other potential series. Cheap Draft, Bad Language, Fast Cars, Women and a Video Camera, about a filmmaking competition from Halifax-based Black Dog Red Films, brought in 167,000 at 9 p.m. the same night, and This Space for Rent, an Omni Film Productions/Resonance Films copro, about roommates sharing a flat in Vancouver, attracted 188,000 viewers on Jan. 4 at 9 p.m.

The CBC usually tests out new comedies in January, but ratings are just one element to be considered, says Anton Leo, CBC’s creative head of TV comedy. The Ceeb gets e-mail feedback from viewers and received more than 3,000 notes last month. Leo says there is no clear favorite among them. The shows have also been sent out for further audience testing, and additional scripts have been ordered from each production.

‘It’s not a competition between the shows,’ says Leo. ‘We could find that some of them, all of them or none of them end up on the air next year.’

Last year’s successful pilots, Hatching, Matching & Dispatching and Getting Along Famously, both made their season premieres on Jan. 6. In the 9 p.m. slot, Hatching – about a family-run chapel and funeral home combo – pulled in 464,000 viewers, gaining momentum on Jan. 13 with 514,000 for episode two. Getting Along, about a struggling CBC show in the ’60s, didn’t fare nearly as well, generating 264,000 viewers in the 9:30 p.m. slot. It produced 263,000 on Jan. 13.

CBC did far better with its Hockey Day in Canada broadcast on Jan. 7. The 7 p.m. match-up between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers attracted 1.5 million viewers, and was the highest rated of the three all-Canadian games aired that day. The game bested the strong 1.2 million viewers for CTV’s one-hour doc special Ice Storm: The Salé and Pelletier Affair, about the Canadian figure-skating duo who were nearly cheated out of Olympic gold because of corrupt judging in 2002. It aired at 8 p.m. the same night.

Meanwhile, the CTV original MOW One Dead Indian brought in slightly more than one million viewers when it aired in primetime on Wednesday, Jan. 4. The film, from Sienna Films and Park Ex Pictures, dramatizing the Ipperwash crisis in 1995 when a protest over a native burial ground turned deadly, peaked at 1.1 million during its second hour.

CTV also drew 2.2 million viewers for its broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 16. The network’s eTalk Daily, which served as a primer for the award’s show from 7-7:30 p.m., tallied 537,000.