CBC may be drumming up big ratings with Hockey Night in Canada, but post-lockout viewers are slower to return to the net’s big-ticket dramas, with its two-part prequel mini Trudeau II: Maverick in the Making receiving just a quarter of the ratings garnered by its 2002 predecessor.

The Big Motion Pictures show brought in about 501,000 viewers on Oct. 23 and 470,000 on Oct. 24, both in 8 p.m. timeslots. The first Trudeau, also from BMP, aired in the less competitive spring 2002 period to ratings in the two million range.

Richard Stursberg, executive VP of CBC Television, says the short ramp-up following the net’s staff lockout could have been a major contributing factor, or ‘maybe people aren’t so interested in docudramas that date all the way back to the 1940s.’

He may have something there. Trudeau II followed the underperforming World War Two-era mini, Il Duce Canadese, which, over the previous Sunday and Monday (Oct. 16 and 17), drew 172,000 and 217,000 viewers, respectively.

On Oct. 25, CBC premiered the Da Vinci’s Inquest spin-off Da Vinci’s City Hall to about 564,000 viewers, slightly above Inquest’s final season average of 561,000. Even so, some at the CBC say they hoped for more, but Stursberg again cites a lack of promotion.

‘People just didn’t know it was there,’ he says. ‘I think when people understand that this is a different show from the old Da Vinci’s, and once they actually know where it is, it is going to do well. I like it a lot.’

Stursberg admits that had the lockout never occurred, the big-ticket items might have aired earlier in the season, but believes City Hall would have still premiered around this time, but with a bigger promotional push.

He says there will be a wave of returning CBC shows in the coming weeks to get viewers suitably sucked in before it turns its attention to Christmas programming and the 2006 Winter Olympics.

CBC will continue to roll out event programs in quick succession in the coming weeks, with MOW biopics Waking up Wally: The Walter Gretzky Story and Shania: A Life in Eight Albums back-to-back on Nov. 6 and 7, followed by the season premiere of the satirical Rick Mercer Report on Nov. 8 (formerly Rick Mercer’s Monday Report).

‘[Ratings] take a little time to get back up again, but I’ve been encouraged and surprised by how quickly some of our properties have started to come back,’ says Stursberg.

One such property is CBC’s flagship news program The National, which, according to the CBC, averaged 652,000 viewers per night from Oct. 11 to Oct. 23, close to last year’s overall average of 673,000. The National was replaced by BBC World News during the lockout.