Having a Canadian team in the final round of the NHL playoffs is certainly paying off for the CBC, as more Canadians are tuning in to the series than have done so in more than a decade.

The pubcaster drew 3.63 million viewers to the first game of the final round of the playoffs on May 25, just beating out the final performance episode of American Idol on CTV at 9:30 p.m., which drew 3.2 million viewers. It was the largest TV audience for a playoff game since 1994, when the Vancouver Canucks battled the New York Rangers for the Stanley Cup. Games May 27 and 29 drew 2.81 million and 3.14 million, respectively.

And with five Canadian teams making it to the first round of the playoffs, CBC has consistently attracted bigger audiences than last year throughout the playoff season.

In round one, audiences averaged two million, up 17% over last year. An average 1.9 million tuned in for the second round, for an increase of 13% over last year, and audiences for the third round were up 22% over last year, averaging 1.7 million.

Meanwhile, with this year’s TV season coming to an end and broadcasters announcing their lineups for the fall, CBC drama and comedy programming struggled to pull in half a million viewers over the 2003/04 season. Rick Mercer’s Monday Report is the exception, boasting an average audience of 786,000. That is more than double the average audience for Ken Finkleman’s second take on his comedy series The Newsroom, which at the end of the season reported average audiences of 343,000.

New CBC drama This is Wonderland attracted an average audience of 447,000 over its first season. Snakes & Ladders, another new drama for CBC, drew an average 309,000 viewers, and rumor has it that the Halifax-produced series will not be renewed for a second season.

Sports programming also outstrips drama in terms of audience at Global, where Blue Murder and Train 48 put together could not draw as many viewers as the broadcaster’s airing of The Masters golf tournament.

The first season of Train 48 drew average audiences of 231,000, and at the end of its third season, Blue Murder’s average audience sat at 401,000. The Canadian cop drama’s fourth season was shot last fall, but the series will not be renewed for a fifth. Meanwhile, The Masters attracted an average 810,000 viewers over two days, with 968,000 tuning in on Sunday, April 14 for the finals.

At CTV, audiences for drama and comedy were considerably higher than the competition at other national broadcasters. Hit comedy Corner Gas drew an average 1.26 million viewers over its inaugural season, making it the highest-rated Canadian-produced series in this broadcast year. Meanwhile, Degrassi: The Next Generation averaged 670,000 viewers in its third season and The Eleventh Hour averaged 500,000 in its second.

-www.cbc.ca

-www.ctv.ca

-www.canada.com/globaltv