Duncan Hood is editor of Stategy Media. The following is a mid-season review of how Canada’s broadcasters have faired in the highly competitive national broadcast market.

They say there’s no such thing as a normal year in television, but as the season hits the midway mark, both sellers and buyers agree that this is about as good as it gets.

When it comes to ad sales, it’s been a very good year for broadcasters, with one of the fastest-moving upfronts ever continuing to pay off in above-average sales. And when it comes to viewing, audiences are fairly stable for most casters, with CTV in particular crowing about landing a new top-10 hit with CSI: Miami – and not one cancellation.

Global Television hasn’t fared quite as well, buyers say, as its new season pickups were marred by lower ratings and some cancellations. But while it got off to a slower start, thanks to another late-breaking season from Fox, the numbers are starting to build.

Global’s inability to land a new hit sitcom to replace the faltering Frasier and aging Friends seems to have translated into some audience loss, with an 18% dip in the average 18-34 audience season-to-date versus last year – a trend somewhat worrying for a net that’s always prided itself on a younger skew. But Global still owns the top series overall, Survivor, and the franchise has surprised some buyers by continuing to deliver remarkably high ratings that top out above last year’s high.

Citytv, meanwhile, continues to deliver the youngsters, although it lost some ground against the older demos, and saw its surprise hit Enterprise plummet right off the top 20. CHUM’s NewNets haven’t had the best year, with a notable 30% loss in average audience in the 18-34 demo in Ontario this season-to-date over last, an audience which may have shifted towards CanWest’s CH, which posted an 18% increase in the same demo.

Finally the CBC – which saw its audience skyrocket last season – has seen an equally dramatic drop this year, evidenced by losses of 34% to 37% against all three key demos in Ontario.

But overall, ‘it’s a nice, stable season compared to a year ago,’ says Theresa Treutler, SVP, broadcast investment director at Toronto-based Starcom Worldwide. ‘Last year we went into the fall with 28 new shows, of which only 12 survived. Going into this year, we had 40 new shows, with much fewer cancellations. And I’m really glad to see that.’

CTV: The recovery is complete

While CTV’s overall audience in Ontario has remained about the same as last year, season-to-date, there’s a celebratory mood at the caster thanks to the achievement of a long-standing pledge to grow more top-10 hits. National numbers from BBM show a record seven out of the top 10 belonging to the net, while Nielsen numbers show three to five top 10s (depending on the demo). But no matter how you slice it, it’s a dramatic improvement.

‘It looks like CTV is the winner this year,’ says Florence George, VP/media director at Toronto’s HYPN. ‘It has picked up programs that were winners this past fall, and they were also able to pick up hit franchises, such as CSI: Miami.’

Indeed, Rita Fabian, Toronto-based SVP sales and marketing at CTV, is over the moon. ‘We really are having a record-breaking year,’ she says. ‘It looks like all of the shows that we picked up have met with success – which is almost unheard of. I think our recovery may be complete.’

In addition to Miami, CTV’s last-minute pickup The Osbournes also cracked the top 20, and the icing on the cake, say buyers, is that both do well with the younger 18-34 demo.

Fabian admits that the net is indeed making a deliberate attempt to lure younger viewers. ‘We’re just looking for more balance in our schedule,’ she says. ‘We have always done really well with 25 to 54, and pretty well in 18 to 49, but now we’re actually winning some nights in 18 to 49 as well. When we looked at shows like The Osbournes and Fastlane, it was really done with an eye on rounding out the younger demos.’

Not only is CTV winning the horse race, season-to-date, but its midseason additions are already generating positive buzz among buyers. Perhaps most exciting is the American Idol/Canadian Idol duo, the latter of which is rife with sponsorship and integrated messaging opportunities a la Popstars.

Buyers say that scheduling Canadian Idol for the summer was a smart move on CTV’s part, as there is less competition for viewing, but add that the sponsorship price tag is ‘a big chunk of money,’ and summer is a season in which overall spending usually dips. Still, the net is apparently only looking for a couple of flagship sponsors, and will likely find them.

Global: Oldies solid, but not much new

It’s a mixed season for Global, which still has four to six shows in the top 10 according to Nielsen numbers, but it has yet to find a new anchor sitcom to replace Friends, which was recently renewed for another season – at great expense to NBC – but likely won’t be around for much longer.

‘Global hasn’t got any clear new winners,’ says Sherry O’Neil, managing director at Toronto-based media buyer OMD Canada. ‘They’re relying on a lot of old, proven properties from the Fox schedule, such as The Simpsons, That ’70s Show and Malcolm in the Middle.’

But Treutler sympathizes with Global, noting that ‘their risk was all the greater because they had to buy a lot more new shows.’

Kathy Gardner, Toronto-based CanWest Media Sales VP of integrated media research, notes that Global’s sked still has its strengths. ‘We’re actually very pleased with our performance,’ she says, adding that while they aren’t new, most of the Fox pickups from years past are continuing to perform. In particular, Gardner points to higher ratings for 24, continuing audiences for Fear Factor and Everybody Loves Raymond, and ‘some nice lifts’ for properties like Judging Amy, Gilmore Girls and Dawson’s Creek.

Over at CH there’s a much happier story unfolding, as the channel continues to gain audience in the Ontario market. In particular, CH posted gains of 17% to 22% against various demos, and buyers agree that they take the channel much more seriously now when planning.

Citytv: Needs a new top 10

When buyers aim for youth in Southern Ontario (and now in Vancouver) they’ve always looked to City, and they’ll continue to do so this year – but this year’s season hasn’t been City’s best.

The biggest blow, says O’Neil, came when Star Trek: Enterprise ‘dropped like a rock,’ falling from the number-four show in the Toronto/Hamilton area among 18-49s with a remarkable 9.8 rating, to its current position somewhere around number 40 or 50 with a 4.3 rating.

Treutler says the drop ‘makes no sense’ and O’Neil confesses that she has no idea why it fell, but HYPN’s George suggests that it’s partly because competition has heated up in its time slot.

Ellen Baine, Toronto-based ‘princess of programming’ at City, theorizes that the show actually performed much better than anticipated when it launched because the skeds at Global and CTV were in such disarray post 9/11 – and has simply dropped back to a more realistic audience.

But whatever the reason, says O’Neil, ‘that doesn’t help those of us who bought it based on historical performance.’

City’s top-20 placing Temptation Island is now gone, leaving only The Bachelor, and its successor, The Bachelorette, up at the top.

Buyers predict that the sequel, which turns the tables with men vying for the attention of a single woman, will continue to do well, and Baine says it will likely be followed up with some other new twist in The Bachelor III.

Baine adds that the station is still pleased with Smallville, which is pulling in about a 3.1 rating, but admits that City is a ‘little softer on the movie side’ thanks to more competition from the digital specialties and pay-per-view. The channel has been showing fewer simulcast movies, Baine says, because the U.S. nets have been airing fewer, ‘but that’s going to change, because starting in January, ABC is airing more movies on Thursday nights.’

City also hopes to increase its share of youth with Joe Millionaire, but buyers are wary of the environment. Baine says the show is ‘like a train wreck – you just have to watch it,’ while Treutler says it’s ‘really in poor taste.’ But are people tuning in? You bet, says O’Neil, especially on City, as it ‘fits their audience perfectly.’

The show airs at 9 p.m. Mondays, and leads into another new acquisition, Girls Behaving Badly, which Baine says is kind of like The Jamie Kennedy Experiment from a female perspective, produced by Oxygen network in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the NewNets, which suffered a nasty 30% drop among 18-34s in Ontario, this season-to-date over last (while mysteriously only dropping 6% with 25-54s), are vying to win back the young ‘uns with Dead Zone, a USA Network pickup that’s done well on cable south of the border. ‘It’ll skew male, younger, probably 18 to 34,’ says Baine. ‘It’s a kind of sci-fi-ish drama based on a Stephen King novel.’

CBC: Retreat to culture

‘You can’t compare us, and you should not compare us, to CTV or Global,’ says Slawko Klymkiw, CBC executive director of network programming, English television. And when you look at the numbers you can see why.

CBC lost 37.5% of its 18-34 audience, 36.9% of its 18-49 audience and 34.1% of its 25-54 audience in Ontario this season-to-date over last – but it’s no great mystery why that happened.

Klymkiw and the buyers agree that last year’s audiences were artificially high due to the Winter Olympics and 9/11 news coverage, and this fall, there were no major sporting or news events to keep up the momentum.

As well, CBC’s 50th anniversary programming disrupted the schedule, resulting in lower ratings for comedies such as This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Klymkiw says he knew right from the start that the U.S. simulcasts were going to be strong this season, and without that ratings-grabber to reach for, the CBC had a difficult decision to make.

‘So we said to ourselves, instead we’re going to build shareholder value, citizenship value, in a whole bunch of different ways,’ says Klymkiw. Some of those ways included the 50th anniversary programming, a series on the environment by David Suzuki called Sacred Balance, a show on the history of Islam, and a subtitled version of Radio-Canada’s French-language hit Music Hall.

‘What that did,’ says Klymkiw, ‘was to really re-establish the importance of the CBC, not just as a TV network, because it’s so much more than that, but as a cultural institution.’

HYPN’s George says that she understands what the CBC was trying to do ‘and if they didn’t have to sell it, I don’t think it was a mistake.’ But at the same time, she notes that lower overall tune-in and a dearth of big news stories have impacted the CBC’s treasured The National newscast, which lost 27% of its audience versus a year ago. That puts the newscast about a quarter million viewers behind CTV News with Lloyd Robertson – and that’s enough to worry even a public broadcaster.

New shows for the winter include The Great Canadian Music Dream, a six-episode series, which premiered Jan. 22, that features battle-of-the-band-style competitions in five regions across the country, building to a finale in Hamilton, ON on Feb. 26. The winning band gets its own music special, and the series is sponsored by General Motors.

Several buyers say the show won’t pull in huge numbers because the younger audience that would be interested in such a show doesn’t watch the CBC – while O’Neil’s reaction to hearing about the show is disbelief.

‘We’re one of Canada’s largest buyers of media, and we didn’t even know about it. You’d think they would have come in and presented it. The CBC needs to do a better job marketing to us.’

Also of note is a completely revamped Disclosure, with no Wendy Mesley, but a ‘harder-hitting, more topical, more contemporary’ approach to current affairs.

Finally, the success of Trudeau and other made-in-Canada miniseries hasn’t been lost on Mother Corp. A new batch has been ordered, says Klymkiw, but they won’t be ready until next fall. ‘This year, the big one we have is Hemingway and Callaghan, which I think is going to do very, very well for us. That will air in late March.’

(A version of this article appeared in the Jan. 13 issue of Strategy Media.)

-www.ctv.ca

-www.canwestglobal.com

-www.citytv.com

-www.cbc.ca