Bye bye!!

CBC says goodbye to Grey Cup
The Grey Cup went out with a bang on CBC, with the network noting a 4% increase over last year’s average viewership for Sunday’s CFL championship game, which saw the Saskatchewan Roughriders defeat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 23-19.
The game, which got underway at 6 p.m. ET, scored a strong 3.3 million viewers (2+), peaking at 3.7 million between 9 and 9:30 p.m., making it CBC’s sixth most-watched Grey Cup since the process of tracking game-only audiences began in 1996.
It marked the pubcaster’s final Grey Cup game for at least five years, as rival TSN takes over broadcasting duties of CFL regular season and playoff games next year. CBC had been televising the CFL and Grey Cup for 55 years.
Meanwhile, audiences were down for the East Final last week, as one million viewers tuned in for the Winnipeg-Montreal match-up, while an average 1.5 million viewers watched Saskatchewan take on Calgary in the West Final, for an audience increase of 12%.
The Grey Cup was broadcast in countries including the U.K., Belarus, Denmark and Portugal through NASN (North American Sports Network), and also in Mexico through cable sports channel TVC Deportes. The game aired in Quebec on RÈseau des Sports, attracting a reportedly small 202,000.
Meanwhile, CTV continues to grow its viewership for its Sunday afternoon 1-4 p.m. NFL block, which is up 38% since the beginning of the season.
CTV’s national average audience was 353,000 for Sunday’s broadcast, in which it aired four simultaneous games, including Buffalo vs. Jacksonville in southwestern Ontario, Montreal and Atlantic Canada, while B.C. viewers got to watch neighboring Seattle take on St. Louis.
A spokesperson at the net says the reason the numbers are growing is because it’s now airing specific games of interest to specific regions. In week one, when CTV televised one game nationally, it averaged 255,000 viewers for the Denver-Buffalo match-up.