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Good morning, folks.
I have a confession: I did not watch any of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts last week.
I was somewhat tempted to tune in to the final on Sunday evening, but I ended up watching a terrific documentary on the Bee Gees called How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.
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Turns out I wasn’t the only one who skipped the showdown between Rachel Homan and Kerry Einarson.
Ratings for this year’s Canadian women’s curling final were down significantly. An average audience of just 682,000 viewers tuned last Sunday. That’s about 30 per cent less than the 979,000 viewers who watched the 2020 final in Moose Jaw when the same two teams met for the championship.
It shouldn’t come as a big surprise to those of you who have been reading this little missive that I didn’t watch the Scotties. It’s not that I don’t enjoy watching curling — it’s all right — but as most of you know by now, I try to avoid work when I leave work.
Team Canada, left to right, lead Briane Meilleur, second Shannon Birchard, third Val Sweeting and skip Kerri Einarson celebrates pose with the trophy after defeating Team Ontario in the final at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Calgary, Alta., Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Yes, I watched the Jets game last night — but I leave the curling to our resident expert Jason Bell. He watched it Sunday night and filed this report on Einarson winning her second consecutive final over Homan. I read every word of it.
But what about the rest of you? You may recall I wrote in this space a week or so ago about what big fans you all are of curling. Did you watch on Sunday?
TV ratings for live sports had been dropping pre-pandemic — lots of cord-cutting — and when sports made its return to play last summer, ratings were also not great.
Dennis Deninger, a sports communicators professor at Syracuse University and Emmy-award winning producer, said in a recent Forbes article that it would be naive to view the 2020 ratings dips as an anomaly, and suggests 2021 may bring more of the same.
“We’ve seen major disruptions in people’s behavior patterns,” Deniger says. “As a result, even after people have been vaccinated and sports are being played as scheduled again, I think there is going to be for a number of years, a discernible levelling-off of sport not returning to the same viewership levels it had pre-pandemic.”
Anecdotally, many of you have told me this same thing — that you found other interests when sports was shut down and a re-examining of what’s important to you has had you spending less time in front of the tube watching sports.
Except hockey, apparently — it seems to be “Stayin’ Alive.” Sorry, had to throw that in there!
According to numbers sent to me on Thursday by Sportsnet’s Meghann Cox, as of Feb. 16, Hockey Night in Canada was reporting that its early game on Saturdays was experiencing a four per cent increase year over year, while the late game had a 19 per cent bump. The station’s Wednesday night national game has had a whopping 47 per cent increase in viewership.
Well, in case you were just busy and are still craving a curling fix, the Brier gets underway tonight in Calgary and Jason had a full preview of the event in yesterday’s edition.
There are 10 full days of action, with the final slated for next Sunday night. I can’t guarantee I will watch any — you’ve seen the forecast, right? — but I’ve assigned Jason to watch and report on it, so my work is really done.
Oh, and I told him, he’s just gotta get a message to you.
As always folks, you can reach me by replying to this mailing or by sending me an email here.
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