In Toronto, CBC RadioOne had a 25% share of the audience.

What's wrong with talking about the peak minute when the US got the goal for the gold medal? All networks do this for big sports events like the Super Bowl, World Series etc.  Many people would likely be interested in that.  Here is more ratings information from CBC...30.5 Million Canadians watched the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, with Record-Breaking Digital Audiences | CBC Media Centre

paterson1 wrote:

What's wrong with talking about the peak minute when the US got the goal for the gold medal? All networks do this for big sports events like the Super Bowl, World Series etc.  Many people would likely be interested in that.  Here is more ratings information from CBC...30.5 Million Canadians watched the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, with Record-Breaking Digital Audiences | CBC Media Centre

No they don't haha. Stop spewing stuff you guys nothing about.... CBC does it worse than anyone

Average-minute-audience is the industry standard because advertisers don't care what you peaked at. The CBC press release only uses peak reach because they know the actual average viewership numbers are poor when stacked up against the real mega broadcasts of the past year....

The Super Bowl, 4 Nations and World Series press releases focused on the average audience, whereas CBC doesn't even include it in their olympics PR

Peak reach is somewhat interesting, but not a measure of the success of the broadcast. In context, it's clearly grasping for a highlight when the regular metrics aren't great.

Last edited by RadioAaron (February 24, 2026 9:02 pm)

The Globe & Mail's Simon Houpt laments how difficult it's become to really measure the true number of people who are watching a sporting event like the Olympics. And he wonders if we'll ever really know. He claims it started when Numeris began to keep all its results a state secret and refuses to truly publish what its numbers indicate. 

"Traditional viewership is withering: according to Numeris, the audience tuning in to linear TV is now less than 60 per cent of what it was in 2014, during the Sochi Games. The PR departments of broadcasters are being more stingy and selective about the data they release. Sports is the only programming pulling in mass viewership, so sports ratings are the only ones we’re given. And even then, rarely."

Selective sports TV ratings tell an incomplete story

A different story in the UK as well where ratings seem to be much more available for anyone who wants to look at them. OTA broadcasters in the UK still get strong ratings for regular programming, unlike the US and Canada. 

In terms of Numeris it is just about controlling the information.  Numeris is owned by the networks, ad agencies, Canadian Association of Broadcasters.  A cozy group that decided a few years ago to stop releasing the 8 to 10 day old weekly top 30 ratings in Canada.  What was really dumb was that Numeris also scrubbed all of the archive material that was also available.  Can't have people looking up the ratings from 10-30 years ago.  

Other than the Olympics, Super Bowl, Grey Cup and a few others, Canadian networks aren't very good at promotion for themselves even when they have some good ratings.  Bell is likely the best of a poor group at self promotion and CBC the worst. 

Pretty sad since both radio and TV are in the marketing business...