Recently the Numeris ratings company dropped the public weekly TV ratings for the most popular over the air programs in Canada.  Numeris is operated by the CAB, member stations and ad agencies.

This "cabal" decided that the public wasn't really that interested in knowing how many people were watching the top 30 most popular programs every week in the country.

Numeris had been delaying the numbers by about 8 days, so what the public could access every week in fact were not the latest numbers anyway.  Sort of like day old donuts multiplied by eight.

However the company replaced the weekly top 30 with the Netflix Top Ten in Canada. So now we get the most popular viewed programs from the subscribers from one streaming service. Yippee!

No sports numbers, no news numbers, no more ratings from any specials or events.  Just the shows that subscribers from one service decided to watch.

The Netflix Top Ten week of Oct 10-16, actually had two different programs on Jeffrey Dahmer.  And Dynasty, a show that tanked on OTA TV was number 9 in the country!!!  In fairness we don't know if this was the new or old Dynasty.  Season 18 of Grey's Anatomy came in third spot, but we have no idea how the current season 19 of the show is doing.   And speaking of any new programming or series that makes the list, they will surely be produced by, who else, Netflix!!! 

Anyway, to me at least, the list is boring and much less that what was available a few weeks ago.  While it is nice to look at the often dismal US OTA ratings from various sources, it would be more interesting to many to see the top shows in Canada every week.

One thing that the old Numeris weekly ratings did show was how dramatically different viewing habits were in Canada vs the US. Shows that weren't popular south of the border often did much better here. And the Canadian top 30 also showed that OTA network programming was healthier here with a greater variety for the top shows.

Sports does not dominate the ratings nearly as much in Canada, and scripted programming is more prevalent here with a larger variety of shows.  And of course it is great to see what homegrown programming is popular and get into the top 30. It was surprising to see what domestic shows with usually poor promotion and no simsub would make it into the top 30. 

But now, we just live in a ratings vacuum.