Don Cherry fired by Sportsnet

[hockeyfan1]

The last two weeks of available data show that HNIC viewership is up compared to the previous year. So using the Toronto Sun's excellent logic that means more people are now watching because Don Cherry was fired.

Link?

I checked the Numeris ratings numbers and it looks like HNIC is back up in the ratings.

However, you can?t discount the fact that it was down at least for awhile (and not just by the Toronto Sun?s definition at the time).

October:
http://assets.numeris.ca/Downloads/October%206,%202019%20-%20October%2013,%202019%20(National).pdf

http://assets.numeris.ca/Downloads/October%2021,%202019%20-%20October%2027,%202019%20(National).pdf

November: (post Cherry firing ratings temporarily plummet)
http://assets.numeris.ca/Downloads/November%2004,%202019%20-%20November%2010,%202019%20(National).pdf

http://assets.numeris.ca/Downloads/November%2025,%202019%20-%20December%2001,%202019%20(National).pdf

December: (ratings begin ascending again)
http://assets.numeris.ca/Downloads/December%2023,%202019%20-%20December%2029,%202019%20(National).pdf

Dec./January (most current - 2020)
http://assets.numeris.ca/Downloads/December%2030,%202019%20-%20January%2005,%202020%20(National).pdf


For the record, I am not an avid Sun reader.  Never liked that newspaper/tabloid particularly it?s political POVs.  (Yes, they did have a good sports section  back in the ?70?s, ?80?s, & ?90?s eras).
However, I cannot bring myself to hate it.  Highly personal reasons (of which I do not wish to divulge on the web).  I?ve never been a fan of the T.O. Sun in general but I cannot vehemently abhor it either.
Sorry if this inconveniences anyone on this board.

 

[Kin]

The Sun's own article says there was a 300,000 drop in viewership between the October 12th game between Detroit and Toronto and the November 9th game that was Cherry's last. So if the drop after Cherry's game is attributable to his firing what explains the drop prior to it?

This is why cherrypicking one small datapoint in a giant haystack of data just because it seemingly fits your agenda is the sort of thing that only works on, well, Sun readers.

 

[Guru Tugginmypuddah]

For the record, I am not an avid Sun reader.  Never liked that newspaper/tabloid particularly it?s political POVs.  (Yes, they did have a good sports section  back in the ?70?s, ?80?s, & ?90?s eras).
However, I cannot bring myself to hate it.  Highly personal reasons (of which I do not wish to divulge on the web).  I?ve never been a fan of the T.O. Sun in general but I cannot vehemently abhor it either.
Sorry if this inconveniences anyone on this board.

Come on lets see the Sunshine Girl photo. 

 

[hockeyfan1]

For the record, I am not an avid Sun reader.  Never liked that newspaper/tabloid particularly it?s political POVs.  (Yes, they did have a good sports section  back in the ?70?s, ?80?s, & ?90?s eras).
However, I cannot bring myself to hate it.  Highly personal reasons (of which I do not wish to divulge on the web).  I?ve never been a fan of the T.O. Sun in general but I cannot vehemently abhor it either.
Sorry if this inconveniences anyone on this board.

Come on lets see the Sunshine Girl photo. 

Ha ha!  But that?s not the reason.

 

[hockeyfan1]

Just for fun... some interesting data:  Sports networks & their audiences (analytical comparisons)

https://tv.parrotanalytics.com/CA/hockey-night-in-canada-cbc-television

 

[Hobbes]

It's also fun to actually look at the top 30 shows each week. The Sun's piece says "didn't even draw as many as NCIS New Orleans" and if one looks back at the 7 weeks of Cherry-filled-HNIC it turns out that NCIS beats it every single week and is almost always a top-10 show while the 2nd NCIS-type show rotates between NCIS LA, NCIS NO, and Bull which all routinely rated very close to or above the HNIC rating. So....status quo. Also the Sun piece makes it sound like they're competing in the same time slot whereas they're not...that's weekly top ratings so it's really not all that surprising that a few of the very top rated prime time weekday evening shows are beating out a Saturday evening sports broadcast.

There's lots of scatter to the data, and it's also not really all that dissimilar to the 2018 data for AMA (average audience per minute (in k)) and rating.

https://imgur.com/EAv6Xpn

 

[hockeyfan1]

It's also fun to actually look at the top 30 shows each week. The Sun's piece says "didn't even draw as many as NCIS New Orleans" and if one looks back at the 7 weeks of Cherry-filled-HNIC it turns out that NCIS beats it every single week and is almost always a top-10 show while the 2nd NCIS-type show rotates between NCIS LA, NCIS NO, and Bull which all routinely rated very close to or above the HNIC rating. So....status quo. Also the Sun piece makes it sound like they're competing in the same time slot whereas they're not...that's weekly top ratings so it's really not all that surprising that a few of the very top rated prime time weekday evening shows are beating out a Saturday evening sports broadcast.

There's lots of scatter to the data, and it's also not really all that dissimilar to the 2018 data for AMA (average audience per minute (in k)) and rating.

https://imgur.com/EAv6Xpn

Thanks for posting that link.  That?s what I was hoping to find (post-Cherry ratings).

HNIC will never supersede NCIS on any given week (and neither shall we be expecting it to).

The reason I had posted that link to that Sun article at the time I did was because that?s all there was, and many were talking about it on the web. 
In no way was that meant to be shoved down anyone?s throat figuratively speaking, contrary to what some may think.

I reiterated some of the Numeris weekly ratings (not a good depiction I know) but to showcase a bit of a blip on the HNIC viewership horizon, coincidental with the Cherry firing, still not attributable to it.
It encapsulates two things:
1)  That there was indeed a downward blip in viewership ? no not the Toronto Sun?s version of ?the shy is falling? type of thing

and

2)  Thereafter, It shows HNIC holding it?s own ? viewership remaining constant going into the new year where it should be (in the middle of the weekly ratings pack the HNIC normal we?ll call it)

 

[Hobbes]

The other thing to keep in mind with any small segment of game (or ratings of any sort) is the host of other factors that might contribute to good or bad ratings including:

- which two teams are playing in the "prime time" HNIC slot...crap teams get lower numbers than good ones (or traditional rivalries)
- whether the game is a good one...the figure averages the AMA over the duration of the program so if the game is effectively over by the end of the 1st, its numbers will be bad as many may tune to something else of the rest of the evening
- competition in that time slot...ratings will be lower if there are other competing programs on at the same time (a couple weeks there are Saturday NFL playoff games)
- world events that might draw away viewers
- weather effects
- competing ways of viewing the broadcast - the ratings only factor TV viewership and I believe more and more people (myself included) are moving to watching games streamed via NHL Live so that might account for a (small?) decline year over year in the TV numbers
- seasonal effects - around Christmas and New Years it matter what exact date(s) those Saturdays fall...

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the scatter is due at least as much to "noise" as it is to any sort of trend.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

- competition in that time slot...ratings will be lower if there are other competing programs on at the same time (a couple weeks there are Saturday NFL playoff games)

November is generally a very busy time for TV programs. "November sweeps". A lot of shows are airing their season premieres or finales or big episodes during this time and they get big boosts in ratings. HNIC of course doesn't really get that boost so it gets pushed out of the top-30 even if it's ratings stay constant but it looks like they dropped because of that. The first two post-Cherry broadcasts happened in the very middle of this busy period, which is at least partially why they got pushed out of the top-30. The Sun's article makes a big deal out of this and it makes the reader believe that their ratings must have absolutely crashed all because of Cherry. It doesn't mention anything about this sweeps period or mention that, as you noted in your numbers, last year's HNIC didn't make the top-30 in one of those weeks as well. So either the author put less effort into researching his piece than we have, or he just left all this information out because he's fine misleading his readers.

Another thing that I also noticed when looking through these numbers that complicates things is that the CBC broadcast of the Saturday game is tracked separately from the Sportsnet broadcast, even though they're both playing the same Leafs game. But the SN one very rarely appears in the top-30 rankings because CBC is still the go-to for most people. I'm not saying that a bunch of angry people boycotted CBC (who had nothing to do with the decision but is still what most people think of when they imagine Cherry's boss I think) and watched the Sportsnet broadcast instead, but it'd be pretty funny if they did.

 

[Hobbes]

- competition in that time slot...ratings will be lower if there are other competing programs on at the same time (a couple weeks there are Saturday NFL playoff games)

November is generally a very busy time for TV programs. "November sweeps". A lot of shows are airing their season premieres or finales or big episodes during this time and they get big boosts in ratings. HNIC of course doesn't really get that boost so it gets pushed out of the top-30 even if it's ratings stay constant but it looks like they dropped because of that. The first two post-Cherry broadcasts happened in the very middle of this busy period, which is at least partially why they got pushed out of the top-30. The Sun's article makes a big deal out of this and it makes the reader believe that their ratings must have absolutely crashed all because of Cherry. It doesn't mention anything about this sweeps period or mention that, as you noted in your numbers, last year's HNIC didn't make the top-30 in one of those weeks as well. So either the author put less effort into researching his piece than we have, or he just left all this information out because he's fine misleading his readers.

Another thing that I also noticed when looking through these numbers that complicates things is that the CBC broadcast of the Saturday game is tracked separately from the Sportsnet broadcast, even though they're both playing the same Leafs game. But the SN one very rarely appears in the top-30 rankings because CBC is still the go-to for most people. I'm not saying that a bunch of angry people boycotted CBC (who had nothing to do with the decision but is still what most people think of when they imagine Cherry's boss I think) and watched the Sportsnet broadcast instead, but it'd be pretty funny if they did.

Be careful to check the day tag of those SN broadcast numbers...they could just as easily be for a weekday broadcast of a different game, not the Saturday HNIC game broadcast. Then, as you say, there are often 2-4 games being simultaneously broadcast during the prime time slot since they essentially make sure that every Canadian team's game is on one of their channels.

For instance: http://assets.numeris.ca/Downloads/December%2030,%202019%20-%20January%2005,%202020%20(National).pdf

That's the most recent week for which data is available (Dec 30 - Jan 5) although the next week's will be released later today. The highest rated NHL program of that week was at #13 "Hockey: Leafs" which was Tuesday night's 4-1 win over the Wild (prime time, in Min.). Saturday's HNIC prime time east show comes in at #15 (Hutch's shutout over the Isles). We skip past the World Juniors (#18) to the next one...Thursday's TSN broadcast of Leafs at Jets (6-3 win) at #20. None of the other NHL broadcasts that week made the top 30 at all, including any of the other TSN and SN broadcasts of assorted Canucks, Jets, Oilers, Flames, Sens or Habs games.

The only game(s) that might have been impacted by Cherry's firing would be the Saturday night one, I suppose the HNIC late game, and possibly minutely the other prime time HNIC regional broadcasts. Since it got #15 even without him, that's pretty good considering it typically is in the high teens or low 20's, although being the week with New Year's Eve falling in it, there was less competition from mainstream channels in weekday prime time who would all have been airing reruns.

It will be interesting to perhaps compare the final 20-30 weeks of the season from both years to get a bit cleaner sense of whether there has been much in the way of a drastic change in viewership. It will be easy enough to pull and graph the data as long as I remember to look at it when it's all been published.

 

[Kin]

All of this seems to kind of be dancing around the larger point which is that if firing Cherry did cost Sportsnet viewers then it actually makes what they did more admirable as it would then be a rare instance of a large corporation putting their values ahead of profits.

And, honestly, if you're not watching a hockey game because of who isn't yelling racisms during the intermission then you're probably not much of a hockey fan to begin with and the league is probably glad to see the back of you.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Be careful to check the day tag of those SN broadcast numbers...they could just as easily be for a weekday broadcast of a different game, not the Saturday HNIC game broadcast. Then, as you say, there are often 2-4 games being simultaneously broadcast during the prime time slot since they essentially make sure that every Canadian team's game is on one of their channels.

Yeah I know. Look at the numbers on week 19 for instance. This was the week of the Christmas holidays so there wasn't much other TV going on. Both the CBC broadcast of "HNIC PRIME EAST" and the Sportsnet broadcast of "HNIC PRIME EAST" show up.

That night the Leafs game was broadcasted on CBC, SN1, SNO, SNW, SNP. There was also a Montreal game going on at the same time that was broadcasted on CityTV, SN360, and SNE.

Obviously the CBC numbers are the Leafs game (842k). I don't think we can say entirely what the Sportsnet numbers (565k) are made up of. At first I assumed it was also only the Leafs game because it was named the same (HNIC PRIME EAST). But the progammer was named "Sportsnet National+" when weekday games on Sportsnet are listed under "Sportsnet Ont+". So now I'm thinking it's a total of all the channels during that time slot, so it would include both games.

Still, it's pretty clear that the numbers being posted for the CBC HNIC broadcast don't actually include any of the people who watched the same game on Sportsnet. Just something to keep in mind. I never would have thought I'd be doing deep dives into Canadian television audience ratings hah.

 

[Kin]

Not shockingly, Sportsnet is saying their numbers are just peachy:

https://twitter.com/SportsnetPR/status/1220403368646119426