Hockey Central Draws More Viewers Than Either VERSUS Telecast on Friday
October 12, 2010 2 Comments
The NHL Premiere games continued to show a loss of interest from the previous year, and this time in direct comparison to last year’s numbers.
VERSUS’ broadcast of the second game of the Minnesota-Carolina series in Helsinki, Finland drew 95,000 viewers in it’s Noon ET timeslot on Friday. While this was up 16% from the game airing at the same time on Thursday, it was still down 5% from the comparable telecast last year (100,000 viewers for Blackhawks/Panthers on 10/2/09). The game scored an 0.1 HH rating, and 50,000 viewers in the Adults 18-49 demographic, and 10,000 Women 18-49 tuned in.
The second game of the day on VERSUS, Columbus-San Jose from Stockholm, Sweden drew 120,000 viewers. This was down from the comparable year-ago telecast by 65% (278,000 for Red Wings/Blues on 10/2/09). The game also drew an 0.1 HH rating, with 64,000 among Adults 18-49 and 15,000 among Women 18-49. Columbus-San Jose grew from it’s Carolina-Minnesota lead-in by 21%.
The curious note is that the brief Hockey Central that aired in between Carolina-Minnesota scored 125,000 viewers, more than either game. 52,000 Adults 18-49 watched the broadcast, with 23,000 among Women 18-49. It’s only 40,000 viewers short of a Hockey Central that aired at 6:30 PM ET Thursday broadcast that aired before the Penguins-Flyers game.
(Source: Son of the Bronx)
Puck The Media 
Honestly, games played in the middle of the day from Europe are not going to be a ratings draw. I think Versus airs the games as a favor to the NHL. I mean Carolina vs Minn…..Versus/NBC/whoever would never choose this matchup to televise……
From what I saw, Versus did a terrible job with these, even NESN had lots of beauty shots of Prague for their Bruins/Phoenix game yet I didn’t see any on Versus’s.