TV Weekly Top 30

These reports capture the top 30 shows that air on conventional and specialty television networks each week. They're ranked by Average Minute Audience (the average number of viewers, age 2+, watching the program during any given minute). Reports are available for Total Canada and Quebec Francophone.

August 27, 2018 - September 2, 2018 (National)

Interesting to see the CFL in the top 30, the only sport and the only cable outlet.

I'm too young to really be able to make comparisons, but anecdotally it really does seem like sports are not very high up on the entertainment list. I would not bring up any sport in any league as small talk, even with men.

Funny you say that. I find it interesting that at my workplace, which is almost all young men, the two things that are almost never talked about are chicks and sports. When I started working in the 80s, again in a male dominated career, that's all we talked about. Times do change.

Not sure why but sports seem less important now (at least to me). Maybe it's just the sheer availability of it, 24 hours a day. I used to watch everything when I was a kid but back then there wasn't much on and IIRC that was probably only on weekends.

I have to admit I am turned off by the big salaries and yesterday it dawned on me about the stupidity of the choreographed TD celebrations. They even do some stupid "dig me" show after every play. I guess I've grown tired of it.

https://i.imgur.com/wngKWFb.jpg

There is still some sports talk around my office, but not nearly as much as there used to be. The guys who are into it seek out other guys and they chat mostly bilaterally.

When I started my career in the 1990s you might occasionally have had someone walk into a morning staff meeting, and some guy would make a comment about a "play" from the big game the night before, and almost all of the guys would have something to say about it. Nowadays you only get that for very special sporting events, like maybe the gold medal match in men's hockey at the Olympics.

And my workplace hasn't changed much since then in terms of "style" or demographics either.

When the NHL was only on Saturday night, MLB on Saturday afternoon, the CFL was only shown after Labour Day and the NFL had one or two games shown Sunday (this was in the days of 3 channels on the antenna) it was a big event to watch the game(s) and the thing to talk about on Monday. Now with 100's of games being shown every minute of every day its just so much white noise to me now.
I'm an older white male with major rural roots so this may not be what young urban hip folks are thinking.

Except for a few isolated cases during the year, "The Game" no longer exists anymore.

And it's just simply that males are all over the place in terms of their sports interests. There is some of that as you say, but the percentage of males just not interested in sports has gone up as well ISTM.

I suppose that back in the day there was probably more peer pressure than today to follow the most popular sports or teams if you were a guy.

Contemporary society gives people a lot more opportunity to opt out of the mainstream.

Off topic, but you just reminded me of a great TV series that is not too well known but was pretty trendsetting.

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And yet ironically the CFL's low salaries are commonly brought up as a reason why people don't watch it!

That's part of the reason why I like it because the players are more "accessible" but I've never really heard that people don't watch it because of the salaries (unless they mistakenly use it as a judge of the overall quality of the player).

For example, I doubt Delvin Breaux is likely much better or worse of a player since going to the NFL and being a highly paid star for a few seasons vs his time before with the CFL and his career in the CFL now.

Maybe the NFL snobs associate the wages with the quality of the player, which is not very intelligent. I can post a thousand quotes from people (who should know) how close in quality are the NFL and CFL players. It's the wannabes who make these comments and I find it interesting they can offer expertise in a subject they proclaim not to watch or follow.

I think there's a legitimacy that high salaries lend to sports. As in, the big 4 leagues all have high salaries, since the CFL doesn't it must not be a serious entity. And yeah, as a proxy for player quality as well.

It's usually in conjunction with other arguments, but the salary thing is one I've heard before.

^ Yeah, not many people will specifically cite low salaries as the reason they don't watch the CFL, but you definitely get the feeling that some people look at it as an inferior league, with the low salaries being among the reasons for that. A lot of people are under the impression that CFL players all make McDonald's money.

As to the earlier point about water cooler sports talk, the audiences are way too fragmented these days for that. In my workplace, younger guys will be less into hockey and more into basketball, UFC or whatever, and older guys tend to be hockey all the way. The recent Jets playoff run was one of the rare local instances of everyone being on the same page. But that's obviously a very exceptional set of circumstances.

The average CFL salary is probably a little more than 80k (and that was mentioned a few years ago). Haterz often quote the rookie minimum of around 50k. Be that as it may it's still peanuts compared to the other big North American sports but still not bad for six months work for the average Joe.

A more prized commodity like a star, Canadian lineman or ratio breaker will make over 100k and the top QBs are over 400k. Regardless of pay, some will find a second job and some won`t, preferring to devote to training full time in the off season.

As for interest where I`m at, it`s baseball, hockey and NFL. There used to be some interest in Nascar and UFC, Nascar has almost fallen off the radar and UFC is greatly reduced. I think WWE is still popular. No basketball (aside from a hat) or soccer interest in anyone I come into contact with or our kid's friends.

There is no CFL interest but just from asking, they will support a team if it comes to Halifax. From what I've seen there seems to be more general interest in the NFL (pools, water cooler talk) than actual team devotion. With a CFL team, I think the interest will come from being a fun thing to do rather than a general interest, although if it's done right Halifax/Atlantic could become like another Regina. The potential is there.

There is more interest in MLB than NHL in PEI?

$80K for basically 4-5 months of work is not too bad at all... I assume there is some sort of bonus as well for a Grey Cup win.

Don't think so, but both are pretty popular and I didn't mean to put any order to those sports.

It can be stated the CFL player mean income is over two times the Canadian national median income for males in the 25-34 age range. While they pale in comparison to some professional athletes, CFL players are paid more than the general population in their age group on average, most players would be in the top 10% income earners in Canada while the highest paid players are in the top federal and provincial income tax brackets and the top 1% (over $225,000 in 2014) income earners in Canada, contributing to the 4.4% under 35 that make up this group.

The minimum player salary as dictated by the Collective Bargaining Agreement is $54,000 in 2018, incremented by $1,000 per year for each year of the current CBA.

Players are also compensated with a per diem when travelling, free and discounted tickets, playoff and Grey Cup compensation and pension contributions.

https://i.imgur.com/jXhu9aE.jpg

What is the CFL players daily per diem? What is the travel allowance for a CFL player?

The travel allowance for CFL players is defined in Article 25 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. For the term of the 2014 CBA the daily travel allowance is $115 for each day travelling for a pre-season, regular season, playoff or Grey Cup game.

The allowance is reduced by $30 for travelling days where the team provides a meal and by $50 on departure or return days where the departure time occurs after or before 12:00 noon respectively. See the CBA for the full details of the exceptions.

For comparison, this was higher than the base NHL per diem (Article 19 of the NHL-NHLPA 2013 CBA [pg 128]) established in 2013

Moncton will be setting a new high for single-game hockey attendance in New Brunswick this Friday. Wildcats have sold out their new 8,800 seat arena for the game against Saint John on Friday.

Will any of the province's premiers be attending?