Who's watching Compass?

I stumbled across a very helpful tool this afternoon while visiting the CBC website: the Master Planner from CBC Media Sales and Marketing is a web application that lets you explore the ratings and audience size of CBC programs by market and demographic.

If I enter “Charlottetown” as the “Market,” for example, “CBC News at Six” as the “Program,” “Fall 2009” as the “Season” and select “A2+” (short for “all viewers”) as the demographic, I learn that 23% of televisions in the Charlottetown market were watching the Compass, representing an estimated audience of 31,500.

Splitting this up demographically, in the “lucrative 18-24” demographic the rating is to 5.4% and in the “55+” demographic it’s 41.8%.

I think that means that “a lot more old people watch Compass.”

By contrast, The National has a 2.9% share and an estimated audience of 4,050, the Rick Mercer Report has a 3.8% share and an audience of 5,500 and the Sunday morning airing of Coronation Street has a 1.9% share and an audience of 2,880.

Looking across the country, Compass’ counterparts (assuming they’re all tagged CBC News at Six) have the following ratings share:

• Vancouver, 0.7%
• Edmonton, 0.45%
• Calgary, 0.6%
• Regina, 1.05%
• Winnipeg, 3.9%
• Toronto, 0.8%
• Montreal, 2.2%
• Halifax, 5.15%
• St. John’s/Cornerbrook, 10.4%

This means that 10,000 more people are watching the CBC News at Six in Prince Edward Island than are watching the CBC News at Six in Montreal (despite the fact that Montreal is, well, bigger).

By ratings, the ten most popular shows for the CBC Charlottetown market are:

1. CBC News at Six (23.15%)
2. CBC News at Five (8.9%)
3. Jeopardy (6%)
4. Coronation Street Primetime (5.3%)
5. Hockey Night in Canada (5.3%)
6. Wheel of Fortune (4.7%)
7. Heartland (4%)
8. Rick Mercer Report (3.8%)
9. Nature of Things (3.6%)
10. Figure Skating Championships (3.5%)

By contrast the most popular programs in the CBC Toronto market are:

1. Jeopardy (4.3%)
2. Hockey Night in Canada (4.2%)
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (3.41%)
4. Wheel of Fortune (3.38%)
5. Rick Mercer Report (2.9%)
6. Coronation Street Primetime (2.5%)
7. Happy Feet (2.5%)
8. Elf (2.3%)
9. Ron James Show (2.3%)
10. Best of Rick Mercer (2.1%)

Of those top 10 shows in Toronto, 3 are Hollywood movies, 2 are U.S. game shows, and 1 is a British soap. Only three are made-in-Canada: 2 Rick Mercers, a Ron James and the hockey.

So, it’s true what they say: lots of Prince Edward Islander’s watch Compass. 

You gotta wonder about the Jeopardy and the Wheel of Fortune though. I guess running those imports five times a week is what lets the 5,000 Islanders watch the Nature of Things on Sunday nights?