The title of this Pension Plan Puppets article says it all: Would the CBC ever drop the Leafs from the National Broadcast? I doubt it, and I have numbers on my side.On Average the ratings for HNIC Game 1 are in the 1.228 million range. When the Leafs play it is 1.262 Million. When the Leafs do not play it is 0.972 Million. That means on average the CBC loses approx. 289,000 viewers when the Leafs do not play. That is a drop of almost 24%....aaand of course, he's right. Toronto is, for better or worse, our "national" team. Lacking a detailed breakdown by region, we can guess that this is mostly due to the high density of frustrated Maple Leafs fans in Southern Ontario. But over all, these numbers explain precisely why we have Hockey Night In Toronto.
One thing we can't measure is whether or not there is any inertia in these numbers -- that the national audience identifies with Toronto simply because Toronto has lead the national broadcast for so many years. Although I've just written that and I immediately discount it. For households where HNIC is a Saturday tradition, the majority of viewers probably don't care who is playing, they just care that there is a game on.
One question the article does ask, although perhaps more rhetorically:
Imagine if the Leafs were good!I think if the Leafs were any good, the numbers would go up a bit, but only due to the bandwagon effect where fair-weather fans pile on. One could say that this season (so far anyways) marks rock bottom for the Leafs fanbase, and probably represents the absolute lowest that these numbers can go. And if MLSE can make money with this kind of team on the ice, it adds much more credence to my "Timbits" theory.
(You know, where MLSE could ice a team made up entirely of Timbits hockey players, and they'd still sell out.)
