TV & Film News – Raptors’ Game 6 win draws combined average audience of 7.7M viewers

TSN, CTV and RDS, combined, drew an average audience of 7.7 million viewers to the Toronto Raptors’ Game 6 NBA Finals win last Thursday. That makes it the most-watched NBA game on record in Canada and the biggest English-language television broadcast in three years. Preliminary Numeris data indicates the broadcast drew 15.9 million unique Canadian viewers – 44% of Canada’s population – that watched some part of the game. Audiences peaked at 9.99 million viewers at 11:47 p.m. ET in the game’s final minute. TSN and CTV post-game coverage attracted an average audience of 6.5 million viewers. In Toronto and Hamilton, the game had a share of 82% on TSN and CTV – the highest audience ever in that market, excluding the Olympics. TSN’s official social media accounts also garnered significant engagement during the game, with 12.5 million views on Twitter and 4.4 million on Instagram. Additionally, TSN’s live streaming coverage attracted 143,000 video starts across the network’s digital platforms – the second-highest total for any event on TSN. Game 5, broadcast on Sportsnet and Citytv, drew an average audience of 6.4 million viewers and reached 13.4 million Canadians.

Bell Media’s coverage of the Toronto Raptors Championship Parade across CTV, TSN, CP24 and CTV News Channel reached nearly 5.7 million Canadians, according to data supplied by the network. The average audience across the Bell Media network was 954,000 viewers between roughly 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Global was one of the only major Canadian networks that wasn’t an NBA Finals rights holder. Global Toronto news director Mackay Taggart says without unlimited game footage to lean on they set out to tell the story of the fan. Read our feature here.

The City of Hamilton has signed a memorandum of understanding with a coalition of investors that would see the city-owned Barton-Tiffany lands developed into an international hub for film, television, and digital media production. The Hamilton Studio District would encompass what’s envisioned as a 15-acre “live-work-play development” for the creative sector set to include a film and TV production campus featuring 500,000 sq. feet of soundstage and studio facilities; post-production, VFX, music and game development studios; training facilities; two residential towers, office and retail space. Leading the development charge is Aeon Studio Group – a group of investors led by Mike Bruce, co-owner of Toronto’s Studio 550 where Big Brother Canada is filmed and a location manager by trade; Robbie David, a producer who has been filming in Hamilton for a decade; Mark Sakamoto, former chair of the Ontario Media Development Corporation; and entrepreneur Jeff Anders, founder of Toronto creative agency The Mark, joined by lawyers Phil Lefko and Stephany Mandin. Read the full story here.

CHCH-TV Hamilton is celebrating 65 years of broadcasting this month. Founded by Ken Soble, who owned CHML 900 AM, the station signed on June 7, 1954 as a CBC affiliate. Local business leaders and politicians, including Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, weigh in on the station’s legacy of local programming in this piece by Lisa Hepfner that contains some archival gems.

Coast Community TV on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast is celebrating 40 years.The volunteer-run community channel was started in 1979 by Marta MacKown, Maryanne West, and a group of students at Elphinstone Secondary School. Coast Community TV student alumni include Zach Greenberg, who now serves as technical director on The Ellen Show, in addition to Genie Award–winning documentarian Velcrow Ripper.

Bell Media’s Much Studios will premiere original documentary Positive June 22 on MTV and on Crave June 23. The special is also available for streaming on Much’s YouTube Channel, MTV.ca, Much.com, and SnackableTV. Moderated by Much Studios’ Michael Rizzi, Positive profiles the lives of five diverse HIV+ millennials through a roundtable discussion and stigma-busting personal narratives.

The Quebecor Fund has announced the Canadian production companies that will receive a financial investment in the 38th round of the fund’s Main Television Production Assistance Program with $2.7M being dispersed. Find the successful list of prodcos here.

The Bell Fund has announced the results of its April round of funding for Short-Form Digital Series – Fiction Program. Over $2.4M in grants have been approved including over $640,000 to support the discoverability plans for the series. Supporting audience engagement strategies is a priority for the fund. 14 independent production companies are being supported across eight English and six French-language projects from Alberta, B.C., Ontario and Quebec.

The Knowledge Network, B.C.’s public broadcaster, and the National Film Board (NFB) have partnered to increase awareness of Canadian Indigenous-made films. Twenty documentaries from the NFB’s Indigenous Cinema Collection will launch on Knowledge Network’s streaming services, with 40 additional titles to be refreshed over the next three years, giving the films and filmmakers greater visibility in B.C. The NFB’s Indigenous Cinema Collection debuted in 2018 with close to 300 films by Indigenous directors from across Canada. Films available for streaming include Finding Dawn by Christine Welsh, a documentary that puts a human face on the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. The collection will launch on Knowledge Network on National Indigenous Peoples Day, June 21.

The CRTC has approved Corus Entertainment’s request to delete 44 television rebroadcasting transmitters. Corus argued that the transmitters are expensive to maintain and don’t generate any incremental revenue and generally attract little to no added viewership, due in part to their locations in smaller markets. Global television is carried on basic cable in most of the affected markets.

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