VANCOUVER – Canadians are tuning in to the 2010 Olympic Games in record numbers.
Live coverage of the Opening Ceremony on Friday night made history as the most-watched television event ever in Canadian history. On average, 13.3 million Canadians watched every minute of the 3.5 hour ceremony. The figure eclipses the previous record-holder, the Gold Medal hockey game at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002 (10.3 million), by 29%.
Airing live across 11 television networks in 11 languages, 23 million viewers, or two in every three Canadians (69%), tuned in to some part of the ceremony.
A total of 27.7 million Canadians, representing 83% of the population, experienced the 2010 Winter Games on its first full day of activity on the platforms of Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, a figure even greater than Opening Day.
The Ladies Moguls Final on Saturday night averaged 6.6 million viewers as Jenn Heil won Canada’s first medal of the Games, peaking at 8 million viewers in the final minute. The event delivered more viewers than Super Bowl XLIV on CTV and is one of the most-watched broadcasts on Canadian television this season.
Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium developed a calibrated measurement system to report total unduplicated audience reach of its multi-platform presentation of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Canadian Unique Multimedia Engagement (CUME) index is the cumulative reach of all Canadians that engage with the major media platforms offered by the Consortium.
CUME uses previous day audience reports from BBM Canada’s PPM system to track TV audiences both in and out of home for the Consortium’s television properties; previous day reports from Omniture, software that tracks actual web site visitation and video viewing, for the Consortium’s two websites; national audience derived from BBM Canada’s latest audience sweep, for the Consortium’s 96 Rogers and Corus Québec radio stations; and The Globe and Mail readership from the most recent NADbank newspaper readership study, for the Consortium’s official print partner.
