Source : Toronto Star

The Newsroom in certain ways represents just what CBC Television wants to be known for. Ken Finkleman's satire of the TV news business is risky, sly and wised-up. It has a cult following, especially among people in the media world. And it is one of the few Canadian shows to have earned fans in the U.S.

But it is definitely an acquired taste, and when it comes to attracting a mass audience, well, this show's numbers are never going to rival those of Hockey Night In Canada.

In fact, the evidence suggests that a significant number of viewers have developed so strong an aversion to Finkleman that they reach for their converters the instant he appears.

This has created a problem, because no matter how much it tries to program against the grain, CBC is still forced to play the numbers game. And the public broadcaster was hoping to score a big success on Monday nights with three new shows in a row airing in the 8 to 10 p.m. slots.

Rick Mercer's Monday Report has been kicking the night off reasonably well from 8 to 8: 30, but half Mercer's viewers have been defecting when Newsroom comes on. And the feeble lead-in from Newsroom hurts the chances of This Is Wonderland to score well at 9 p.m.

Last week the CBC conducted a bizarre experiment, suddenly moving Wonderland to 8: 30 p.m. and trying Newsroom at 9: 30 p.m.

Results: Mercer drew 720,000 viewers. That dropped to 449,000 for Wonderland and 238,000 for Newsroom.

The upshot: The National, the flagship newscast, slipped below half a million to 498,000 viewers - which you can bet did not please its producers. Consequently, that schedule change turned out to be a one-week-only phenomenon.

Doesn't all this sound as if it would make a great episode of The Newsroom?

Still, there was some good news for numbers crunchers at the CBC. The Royal Canadian Air Farce (Fridays at 8) climbed back over the magic million mark for the first time in ages.

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© The Toronto Star