While fresh Tuesday drama Wild Roses bested a new episode of 90210 on Global, the premiere of CBC’s heavily promoted new comedy Being Erica lost against the monster final of the World Junior Hockey Championships on TSN, generating 575,000 viewers in the Monday 9 pm timeslot, facing off against the final hour of TSN’s highest-rated program ever with 3.6 million viewers. (All numbers 2+ unless otherwise indicated.)

The loss to the championship game is not unexpected. Dennis Dinga, VP and director of broadcast investments at M2 Universal, says hockey undeniably took a bite out of Erica‘s audience.

The surprisingly lofty TSN numbers ‘had to come from somewhere,’ he notes. ‘But if you consider things like Canadians’ mood not being good because of economy, the hockey [championship] being in primetime with nothing else on whatsoever, maybe it’s believable.’

The soapy Roses managed a slightly higher 627,000 viewers the following night at 9 pm, beating the debut of last year’s jPod in the same timeslot by some 150,000 viewers. The Alberta-set drama had help from a strong lead-in by the Rick Mercer Report with nearly one million, followed by This Hour Has 22 Minutes with 650,000.

The older-skewing Roses topped Global’s 90210, which averaged 467,000 viewers at 9 pm, though the teen soap had the upper hand in the 18-49 selling demographic, where it claimed 69% of the audience nationally with 318,000 viewers versus Roses‘ 189,000. Ultimately, however, both lost to a rerun of Fringe on CTV.

Little Mosque on the Prairie returned with 612,000 viewers following its move to Mondays, on par with its Wednesday fall season average, while Sophie continues to struggle in the low 300,000s. These shows also lost to CTV, however, which drew upwards of 700,000 viewers each with reruns of The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men and Corner Gas.

From Playback Daily