In the week of Nov. 8, Adele One Night Only, the CBS special on Global in Canada, was the most-watched event and the only TV show to have more than two million viewers in the country.Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Plan your screen time with the weekly What to Watch newsletter. Sign up today.
What’s going on in television? Well, if you look at media coverage and social-media discussions, what’s going on is HBO’s Succession and Netflix’s Maid. Maybe throw in Showtime’s Yellowjackets (on Crave here) and you’ve got the most talked about and praised series.
But there’s a divide. A look at a recent top 10 list for conventional TV in Canada tells us there’s a portion of the population watching the same batch of network shows week after week. Also, there’s a big audience for live TV specials, depending on the performer. And with some performers it doesn’t really matter if the show is a giant-sized commercial for a new album.
So it is with Adele. In the week of Nov. 8, Adele One Night Only, the CBS special on Global in Canada, was the most-watched event and the only TV show to have more than two million viewers in the country.
Now, I’ve nothing against Adele. Back in the day, her song Daydreamer was on my iPod Shuffle, and a good song to accompany the stretching before running pointlessly in circles for a while. That’s when Adele was 18. Now she’s 33 years old and magisterial. That TV special included her being interviewed by Oprah and performances to plug the album. On that wave of attention, she also announced a forthcoming and lucrative residency in Las Vegas. It was all about selling, but two million Canadians didn’t care; an Adele concert is a rare treat.
The 21 best TV series to stream so far in 2021
The next most-watched show in Canada that week, at No. 2, was Blue Bloods (CBS, CTV on Fridays), with 1.8 million viewers. It’s the definition of conventional TV, about a multigenerational family of cops in New York. Tom Selleck plays the patriarch, a role that helps bolster his sideline in commercials, selling “home equity solutions for retirement,” or reverse mortgages. Everybody is busy selling something to viewers on these top-rated shows.
Behind Blue Bloods on the list comes NCIS (CBS, Global on Mondays), with 1.62 million viewers.
Then 9-1-1 (Fox, Global on Mondays) with 1.6 million. It’s about first responders – police, firefighters, dispatchers – who deal with emergencies. It has a good cast, including Angela Bassett and Jennifer Love Hewitt, and is, reportedly, uplifting. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it.
Scrolling down the list, you will find Survivor, still surviving at No. 5 in the top 10, after all these years. In fact, it remains such a strong franchise that BellMedia aims to bring Survivor to French-speaking audiences, with a cast of players from Quebec. Then, on the list, you’ll find the weekly procedurals, with The Rookie (ABC, CTV on Sundays) getting 1.5 million viewers; FBI (CBS, Global on Tuesdays) with 1.5 million; CSI: Vegas (CBS, Global on Wednesdays) also with 1.5 million.
At No. 9 is Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, CTV on Thursdays), with 1.4 million viewers. The continuing popularity of Grey’s, a show created by Shonda Rhimes in 2005, is astonishing. It continues to be one the few top 10 shows here or in the United States that has a strong audience in the important 18 to 49 age demographic. (Almost everything else skews older.) The current season averages more than 15 million viewers each episode across TV and digital platforms in the U.S. Grey’s Anatomy is also of the most popular streaming shows in the world, with a vast audience on Netflix.
Why is that? Well Ellen Pompeo has stayed with it, portraying Dr. Meredith Grey. That’s one good anchor for it, and the very diverse cast that surrounds her attracts a wide audience. That plus the mixture of medical drama and romance is a solid, no-fail recipe.
The continuing popularity of network TV in the U.S. or in simulcast here isn’t much of a puzzler. While hot shows on streaming services dominate the conversation, they don’t have a monopoly on the audience. This past summer, Nielsen, the TV-measurement company, reported 64 per cent of time spent on televisions in the U.S. was on network and cable TV, while 26 per cent of time was spent on streaming. Another 8 per cent went in for “Other,” including video-on-demand.
Some TV viewers want the comfort of familiar faces and familiar, reassuring storylines every week. They are neither dumb nor are they older unsophisticated people. They don’t mind ads selling them stuff. They just know what they like and, understandably, take sustenance from the habitual and the usual, not the new and unusual.
Sign up for The Globe’s arts and lifestyle newsletters for more news, columns and advice in your inbox.