Ghost Whisperer, Clone Wars Premieres Deliver for CTV This Weekend

CTV / 'A' Ratings Alert - October 6, 2008

-- Desperate Housewives #1 on Sunday with 2 million viewers as Star Wars: The Clone Wars wins time-slot --

-- Ghost Whisperer Friday's #1 show; Supernanny and Without a Trace tops in time-slots --

CTV's fall season success story continued this past weekend as the returns of Ghost Whisperer and Supernanny on Friday teamed with the debut of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and all-new episodes of Desperate Housewives and The Amazing Race on Sunday to make the network #1 in Canada. CTV won every timeslot from 8-11 p.m. on both Friday and Sunday nights. Among the highlights:

Sunday

• At 7 p.m., Star Wars: The Clone Wars debuted strong on CTV, winning its time-slot as 652,000 Star Wars fans tuned in for the franchise's newest adventures over Global's renegadepress.com (126,000) and CBC's premiere of Heartland (513,000). Ranking #2 in the timeslot was the season premiere of America's Funniest Home Videos on 'A', delivering 610,000 viewers. At 7:30 p.m., the Season 8 premiere of Degrassi: The Next Generation returned with 398,000 viewers.
• At 8 p.m., The Amazing Race was the #2 show for the night with 1.8 million viewers on CTV, including 1.09 million A25-54 viewers and 976,000 A18-49 viewers. The Amazing Race doubled its time-slot competitors The Simpsons (Global/FOX; 921,000) and King of the Hill (Global/FOX, 675,000) and Celine (CBC; 761,000).
• Desperate Housewives was the #1 show of the night on Sunday with 2 million viewers on CTV, including 1.06 million viewers A25-54 and 1.01 million viewers A18-49. Desperate Housewives won its timeslot over Global's back-to-back comedies Family Guy (9 p.m., 1 million) and American Dad (9:30 p.m., 674,000).
• At 10 p.m., Law & Order: Criminal Intent was #1 in its time-slot on CTV with 985,000 total viewers over Brothers & Sisters (Global/ABC; 850,000).

Friday

• The season premiere of Ghost Whisperer at 8 p.m. on CTV - with 1.3 million viewers - was the #1 program nationally with all key demos over a new episode of Global's Life (289,000), CBC's premiere of Air Farce: Final Flight (611,000) and an encore of the Rick Mercer Report (593,000).Ghost Whisperer was up in all demos (+7% A25-54, +10% A18-49, +57% A18-34) and total viewers over last year's premiere episode.
• At 9 p.m., Supernanny on CTV was the #1 show of the hour with total viewers (701,000), over the series premiere of The Ex List (Global/CBS; 453,000) and Doctor Who (CBC; 482,000).
• Airing out of simulcast at 10 p.m., Without a Trace (804,000) edged out the season premiere of Numb3rs (Global/CBS; 796,000) and The National (CBC; 689,000) with total viewers to win its timeslot.

Last night's episodes of Desperate Housewives and Degrassi: The Next Generation are now available on demand on the CTV Video Player at CTV.ca.

Tonight on CTV is an all-new two-hour episode of Dancing With the Stars at 8 p.m. ET, followed by a fresh installment of CSI: Miami at 10 p.m. ET (visit CTV.ca to confirm local listings).

Source: Preliminary overnight data, CTV Total, Global Total and CBC Total (BBM Nielsen Media Research).