CALGARY, AB – Television coverage of Monday’s Canada vs. USA gold medal game from the 2004 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship in Finland attracted a total national Canadian audience of 1.7 million viewers (2+)*.

The breakdown for the gold medal game is as follows:

• TSN’s live coverage – 1.31 million viewers
• TSN encore presentation at 7 p.m. ET – 113,000 viewers
• RDS’s live coverage – 215,000 viewers
• RDS encore presentation at 7:30 p.m. ET – 37,000 viewers

Audience levels peaked during TSN’s live coverage on Monday at 1.45 million viewers from 2 p.m. - 2:20 p.m. ET during the final 20 minutes of the game. *Source: Nielsen Media Research. All audience figures exclude pre-games.

TSN/RDS is the official broadcaster of Hockey Canada, who annually broadcast over 20 games for Hockey Canada per year, including Team Canada’s men’s and women’s international world championships, as well as the three major Canadian national championships: Royal Bank Cup, Esso Women’s Nationals and the National Midget Hockey Championship.

"We are very pleased with the ratings that this event received and we congratulate our partners TSN and RDS, " said Scott Smith, Hockey Canada’s Vice-president, Business Operations. "We know that TSN and RDS will continue to provide excellent coverage and promotion of all of our upcoming Hockey Canada events, including the World Women’s Championship, Men’s World Championship and our three national domestic events in the spring."

The 2004 World Junior gold medal game on Monday was TSN’s highest rated World Junior televised final held outside North America, and represents an eight per cent increase from the 2002 world junior gold medal game held in the Czech Republic (Russia 5, Canada 4) which attracted 1.2 million viewers.

Television ratings highlights from the 2004 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship include:

• Game 1 (Canada 3, Finland 0) attracted 856,000 viewers (live-793,000, encore-63,000, plus an additional 433,000 on CTV), making this TSN’s highest rated round-robin game of all-time when the tournament is held outside North America
• Live coverage of the four round-robin games averaged 612,000 viewers, 29 per cent higher than the average of the four round-robin matches from the 2002 tournament in the Czech Republic
• Semifinal #1 (Canada 7, Czech Republic 1) attracted 898,000 viewers (live-820,000, encore-78,000), now the third highest rated semifinal game in TSN World Junior history
• Semifinal #2 (USA 2, Finland 1) attracted 774,000 viewers, now the highest rated non-Canada game in TSN World Junior history

OTHER TELEVISION RATINGS FOR RECENT HOCKEY CANADA EVENTS:

On , the World Under-17 Challenge gold medal game was aired on TSN on a tape-delayed basis. The final game between Team Pacific and Team Ontario gathered an impressive television rating of 288,000 viewers (2+).

The Spengler Cup, the oldest international event held annually in Davos, Switzerland, saw Canada repeat as gold medalists when they won this year’s event on Dec. 31 by beating the host team 7-4. Rogers Sportsnet carried all of Canada’s games from the Spengler Cup are received the following television ratings (all ratings are 2+):

Dec 26 Canada vs. Krefeld 215,000

Dec 28 Canada vs. Helsinki 124,000

Dec 29 Canada vs. Yaroslavl 142,000

Dec 30 Canada vs. Davos 133,000

Dec 31 Canada vs. Davos – gold medal game 207,000*** (This number includes Live and Repeats)