World Junior Hockey Championship pulling in smaller audiences

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This year's World Junior Hockey Championship is over and the viewership for the round robin games this year are much lower than last year's. The games involving Canada were played live at 4:30 a.m. EST with one played at 9 am against Russia. TSN has a breakdown of the audience sizes of their live and repeat telecasts of the round robin games (largest audiences are in bold):

Wednesday, Dec. 26
• Canada vs. Germany
o Live at 4:30 a.m. ET – 372,000 viewers on TSN
o Encore at 12 noon ET – 849,000 viewers on TSN
o Encore at 7:30 p.m. ET – 178,000 viewers on TSN
o Encore at 10:30 p.m. ET – 39,000 viewers on TSN2

Friday, Dec. 28
• Canada vs. Slovakia
o Live at 4:30 a.m. ET – 286,000 viewers on TSN
o Encore at 12 noon ET – 610,000 viewers on TSN
o Encore at 7:30 p.m. ET – 496,000 viewers on TSN
o Encore at 10:50 p.m. ET – 58,000 viewers on TSN2

Sunday, Dec. 30
• Canada vs. USA
o Live at 4:30 a.m. ET – 561,000 viewers on TSN
o Encore at 12 noon ET – 904,000 viewers on TSN
o Encore at 8 p.m. ET – 191,000 viewers on TSN2

Monday, Dec. 31
• Canada vs. Russia
o Live at 9 a.m. ET – 1.6 million viewers on TSN
o Encore at 12 noon ET – 447,000 viewers on TSN
o Encore at 7:30 p.m. ET – 412,000 viewers on TSN
o Encore at 11:20 p.m. ET – 59,000 viewers on TSN2 

Was curious enough to see what previous year's numbers were. So, here are 2011's:

• Dec. 26: Canada vs. Finland – 2.3 million viewers
• Dec. 28: Canada vs. Czech Republic – 2.55 million viewers
• Dec. 29: Canada vs. Denmark – 2.0 million viewers
• Dec. 31: Canada vs. Unites States – 2.8 million viewers

2010: 

Canada-Sweden – 2.9 million viewers
Canada-Russia – 2.9 million viewers
Canada-Czech Republic – 2.2 million viewers
Canada-Norway – 1.9 million viewers

2009:

Canada-United States (Dec. 31) – 3.3 Million

Canada-Latvia (Dec. 26) – 2.5 Million

Canada-Slovakia (Dec. 29) – 2.2 Million

Canada-Switzerland (Dec. 28) – 2.1 Million

 The time-zone difference appears to have a large enough (negative) impact on viewership. The combined total of the live and repeats of any game played last month is still not enough to match the audience sizes in the past.

In previous years, the round robin games would attract around 2 million Canadians or more. The only game in 2012 that had more than 2 million viewers (combined live and repeats) is the Russian match on New Year's Eve.