Grey Cup Most Watched on English language TV

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From TSN's press release:

Preliminary overnight data from BBM Canada confirms that the 100th GREY CUP delivered an average audience of 5.5 million viewers on TSN, making it the most-watched CFL championship game ever recorded on English-language television.*

Meanwhile, an average audience of 5.8 million watched the 100th GREY CUP on TSN and RDS, marking a 28% increase in viewers compared to last year and earning an incredible national 16.1 rating. Audiences jumped even higher for younger viewers, with a 38% increase among A18-34.

This is the largest audience for a Grey Cup game on English-language television since 2009 in Calgary when Montreal Alouettes faced the Saskatchewan Roughriders as 5.087 million Canadians watched this on TSN. This year's audience increased by 391,000 from the old record or grew by 7.7%. By the way, a more precise number of this year's game is 5.478 million, courtesy of Bill Brioux.

In the Toronto Extended Market, more than 3.6 million viewers watched some of the 100th GREY CUP on TSN – close to half the population in this market.

Audience levels for the 100th GREY CUP peaked at 7 million viewers.

Unlike the releases from previous years, TSN left out what event triggered this peak level, but we can probably conclude that it wasn't significant enough to have it released to the public. May have been a random time when many viewers decided to tune in. The peak level certainly didn't occur during half-time because the half-time show figures were the following:

The Sirius XM Grey Cup Half-Time Show delivered a 44% increase in viewers compared to last year’s halftime show, with an average audience of 6.1 million viewers tuning in for performances by Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen, Marianas Trench, and Gordon Lightfoot.

Not surprisingly, the much anticipated Half-Time Show had a larger audience than the average viewership of the entire game. Assuming the Half-Time Show figure is for all viewers of TSN and RDS, the net difference between the viewers of halftime and the entire game is approximately 300,000 or a 5.2% increase.

The report says this year's halftime show saw a 44% increase in audience compared to last year when Nickelback performed. With this year's audience (6.1 million average) of the halftime show and the growth rate from last year's half time show (44%), we can determine what the average audience was for Nickelback. TSN did not release any half-time show viewership figures, so let's figure out why.  The result of the calculation was 4.2 million viewers of the 2011 half-time show. That's quite the number considering many Canadians loathe Nickelback. However, 4.2 million is still less than the average audience for the entire game (4.6 million), which may explain why TSN decided to leave this number off their press release.