'Jersey Shore' MTV Canada's Best Performing Series Ever

TORONTO -- MTV Canada has a Shore hit.

Jersey Shore has become the Canadian cable channel’s best-ever performing primetime series ever, leaving another MTV show, The Hills, in the dust.

Snooki and JWoww’s poofed hair and fist pumps have propelled the series’ second season average north of the border to 406,500 total viewers, up 317% over the first season average audience, according to BBM Canada data.

That viewership crushed The Hills, whose current sixth season on MTV Canada has an average viewership of 168,700 viewers.

MTV Canada also reported the second season from the trashy paradise of Seaside Heights, New Jersey, is now the top-rated Canadian cable TV series of this year, excluding sports programming, in the 12 to 34 years demo.

How the Canadian ratings juggernaut will play with the CRTC is uncertain after the country’s TV watchdog in September called MTV Canada on the carpet for a U.S.-originated MTV show that apparently breaches the Canuck channel’s all-talk format (HR, Sept. 30).

MTV Canada-parent CTV wrote back to the CRTC to insist the guidos and guidettes were very much in keeping with the Canadian channel’s format by engaging in "unscripted forms of conversation” (HR, Oct. 1)