Despite contradictory numbers and a less than sterling fall season, Canadian broadcasters don’t seem to be suffering the worrying loss of the young male viewer seen by the major American networks.

While U.S. nets are seeing a reported 20% loss of the male 18-to-34 demo this fall season, Canadian media buyers and broadcasters are not reporting the same phenomenon.

‘We haven’t seen anything along those lines yet in Canada,’ says Dennis Dinga, VP director broadcast buying, M2 Universal.

The numbers, however, paint a confusing picture.

In fact, Nielsen’s Canadian conventional viewing figures for five weeks from mid-September to late October this year, versus the same period last year, show a surprising 13.3% increase in adults 18 to 24 and a 17.6% increase in males of the same age. However, BBM’s figures for the same period show a decline of 14.6% and 19.7% respectively.

Lisa Eaton, VP client services, Nielsen Media Research, says the discrepancy could be due to differences in methodology, technology, sample size or even the sample itself. ‘[The male 18-to-24 demo] is the most difficult group to recruit into a sample because they are such a transient population,’ she says.

‘The numbers are a bit wacky, but I think young males are tuning in less in the U.S. than here because we are so much ahead with Internet use,’ adds Dinga, by way of explanation. ‘[In the U.S.], high-speed Internet use is expanding and that demo is spending a lot of extra time online and away from the television set. We’re already past that in Canada.’

Another theory put forward to explain Canada’s insulation from the ‘missing male’ phenomenon is that in the U.S., broadcast is rapidly losing young males to specialty, while in Canada, broadcasters are slowing the trend by picking up the very U.S. specialty hits driving the U.S. migration.

‘The networks in the States are trying to emulate Sopranos-type shows, but we’re able to buy them,’ says Susanne Boyce, VP of programming for CTV. ‘In a way, it’s old thinking to say let’s just buy simulcast.’

So while NBC recently axed cable-style series Boomtown (CTV), along with Coupling (Global) and The Lyon’s Den (Global), CTV for one, has been busy increasing its stable of U.S. hit cable shows.

These include such ratings grabbers as The Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica (picked up from MTV), Born Rich (MTV), The Osbournes (MTV), Nip/Tuck (FX) and PUNK’d (MTV), which has already made CTV’s top 20.

‘The strategy is to find the best shows for your schedule. It’s great to have stability in shows like Law & Order, which people will watch rerun after rerun, or the CSIs, which are solid for us – but you need the sprinkles,’ says Boyce.

There are, however, some calculated risks when Canadian broadcasters pick up U.S. cable shows.

‘For most of the high-profile properties, they’re paying a high-profile price,’ says Toronto-based OMD managing director Sherry O’Neil. ‘Some lose a lot of money on them, depending on the lead time. Not a lot of advertisers will pay for Sopranos because of the violent environment.’

But Ken Johnson, SVP, CanWest Media Sales, points out that once such a show becomes a real hit, such concerns can fall by the wayside. ‘Advertisers shy away from violence and sex, but that relates to network shows too.’ When NYPD first launched, for example, it was perceived to be a very violent show, but once it became critically acclaimed, advertisers were drawn in hordes, he recalls.

Not only that, but like all shows, with U.S. cable pickups, the higher the viewership, the higher the ad rate.

And despite the fact that popular cable shows like The Sopranos and The Osbournes or even Band of Brothers – which Global picked up two years ago – may alienate some potential advertisers, clients like breweries, entertainment companies and tech businesses, for example, are particularly interested in the edgier stuff, says Rita Fabian, SVP sales and marketing, CTV.

Another factor preventing the mass exodus of young males to cable in Canada is the fact that while Canadian broadcasters can mitigate the flow with U.S. cable hits, Canadian specialty channels, for the most part, don’t have the budgets to produce or pick up similar fare.

‘Specialties try to do it in Canada, but they can’t afford it, so what you mostly see is revamped stuff from holding companies like BellGlobemedia and CanWest Global,’ says Dinga.

Alliance Atlantis’ Showcase is one of the few exceptions, having picked up such HBO hits as Six Feet Under and Curb Your Enthusiasm. But the question remains as to how long the specialty channel can incur the premium cost of such shows.

Thanks to these factors, migration to specialty in Canada is relatively flat this year.

According to The Media Company’s interpretation of Nielsen data, for the first six weeks of the fall season, the conventional nets took a 35.4 share of the adult 25-to-54 demo in prime time, while specialty took 16.8. This compares to 35.0 and 16.2, respectively, in the same period last year.

Overall in Canada, the split between conventional and specialty is holding steady at roughly 75%/25%, respectively; unlike the U.S. where cable channels are taking close to 50% of the TV-viewing universe.

‘You simply can’t compare Canada to the U.S.,’ concludes Johnson. ‘There are different rating sources and different coverage by the networks.’