Canada-U.S. hockey semifinal sets online viewing record for CBC

It's safe to assume that very little work got done in Canadian offices on Friday.

At least, not between noon and 3 p.m. EST.

The CBC reports that Friday's Sochi Olympics men's hockey semifinal between Canada and the U.S. drew an average audience of 625,000, a record for the network. That beat CBC's old record, set the day before when an average of 325,000 people watched the women's gold medal game between the same two countries.

Since the game was available free on TV, it's safe to assume that most of those were watching on office computers.

The Sochi Games have created a bit of an online revolution, partly because so many events are taking place on weekday mornings and afternoons and partly because technology has paved the way for more online viewing.

Prior to Thursday's women's games, CBC reported that it had streamed more than 8.3 million hours of video on its website -- a record number for Canada. And it's not just hockey.

Almost 6.3 million Canadians tuned in to watch some or part of Canada's gold medal victory in women's curling on Thursday morning -- almost half a million of those logging on to watch some or all of the game online. (CBC did not release the per-minute average audience for the curling final.)

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues in 2016, when the Olympics are in Rio. With those Games in a similar time zone, Canadians may not have the need to view online. But many of those events will take place on weekday mornings and afternoons, too, so the trend may continue.

As for television numbers, CBC isn't breaking out those yet but it's unlikely the corporation will be able to match the high-water mark set by CTV in 2010.

For example, CBC reports that a total audience of 13 million tuned in to TV or their computers to watch all or some of Thursday's women's final. That's an impressive number, but only half the total television audience for 2010's gold medal men's game. (Note that the CTV-Rogers consortium did not include online viewing in its audience figures.)

In fact, the average television rating for that 2010 game was 16.6 million -- the highest in Canadian history. It's doubtful that Sunday's Canada-Sweden game will come anywhere near that, partly because of the 7 a.m. Eastern (4 a.m. Pacific) start and mostly because Sweden doesn't stir the emotions quite the same way the U.S. does.