The Suburban crunches some numbers in the evening TV news race here, and theorizes that Frank Cavallaro’s move from CTV to CBC had something to do with the latter’s 25% jump in viewership over last year, prompting Inside the CBC to wonder if weathermen are the magic ticket to success.

I think we should take a step back here. 25% seems large, but only represents about 6,000 actual viewers. CBC Montreal’s news audience is still an order of magnitude smaller than CTV, which has dominated the race since CBC gutted Newswatch.

Though I’m sure Cavallaro has a loyal audience, the numbers probably have more to do with people slowly trickling back to CBC after the network decided to bring back a local one-hour newscast. And the station still has plenty of ground to make up. It needs a new studio (well, actually, it needs its own studio), a graphics department, and other things that only money can buy.

Meanwhile, The Suburban notices that Paul Graif, a victim of Global Quebec’s job cuts, is now at CTV. Another example of why we have one local news program here and two pretend local news programs.