Yesterday, Sportsnet and TSN got into a tiff over who was "Canada's number one sports brand". They both sliced and diced ratings numbers many different ways, and published those that were the most favourable to their own network.
Chris Zelkovich at Yahoo does a great job of explaining the intricacies of how they can both claim such a title, but the reality is Canadians don't really care.
It's all about advertising dollars. Networks want to tell a good story to advertisers and the best story is that they have more eyeballs on the screen than anyone else at a moment.