Articles

November 6, 2012
 

THE SKED SUNDAY CABLE SCORECARD – 11/4/12

 

AMC:  If a 6% decline to 4.9 (plus 1.7 for the 10PM rebroadcast) can be considered an “off” week, then THE WALKING DEAD was off this Sunday.  That 6.6 total will still be second only to Sunday Night Football in all of television for the week, although football’s lead is more lopsided this week, with a big Dallas/Atlanta game drawing an 8.5.  The Walking Dead episode was a pivotal one, killing off two regular characters, one of them even more shockingly than usual, and the plotting to follow should help sustain viewership in the weeks to come.   Following the 10PM Dead reairing, TALKING DEAD had a 1.1, up a notch from last week (probably because fans needed to digest–so to speak–what had occurred in the episode), and COMIC BOOK MEN was steady at 0.5.

SHOWTIME:  After the titanic churning of plot HOMELAND‘s been keeping up all season, this past week was comparatively sedate, moving its characters into place for the season’s second half.  The rating was down a tick to 0.8, and  lead-in DEXTER was also down, from 1.2 to 1.0.  That show’s season is proving to be, perhaps fittingly, schizophrenic:  gripping when it deals with the Dexter/Debra storyline, less so when the Russian gangster and the black widow are center stage.

HBO:  BOARDWALK EMPIRE and TREME were even for the night, at 0.7 and 0.2 respectively.  Boardwalk, though, was up about 15% in older-skewing total viewers, to about 2.1M.

NATGEO:  A somewhat controversial airing of SEAL TEAM SIX, the drama about the hunt for Osama bin Laden licensed by the Weinstein Company for airing just a few days before the presidential election, scored well for that network, with 0.9 in 18-49s, and 2.7M total viewers.  Whether that had any effect on votes, of course, is another matter.



About the Author

Mitch Salem
MITCH SALEM has worked on the business side of the entertainment industry for 20 years, as a senior business affairs executive and attorney for such companies as NBC, ABC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and BermanBraun Productions, and before that, at the NY law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. During all that, he has more or less constantly been going to the movies and watching TV, and writing about both since the 1980s. His film reviews also currently appear on screened.com and the-burg.com. In addition, he is co-writer of an episode of the television series "Felicity."