The Disney machine is hitting an atypical pothole with DUMBO (Disney), which according to preliminary numbers at Deadline had a $14.8M Friday ($2.6M of that from Thursday night).  That’s very much on the low end of the studio’s live-action remakes of its own animated classics, behind the opening days for Beauty & The Beast […]

  Fair starts for the newcomers. DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart below displays preliminary live+same day key advertiser demographics (adult 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54 ratings), audience skews (women 18-49, men 18-49 and adults 50+ shares) and total viewership (thousands of people over the age of 2). Ratings analysis and comparisons […]

> It’s too little to make any meaningful difference for JOHN CARTER (Disney), but according to Deadline, the giant-budgeted spectacle didn’t have a bad Saturday.  Preliminary numbers have Carter rising by around 30% over its Friday total, which could mean a weekend over $30M.  A nice weekend multiple, though, still won’t touch the mountain of […]

        NETWORK FINALS:  There were significant adjustments (to the next tenth) for AMERICAN IDOL, 60 MINUTES, THE EQUALIZER, BOB’S BURGERS and the reruns of  ELLEN’S GAME OF GAMES and the 9PM THE SIMPSONS.         Broadcast Official Nationals Program Ratings Chart     CABLE HIGHLIGHTS:  The final season premiere of […]

  Although still down steeply from Fifty Shades of Grey, FIFTY SHADES FREED (Perfect World/Universal) is opening on par with the initial sequel Fifty Shades Darker.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Freed earned $18.4M on its first day (including $5.6M from Thursday night), down 14% from Darker, which could translate into a $40M weekend, […]

Weekend #28 of 2012 looks fairly soft: $159 million for the top 12 films, down 37% from last year’s comparable weekend (the opening of the last Harry Potter — talk about a high bar) and down 23% from the four-year average for the weekend. Opening at around 3,800 theaters, Ice Age: Continental Drift from 20th Century […]

> CBS has moved slightly ahead of FOX season to date, while NBC moved past a sagging ABC on a strange Sunday night.  ABC is simply falling apart on Sunday:  its three-week 18-49 rating track for the night is 2.5…2.3…2.0.  As Mitch Salem pointed out earlier this morning, Desperate Housewives and Pan Am are just in […]

> The fundamental problem with LAY THE FAVORITE, Stephen Frears’ new film that premiered last night at Sundance, is that it’s made by people who seem to have little if any interest in gambling. And since this is a movie about the thrill and especially the business of gambling, that means they don’t have any […]