NBC was desperate to get Michael J. Fox back on its air, so much so that it ordered 22 episodes of his series before a pilot had even been produced.  But viewers had much less interest in Fox’s return, especially in what turned out to be such a pedestrian vehicle, and the show’s only […]

Weekend #6 of 2014 is looking like a tepid $114 million for the top 12 films, a 30% increase over last year’s disaster for the comparable weekend (Identity Thief and Side Effects bowed this time last year).  But $114 is over 30% below the average for this weekend over the last four years.  For example, […]

  CBS has won the competition to carry 8 fall NFL games on Thursday nights.  Price wasn’t disclosed, but the network is believed to be paying in the neighborhood of $300M for the games, or about $37.5M per game.  (All the broadcast networks and several cablers bid for the rights, as reportedly did Google.)  In […]

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  No good news in the final numbers for FOX, as NEW GIRL and BROOKLYN NINE-NINE stayed as is.  All changes were of the 0.1 variety:  up for NCIS, AGENTS OF SHIELD and THE ORIGINALS, down for NCIS LA, THE GOLDBERGS, TROPHY WIFE and SUPERNATURAL.  TUESDAY CABLE:  MTV’s TEEN MOM was again on […]

  We don’t know how many people actually watch HOUSE OF CARDS, because Netflix keeps that information as close to its corporate vest as Francis Underwood keeps his doublecrossing strategies, but we know that Netflix is pleased with the result, because the streaming service/network has renewed the series for a Season 3 before the second […]

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER had one of the biggest non-sports adjustments in memory, regaining all of the half-point it had appeared to lose from last week in the morning numbers and returning to 3.8.  Good for HIMYM, but a very odd series of events.  MIKE & MOLLY and MOM were also […]

  Everyone knows that the Super Bowl is by far the highest rated show of each season, but what does it mean for a network’s big picture?  Here were the season-to-date averages for the broadcast networks as of a week ago: NBC:  2.47 FOX:  2.11 CBS:  2.07 ABC:  1.67 CW:   0.54 And here are the […]

  NETWORK UPDATE:  In final numbers, SUPER BOWL XLVIII had a 39.3 rating in 18-49s, just slightly below last year’s 39.7 (the latter number excludes the game’s blackout period).  However, in total viewers this was the most-watched Super Bowl–in fact, the most watched network show–ever, with FOX reporting 111.5M sets of eyeballs.  (UPDATED UPDATE:  FOX […]