OPENINGS:  TRANSFORMERS ONE (Hasbro/Paramount) underdelivered vs projections by about 20%, and its dim $25M start didn’t even give it the weekend’s #1 ranking at the box office.  Paramount was taking a calculated risk by rebooting the franchise via PG-rated animation, and it doesn’t seem to have worked out.  It faces direct competition next weekend […]

> Not even championship basketball can dent SMASHWatch. NBC:   Perhaps the moment last night that most typified the lows SMASH has reached was the bit where Ivy popped pain pills while staring into a mirror affixed with photos of Marilyn Monroe, while the theme to the Marilyn musical started to play in the background, because–sing […]

  The summer movie season will be underway momentarily on the east coast, as 7PM screenings commence for The Amazing Spider-Man–which isn’t exactly riding a rave of critical support (56% positive at Rotten Tomatoes, and 35% among “top critics”).  At Sony tonight, uneasy lie the heads that wear a crown.  But meanwhile, our survey of […]

>Now 14 full weeks into 2012, year-to-date domestic box office is still running 27% ahead of last year’s dreadful pace, and the year-to-date total is still fully 15% ahead of the comparable period’s average for the last several years.   Updated final domestic gross estimates are available below for recent releases, with The Hunger Games now […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #19 of 2014 looks like $127 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 10% from the norm for this weekend (somewhat better than we expected due to the impressive strength of Neighbors).   Opening at 3,279 theaters, Neighbors from Universal grossed $19.6 million Friday, putting the film on track for a $49.7 […]

> NYC 22 goes down with the ship. CBS:  It was almost a full year ago that CBS announced the arrival of NYC 22 (which has changed titles since then), and after all that time… nobody cared.  The show debuted to a terrible 1.5, unable even to hold its mediocre 1.8 lead-in from THE GOOD WIFE […]

Note: The numbers below are inflated by tenths of a rating point by multiple major-market pre-emptions for the final night of NFL Preseason: ABC (Los Angeles-Chargers, Houston, Cleveland, Charlotte, Nashville, Buffalo) CBS (New York-Jets, Boston, Dallas, Bay Area-49ers, Pittsburgh, Miami, Kansas City, Cincinnati) NBC (New York-Giants, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Tampa) FOX (Chicago, […]

Here are the weekend sports ratings for Saturday and Sunday October 15-16, 2016.  Eligible programs include sporting events on broadcast and cable networks (minimum audience size 150K P2+).  Programs are grouped by sport and ranked within each sport by P2+ audience size.     For comparison, here is the same chart for the same weekend last year, […]