OPENINGS:  THE POSSESSION (Lionsgate) is doing quite well for a low-budget horror quickie, with $17.7M for the 1st 3 days of the holiday weekend, and is on track to be the #2 Labor Day opening ever, behind only the 2007 remake of Halloween.  LAWLESS (Weinstein Company), though, at $9.7M, is behind last year’s The […]

  Provocative, almost existential questions have circled this year’s Oscars since seconds after the nominations were announced.  Should the awards, and the Motion Picture Academy’s voting membership, mirror the actual state of the film industry, which is overwhelmingly dominated by older white men, or a Platonic ideal embodying a more diverse vision of what the […]

  It has to be demoralizing for programmers to watch 3 networks’ worth of original summer programming get soundly beaten by a sitcom rerun. NBC:  The new mystical/medical soap SAVING HOPE flatlined with a 0.7.  Believers in glasses half-full can note that this did tie the network’s high number on the night, with ROCK CENTER. […]

NOTE: ABC and FOX ratings below will be adjusted in the official nationals later today due to live West Coast viewing. ABC 8-9PM will go down about -50% and the post-9PM ratings will rise about +25%. FOX should increase about +10%. DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart below displays preliminary live+same […]

  OPENINGS:  While DUNGEONS & DRAGONS:  HONOR AMONG THIEVES (eOne/Paramount) launched at the upper end of expectations, $38.5M (which included an unusually intense program of preview screenings) was a shaky start for a project with $250M in production/marketing costs and the hope to become a franchise.  It will need to hold up extremely well over the next several […]

The ratings below are household ratings from the 56 television markets with local Nielsen meters for Saturday June 7 and Sunday June 8, 2014. The 56 markets (out of 210 total) cover about 70% of the US television population.   Horse Racing: Triple Crown Belmont Stakes (Saturday) 4.0 rating NBC 4:30-5:00 pm (+190% from 2.1 […]

> THURSDAYS this Fall officially start September 22, with virtually all series debuting or returning on that night.  The main exception is The CW, with Vampire Diaries and Secret Circle premiering tonight and a few late premieres (CBS’s How to Be a Gentleman and ABC’s Private Practice on September 29 and FOX’s Bones in early […]

  Today ABC announced its midseason schedule.  Mostly, the network did the necessary work of filling in the gaps where shows have been canceled (or run out of episodes, like Super Fun Night and Once Upon A Time in Wonderland) or where serials like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal are taking breaks, but Revenge has also been […]