> Jim Field Smith’s comedy BUTTER, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, ambitiously makes a play for both the heartwarming indie Little Miss Sunshine audience and the satire-minded Election crowd.  That may be one play too many, but the movie is worth seeing anyway. Jason A Micallef’s first produced script is set in the […]

  THURSDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL owned the night. DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart below displays preliminary 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 follow […]

Live awards shows have been surging in the DVR age, and last night it happened again. ABC:  The BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS blew away the competition with a 3.6 (peaking at 3.9 in the 9-9:30PM half-hour), the show’s highest rating in 10 years and up a huge 1.2 from last year.  Before that, the season finale […]

      Analysis to follow.       Broadcast Official Nationals Program Ratings Chart   Top 50 Original Cable Telecasts with Demographic Detail Top 150 Original Cable Telecasts To search for a show: type Ctrl-F and type your show title in the search box. Top 150 Original Cable Telecasts: Wednesday July 28, 2021 P18-49 P2+ Rank […]

  OPENINGS:  HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2 (Columbia/Sony) has set a new September record with a $47.5M opening (beating the first Hotel‘s $42.5M), and it barely missed becoming Adam Sandler’s biggest opening ever (The Longest Yard currently has a tiny lead at $47.6M, and kudos to Sony for not claiming the record and changing its mind tomorrow […]

  NBC’s decision, announced today, to bring back its series HANNIBAL for a second season (probably again at midseason) provides some insight into how the network television business has changed, and will continue changing.  By any traditional ratings analysis, renewing Hannibal would seem as insane as one of its many darkly murderous characters:  although technically […]

  BROADCAST FINALS: ABC:  COLLEGE FOOTBALL continued to lead the way on television with 1.85. CBS:  After a rerun 60 MINUTES at 0.40, BIG BROTHER fell 0.24 to 0.75.  A run of SCHOOL OF ROCK followed at 0.24. NBC:  PARALYMPICS coverage was at 0.23, followed by an AMERICA’S GOT TALENT rerun at 0.23. FOX:  Reruns […]

> A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and production of episodes for the regular season:  a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover in the off-season) give plenty of notes, both helpful and otherwise, and […]