HBO’s Aaron Sorkin opus THE NEWSROOM fared well in its Season 2 premiere last night, drawing 2.2M total viewers (plus another 400K for the late-night re-airing).  Demo info won’t be available until tomorrow, but that should translate into a solid 0.9-1.0 in 18-49s.  The total viewer number isn’t quite a series record–the Season 1 […]

The ratings below are household ratings from the 56 television markets with local Nielsen meters for Saturday July 13 and Sunday July 14, 2013. (The 56 markets out of 210 total cover about 70% of the US television population.)   NASCAR ruled the weekend yet again with both races up versus last year.  The main […]

Projected weekly network ratings in prime time (based on four days of official nationals and three days of fast nationals).  NBC is on track to hang on for another victory in primetime with adults 18-49 this past week, although CBS and FOX are extremely close behind in a virtual three-way tie for first place.  All […]

  Summer:  when the network airing reruns beats all the networks with new programming. CBS:  BIG BROTHER was the highest rated show of the night with a preliminary 1.9 (starting 20 minutes late, like the rest of the network’s line-up, due to a golf overrun), but the reruns afterward were so low that the network […]

  The calendar may have us at barely mid-July, but for the major movie studios, the summer season has already peaked.  The would-be, sometimes-are blockbusters have been arriving since the first weekend in May, and although there are still a few major productions left to open (notably 20th’s The Wolverine and Sony’s Elysium), for the […]

  OPENINGS:  Despite the strong weekend, it’s a bit troubling that GROWN UPS 2 (Sony) fell 11% on Saturday (the original Grown Ups rose 2% on its 2d day), suggesting frontloading and less than great word of mouth.  That may place the studio’s estimated Sunday drop of 21% and $42.5M weekend total in doubt, but […]

Updated international box office chart:

STUDIO SCORECARD. Another very strong week for Universal (primarily overseas grosses for Despicable Me 2 which were understated in last week’s chart), enough to pass Warner Brothers and move into the #2 spot in terms of worldwide box office.  The perennial also-ran Universal finds itself in an odd position: in the upper tier of the worldwide […]