The 27th weekend of the year is looking like an excellent $218 million for the top 12 films, up 20-35% from the comparable weekend the last few years. Opening at around 3,900 theaters Wednesday (well above the top 10% theater count for opening weekend wide releases of 3,690 theaters), Despicable Me 2 from Universal should average $20,000 per theater for the three-day weekend […]

  The place to be last night was again Under the Dome. CBS:  UNDER THE DOME was by far the night’s biggest show, although it fell half a point from last week’s giant premiere to 2.8.  The Stephen King series was fairly stable throughout the hour (2.9 rating in the 10:00 half hour and 2.8 […]

Cable and broadcast weekly rankings.  The annual BET Awards took the #1 position for the week with adults 18-49, edging the premiere of Under the Dome for the weekly crown.

  Fans are already starting to miss their favorite serial killer, as DEXTER had the best launch of its run with last night’s Season 8 premiere.  The show had 2.5M viewers, up 100,000 from Season 7’s premiere.  (Demo numbers weren’t released, but should end up at around a 1.4 in 18-49s–which, if true, would mean […]

The ratings below are household ratings from the 56 television markets with local Nielsen meters for Saturday June 29 and Sunday June 30, 2013. (The 56 markets out of 210 total cover about 70% of the US television population.)   Stop the presses!   Major League Baseball was the top sporting event this weekend.  Not because […]

Projected weekly network ratings in prime time (based on four days of official nationals and three days of fast nationals).  ABC tumbles to last place with the NBA Finals all wrapped up.  The network is now pacing 12% behind last year’s comparable week.  CBS is back in the game with the early premiere of Big Brother and […]

  A definition of pathetic:  the combined rating for the four broadcast networks last night sunk below a 4 rating with adults 18-49, down 33% from the same night last year. CBS:  For what it’s worth, a 1.1 average allowed CBS to claim victory last night.  BIG BROTHER was the highest-rated show of the evening […]

  OPENINGS:  The $40M weekend estimate for THE HEAT (20th) makes more sense than it did last night, now that the movie’s Saturday is being reported as a 6% increase rather than a 5% drop.  (But always be suspicious of round-number estimates anyway.)  The Heat is going to be profitable, thanks to its $45M production budget, […]