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 […]

The ratings below are household ratings from the 56 television markets with local Nielsen meters for Saturday June 8 and Sunday June 9, 2013.  (The 56 markets out of 210 total cover about 70% of the US television population.) The forgettable NBA playoff season is coming to a close, but the NBA remains the biggest […]

  BROADCAST FINALS: ABC:  THE GOLDBERGS dropped 0.15 to 0.55, THE WONDER YEARS similarly fell 0.17 to 0.50, THE CONNERS lost 0.14 to 0.51, and HOME ECONOMICS was down 0.05 to 0.36.  A MILLION LITTLE THINGS reversed the trend, up 0.02 to 0.31. CBS:  SURVIVOR dipped 0.06 to 1.00, and the season finale of BIG […]

> Deadline has some early updated weekend numbers, and there are no major surprises from the Friday results.  The top 3 are DOLPHIN TALE, MONEYBALL and THE LION KING with $14M, $12M and $11M respectively, with the family pictures garnering the benefit of stepped-up Saturday matinee business.   After that, 3 new titles–50/50, COURAGEOUS and DREAM […]

The 25th weekend of the year is looking like a very good $217 million for the top 12 films, well above the same weekend the last few years.   Opening at over 3,800 4,004 theaters Friday (just above the top 10% of theater counts), Monsters University from Pixar and Disney should average $21,100 per theater for the […]

  OPENINGS:  All the box office action is coming from franchises, with the latest being HALLOWEEN KILLS (Blumhouse/Universal, also on Peacock), which started at $50.4M.  The Peacock part of this story is probably being overstated by pundits (very few Peacock users subscribe to the tier where they would have access to the movie), and Kills […]