Here is how this television week is shaping up, three days down and four to go.

In the movie 42, Jackie Robinson (played by Chadwick Boseman) repeatedly asks Branch Rickey why he is breaking baseball’s unwritten whites-only rule.  Rickey (played by Harrison Ford) gives very vague, unsatisfying responses each time.  What a blown dramatic opportunity.  In Ken Burns’ nine-part documentary masterpiece “Baseball,” an aged Red Barber (the Dodgers’ radio broadcaster) describes the […]

  Has American Idol finally leveled out? FOX:  After 3 weeks of consecutive drops that brought the show down 0.7 from a month ago, AMERICAN IDOL was up a tick last night to 3.2.  That’s still a full point below its season average, and just over half its season high, but it may be the […]

The box office this weekend should be slightly off the pace for this weekend the last few years, cooling off a bit after a few solid weekends.  Two new films open, and it appears 42 will lead the way with just under $20 million. Opening at around 2,900 theaters Friday (a very average number), 42 from […]

  It really takes some doing to have ratings too low for CW on Friday nights, but CULT pulled it off, yanked from the network’s schedule with almost half of its episodes still unaired.  (Last week Cult had a 0.2 rating in 18-49s and was watched by a total of 622,000 viewers.)  For the rest of […]

  NBC’s curse continues. NBC:  The network really thought it had something with the dating show READY FOR LOVE, promoting it like crazy and clearing Tuesdays of Go On, The New Normal and Smash so it could pair 2-hour episodes with THE VOICE.  But last night’s blah result was a 1.6, and as Mitch Metcalf […]

  SUNDAY HBO:  Westeros ruled the night, as GAME OF THRONES took the Sunday lead now that The Walking Dead and The Bible are done, down just a tick from last week’s premiere to 2.3, plus another 0.6 for the 10PM re-airing.  (Remember, as always, that pay-TV numbers reflect the entire country even though only […]

Updated weekly ranking of top cable and broadcast programs.  A broadcast network reclaimed the top spot this past week (CBS’s Saturday night telecast of the Syracuse-Michigan Final Four game), mainly because Walking Dead concluded its season last week.  Otherwise, AMC would have been atop the heap again.   There are a lot of empty spaces on this […]