OPENINGS:  There wasn’t any good news for this week’s wide releases, and that began with the weekend’s leader, as THE FLASH (DC/Warners) failed to meet even the lowest expectations with a sluggish $55.1M start.  (The studio’s 4-day estimate, including the Monday Juneteenth holiday, was an optimistic $64M.)  The 3-day total was significantly lower than […]

>FOX declined again last night as American Idol continues to erode.  However, viewers didn’t shift to the network competition as CBS was down a touch and ABC, as expected, was down significantly (repeats this week versus original episodes last week).  NBC premiered the comedy Bent with two episodes from 9-10 pm.  While they improved the […]

  The holiday drought of original programming continued. DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart below displays preliminary live+same day 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 […]

  More preseason football. 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 the chart. CBS:  […]

The ratings below are household ratings from the 56 television markets with local Nielsen meters for Saturday April 5 and Sunday April 6, 2014. The 56 markets (out of 210 total) cover about 70% of the US television population. College Basketball NCAA Men’s Tournament: Final Four 4.6 rating TBS 6:00 pm Saturday #1-Florida 53 vs […]

  OPENINGS:  THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER (Blumhouse/Morgan Creek/Universal) was at the low end of expectations with $27.2M, and it was also below projections internationally with $17.9M in 52 markets.  It’s hard to tell just what this means in terms of the bottom line, because while a $125M worldwide total wouldn’t look terrible against $30M in production […]

>The return of Dancing to Tuesday brought ABC back above a 2 rating and into second place, but far below the lofty 3.4 rating the network scored on this night a year ago.  Steady as always, CBS held on to first place for the night.  Dancing‘s recap and results shows did damage NBC, which sunk […]

  Some shows said farewell to their seasons more effectively than others. ABC:  SCANDAL had its biggest season finale to date, up 0.4 from last week to 3.4 and (with Big Bang Theory in reruns) easily the highest-rated show of the night.  It towered over lead-in GREY’S ANATOMY, which fell 0.1 to 2.5 after an […]