FOX opted for stability today and renewed NEW GIRL, THE FOLLOWING, THE MINDY PROJECT and RAISING HOPE for next season.  The first two were no-brainers.  Even though New Girl isn’t the breakout smash the network had been hoping for (especially this fall, when The Voice boosted Go On‘s ratings), it’s FOX’s highest-rated live-action comedy […]

  There’s always an audience for some stories, and while History Channel’s miniseries distillation of THE BIBLE from Mark Burnett and Roma Downey wasn’t quite at the network’s Hatfields & McCoys level of blockbuster success, it was–pardon the expression–damn close.  Hatfields was watched by 13.9M people in its premiere, 4.8M of them 18-49, while Bible […]

More grim news for ABC and NBC. ABC:  After ONCE UPON A TIME set the tone with a series-low 2.1, down 0.3 from its last airing, RED WIDOW had a disastrous 2-hour debut at 1.4.  That ended ABC’s chance to launch any successful dramas this season (it still has one comedy on deck), and made […]

Another week of prime time ratings, and only FOX can claim a full week average over a 2 rating with adults 18-49 for the week ending last night.  ABC has a particularly steep decline versus the same week last year, which included The Oscars. Weekly Rating Feb 25-Mar 3 18-49 Rating Vs Last Year FOX 2.19 […]

  “You can’t fake smart,” Aaron Sorkin noted about his cast of THE NEWSROOM at tonight’s PaleyFest session, and that, along with the presence of real-life cable infortainment host Piers Morgan as moderator, seemed to set the tone for an unusually thoughtful evening.  Morgan appeared to be more interested in seeking guidance from Sorkin, Executive […]

  Cheers to ONCE UPON A TIME, which rushed through the PaleyFest preliminaries at this afternoon’s session and was able to screen not just tonight’s entire episode, but next week’s first act as well.  Tonight’s show does the usual deft job of switching among present-day Storybrooke, present-day New York (even if the latter looks a […]

The Hobbit moved up with another $21 million overseas since last week, bringing the foreign total to $700 million and the worldwide total to just over $1 billion. The biggest mover this past week overseas was A Good Day to Die Hard, up $29 million to $162 million overseas to date and $229 million worldwide. Debuting this […]

  OPENINGS:  Two studios stretched as far as they could in coming up with weekend estimates for their bombs, claiming the lowest Sunday drops in the Top 10 to reach numbers that may well fall when actual figures are released on Monday.  The sadder story was JACK THE GIANT SLAYER (Warners), as though it really […]