Jimmy Kimmel’s set got a bit of an upgrade, but other than that there was little visible evidence that the 11:35PM version of JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE will be very different from its midnight incarnation.  Kimmel has never been Mr. High-Concept–he leaves that for Letterman and Conan–and as Jay Leno, still the winner in both […]

Life without The Voice isn’t so much fun. NBC:  Even in our DVR society, where people can watch what they want pretty much when they want, lead-ins still matter.  Thus the replacement of The Voice with oldster reality show OFF THEIR ROCKERS (2 episodes at 1.5/1.8), caused both GO ON and THE NEW NORMAL to […]

  It wasn’t a great morning for the Weinstein Company, which saw both of its major candidates rejected by the Directors Guild of America in that organization’s nominations, the last to be announced before Thursday morning’s Oscar unveilings.  The DGA chose: Ben Affleck, ARGO Kathryn Bigelow, ZERO DARK THIRTY Tom Hooper, LES MISERABLES Ang Lee, […]

Last night was dominated by ESPN, whose airing of the BCS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME may beat all the broadcast networks combined, despite a number that trailed off as Alabama’s irreversible destruction of Notre Dame became clear.  18-49 numbers aren’t yet available, but early household ratings indicate the game could be up 10% from 2012, when it […]

NBC’s Deception premiered to a 2.0 adult 18-49 rating in the fast nationals last night (very close to our 1.9 rating forecast).  Look for the series to go down a few tenths from here in the next few weeks.  Biggest Loser (2.4 rating from 8-10 pm) beat our 2.1 rating forecast and is off to a solid start. […]

This past sports weekend was all about the Wild Card playoffs: four games arranged by the NFL in ascending order of audience appeal.  Sure enough, as the weekend progressed, the ratings steadily increased with each passing game.  The first game between the Bengals and Texans Saturday at 4:30 (16.2 HH rating in the 56 large markets with […]

  DOWNTON ABBEY returned to PBS in spectacular fashion last night, with an enormous 5.1 household rating.  That was almost double the rating for Season 2’s premiere (almost 50% higher than the Season 2 finale, which was itself up 25% from Season 1), and its 7.9M total audience outrated everything on network TV in the […]

NBC began the second half of its season, but the story was still football. FOX:  The overrun from the Seattle/Washington NFL WILD CARD GAME coverage, which was cunningly pushed even farther into primetime by FOX with the postgame show extended to around 8:03PM, gave Rupert Murdoch’s troops the night.  The overrun itself had a massive […]