Completely updated with official national ratings. Thursday premiere night is down 23% collectively for the broadcast networks (10.5 Adult 18-49 rating last night versus 13.7 last fall on premiere Thursday).  CBS is most on track, winning the night and just two tenths of a rating point behind both last year and our estimate for the […]

  Friday isn’t yet Saturday for the broadcast networks–there’s still plenty of original programming on the night.  But declining ratings and revenues have made it something like the network Island of Misfit Toys, where shows that skew too old or fall in too narrow a niche share space with miscellaneous newsmagazines and reality shows.  It’s […]

With three nights of official national ratings counted, CBS is in front with a 2.99 Adult 18-49 rating, down a dizzying 30% from the first three nights last fall (when CBS was a towering #1 at a 4.28 rating).  Remember, The Eye pulled a 10.7 rating for the season premiere of Two and a Half Men […]

So much for the monkey. NBC:  ANIMAL PRACTICE lurched into the regular season with an awful 1.4 start, the lowest rated show in primetime (other than on CW) last night.  GUYS WITH KIDS did marginally better at 1.6, but that was still deeply in 4th place for its timeslot.  (Incidentally, in other NBC bad sitcom […]

Last weekend we said domestic box office would get back on track, and it turned out to be another very weak weekend (the third weekend in a row down around 20%).  We are going out on a limb again this week, forecasting an okay box office performance, with the top 12 films generating about $88 […]

The networks premiered their Wednesday nights last night (mostly), and they finished in the order we forecast back in May (FOX #1, CBS and ABC fighting for #2, and NBC a distant #4).  But three of the four networks are well below our predicted rating levels and well below the ratings from the Wednesday premiere […]

  There was a time, not that many years ago, when Thursday was the night that network television was all about.  Fueled by the enormous amounts movie studios spend to promote their openings the next day, the night was stuffed with every network’s brightest offerings–and for more than a decade, it was dominated by one […]

  No real winners. FOX:  People forget just how much NEW GIRL had slipped since the heady days of its premiere–although it sounds awful to compare last night’s pair of 2.7s to that 4.8 start a year ago, the evening’s numbers were completely consistent with what the series was doing last spring.  The good news […]