A night for departures and arrivals..   CBS:  The 1-hour season finale of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER (which disclosed not The Mother, but Barney’s wife) was up from recent episodes at 3.6, also better than last week’s 2 Broke Girls finale.  The 2 1/2 MEN season finale was even with recent weeks […]

  NETWORK UPDATE:  There was no change for the NBC sitcoms.  BIG BROTHER, however, climbed 0.1 to an even higher 2.1.  GANG RELATED slipped 0.1 to 0.7, and the CW reruns were both down 0.1. THURSDAY CABLE:  The cable night was all about Pawn and History Channel, as the 2 half-hours of PAWN STARS were […]

  Mick Jagger isn’t exactly known for his comedy stylings.  But the man knows a little bit about performing, and he was an extremely game host for tonight’s 37th season finale of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.  He didn’t have much to do, though, with the night’s highlights. The highest of those was the sweet, teary farewell […]

Weekend #30 of 2014 is looking like $128 million for the top 12 films this weekend, -13% below the norm for this weekend.  Not a disaster like the previous three weekends (-27% to -34%), but the sixth down weekend in a row.  Opening at 3,172 theaters Friday (somewhat above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends […]

    Beware of studio estimates and round numbers. OPENINGS:  In order to get MEN IN BLACK 3 (Sony) to a round $70M for the 4-day weekend, the studio had to claim the lowest Monday drop of the market’s Top 9 films–even though MIB3 hasn’t shown any particular strength with the family matinee audience (its […]

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). PREVIOUS SATURDAY NETWORK SCORECARDS (FAST NATIONALS) PREVIOUS SATURDAY CABLE & […]

ABC won the final Sunday of the May Sweep with the Billboard Music Awards and very little competition from the other networks.  The FOX animated comedies ended their seasons at or near their respective lows, while NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice ended its season with a steep year-to-year decline and CBS programmed this final Sunday as it usually does (with a […]

The ratings below are household ratings from the 56 television markets with local Nielsen meters for Saturday August 16 and Sunday August 17, 2014. The 56 markets (out of 210 total) cover about 70% of the US television population. Golf PGA Tour: Wyndham Championship 1.0 rating CBS 3:00 pm Saturday 3rd Round (+14% from 0.9 […]