TRUE DETECTIVE, despite major competition from the Golden Globes and the season premiere of Shameless on Showtime, had a solid start in the ratings for HBO on Sunday.  Preliminary numbers have it at 2.3M total viewers for its 9PM airing, with another 1M at 11PM.  The 9PM rating is a bit higher than the […]

  OPENINGS:  We’ll see how the numbers hold up in tomorrow’s finals, but for now at least THE BOSS BABY (DreamWorks Animation/20th) is the weekend winner with $49M, considerably better than expectations.  The only dour note on the success is that it was rather frontloaded for a family non-sequel, with a 28% Saturday bump.  That […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots FAMILY ALBUM was one of the more buzzed-about FOX pilots of this past development season, and although it’s not on the network’s announced schedule, Deadline reports that it’s in contention for midseason and will even shoot a second prototype episode.  So this isn’t so much a postmortem as […]

The climax of the NHL season took the night. 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 […]

  OPENINGS:  TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS (Hasbro/Paramount) launched at the higher end of tracking expectations with $60.5M.  Beasts is a much bigger-budgeted effort than its immediate predecessor, 2018’s Bumblebee (which opened with $21.7M but had a 6x multiple thanks to word of mouth and the dynamics of the Christmas box office).  More impressively, Beasts […]

        NETWORK FINALS:  SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL adjusted to 4.63, compared to 4.9 for last week’s game.  In addition, there were significant adjustments (up to at least the next tenth) for 60 MINUTES, NCIS: LA, WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE, CALL ME KAT, THE GREAT NORTH and THE SIMPSONS.       […]

  As has been the case the last couple of Thursdays, preseason football preemptions (one major market each for NBC, CBS, ABC and CW last night) will play a bit of havoc with the early numbers.  Per Mitch Metcalf, expect each network except for FOX to decline about one-tenth of an adult 18-49 rating point […]

NETWORK UPDATE:  THE MYSTERIES OF LAURA lost 0.1 in final numbers to 2.0.  With quarter-hour info, the spread between the end of AMERICA’S GOT TALENT (which gained 0.1 in adjusted numbers) and LAURA also got starker:  a 1.1 gap between the 2.9 NBC had at 9:45PM and the 1.8 still watching LAURA at 10:30PM.  Of […]