THE MCCARTHYS:  Thursday 9:30PM on CBS THE FACTS:  Ronnie McCarthy (Jake Lacy) is part of a lovingly smothering Boston Irish-Catholic family, who are just fine with him being gay but embarrass him at every turn anyway.  The series was created by Brian Gallivan, a relative newbie, so the showrunner will be Mike Sikowitz, of […]

>When the television ratings come in each morning, there is often a lot of attention paid to a rating that might be up only one tenth of a rating point from the prior week or the prior year.  (More recently, most ratings in most time periods have been trending down instead of up, which makes […]

  The rest of the week:  Monday,  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The Saturday primetime network schedule, such as it is, isn’t worth much attention, being a patchwork of reruns and sports (although we will include estimates for that night in our full-week network projections).  That brings us to Sunday, once the showcase night for […]

> From the Department of “Duh”:  CBS has worked out deals with Ashton Kutcher, Jon Cryer and Angus T. Jones to return for another season of  2 1/2 MEN.  There had been reports that the cast and show creator Chuck Lorre wanted the new 10th season to be the finale, while CBS wanted 2-year deals, […]

  NBC has struck first in releasing the dates of its fall premieres.  Most of its new shows will launch during the official Premiere Week starting Monday September 22, but there are a few exceptions (new series are in ALL CAPS): Sunday Sept 7:  NFL Sunday Night Football Thursday Sept 11:  The Biggest Loser Monday […]

Weekend #20 of 2012 looks like it will be about $156 million for the top 12 films, down 2% from last year’s comparable weekend and down the same amount from the four-year average for this weekend.  Three movies open, with Battleship headed for the biggest opening of the trio (about $42.5 million).  The Dictator starring […]

  OPENINGS:  THE ADDAMS FAMILY (BRON/MGM) proved to be a still-fertile source of IP with a solid $30.3M US start, and the cartoon should benefit from closed schools on Columbus Day for a robust 4-day weekend total.  Production costs were reportedly on the low end of animation, so a 3x multiple to $90M should go […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #24 of 2014 now looks like $184 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, still 20% above the norm for this weekend but now -7% below the same weekend last year.   Opening at 3,306 theaters, 22 Jump Street from Sony grossed $25.2 million Friday and $18.8 million Saturday, […]