With CBS in re-reruns last night, it was one grim night on network TV Tuesday.  ABC won the night with a 2.0 adult 18-49 rating from 8-11 pm, slightly above the 1.7 season-to-date rating for ABC Tuesday.    The network premiered The Taste with Nigella Lawson, Anthony Bourdain and others from 8-10 pm, scoring a 2.2 rating. […]

> A program note:  tonight at 9PM, HBO will premiere the documentary BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD, which screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival; it will then air many more times on the network’s channels.  It’s a fascinating, extremely well structured look at a point in 1970s pop culture history that’s been largely forgotten […]

February Sweeps stunts by NBC and CBS both fail. NBC:  The network aggressively promoted last night’s SVU because it featured Mike Tyson as a guest star, but the show dropped 0.2 to 1.5, in 4th place for its hour.  CHICAGO FIRE had an even steeper fall, down 0.3 to 1.8, but that was enough to […]

> One of the most heartening developments of the past couple of years has been the spreading popularity in theaters of cultural events presented in HD video.  Operas and ballets have become monthly features in many cities, and stage shows are now joining in:  Britain’s National Theatre has been presenting several productions on screen for […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #21 of 2015 now looks like $143 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, significantly below the norm for this weekend.  A definite clunker Memorial Day Weekend at the box office. Opening at 3,972 theaters Friday, Tomorrowland from Disney is on track for a $32.2 million opening three-day weekend (better than it looked yesterday […]

It’s been so long since there’s been a stable Sunday, what with preemptions and competition from football playoffs, the Super Bowl, the Golden Globes, and the Grammys (with the Oscars still to come), that it’s hard to know what “normal” looks like–but last night, for the most part, wasn’t good. ABC:  Last night’s REVENGE was […]

>The FOX pilot LOCKE & KEY is a very effective hour of creepiness, but it’s not that hard to understand why the network didn’t put the project on its schedule.  The show screams “cult hit” at best, and the pilot feels more like a shortened feature film than the viable prototype for a continuing weekly […]

The 9th weekend of 2013 looks like a problem: $96 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 37% from the same weekend last year.  One movie should open decently, while all the holdovers are wilting.  The last six weeks are down 21% from the same period last year and down 20% from the average […]