2014-15 TV Season

NIELSENWAR: The ABC Fall Schedule (with Trailer Reviews)

Posted May 12, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  ABC made some impressive strides this past season, especially on Wednesday and Thursday, and it was probably wise that the network decided to adopt a conservative schedule for the Fall.  Here’s a quick look, along with the network’s reported midseason plans, and reviews of the new shows’ trailers (new shows are in ALL CAPS, […]

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2014-15 TV Season

NIELSENWAR 2014-15 Trailer Review: ABC’s “Galavant”

Posted May 14, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  GALAVANT:  Winter-ish Sunday 8PM on ABC THE FACTS:  A fairy tale musical comedy from Dan Fogelman, the creator of the late, lamented (by some of us) The Neighbors, with an original score by multiple Oscar-winner Alan Menken and Glenn Slater.  It tells the tale of Prince Galavant, whose true love left him for the […]

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NIELSENWAR: On “The Good Wife” and The Business of Plot Twists

Posted March 24, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  {Note:  SPOILERS will follow the weekly and season-to-date ratings below.} None of the networks are anywhere a 2 rating at this point of the season, with CBS on top last week thanks to its Mon-Wed line-up and less than an hour of NCAA TOURNAMENT overrun on Sunday (the relatively low Thurs-Fri ratings for March […]

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NIELSENWAR: The Kevin Reilly Exit

Posted May 29, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  The clock starts ticking on a network head’s job the second that he or she takes it, and today time ran out for Kevin Reilly, Entertainment Chairman of the FOX television network.  (Everyone is being extremely civilized and mouthing words about it being a voluntary decision, but in the history of the television world, […]

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2014-15 TV Season

NIELSENWAR 2014-15 Trailer Review: ABC’s “Cristela”

Posted May 14, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  CRISTELA:  Friday 8:30PM on ABC THE FACTS:  The Hollywood American Dream:  Cristela Alonzo is a Latina comic who wrote (with Kevin Hench) a family comedy pilot script loosely inspired by her own life, about a young woman living with her sister and brother-in-law as she tries to become a lawyer.  ABC passed on the […]

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NIELSENWAR: Olympics Post-Mortem, and Top 5 Midseason Storylines

Posted February 24, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  SQUIRREL!  NBC, and its media enablers, will do their best to focus discussion of the WINTER OLYMPICS ratings on total viewers, daytime and online numbers, and–SQUIRREL!–anything other than the evident fact that the Games didn’t justify a cost that probably exceeded $1 billion, between rights ($775M alone) and production costs over the 18 days of […]

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2014-15 TV Season

NIELSENWAR 2014-15: The CBS Schedule – Grid and Instant Analysis

Posted May 14, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  The big news at CBS is that the network is reducing its Monday comedy block to 1 hour, while leaving 2 sitcom hours on Thursday.  Consequently, the network is adding only one new half-hour in the fall.  (There was no last-minute pick-up for How I Met Your Dad, which until last week was regarded […]

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2014-15 TV Season

NIELSENWAR 2014-15 Trailer Review: ABC’s “Forever”

Posted May 13, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  FOREVER:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC THE FACTS:  Dr. Henry Morgan (Ioan Gruffudd) is a brilliant New York medical examiner who can solve any murder.  Partly that’s because he has a lot of experience with death, since he himself has (temporarily) died many times–when he falls out a window, is poisoned or hit by a […]

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