We’re now 5 weeks into the fall TV season, and although some major changes in the schedule are ahead, mostly due to CBS’s half-season of Thursday Night Football coming to an end, there’s enough data to come to some conclusions about how the season is going for each network.  The following chart shows the […]

  The Upfronts are officially here, more troubled than ever thanks to the ever-declining ratings at the broadcast networks.  (This Variety article does a good job of laying out the ways in which business considerations are altering what shows are put on the air.)  NBC is in the best position of the broadcasters, thanks to […]

  3 of the 4 major broadcast networks averaged under a 1.5 rating last week, a number that not so long ago meant instant cancellation.  CBS has been head-and-shoulders above the other networks for the past 2 weeks, but that’s because of the event programming of the How I Met Your Mother finale and the […]

  SELFIE:  Tuesday 8PM on ABC THE FACTS:  Suburgatory creator Emily Kapnek may have lost one sitcom this week, but she gained a new one, this spin on My Fair Lady.  Eliza Dooley (Karen Gillan) is an entirely self-obsessed, social  media-magnet narcissist (think a slightly less sociopathic Dahlia from Suburgatory), but when she herself gets […]

We’ve reached the broadcast networks’ Upfront Week… which used to be a lot more central to our television lives than it is now.  Ratings everywhere are down, and there’s no reason to think they’ve hit bottom, which has caused seismic changes in the ways networks make scheduling decisions.  Among other things, with revenues from on-air […]

  We’re continuing with our 18-49 ratings predictions for the fall 2014 TV season.  As before, these predictions cover September 22 (the official start of the new season ) through December 7, and our views on the new series are based on looks at the trailers released last week.  We’ve already surveyed the fall’s Big […]

  BACKSTROM:  Midseason TBD on FOX THE FACTS:  Rainn Wilson plays your basic difficult-but-brilliant homicide detective in a procedural based on a series of Swedish mystery novels, adapted for television by Hart Hanson, the creator of Bones.  Backstrom is grumpy and dismissive of his colleagues, and unhealthy in his eating, drinking and general living habits, […]

  Welcome to Upfronts week, when the broadcast networks (or what’s left of them) announce their Fall schedules and attempt to generate billions of dollars worth of excitement from advertisers.  It’s harder than ever to authoritatively analyze the thought process that goes into a broadcaster’s cancellation, renewal and pick-up decisions, because network ad revenues directly […]