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 […]

  We’re taking these last days before the broadcast networks’ midseason begins to scrutinize how those still-powerful dinosaurs fared during the fall.  Yesterday we looked at ABC, and today it’s the turn of what was called (although not recently) the Tiffany Network. CBS Fall Primetime 18-49 Average (through December 28):  1.93, down 3.6% from Fall […]

  MANHATTAN LOVE STORY:  Tuesday 8:30PM on ABC THE FACTS:  Boy (Jake McDorman) meets girl (Analeigh Tipton), but here’s the gimmick:  we hear all of the couple’s hidden thoughts throughout.  The series creator is Jeff Lowell, whose sitcom writing/producing career goes back to Cybill and Spin City. WHAT IT’S SAYING:  He’s cute, she’s cute, and […]

  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, […]

  There was little change from last week in the new weekly averages (based on 5 days of final Same Day ratings and 2 days of overnights), as again no network averaged over 1.5 in 18-49s over the course of the week.  ABC held even at 1.49, CBS was up 0.3 to 1.43, FOX had […]

  The network averages for last week are significant because they represent a full week of sweeps programming, which means reruns were at a minimum and some stunting (although not a tremendous amount of it: a Chicago Fire/PD crossover here, the IHeartRadio Music Awards there) boosted the numbers.  In other words, barring really big events […]

  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 […]