Everyone knows that TV is a pitiless business, where a show lives or dies by the ratings it receives. Except… not always. Today, VH1 announced that it was renewing its time-travel dramedy Hindsight, even though the show’s Season 1 finale had a 0.17 rating in 18-49s, losing 70% of its Mob Wives lead-in.  (And […]

  The broadcast networks aren’t what they used to be, and likely will never be again.  They’re collectively on a train that’s moving in the wrong direction, because the lion’s share of their revenues are based on the number of people who watch the commercials contained in their shows within a short time after initial […]

  THE WHISPERS:  Midseason TBD on ABC THE FACTS:  Something is taking possession of American children and making them do very bad things–like “kill your parents” bad things.  They may be on their way to launching an all-out attack, and Lily Rabe is the government agent tasked to stop them.  The series creator is Soo […]

  Thanks to SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL, THE VOICE and Dick Wolf, NBC is in stable–if unexciting–shape as the 2015-16 season ends, and the Peacock’s fall line-up is as notable for what it doesn’t do as for what it does.  Although the network has ordered a dozen new series, only 3 of them will begin airing […]

  NOTE:  Season To Date and Weekly Network Ratings Charts Are Below NBC made a surprise move today, announcing that THE BLACKLIST, rather than following the pattern of last season’s Revolution and airing only with The Voice as its lead-in, will broadcast three new episodes next month starting on January 13, making tonight’s fall finale […]

See our commentary on the NBC fall schedule here. FOX had a terrible 2016-17 season (blurred a bit by airing the Super Bowl and a historic World Series).  The closest thing it had to a new hit was Lethal Weapon, and it watched in horror as Empire plunged in the ratings with unprecedented speed.  The network’s fall schedule […]

  According to Advertising Age, advertisers have begun to buy time on the broadcast networks for the 2014-15 TV season, which is the whole reason the hoopla of the “Upfronts” exists in the first place.  There are two basic components to each of these sales (although they can become quite intricate):  the rate that buyers […]

  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 […]