Other Nielsenwar Network Report Cards:  NBC One massive hit can make up for an awful lot of failure.  Have you met EMPIRE? Full Season To Date (thru May 3) 18-49 Rating Average:  1.53 (#4), down 26.2% from last season (Note:  FOX aired the Super Bowl in 2014-15; with that excluded, the year-to-year drop was […]

  NBC has kept a lot of is pieces in place, but also made some significant changes for next season, especially on its once-signature Thursday night.  Let’s dig in. MONDAY:  No surprise that THE VOICE is staying where it is, but 10PM is a risk.  NBC will keep THE BLACKLIST there only until November 10, […]

  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 […]

  THE MYSTERIES OF LAURA:  Wednesday 8PM on NBC THE FACTS:  Laura Diamond (Debra Messing) is an NYPD homicide detective who also has to juggle her responsibilities to her young twin sons and her issues with her estranged cop husband (Josh Lucas).  The series creator is Jeff Rake, a veteran writer/producer (everything from The Practice […]

  We’re a bit more then 2 weeks into the Fall 2014 TV season, most of the new series have had their debuts, and a few selected hours aside, the results aren’t pretty.  We’re going to take a capsule look at where each of the 4 major networks stand (CW is just beginning the roll-out of its […]

  GRACEPOINT:  Thursday 9PM on FOX THE FACTS:  David Tennant repeats his role as the lead detective in a US adaptation of the hit British miniseries Broadchurch, about the murder of a child in a small seaside town and what the investigation reveals about the inhabitants.  He’s joined by Anna Gunn in what had been […]

  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, […]

  1.3.  0.9.  1.4.  1.1.  0.7.  1.2.  1.3. 1.2. Those are, respectively, the most recent Live + Same Day ratings for Quantico, Grandfathered, Code Black (which actually had a bump for the week thanks to a higher than usual lead-in), The Mysteries of Laura, The Grinder, The Muppets, Limitless, and Rosewood–all of which have received […]