WAYWARD PINES:  Midseason TBD on FOX THE FACTS:  M. Night Shyamalan is the marquee producer of this neo-Twin Peaks-ian limited series.  (He also directed the pilot.)  It concerns Secret Service agent Ethan Burke, who travels to the small, strange town of Wayward Pines in search of two missing agents.  The people he encounters there […]

  With a few scattered exceptions, over the next couple of days the broadcast networks will shut down their regular series for breaks that will range from 2 to 12 weeks, for all intents and purposes ending the “fall” part of the 2013-14 TV season. Let’s see where we are: Season to Date Averages Weeks […]

  Other Nielsenwar Network Report Cards:  ABC, FOX, NBC Tried and True is starting to look more tried. Full Season To Date (thru May 3) 18-49 Rating Average:  1.81 (down 4.1% from last season)–note, however, that last season didn’t include Thursday Night Football. Grade:  B What Happened: Sunday:  Madam Secretary and The Good Wife are […]

  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 […]

  In a very unusual move, NBC has already made major changes in the fall schedule that it announced just 2 weeks ago.  In fact, it’s changed the centerpiece of that schedule, reversing the move of its breakout hit This Is Us to Thursdays, and leaving it instead on Tuesday.   As the chart indicates, This Is […]

  FOX may be in 4th place for the season, but it has the hot hand right now, with Spring blockbuster Empire and surprise success The Last Man On Earth livening up its season.  It’s trying to build on those with an aggressive Fall schedule (new shows are in ALL CAPS, new timeslots are in […]

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 […]

  Once again, CW demonstrated that it operates under different economics than the other broadcast networks.  Much of its revenue comes from episodes streamed online via Netflix and Hulu, which makes sometimes puny on-air ratings acceptable.  Also, virtually everything it airs is produced by one of its in-house studios, Warner Bros Television or CBS Television […]