Author Archive
 

 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “The Red Road”

  THE RED ROAD:  Thursday 9PM on Sundance Channel – If Nothing Else Is On… “Ponderousness” is odd branding for a cable network with fledgling original programming to embrace, but after Top of the L...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “New Amsterdam”

  NEW AMSTERDAM:  Tuesday 10PM on NBC You can learn much of what you need to know about NBC’s medical procedural NEW AMSTERDAM from a bit of the David Schulner pilot script: DOCTOR 1:  Look–if you can’t...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Mad Men”

The title of MAD MEN‘s Season 5 finale was “The Phantom,” and as is almost always the case with Matthew Weiner’s opus, it had several meanings.  (Weiner shared credit for the finale’s script with ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Beauty & the Beast”

  It helps, when watching CW’s BEAUTY & THE BEAST, not to think too much about “Beauty and the Beast”.  Not the 1987 TV show, and certainly not the movies and other adaptations of the story.  Jay Ry...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

NIELSENWAR: The Value of a Super Bowl, and Midseason, Part I

  Everyone knows that the Super Bowl is by far the highest rated show of each season, but what does it mean for a network’s big picture?  Here were the season-to-date averages for the broadcast networks as of a week...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

UPDATED: Behind the Weekend US/Worldwide Box Office – 2/8/15

  Note:  due to last week’s low-grossing Super Bowl Sunday, all weekend-to-weekend comparisons appear unusually strong this week. OPENINGS:  THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE:  SPONGE OUT OF WATER (Nickelodeon/Paramount) notche...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED: Sunday Ratings Projections

> A few notes: these projections are for original episodes (no repeats) aired in the 4th quarter of 2011.  Series premieres will likely be .3-.4 higher, thanks to network marketing pushes, and then tend to go down over tim...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Behind the Friday Box Office – 3/14/14

  OPENINGS:  NEED FOR SPEED (DreamWorks/Disney) won Friday with $6.6M (which includes $1.1M from Thursday night), but it’s destined to come in 2d or even 3rd for the weekend, probably under $20M.  At a $175M cost (...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Graceland”

  GRACELAND:  Wednesday 10PM on USA GRACELAND is USA’s attempt to meld its jokey procedural sensibility (and that of series creator Jeff Eastin, who previously created White Collar for the network) to the kind of hi...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED’S MIDSEASON RETURN: “The Secret Circle”

> After a hiatus so long that it seemed as though CW had found its own witchcraft to create more repeats of THE SECRET CIRCLE than there’d been original episodes to start, the series finally returned to original episodes....
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “The Americans”

  THE AMERICANS:  Tuesday 10PM on FX THE AMERICANS is inevitably one of those pieces of pop culture that feels more queasily topical these days (in this case, despite its 1980s setting), with its tale of Russian agents in...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

EARLY FRIDAY BOX OFFICE: “Dumbo” Flies Low, “Unplanned” OK, “Hotel Mumbai” & “The Beach Bum” Dim

  The Disney machine is hitting an atypical pothole with DUMBO (Disney), which according to preliminary numbers at Deadline had a $14.8M Friday ($2.6M of that from Thursday night).  That’s very much on the low end o...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

Full SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews

This may be heresy, but the virtual Sundance Film Festival went so smoothly that if they offered it as an option in a hopefully pandemic-free 2022, I’d seriously consider passing up the freezing weather and the waits for ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED: “Justified” Finale Runs Low On Ratings Bullets

  The critical consensus on this season of JUSTIFIED–including here–was that it was excellent, perhaps the best of the series so far.  Viewers, though, seemed less enthused, as last night’s season finale...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

EARLY WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: “Lego” Even More Awesome on Saturday

  Two of the weekend’s openings drew upon their core audiences for strong Saturday results.  Weekend matinees are prime time for family movies, and according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, THE LEGO MOVIE (Warn...
by Mitch Salem