Author Archive
 

 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “Rush”

  RUSH:  Thursday 9PM on USA – Change the Channel USA Network is aiming for “edgy” with its new Thursday line-up, and so the pilot for RUSH begins with its antihero Will Rush (Tom Ellis) doing coke.  Th...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “Finding Carter”

  FINDING CARTER:  Tuesday 10PM on MTV Previously… on FINDING CARTER:  At 16, Carter Stevens (Kathryn Prescott) believed herself to be having a better-than-average adolescence, mostly due to a close bond with her e...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “The Night Shift”

  For scripted network shows, a summer season is like a dog year, far more weighty than the regular kind.  The mortality rate is so high that just getting a renewal is a considerable feat, and a show like Rookie Blue, ext...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

UPDATED: THE SKED CABLE/NETWORK MONDAY SCORECARD – 7/14/14 (Now With New Demographic Detail)

  NETWORK UPDATE:  MISTRESSES and the rerun THE BIG BANG THEORY both went up 0.1 from this morning’s numbers. MONDAY CABLE:  ESPN’s coverage of the All-Star HOME RUN DERBY took the night at 2.1–even the...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “24: Live Another Day”

  The idea of a changed format turned out to be something of a pretense:  until the last 10 minutes of the final episode, which jumped forward half a day, 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY could more accurately have been called 12.  ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

UPDATED: THE SKED CABLE/NETWORK SUNDAY SCORECARD – 7/13/14

  NETWORK UPDATE:  RISING STAR and WIPEOUT swapped 0.1s, with RISING STAR on the low end–in fact, it was ABC’s lowest-rated original show of the night.  On CBS, BIG BROTHER went up even higher to 2.2, but REC...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “Seed”

  SEED:  Monday 9:30PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… Remember last year’s Vince Vaughn (purported) comedy Delivery Man?  CW’s summer sitcom SEED isn’t a rip-off of the movie, exactly, since...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “Backpackers”

  BACKPACKERS:  Monday 8:30PM on CW – Change the Channel BACKPACKERS feels like a student film project, although it isn’t one.  Instead, it’s another example of the walls coming down between entertainme...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Masters of Sex”

  MASTERS OF SEX:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime MASTERS OF SEX was one of television’s best surprises last season.  Despite a title and premise–the groundbreaking study of human sexuality by Dr. William Masters an...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Salem”

  Sometimes one piece of casting is what it takes to turn a TV series around, and for SALEM, that was the arrival, about midway through the season’s 13 episodes, of Stephen Lang as the Reverend Increase Mather, fathe...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “The Strain”

  THE STRAIN:  Sunday 10PM on FX – Potential DVR Alert Although capable of finer things (notably his Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth), the expert filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is one of those directors–you ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Behind the Weekend US/Worldwide Box Office – 7/13/14

  OPENINGS:  DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (20th) brought in $73M in the US, and added $31.1M in 26 (mostly smaller) international markets.  While a terrific boost to the franchise (which rebooted at $54.8M with Rise 3 ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

EARLY WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: “Apes” Keep Rising

  Good word of mouth kicked in for DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (20th) on Saturday, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline and elsewhere, giving the movie a 5-10% drop from its Thursday night/Friday numbers to $25-...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Behind the Friday Box Office – 7/11/14

  OPENINGS:  DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (20th), with $27.7M on Friday and a likely $70M weekend, will probably have a significant US box office bump over its predecessor Rise ($176.8M, after a $54.8M opening), but it ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED NETWORK SCORECARD – 7/11/14

  NBC:  The network’s numbers were up, but still nothing to boast about.  (And are shaky to boot, thanks to a baseball preemption in San Francisco.)  DATELINE climbed 0.2 to 1.2, and CROSSBONES is currently up 0.2...
by Mitch Salem