Author Archive
 

 

THE SKED SEASON PREMIERE REVIEW: “Franklin & Bash”

  FRANKLIN & BASH:  Wednesday 9PM on TNT Wednesdays have become series reclamation night on cable.  Last week we had Necessary Roughness adding John Stamos for a new series setting and a bit of zing; now FRANKLIN &am...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY FILM REVIEW: “World War Z”

  WORLD WAR Z:  Watch It At Home – Third Act Heroics, In More Ways Than One The travails of WORLD WAR Z on the way to the screen have been widely discussed, and in the end the misshapen, Frankenstein-like $200M (plu...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED’S WEDNESDAY NETWORK SCORECARD – 6/19/13

  Another good night for sports on network TV. NBC:  Per Mitch Metcalf:  NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS GAME 4 scored a 2.2 adult 18-49 rating in the fast nationals, which should go up to a 2.3 in the official nationals later to...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED’S THURSDAY NETWORK SCORECARD – 6/20/13

Updated with official national ratings below for Game 7. ABC may be as happy this morning as Miami’s fans are, with what will probably be the highest network rating we see for quite a while. ABC:  Per Mitch Metcalf:  NB...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED SEASON PREMIERE REVIEW: “Wilfred”

  WILFRED:  Thursday 10PM on FX Thursday’s back-to-back double-episode Season 3 premiere of WILFRED provided a good picture of a show with, fittingly, a somewhat split personality, at times an existential, cosmic jo...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

BEHIND THE FRIDAY BOX OFFICE – 6/21/13

  OPENINGS:  A bit surprisingly, perhaps, Pixar’s recent movies haven’t exploded at the Saturday/Sunday matinee box office, with merely normal (as opposed to “family”) weekend multiples off their F...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

BEHIND THE WEEKEND BOXOFFICE – 6/23/13

  OPENINGS:  Allowing for the usual studio practice of predicting lower-than-typical Sunday drops to boost the numbers a bit, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (Disney/Pixar) opened in line with expectations at what may be slightly les...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Veep”

  No show enjoys running around in circles more than VEEP.  Armando Ianucci’s political sitcom glories in Vice-President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her staff of venal incompetents mistakenly navigating t...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED SEASON PREMIERE REVIEW: “Copper”

  COPPER:  Sunday 10PM on BBCAmerica A tale of two low-rated series:  BBCAmerica’s two original scripted dramas COPPER and Orphan Black had comparable ratings in their first seasons.  Copper garnered a higher numb...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Mad Men”

  There was hardly a moment in Season 6 of MAD MEN when Don Draper (Jon Hamm) seemed to feel comfortable in his own skin.  Oh sure, he could gather up some venom when he had the chance to cut colleague Ted Chaough (Kevin ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED’S SUNDAY NETWORK SCORECARD – 6/23/13

It’s not that no one was watching television last night:  Discovery’s SKYWIRE LIVE WITH NIK WALLENDA delivered 13M viewers during his actual Grand Canyon walk.  What viewers weren’t watching was broadcast TV...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

EARLY SUNDAY CABLE RATINGS: “Mad Men” Up, “Devious Maids” Soft, Wallenda Wins

  Cable ratings will be fragmentary until tomorrow, but here are some numbers worth noting: MAD MEN‘s Season 6 finale was, despite some viewers’ misgivings about this season, the show’s highest-rated fina...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “Under the Dome”

  UNDER THE DOME:  Monday 10PM on CBS – Potential DVR Alert Much of CBS’s programming philosophy is built around the steady reliability of its reruns, so on the face of it, the Eye would seem least likely of t...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED’S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD – 6/24/13

  There is, it turns out, an audience for scripted network drama during the summer. CBS:  Airing in the dead of network summer, and against what turned out to be the last hour of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals, UNDER THE DOME...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED SEASON PREMIERE REVIEW: “Rizzoli & Isles”

  RIZZOLI & ISLES:  Tuesday 9PM on TNT TNT set the last cornerstone of its extensive but unambitious summer schedule in place with tonight’s return of RIZZOLI & ISLES, one of the network’s mainstays, n...
by Mitch Salem