Author Archive
 

 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Mad Men”

  MAD MEN:  Sunday 10PM on AMC Fresh episodes of MAD MEN will likely still be airing more than a year from now, so all the obituaries for the series that have been appearing lately run the risk of sounding like “Gen...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Shameless”

  It made plenty of strategic sense for Showtime to reclassify SHAMELESS in its 4th season as a Comedy for Emmy Award purposes, since television is now swamped with contending dramas, but if the plan works, the result will...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Silicon Valley”

  SILICON VALLEY:  Sunday 10PM on HBO – DVR Alert There’s no algorithm (yet) to predict compatibility between TV series, so we don’t know yet how SILICON VALLEY will fare in the ratings, or for that matt...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Game of Thrones”

  GAME OF THRONES:  Sunday 9PM on HBO GAME OF THRONES is such an assured, expert piece of work that it’s easy to forget how many rules of conventional TV storytelling it routinely violates.  It’s not just the...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

UPDATED: THE SKED CABLE/NETWORK SCORECARD – 4/6/14

  UPDATE:  ONCE UPON A TIME gained 0.2 in final numbers, increasing its lead over RESURRECTION even though the latter inched up 0.1 (still down 0.2 from the previous week).  Also up 0.1:  AMERICAN HOME BUILDERS and AMERICA&...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

NIELSENWAR: “Game of Thrones” Premiere and Other Early Sunday Cable Numbers

  It was a dull week for the broadcast networks, with little variation from the week before.  CBS had the advantage, thanks to the series finale of How I Met Your Mother, giving it a 2.16 average in 18-49s for the week (5...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Veep”

  VEEP:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO VEEP, television’s most scintillatingly vicious comedy, returned with a relatively mild Season 3 premiere by its standards.  Largely that was because the script, written by Supervisin...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

UPDATED: THE SKED CABLE/NETWORK SCORECARD – 4/7/14

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  The NCAA FINALS adjusted up to 7.2 in final numbers, but that was still significantly down from last year’s 8.4.  What time zone adjustment giveth it also taketh away, and that BIG BANG THEORY reru...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

UPDATED: THE SKED CABLE/NETWORK SCORECARD – 4/15/14

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  AGENTS OF SHIELD gained an additional 0.1 in adjusted numbers, putting it at 2.1, 0.2 higher than last week’s 8PM episode.  (The night’s rerun was up 0.1 as well.)  Apart from that, a lot of...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED NETWORK SCORECARD – 4/16/14

  A deadly night of reruns for the most part. CBS:  The highest rated show of the night was SURVIVOR, and even it was down 0.2 from last week to 2.2.  It was followed by reruns of CRIMINAL MINDS (1.4) and CSI (1.2). FOX:  T...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

UPDATED: THE SKED CABLE/NETWORK SCORECARD – 4/9/14

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  SVU’s 0.1 upward adjustment meant that it, too, beat AMERICAN IDOL on Wednesday.  MIXOLOGY also came up 0.1, as did each of the reruns that preceded it on ABC. WEDNESDAY CABLE:  A very slow ni...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED: Stephen Colbert Is the New Dave

  Jon Stewart is becoming positively Lorne Michaels-ian in his influence over comedy culture far beyond his own show.  It was announced today, to no one’s great surprise, that his colleague and protege Stephen Colbe...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Community”

  You couldn’t tell it from the ratings, which were if anything more dismal than ever, or from tonight’s somewhat disappointing season finale, but the return of Founding Genius Dan Harmon rejuvenated COMMUNITY&...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

UPDATED: THE SKED CABLE/NETWORK SCORECARD – 4/10/14

  UPDATE:  Lots of adjustments, but none of them over 0.1, with AMERICAN IDOL, THE BIG BANG THEORY, GREY’S ANATOMY, SHARK TANK and COMMUNITY up (narrowly avoiding series lows in some cases), and THE MILLERS and ELEM...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

EARLY FRIDAY BOX OFFICE: “Heaven Is For Real” Transcends “Transcendence”

  In an appropriately biblical development for this Easter weekend, it appears from preliminary numbers at Deadline that David will defeat Goliath, and the $12M-budgeted HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (TriStar/Sony) will handily outgr...
by Mitch Salem