> Somewhere, Edward R. Murrow weeps. CBS: The attempt to resurrect Murrow’s 59-year old celebrity interview vehicle PERSON TO PERSON with Charlie Rose and Lara Logan flopped badly with a 1.1 (wait, people didn’t want to see the inside of Warren Buffet’s house?). But Survivor will be back next week, so no long-term damage done. […]
> Question for the class: are the travails of AMERICAN IDOL and THE X FACTOR good or bad for NBC’s THE VOICE? Discuss among yourselves for the next 4 days. FOX: It’s becoming a familiar song: Idol easily wins the night for FOX, dominates its hour… but at a substantially lower level than it has […]
> Welcome back to Network Scorecard, where we consider the perplexing case of AMERICAN IDOL. FOX: It’s now clear that the biggest story of the 2011-12 television season is the slump in established reality-competition franchises. Idol joins Dancing With the Stars and The Biggest Loser with a nearly 30% decline from last year’s Wednesday average. […]
> AMERICAN IDOL returned to the schedule, towering over everything… except its own past. FOX: Idol came back with a 7.4, which naturally squashed all its competition. In fact, it beat the ratings of the other 4 broadcast networks combined. And yet… the number was down 24% from last season’s Wednesday premiere. Last year’s 9.8 […]
> AKA the season’s final pre-American Idol Wednesday. NBC: In the absence of the 600-pound gorilla that’s arriving in a week, the new 8-9PM hour did respectably. WHITNEY‘s 2.1 was slightly higher than where Up All Night had settled in last fall, and ARE YOU THERE, CHELSEA built a bit on that to a 2.3, […]