Weekly Cable and Broadcast Program Rankings
Updated telecast rankings for the week ending Sunday.
THE SKED’S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD – 5/20/13
Viewers have started to exit the season before it’s even ended, as neither premieres nor finales excited anyone last night. NBC: THE VOICE, as usual, won the night for NBC, but with its lowest-rated Monday episod...
THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Bates Motel”
The first season of BATES MOTEL pulled one of the season’s more interesting sleights of hand. In theory a prequel to Psycho, more often than not it used the source material as pretext for a quite different kind o...
THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “The Goodwin Games”
THE GOODWIN GAMES: Monday 8:30PM on FOX – If Nothing Else Is On… Note: we reviewed the original pilot for this show back in August. Since then, however, it underwent fairly significant recasting and res...
THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “Motive”
MOTIVE: Thursday 9PM on ABC – Change the Channel It’s a paradoxical truth that when TV’s “summer” begins, cable networks get adventurous and creative, and the US broadcast networks get gen...
THE SKED SERIES FINALE REVIEW: “The Big C: Hereafter”
Even though death is part of the daily menu of our television and movies, dying–lingering, fatal illness–is much rarer. We prefer our deaths to be mere starting points for police investigations, or the bypr...
SKEDBALL: Weekend Sports Ratings — Preakness Does OK
The second leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown was up versus last year (the pre-race coverage was up 24-49% versus last year, while the race coverage was up only 9% versus last year). Certainly, millions of TV sets were ...
THE SKED’s Fall TV Ratings Predictions – Monday
The Upfronts are over, which means the real Upfronts are about to begin–that is, the networks’ advance sale of advertising time (usually about 80% of the season’s total) for the Fall 2013 TV season. A...
THE SKED’S SUNDAY NETWORK SCORECARD – 5/19/13
Live awards shows have been surging in the DVR age, and last night it happened again. ABC: The BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS blew away the competition with a 3.6 (peaking at 3.9 in the 9-9:30PM half-hour), the show’s highest r...
THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Mr. Selfridge”
Think of MR. SELFRIDGE as the methadone to Downton Abbey‘s pure heroin. It’s not remotely the real thing, but it serves to feed the craving through these many months until Downton returns in January 2014. ...
Box Office Year to Date and Studio Scorecards
Looking at wide-release films in North America (those that play on at least 400 screens at some point), 2013 now totals just over $3.1 billion, down 13% from 2012 and down 5% from the prior four-year average 2009-2012. Still ...
INTERNATIONAL BOX OFFICE through May 19
Updated International Box Office numbers below. Iron Man 3 moved up $72 million overseas in the past week, reaching over $700 million overseas to date. If Iron Man 3 ends with, let’s say, $820 million overseas, the...
BEHIND THE WEEKEND BOXOFFICE – 5/19/13
OPENINGS: In order for STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS (Paramount) to hit its $70.6M weekend studio estimate (and $84.1M over 4+ days), it will need to have the best Sunday hold in the top 10 by a substantial margin. Paramo...
WEEKEND STUDIO ESTIMATES May 17-19
Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #20 of 2013 looks like $147 million for the top 12 films, somewhat above the same weekend last year but slightly below the four-year average for the weekend. Star ...
THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: SNL with Ben Affleck
In contrast to last week’s Kristin Wiig-fest, tonight’s season finale of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE didn’t give victory laps to all the franchise characters Bill Hader and Fred Armisen have contributed to the ...