FOX opted for stability today and renewed NEW GIRL, THE FOLLOWING, THE MINDY PROJECT and RAISING HOPE for next season.  The first two were no-brainers.  Even though New Girl isn’t the breakout smash the network had been hoping for (especially this fall, when The Voice boosted Go On‘s ratings), it’s FOX’s highest-rated live-action comedy […]

The College Football Playoff Semifinal games on New Year’s Eve provided some welcome news for ESPN and Disney, with both games up versus last year’s low levels (especially the afternoon window which was up +23% from last year).  The 19.3 million viewers 2+ for the 3:12 pm game (Alabama def. Washington 24-7) includes 18.4 million in […]

The Voice continues to make NBC executives raise their voices in song. NBC:  In final numbers, the return of the Tuesday edition of THE VOICE was at the show’s fall Tuesday average  of 4.1,  tripling what the network has been doing in that timeslot since the fall run ended.  Thanks to its presence, GO ON (which also featured a much-promoted […]

  Believe it or not, now that it’s far too late and the closing notice has all but been posted, SMASH aired its best episode of the season last night–not remotely what some of us hoped the show would be at the start, not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination or anything to […]

  Despite modest bumps for FOX’s season finales, last night featured an alarming number of season and series lows. FOX:  Both BONES and THE FOLLOWING were up in their season finales, the former by 0.1 to 2.1 and the latter by 0.2 to 2.6.  That still didn’t get them past their season average numbers, although […]

  Last night’s festival of season/series finales was also a riot of off-hour running times, and there will be more than the usual number of afternoon adjustments once final numbers are on.  The analysis below features updated American Idol, The Office  and Hannibal numbers from the ones in this morning’s chart.  Note from the “if […]

  SATURDAY BBCAMERICA:  The ORPHAN BLACK season finale didn’t push it anywhere near the ratings big leagues, but at least it rounded up to a 0.2 in 18-49s, and it skewed fairly young, with that demo making up more than half its 375K total viewers.  The finale was up 50% from the week before, however […]

  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 finale ever, with 2.7M total viewers.  (AMC didn’t release 18-49 numbers, but Mad Men has always skewed old.)  That was 200,000 more viewers than […]