Another night to consider how low a rating can justify a back order these days. NBC:  WHITNEY returned to the NBC schedule last night, and the same nobody who watched it last year came back for more.  The show kicked off with the same 1.4 that Animal Practice had in its premiere (tying Whitney‘s own […]

Good news for ABC’s sitcoms. ABC:  LAST MAN STANDING and MALIBU COUNTRY, newly gifted with 5-episode backorders, justified their continued life by rising to 1.6/1.5, a tick or two up from recent weeks.  A rerun SHARK TANK and a new 20/20 won their hours with 1.6 and 1.7, respectively. CBS:  UNDERCOVER BOSS held steady at […]

This airing against no competition thing is fun! CBS:  On Thursday it was the Eye’s turn to be the only network with original regular programming, and as with NBC the night before, it provided some lovely numbers.  THE BIG BANG THEORY kicked things off with a massive 6 rating (up 0.6 from the show’s last […]

With CBS in re-reruns last night, it was one grim night on network TV Tuesday.  ABC won the night with a 2.0 adult 18-49 rating from 8-11 pm, slightly above the 1.7 season-to-date rating for ABC Tuesday.    The network premiered The Taste with Nigella Lawson, Anthony Bourdain and others from 8-10 pm, scoring a 2.2 rating. […]

Valentine’s Day didn’t heart network television, especially early in the evening. ABC:  About the best that can be said about the 1.3 debut of ZERO HOUR is that it edged out NBC and CW for 3rd place in the hour.  It’s a terrible start for a densely-plotted, serialized show that’s unlikely to lure many viewers […]

You know it’s a weird night when the clearest-cut winner is Community. FOX:  As of this morning’s preliminary numbers, FOX won the night, but it’s loaded with asterisks.  AMERICAN IDOL‘s 3.5 may change because it ran until 9:32PM–for now, it’s down 0.3 from last week, and down a giant 1.4 from this time last year. […]

The NBA playoffs continued on three networks this weekend, and the eight games collectively were very close to the comparable games last year (+1% overall).  The two ABC games were the highest-rated by far: a 5.0 household rating for Miami-Milwaukee and 4.1 rating for New York-Boston (in Nielsen’s 56 metered markets that comprise 70% of […]

  FRIDAY STARZ:  It doesn’t appear as though DA VINCI’S DEMONS is going to be a gamechanger for Starz, as the series debuted with a tame 0.4 in 18-49s, about half of the total viewership of 1M.  That was coming off a 0.6 rating for the series finale of SPARTACUS: WAR OF THE DAMNED, which […]