The numbers are in for Keith Olbermann‘s first night on Current. You can’t tell a lot from any new show’s first night ratings—ask Jay or Conan—and there is not much direct precedent for a cable-news star moving shop to an almost-unknown network.
But for one night anyway, I would bet Olbermann and Al Gore are happy. According to the …
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In the News About Sarah Palin and the Women Who Imitate Her department, some exciting developments! Sarah Palin’s Alaska premiered Sunday night as TLC’s top-rated debut ever, drawing nearly 5 million viewers. That, incidentally, is about the viewership for an original episode of 30 …
The ratings are in for the first night of Conan on TBS, and Conan O’Brien has plenty to be happy about.
The big headline everywhere will probably be “Conan Beats Jay”—and yeah, I could not resist a variation on that here—but that’s probably not a big deal in the long run. Yes, Conan got 4.2 million viewers, to 3.5 for Jay Leno and …
It’s a common and understandable myth that TV shows stay on the air by getting as many viewers as possible. They don’t. In commercial television, shows stay on the air by making money, something that relates to, but does not correlate directly to, getting as many viewers as possible. If you’re a network that airs commercials, you …
I say this often enough that I should make it an annual boilerplate disclaimer: when I say that I like a show, I’m not predicting it will be a hit. It’s not snobbery, and it’s not not snobbery; they’re just two entirely different issues. There are great shows that have broad commercial potential (Lost) and great shows that are by …
I mentioned last week that I was especially curious to see how strong the ratings were for The Real Housewives of D.C. on Bravo, as a test of how fatigued America was with the Salahis and/or the Real Housewives franchise. When I saw the headline claim of the ratings release Bravo sent out, I could tell the show was not an out-of-the-box …
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Last night, in the what-I’m-told-was-exciting final game of the Stanley Cup playoffs (um, spoiler alert, I guess), the Chicago Blackhawks won in overtime to capture the title for the first time in half a century. But the exciting finish was not quite enough to take the night’s ratings …
Let me take off my TV-critic hat for a minute and put on my TV-business hat. Everyone’s assumption now—a well-founded one, it seems—is that, forced to choose between Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, NBC will pick Jay. Leaving aside fairness, funniness or cosmic justice, is that the right business pick?
Short-term, I have to say: …
CNN is a sister company to TIME within Time Warner, so let me be unambiguous and without corporate favor when I say that its latest round of primetime ratings are in the dumpster. Bill Carter of the New York Times reports that for the first time, CNN will finish October in fourth place among cable-news networks in the advertiser-followed …
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
That was the sound of broadcast network television getting run over, twice, by FX’s biker drama, Sons of Anarchy, Tuesday night. For the first time, SoA defeated both NBC’s Jay Leno Show and ABC’s The Forgotten in the 18 to 49 ratings, which, as network programmers will tell you incessantly, is the only rating …
Following up on yesterday’s news about Dollhouse’s increase in viewing from DVRs comes news—prompted by that 50% ratings increase—that Fox is committing to at least air all 13 episodes of Dollhouse’s season two. As for season three, we’ll see later. I would not make plans at this point.
Yesterday’s release of the DVR info led to …
The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd has a breakdown of the DVR-viewing figures for TV premiere week. Among other things they show that Dollhouse’s rating goes up 50% when you add in timeshifted DVR viewing.
Mind you, that’s 50% of precious little, lifting it from an anemic 1.0 rating to a slightly less anemic 1.5. DVR viewing was …
A month into his run on the air, it’s about the time for observers to start weighing in on NBC’s Great Leno Experiment at 10 p.m. But as I alluded to the other day, the problem is determining what constitutes success and failure for The Jay Leno Show. Since it is a cost-containment measure before anything, it can’t be judged by the same …
