Tina Fey and Amy Poehler help pull in 20.9 million viewers
TV Ratings
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Keith Olbermann's First Night Ratings Are Pretty Good, Probably, We Think
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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Ratings Report: Everybody Wins!
While I was a big fan of the debut of The Killing, I’ll admit I had my doubts about the ratings: the show was compelling, but also moody and deliberate, and that made me worry it might end up being Cop Rubicon. Instead, The Killing had the second-best debut ever for an AMC series, behind only last fall’s The Walking Dead, with 2.7 …
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The Hot New Medium of the Post-TV Era: TV!
Rounding up the year-end Nielsen ratings for 2010, The New York Times’ Brian Stelter notes that—despite all the alternative media and entertainment choices—viewers actually watched slightly more TV than they did in 2009. The overall balance of the viewing continued to shift more in cable’s favor, but that’s still a growing audience …
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Good News for Real Sarah Palin, Fake Sarah Palin
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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 …
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Conan Night One Beats Networks, By Stealing Their Young
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 …
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Which TV Viewers Should Count?
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 …
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HBO Renews New Hit Boardwalk Empire; Fox Puts the Lone in Star
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 …
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Hung's Renewal and the Mystery of HBO Decisionmaking
Yesterday HBO announced that Hung, its dark comedy about a suburban Michigan gigolo and his pimp, will get a third season. I’m pleased and surprised. I don’t think the show has lived up to its potential, but when it’s on—and the past couple of episodes have been strong—it’s an insightful look at people trying to hold on to their …
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Some Hope for America: Real Housewives of D.C. Ratings Only OK
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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Dead Tree Alert: Last Golden Girl Standing
The debut of Hot in Cleveland, starring Betty White with a trio of sitcom-nostalgia iconettes, attracted nearly 5 million viewers Wednesday night, making it the most-watched show on cable. Those numbers would be fairly decent for a broadcast network show (it’s not far from what, say, 30 Rock or Parks and Recreation draw), they’re …
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Ratings: He Shoots… He Just Misses!
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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 …
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Undercover Boss: Biggest Thing Since Dolly?
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Somewhere in the CBS press release about Undercover Boss’s boffo debut ratings was the claim that this was the biggest debut for any new TV series since the Dolly show in 1987. If you’re like me, you’re thinking, Wow! And also: What the hell was the Dolly show?
I was not watching a …