Author Archives: Brianne Sabino

American Odyssey: Second Episode Slip

Posted on by

The second episode of American Odyssey premiered on Sunday night to a bit of a smaller audience than last time.  The second episode brought in a .8 rating/2 share in 18-45 with 4.05 million total viewers according to Tv By the Numbers.  It came in second for its 10 o’clock time slot behind Revenge on ABC which earned a .9 rating in 18-49 but 3.84 million total viewers.  The time slot is very interesting because Battle Creek lost in 18-49 with a .7 rating, but won overall pulling in 6.48 million total viewers.  Revenge is the most popular for younger audiences, and Battle Creek is the most popular overall with older demographics, leaving American Odyssey in second overall, appealing to some people 18-49 but also a slightly older demographic.  American Odyssey’s lead-in A.D.: The Bible Continues brought in strong numbers with 7.75 million total viewers.  This could be helping keep some viewers for American Odyssey since the demographics may be similar.  According to Deadline, American Odyssey fell -27% from its first episode, which did not have the most successful turnout to begin with.  It is normal for numbers to fall a little bit from the pilot episode, but when the numbers start relatively low it is hard to come back from.  Deadline is already predicting the show to not be renewed, and possibly cancelled before all of the first season airs.  Tv By the Numbers is also predicting the show to be cancelled, but only time will tell.

Publicity wise, the Facebook page is doing another Twitter Q&A with one of the stars of the show, Jake Robinson, this Tuesday at 8:30 pm.  The Explore American Odyssey page has been updated to reflect material for each new episode. They have also been running promos on NBC, but there hasn’t been too much other publicity being pushed. I think the best way to sum up all of the reviews for the show so far is from Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus: “With a been-there-seen-that premise and multiple muddled plots, American Odyssey can’t escape the shadows of its superior predecessors in an age of solid spy/action television”.  The people who are already fans of the show are very engaged.

The writer/director of American Odyssey Peter Horton did an interview with the Hollywood Reporter about the show.  He said that he thought the show was better suited for a television network as opposed to cable because it’s a big enough show to handle a network, while it’s good enough quality to raise the bar for networks to compete with cable networks.  Horton also spoke about one of the show’s biggest challenges which is balancing the three separate main characters storylines.  He said that this season is mostly focused on Odelle and her journey home, but the focus will shift to the other two characters in the future.  You can find the full interview here.

 

Facebook Followers: 62,451

Twitter Followers (@NBCOdyssey): 11,600

 

American Odyssey: The Pilot

Posted on by

American Odyssey debuted on Easter Sunday in the 10 o’clock slot on NBC.  TV By the Numbers reported that it received a 1.2 rating and a 4 share with 5.4 million total viewers in 18-49.  It beat Battle Creek on CBS in 18-49 ratings and share, but lost in total viewership.  Battle Creek received a .7 rating and 2 share, but had 5.6 million total viewers. A.D.: The Bible Continues was the lead in which brought in 9.5 million total viewers, so there was a significant drop-off between the two programs, but I attribute that to the biblical nature of A.D. on Easter Sunday.

The first episode has received mixed reviews so far, with slightly more positive feedback than negative.  American Odyssey has a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 59% on Metacritic– not overwhelmingly good, but not terrible for the first episode of a television series.  Critics are saying that there are too many storylines going on that are too contrived.  Another critique of the show is that there are a few lapses in logic and coincidences that held advance the storyline. Positive reviews of the show have complimented the complex storyline calling it clever and fresh.  It is difficult to make a conspiracy story with a unique story that also sticks as close as it can to reality, and it seems to me that American Odyssey is accomplishing that pretty successfully.

 

Facebook likes: 58,901

Twitter followers: 11,600

American Odyssey: Before the Premiere

Posted on by

One Week Until the American Odyssey Premiere

Less than a week before the premiere of American Odyssey NBC has started an interesting advertising concept.  On Monday, Variety reported that NBC worked with Google Maps to create a companion online immersive experience for American Odyssey.  Fans can go online to the new “Explore American Odyssey” website to see a branded Google Map featuring different videos, photos, and blogs at the different locations within the show.  The concept is truly unique and smart, I have never seen anything like it before.  As episodes are released and the season continues, more information will be available at the key cities within the interactive map so fans can follow along with the show and immerse themselves within the mystery of the storyline.  The interactive exclusive content is available online at http://www.exploreamericanodyssey.com/.  Google did a great job with it and the production value is very high, it seems like an interesting way to engage viewers and help them get to know the characters, I know clicking around the map peaked my interest.

TV By the Numbers reported about another promotion the show is doing. NBC held screenings of American Odyssey on March 25 at 10 different locations across the country in big cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago.  At these screenings NBC honored female veterans and active servicewomen as “women warriors” since the main character of the show, Sargaent Odelle Ballard is in the military.  They are encouraging the use of the hashtag #WomenWarriors on social media for fans to tweet their support of females in the armed forces that they know.  In addition to those promotions, American Odyssey held a Twitter Q&A with one of the stars of the show Peter Facinelli who is known for his role in Nurse Jackie as well as in the Twilight series.  The Q&A generated a moderate amount of activity on their feed.

As far as advanced reviews go, Hank Stuever from the Washington Post said that the show built the necessary suspense it needs to succeed.  Metacritic only offers three reviews, but all three so far have been positive.

Things are looking up going into the premiere this Sunday, April 5 at 10PM on NBC.  The pilot will follow the premiere of the miniseries A.D. The Bible Continues in the 9 o’clock slot.  It is interesting for NBC to premiere a biblical themed show on Easter Sunday, maybe they are expecting that the encourage viewers to tune in and then stick around for American Odyssey.  The show will premiere against Battle Creek on CBS and special holiday programming, the Ten Commandments, on ABC.  Battle Creek has been doing pretty well with ratings, averaging about 6/ 6.5 million viewers every week in the 18-49 demographic.  We’ll see next week how the shows compete against each other!

Twitter Followers: 9,096

Facebook Likes: 48,079

American Odyssey: The Beginning

Posted on by

NBC American Odyssey

On Sunday April 5, 2015 NBC will premiere its new intelligence drama series American Odyssey in the 10 pm slot.  American Odyssey is the story of female American Sargent Odelle Ballard (Anna Friel) fighting jihadists in North Africa and her struggle to return home to her family in America. Two other Americans, attorney Peter Decker (Peter Facinelli), and Harrison Walters (Jake Robinson) gets tangled up with the jihadists as well.

Production

The full series, originally named Odyssey, was ordered originally at the NBC Upfronts in May along with Allegiance which has already been cancelled.  The show is a co-production between Universal Television, London based Red Arrow Entertainment and its US partners Fabrik Entertainment.  Red Arrow is part of the larger Red Arrow Entertainment group which is part of the German based ProSiebenSat.1 media group.  The series was created by Peter Horton, Adam Armus and Kay Foster who will serve as the shows executive producers.  Both Armus and Foster were previously executive producers on The Following and Heroes. The show was shot in Morocco and New York.

Cast

The main character is played by Anna Friel, a British actress best known for her role in the ABC television series Pushing Daisies.  The other two lead characters are played by Peter Facinelli and Jake Robinson.  Facinelli gained a large following after his role in the Twilight movies as the father vampire Carlisle.  Robinson has appeared in many episodes of the show The Carrie Diaries, the prequel to Sex in the City.  An interesting thing about the show is that it was shot in Morocco and some casting was done there as well.  Omar Ghazaoui who will play Aslam is a Moroccan teenager who was chosen during casting in Morocco.  This will be his first professional acting role.

Programming

American Odyssey will be up against Revenge on ABC and Battle Creek on CBS for the Sunday 10pm slot. Last week Revenge received a 1.1 rating/3 share with 4.42 million viewers total in 18-49 which is pretty standard for how it has been performing all season.  Dateline will be the lead-in for American Odyssey which has averaged around 5 million viewers in the past few weeks in 18-49 which is the highest that its been since January, according to TV By the Numbers.

Facebook Likes: 31,926

Twitter Followers: 7,040

NBC Says Goodbye to Allegiance

Posted on by

NBC Cancels Allegiance

After only five episodes, NBC has officially cancelled Allegiance and removed the show from the Thursday night lineup.  The fifth episode premiered on March 5th to a total audience in 18-49 of 3.28 million with a .8 rating/ 3 share which was pretty consistent with the numbers it generated in the first few episodes.  Although Allegiance is cancelled, they will continue to release the rest of the filmed episodes every Thursday online at NBC.com and the Twitter account remains active.  The cancellation was not surprising, TV By the Numbers has been predicting since the second week that NBC would pull it from the lineup.

The fate of NBC Thursday night is facing uncertainty and is struggling since it abandoned its traditional comedy format.  The Slap has been temporarily moved to the Thursday 10 PM slot from 8 PM.  NBC is trying to leverage the success of The Blacklist and will fill The Slap‘s former spot with Dateline: The Real Blacklist.  The two hour Blacklist themed programming block premiered on March 12th.  The program is hosted by Richard Engel and will be about real life conspiracy themed investigations, playing off the theme of the show. “TV By the Numbers” reported that Dateline averages 7 million viewers overall on its regular Friday edition.  On its Thursday premiere, Dateline came in fourth in its time-slot with 4.51 million total viewers in 18-49, less than its average, but not horrible.  Blacklist is the only savior for NBC on Thursdays– it has improved the time period by 9 million people according to Nielsen.  It will be interesting to see if the following of The Blacklist is strong enough to pull in a good audience for the Dateline themed series.

Twitter Followers: 4,139

Facebook Likes: 19,663

Allegiance Week Four

Posted on by

The Future of “Allegiance” Looks Bleak

The ratings continued to fall further this week for NBC’s “Allegiance”.  The show pulled in a .8 rating in 18-49 with a 3 share and 3.36 million total viewers, down from last week’s also low .9 rating.  This week the Thursday 10 o’clock hour looked a little different than usual.  “Allegiance” was slated up against the Victoria’s Secret Swim Special on CBS which did slightly better with a 1.0 rating/ 3 share and 4.02 million total viewers in 18-49. ABC had a special two hour Season 1 finale episode of  “How to Get Away with Murder” from 9-11, which pulled in 8.97 million total viewers for a 2.8 rating/9 share.  It will be interesting to see how the numbers of “The Blacklist” and “Allegiance” are affected now that “How to Get Away with Murder” is off until the fall.  “American Crime” will be premiering in the time slot next week which seems like it will be relatively successful from the reviews.  “Elementary” will be back on at its normal time next week as well.

Allegiance is bringing in Giancarlo Esposito who was in Breaking Bad as a new character in March to play an enemy.  In response to that, they did a live Facebook Q&A with him this past Thursday.  The Q&A generated only a little activity.  There were about 70 questions asked and the post got 266 likes.  Seeing as their social media activity is usually so low, I think it would benefit them to do more of these fan engagement types of Facebook and Twitter things instead of posting random promotional graphics sporadically throughout the week.  They seem to be engaging more than before with fans on Twitter and have been retweeting more fan posts, which doesn’t really do much but shows activity.

Here’s the preview for the episode with Giancarlo Esposito:

Facebook Likes: 17,980

Twitter Followers: 3,707

Allegiance Week Three

Posted on by

“Allegiance” Hangs On

The outlook of the third episode of NBC’s “Allegiance” is not as dismal as the second week, but things are still not looking good for the series.  Last Thursday, February 19, the show brought in a .9 rating/3 share and 3.38 million total viewers, up slightly from .7 rating in 18-49.  The episode was filmed in Philadelphia and the plot line was based around the Masonic Temple.  NBC Thursday night as a whole continues to struggle to succeed with it’s new programming, it came in behind ABC, CBS, and Fox with a 1.1 rating /3 share for adults 18-49.  “Allegiance” came in third in its time-slot behind “How to Get Away with Murder” and “Elementary”.  “How to Get Away With Murder” won the 10 o’clock hour by a larger margin– it brought in a 2.8 rating/ 9 share and 8.84 million total viewers for adults 18-49.  Its lead-in “The Blacklist” matched last weeks ratings of the lowest of the season and is not bringing in the amount of viewers that as they would like it to.

Maybe the reason for such unsuccessful ratings for “Allegiance” is the lack of star-power.  Writer-director George Nolfi is responsible for writing “The Adjustment Bureau” and “The Bourne Ultimatum” has a background in action/drama shows similar to “Allegiance”. The show’s biggest star is Hope Davis who made multiple appearances on the HBO show “The Newsroom” as well as the movie “A Special Relationship” where she played Hillary Clinton.  While she has a vast portfolio of past work, she doesn’t seem to have a strong following as she doesn’t even have a twitter account.  Her “Allegiance” husband Scott Cohen gathered his following as Max Medina on “Gilmore Girls” and starred in the USA show “Necessary Roughness”.  He has just under six thousand twitter followers. NBC placed a series order for “Allegiance” in early May during upfront season along with the two other terrorism-dramas “State of Affairs” and “Odyssey”.  Perhaps they missed the mark on the topic that their viewers wanted to watch as they planned their midseason lineup.

Facebook Likes: 16,764

Twitter Followers: 3,553

Allegiance Week Two

Posted on by

NBC “Allegiance” Flops During Week Two

The executives at NBC were in for a disappointing Thursday night.  “Allegiance” premiered its second episode this week to extremely lacking results.  The show received a .7 rating and 2 share for 18-49 with 3.65 million total viewers.  It was the lowest performing in its 10 o’clock Thursday night time-slot behind CBS’s elementary with 7.9 million viewers and ABC’s how to get away with murder with 8.44 million total viewers.  NBC’s strategy to place it directly after “The Blacklist” does not appear to be working, and this week “The Blacklist” brought in the lowest ratings it has seen since it was on Monday nights with a 2.4 rating/7 share.  Although the numbers were a little lower than usual, it is still bringing in more viewers than the usual NBC Thursday night comedy lineup.  Most sources and critics online are expecting “Allegiance” to be cancelled pretty rapidly and I would not be surprised if they were right.

The other critique of the show is that it is too similar to FX’s “The Americans”.  After a second episode, the feedback generally is that they are different enough, but “Allegiance” falls short considering the success of “The Americans” has not been overwhelming– this week it received a .3 rating 18-49 with just under one million viewers.  Saturating the marketplace with another cold war era spy shows when the demand is not high was not a good programming decision.

Facebook followers: 15,810

Twitter followers: 3,414

 

 

Allegiance: The Pilot

Posted on by

“Allegiance” Pilot Premiere

     NBC is changing up its usual Thursday night lineup from comedy to drama. “Allegiance” is a cold war era drama about an American family with secret ties to Russia. Before the premiere, the main buzz surrounding the show was about how similar it was going to be to FX’s show “The Americans”—also a cold war era themed spy show about a family living in America.

“Allegiance” premiered last week on February 5 at 10PM following “The Blacklist” to a disappointing audience. The premiere gathered a 1.1 rating for the 18-49 audience and a 4 share, with 4.98 million total viewers. “Allegiance” is up against “How to Get Away With Murder” on ABC which had a 2.7 rating and 8.34 million total viewers. The general consensus of the reviews were that the show is different enough from “The Americans”, but is still boring. I would not be surprised if Allegiance does not stay around for long! You can watch the pilot episode here and check out their official website.

 

Facebook Likes: 14,163

Twitter Followers: 3,221