The time has finally come to say goodbye to my following of CBS’s Rush Hour. Normally, when you say goodbye to something, you know the fate of that person or thing. When it comes to saying goodbye to this show, I honestly do not know what the fate of it will be. It is very hard to tell because in its most recent airing, the show scored a 1.0 rating and 4.65 million viewers according to TvByTheNumbers.com. This viewership and rating score is higher than both of its competition on Thursday nights at 10pm, which leads me to believe that the show may survive and be renewed. This would come as a shock to myself and to CBS, who originally was rumored to be cancelling the show after its first season. These talks all came before the pilot episode even aired, but now that the show seems to be fairing pretty nicely, the fate can not be easily determined. Even though I will not be blogging about Rush Hour anymore, I will still be following the show over the course of the rest of the season to see what happens to it. The show means well, and I think a second season could really help it gain a bigger audience and help it succeed even more. CBS would be smart to renew Rush Hour.

Another week has passed and CBS’s Rush Hour seems to be finding its home. This past week the show had a 0.9 rating in the 18-49 demographic and had 4.26 million viewers. These numbers are not bad in comparison to the ratings that its two competitors are getting during this 10 pm time slot, but it is not the greatest either. The show also had the same rating last week, but this week it lost almost half a million viewers. The reviews have also all been the same. The critics say that the show lacks originality and lacks the action and comedy that made the film franchise so successful. It is still unclear what the future for the show is, but it is not looking very good. I feel as if CBS was going to renew the show for another season they would have done it by now because the show is in its third week. I guess only time can tell, but it is too hard to call right now. The ratings aren’t terrible, but the reviews are.

We are now in the full swing of the season for CBS’s Rush Hour and unfortunately, it still has not met the critics appraisal. In its second week the show had a 0.9 rating with 4.81 million viewers according to tvbythenumbers.com. And while this rating may seem low, the fact that it is still reaching this many viewers on Thursday nights at 10 is impressive. The critics keep comparing the show to the movies, which is rightfully so, but I wonder if this makes them biased and fails to let them try and see the TV show as its own entity. To be fair, it is only in its second week, and it is competing nicely against ABC’s The Catch. The Catch had a 1.1 rating last week and 4.89 million viewers. This show was supposed to be ABC’s next hit too so maybe the problem for both of these shows is not the material, but maybe the time slot? Thursdays at 10 is quite late and Rush Hour is definitely aiming for a younger audience that may be in bed at that time. It will be interesting to see how Rush Hour does next week and if there is any buzz around it getting renewed or not for next season.

The day has finally come! Rush Hour finally premiered on CBS this past Thursday at 10pm. Leading up to the premiere the stars of the show were tweeting a lot and their Twitter page got a lot activity. According to Nielsen data on tvbythenumbers.com, the show had a 1.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic and had 5.06 million viewers with its first episode. Professor Jones says that for a show to premiere this late and attract those kinds of numbers is not really a bad thing. The competition in its time slot is NBC’s Shades of Blue and ABC’s The Catch, both of whom received very similar numbers last Thursday. However, regardless of these numbers, there is a lot of talk around the web that Rush Hour will most likely be cancelled by May. Tvbythenumbers.com has a rating scale for “renew/cancel” and they do not have the show lasting very long. We shall see though because there is clearly a fan base from the films and also people have been positively responsive on Twitter. Only time will tell for Rush Hour.

Thursday final ratings: ‘Big Bang Theory’ adjusts up; ‘Scandal,’ ‘Life in Pieces’ and ‘The 100’ adjust down

This past week over Spring Break I found myself watching a lot of college basketball. Since March Madness started last week I watched almost every game while I was home on break. Due to this, I ended up watching a lot of CBS, one of the 4 networks that airs some of the games. I was very pleased to see that they were FINALLY promoting their new show Rush Hour. The promotion came in forms of commercials during the commercial breaks, and also during the game. During timeouts the announcers would often announce a little blurb about the show and at the bottom of the screen a lower third would appear that advertised the show. I was ecstatic when I saw the first promo on air last week. I have been waiting so long for CBS to start its promotional campaign of this show and they did not let me down. There is rumors that the show might get dumped after a few episodes, but at least CBS isn’t giving up on it just yet and they are hoping that by promoting it a lot, especially during much televised events like March Madness, that they will gain an audience. It is also interesting to point out that Rush Hour is definitely a show that skews more male than female, and this is also true for March Madness basketball. I think that CBS has a clear strategy in mind and I hope that it works out for them.

CBS’ CEO Les Moonves already has plans for the future of CBS’ spring premiered shows. He stated this past week that 5 of the 7 new shows that aired this spring are going to be renewed. Unfortunately, this does not look good for Rush Hour. In the article I read on TVByTheNumbers.com, they suggest that 4 shows are already in motion to be renewed because they have already aired and are doing well, while the 5th show to be renewed will be Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders. This show and Rush Hour are the only CBS shows that haven’t aired yet, but Beyond Borders is a spinoff/sequel to an already very successful show with a large audience base. This show will most likely be a success, and unless Rush Hour is a surprise hit and draws big numbers, then it looks like it will only be around for a little bit of time this spring.

CBS CEO says 5 new shows will be renewed; sorry, ‘Rush Hour’?

With only 25 days until its premiere date, Rush Hour is in full advertising swing. The network, CBS, will look to promote the show as much as possible as to attract as many eyeballs as it possibly can. This is also the period when the shows pilot will be sent to critics and media analysts for viewing. With that can come good or bad reviews. At first, a Google search of the shows title brings up an article from “USA Today” stating, “Spring TV preview: 6 new shows worth watching,” and upon looking at the first glimpses of the article you see that the picture that they chose to use was a still from Rush Hour. This seems like good publicity, however, if you scroll down you see that the section about the show says that yes, it is worth giving a try and seeing how the show does after a few episodes, but that it will also be met with lots of bad reviews from its pilot. This is definitely not a good sign, but I am still optimistic that the show will be successful after a few episodes. The following behind this franchise is too strong to fail.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/columnist/2016/03/06/spring-tv-preview-6-new-shows-worth-watching/80976614/

Finally, the promo tour starts its full effect with CBS’ new show Rush Hour. On Thursday, February 25th, ET (Entertainment Tonight) showed an exclusive promo for Rush Hour on their show. The clip is just over a minute long and it really shows the plot and direction of the show, while also honing in on the genre and type of audience the show is trying to reach. The new promo really focuses on action and violence. Many of the shots are involving gun battles or fist fights. Along with that the promo really focuses on comedy. Several punch lines are dropped and several quick instances are comical. I expect that CBS purposely put this promo on ET with the intent to raise awareness and to capture the crowd of people that may be watching ET. ET viewers are usually very interested and informed about movies and since Rush Hour is based on a trilogy of movies, ET’s audience might be interested in watching this new show. I expect more of this promo type stuff to come and I expect some of the actors of the show to make appearances on late night talk shows in the next month.

It was very interesting to me to learn in class last week that it is NOT a big deal if a new show does not start its main marketing campaign more than a month away from being premiered. This is especially the case for CBS this season because we are in the midst of the sweeps period. During the sweeps period networks really have to focus on, and promote, their most current and best programming. This explains why a networks newer shows that may not have aired yet are not getting as much exposure. This is the case for CBS and their show Rush Hour that does not air for another month. Before learning about this sweeps process I really thought that CBS was giving up on the show before it was even airing, maybe due to some possible test audience runs. It is reassuring to hear that that this may not be the case and I really do believe they will kick up the marketing and advertising of the show into full gear in the coming weeks.

This week I decided to look at how CBS’ Rush Hour was trending on social media. Come to find out…it’s not. By a quick look at the show’s Facebook page it only has 1,946 likes, which is considerably more than its measly Twitter page. The show’s Twitter page has 519 followers. This is pretty weak on CBS’ part. Their new show is coming out in a little over a month and this is the extent of their social media presence? This proves to me that many people do not know about the show, and this is CBS’ fault. They need to be marketing this show more on TV AND on social media pages. If they do not get more exposure quickly this show could  turn out to be a big bust for them and could cost them a lot of money. It is worth noting that during the Super Bowl they only aired one promo for Rush Hour and it was BEFORE the game even started. Not a very smart marketing tactic in my opinion. CBS needs to expose this show a lot more and it needs to start now to gain word-of-mouth buzz.