Category Archives: Fall 2015

Heroes Reborn Post #3

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Sci-Fi Is the New Black

This fall the sci-fi, fantasy genre is heating up with shows like Limitless, Minority Report, Supergirl, and of course, Heroes Reborn. With so many shows for fantasy lovers to chose from, who will sink and who will swim in the upcoming season? Critics have been watching closely and from their remarks, Heroes Reborn has a promising season ahead. Although the original show, Heroes, left fans disappointed with its final season, fans are excited for the reboot. Name recognition has definitely helped create buzz and anticipation for the mini-series.

However, great content doesn’t always win out over industry forces. TV advertisers don’t necessarily see the potential in Heroes Reborn according to a list of predicted hits published by Variety. Because of Heroes Reborn’s tough competition, advertisers aren’t placing their bets on the show’s success. The show premiers this Thursday at 8pm on NBC up against the much anticipated season 12 premiere of Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, The Vampire Diaries and Thursday Night Football. 

Only time will tell whether Heroes Reborn can hold its own against a list of powerhouse competitors and dominate the sci-fi genre.

The Muppets – Post #3

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The Muppets premiered last night, September 22nd, 2015, at 8pm on ABC. The 30-minute comedy aired against FOX’s Grandfathered CBS’s NCIS season 13 premier and NBC’s The Voice. On the night, The Muppets earned a 2.8 adults 18-49 rating.

Miss Piggy plays the demanding superstar. Kermit the Frog works on her show as the executive producer. He and Miss Piggy recently split up. The characters deal with real life relationships and feelings. Fozzie Bear plays Miss Piggy’s on-air side kick. The rest of the gang fill up the writers room, on-air band and staffers behind the scene.

In the episode, Kermit has to deal with the backlash he gets from Miss Piggy after booking Elizabeth Banks for her show; Miss Piggy wants to drop her as a guest. Fozzie Bear is dating a human, and meets her parents. By the end of the episode, it is clear that Kermit is going through a midlife crisis. He even says, “my life is a bacon rapped hell” on the show. We get introduced to Kermit’s new girlfriend, Denise, mid episode. Tom Bergeron and Imageine Dragons guest star.

 

You can find the episode here: http://abc.go.com/shows/the-muppets/episode-guide/season-01/01-series-premiere-pig-girls-dont-cry-pilot

Muppets TV Show Trailer

Scream Queens – Post #3

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Last night was the official two-hour premiere of Scream Queens on Fox. As promised, multiple characters died within the span of 120 minutes, and I frequently found myself laughing out loud to edgy humor. A reviewer for EW made a great point in saying that the show isn’t for everyone. “Some will find it too sadistic or too campy, or unfairly dismissive of Millennials.” For someone like myself though, I would say the show is hard-hitting in all the right ways.

ListenFirst Media provided The Wall Street Journal with DAR (digital audience ratings) for all current shows resonating content most among Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube and Wikipedia combined. From August 15th through September 15th, Scream Queens generated a DAR of over 6 million. This number exceeded all other new fall shows by an ample margin. Scream Queens landed in 8th place last week in overall broadcast DAR ratings with a total of 2,255,000 ratings, as reported by Variety.

Next weeks blog will include the official ratings from last night, as well as Live+7 as I am positive that a great percentage of viewers will fall into that category. Stay tuned to see the results!

Minority Report- Post #3 The Premier Results

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The day has finally come, “Minority Report” has premiered. The pilot episode was pretty much just an episode to set the scene for the series and start a larger story. The format of the show seems like each week will be a mini mystery or crime that needs to be solved, while a potential love story and a family reunion slowly unravel throughout the season. After watching the first episode, I am definitely hooked due to the thrilling possible crime scenes, attractive cast, and the little futuristic digs at things that exist in today’s society, but the overall viewing public did not seem to be on the same page as me.

According to “TV By The Numbers”, the show only got a 1.1% rating for the 18-49 rating and a 3.10% rating for the live + same day viewing. There are no L+5 or L+7 ratings yet because the show just premiered last night. I will have to keep following it and see where the show goes. Unfortunately, Gotham’s new season premiering before did not help with Minority Reports ratings because the ratings dropped between Gotham and Minority Report. People must have tuned out at 9, which isn’t do great for Fox.

Limitless- Post #3

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Over the past few days, CBS has been generating a lot of hype over the premiere of Limitless tonight at 10.  Their campaign resides mainly on social media where they are posting to their Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pages every hour revealing a different aspect of the show.  In addition, a poster has been released to promote the show, resembling a fake senator campaign ad to re- elect Eddie Morra.  A juice truck also drove around Los Angeles to give out “brain juice”

Despite this, critic reviews of the show remain skeptical.  The Wrap stated that Limitless has the potential of being good because of the differentiation from other cop shows, but initial impressions have them thinking the story is bland and too attached to the plot from the film.  Likewise, Flavorwire called the show “boredom with a bradley cooper cameo” for the same reasons.  The New York Times, The Atlantic, and USA Today all agree that Limitless is too similar to the film in both visuals and storyline.

 

 

Quantico Pre-Premiere #3: Diversity in Characters, Writers & Producers

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This show really touches on many social issues of our thoughts of national security and the way we view others. The executive producing team comes from all sorts of TV show backgrounds, which should help develop the identities of the characters with a knowledgeable acumen for their cultural and social differences. Joshua Safran will be the head writer for the show and he hails from the world of Gossip Girl. This experience should help pen towards a younger audience while dealing with heftier topics. This should also help with the language of the “Southern Belle” character. Experienced executive producer Mark Gordon will be at the helm. He has been behind such shows as, Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds, and Ray Donovan. This mix of thought-provoking, successful dramas with characters from all walks of life should help Quantico find its stroke and humanize its characters. The rest of the Quantico writing staff is just as diverse as their characters, Safran says, “We have a Muslim writer, a Palestinian writer. We are taking that very seriously. We want to go into those stories with as much care and thought as possible. We just hope that it’s exciting and every week there’s a conversation about things that happen, not just when it’s ultimately revealed who it may be” (http://www.ew.com/article/2015/08/04/quantico-abc-terrorist).

Week 3 – Best Week Ever with Neil Patrick Harris

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On September 15th, 2015 Neil Patrick Harris premiered his first show of Best Week Ever on NBC and the ratings favored in decently well. The first show of the 22 that will air over this fall followed the season finale of “America’s Got Talent” which may have led to the precursor of folks at home continuously watching and not flipping channels after the premiere to stay tuned for this new unexpected show and to see what it was all about. The hour long variety show averaged a 1.9 rating/7 share in adults from 18-49 and 6.8 million viewers overall in the 10 o’clock hour according to national estimates from Nielson, which led to their win of their overall time slot in each category. The show went from a 2.0 in the demo at 10:00pm to a 1.7 at the 10:30pm marker which Variety concludes as a fairly low drop for a show in the late hour coming out of a higher rated program.

The show itself consisted of seemingly random segments that consistently had no common thread such as a random couple whom NBC had been following for months, showing old clips of them and old photographs, Reese Witherspoon casually guest MCing from a high rise booth above the audience, Nicole Scherzinger’s 15 second strip tease to the audience to her own PussyCat doll song “Dont Cha.”  The 90s commercial icon Carrot Top held his own guest appearance, while Gloria Gaynor belted “I will Survive” with audiences participating in the SingAlong segment in their own homes. One audience member at the end played a questions and number game and won prizes and trips, as a trip to Paris and Jeep give away were on the table for her to win. NPH even challenged Reese to a obstacle course suspended in the air that fed into a zipline. But even with all of the “seemingly exciting” fast paced movements from the list above the show itself was slow moving and lots of mundane dialogue but Neil Patrick Harris. Looking forward to next week’s show and what new surprises they whip out!

Blood & Oil: Post #3

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With less than a week until Blood & Oil premieres on ABC, the social media tactics employed in the coming days could gauge how many are tuned in Sunday.

Blood & Oil’s Twitter handle has about 16.6k followers to date, which do not seem too terribly low for a new series. However it will be premiering against the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation two-hour finale special on CBS; in which CSI has over 114k followers. With the fan following and recognition for CSI, it’s doubtful fans will tune away from the series finale for the Blood & Oil premiere.

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Source: Blood & Oil on Facebook

Across its Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages, the show has promoted “5 Reasons to Watch the Blood & Oil Series Premiere“, which provides some compelling reasons to tune in–specifically, their male leads: Don Johnson and Chace Crawford. The two gentlemen will likely prove worthy for female viewers in both younger and older demographics, which seems to be the target for the show. Working on this tactic, Blood and Oil’s Instagram consists mostly of on-set shots of their male actors.

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Source: Bloodandoilabc on Instagram

 

Will their social media presence be enough to drive viewers for its premiere? Maybe not the big numbers, but certainly could create a core viewership.

Blood & Oil Premieres this Sunday, September 27th, at 9/8c on ABC.

“Rosewood”-Post #3

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Whenever one reads an article about Fox’s upcoming series “Rosewood,” the popular series “Empire” will most likely be discussed alongside the new series. Fox appears to be giving an extra boost to its new comedy drama series “Rosewood” by having it lead into “Empire”. However, not only will “Rosewood” be the opener to “Empire,” but it has also taken “Empire’s” original 8pm Wednesday slot. Much of Fox’s success with “Empire” have been due to the networks extensive and early promos for the show starting as far back as May, right after the show was picked up. Furthermore, Slate Magazine claims, “Fox also took things a step further by capping each of Empire’s first ten episodes with an extended, 90-second teaser touting coming attractions—not just for the next week’s episode (standard practice), but for the entire season to come,” which gave “Empire” a leg up to it’s competitors. Slate magazine predicts Fox will thrive off of “Empire’s” success and apply it’s innovative structure to future series in what it calls “The Empire Effect”. Thus, I will be interested to see if “Rosewood” follows in “Empire’s” innovative promotional efforts during its first season. “Rosewood” has already followed “Empire’s” footsteps with early promotions starting as soon as May 7th 2015, right after Fox announced that the series had been picked up.

“Rosewood” premieres next Wednesday night at 8pm on Fox!

 

Heroes Reborn- Post #2

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NBC took 114 million viewers by surprise when it debuted the Heroes Reborn trailer during the 2015 Superbowl. Before this reveal, there was virtually no chatter indicating any expectation for the revitalization of the critically acclaimed series Heroes. However, with the premier just days away, the hype for the 13-episode mini series continues to rise due to the expansive marketing push from NBC.

Though its going to be hard for NBC to top the iconic “save the cheerleader, save the world” slogan, Heroes Reborn has been making waves with its stunning movie posters and electrifying trailers. Check out the most recent trailer below.

Along with various public appearances by the cast at big name events such as Comic-Con and TIFF, NBC furthered its promotional efforts with a digital prequel series titled Hereos Reborn: Dark Matters that fans can stream directly from the NBC website. Additionally, fans are anxiously awaiting the release of a Heroes Reborn video game.

Lastly, this week NBC brought the final push by taking the series to Times Square where fans could interact with the show and “become a hero” through an interactive photo both and multi-visionary experience. All of the fan created content was shared via social media.

It will be interesting to see how NBC continues to promote the show after the September 24th premier.