The Dovekeepers Premieres

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Nicole DeGrandpre

The Dovekeepers premiered on Tuesday night at 9 pm after a substantial publicity push throughout the day. The show premiered after the CBS juggernaut, NCIS, whose 18-49 rating was at a season low of 2.1/7 and 16.3 million total viewers. The Dovekeepers did not hold on to a significant portion of that audience, beginning it’s 2 night run with a 1.0/3 in the 18-49 demographic and 8.99 million total viewers. The show won both the time slots it occupied, both 9 and 10pm, and came in second in overall viewers for the night after NCIS. Though it overtook it’s closest time slot competitor, NBC’s Undateable, by 4 million viewers, it did have a weak performance in the 18-49. It’s 1.0 rating was one of the weakest of the night, only slimly beating a rerun of Chicago PD and the series premiere of Weird Loners.

Hopefully the second night, whose content was arguably stronger than the first, will carry the respectable audience the first night garnered and can finish out strong.

American Odyssey: Before the Premiere

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Brianne Sabino

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

Weird Loners – Blog Post 7

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Olivia Klayman

Well folks, we’re off to the finish line.

With less than two days before the show’s premiere, I was curious to see any development in how this show is seen in the industry. The jury is in and things aren’t looking very pretty for “Weird Loners.”

These three different news sources represent a whole sum of publications that have said nearly the same thing about this show…

Forbes defines Weird Loners as a show that, “nowhere else in the schedule to go” and notes that, “the occasional sweetness isn’t enough to make one forget about the lack of interesting dynamic that currently exists.”

The New York Times notes that while, “this is one show that you can drop in on just to grab a few laughs without feeling you have to invest your whole being in it,” the characters of the show, “will all soon be too old to carry the premise” if it becomes a hit.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch called this show as a show, “struggling to make viewers laugh” as well as wanna-be “Sex in the City” and “Friends.”

Well, the future of this show isn’t very bright. I’ll tell you myself once I watch this Tuesday, March 31st, 9:30pm.

The Odd Couple 2.0: A Look Back at its First Revival

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Alexander Wallick

As The Odd Couple continues its hiatus because of the NCAA Basketball tournament airing on CBS, I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a look back at the history of the show. Particularly, at the fact that this new version of The Odd Couple is not the show’s first TV revival. In anticipation of the series’ return back in February, USA Today ran a great article on the program’s history (http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2015/02/25/odd-couple-tv-film-broadway/23980183/). While the critics were not too enthusiastic about this new CBS version of the show, the ratings have not been dismal. However, turning the clock back to October 29, 1982, when the first revival of the show premiered on its original network, ABC, this new African-American version was panned by critics, even reused scripts from the original series and was canceled after a run of just eighteen episodes. What is more, the failures of The Odd Couple adaptations are not just limited to the small screen. According to IDBD.com, in 1985, Neil Simon (the creator of The Odd Couple) updated his original play, this time with an all-female cast, featuring popular television personalities Rita Moreno and Sally Struthers as Olive Madison and Florence Ungar. The show flopped and ran for only eight months, compared to the original 1965 production, which was huge hit and ran for nearly two and one-half years (http://ibdb.com/production.php?id=4375). Therefore, given the track record of The Odd Couple derivatives, it will be interesting to see whether or not the show finds its way onto the CBS Fall 2015 schedule.

Secrets and Lies – Post 6

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Keith Zubrow

March 22 saw Secrets and Lies reel in its second highest rating since the show premiered on March 1. The 1.5 rating in the key 18-49 demographic was a 0.13 gain from the week prior. The show has been consistent in its audience topping at least 5.4 million viewers each week.

The show is a production of ABC Studios and was created by Barbie Kligman. A Shonda Rhimes disciple, Kligman previously served as executive producer and co-head writer on Private Practice and The Vampire Diaries.

ABC ordered 10 episodes of the Secrets and Lies, but signed a two-year contract with Kligman in case the show goes into a second season, according to Deadline Hollywood. The murder mystery is yet to be canceled, but it is also yet to be renewed.

American Odyssey: The Beginning

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Brianne Sabino

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

The Dovekeepers Publicity and Cross Promotion

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Nicole DeGrandpre

In another interesting move publicity-wise for The Dovekeepers, star Diego Boneta has released a music video for his new song Warrior, which is featured on the soundtrack of The Dovekeepers. The singer-actor is calling this video his “comeback to music” on JustJared, and said of his Dovekeepers experience “I am very grateful to [executive producers] Mark Burnett and Roma Downey for supporting both of my acting and musical career. Working with Mark and Roma has been one of the greatest experiences in my entire career.”

The video can be found on Diego Boneta’s YouTube account.

The miniseries has also been keeping up their activity on social media sites, encouraging fans to tweet #AskTheDovekeepers for a Q&A video with stars Diego Boneta and Cote De Pablo for CBS.com. With only one week until the premiere of the series, I would expect these efforts to continue to increase as we get closer and closer to the March 31 premiere.

Weird Loners – Blog Post 6

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Olivia Klayman

Every week I address this shows lack of ‘presence’ on social media and the basic web.

Last week I noticed a trend that has begun. This show’s whole marketing campaign — from my understanding — is promotion from each actor’s following from previous shows. There is virtually no talk of this show minus it’s established hashtag “weird loners.” As of last week, the show has begun to launch these promotional interviews of each main actor. Last week was with Becki Newton and this week is with Nate Torrence.

My guess is that in the next two following weeks, the show will promote its last two actors (which coincides quite nicely with the launch of the show, itself).

Time will tell if this plan ACTUALLY works!

Until next week.

Trending Now: The Odd Couple

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Alexander Wallick

Since The Odd Couple will be on hiatus for the next two weeks because of the NCAA Basketball Tournament airing on CBS, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the show’s social media presence. As now more than ever, social media presence is an integral part of a television show’s success, it appears that The Odd Couple is taking full advantage of all that twitter has to offer. For example, as a nice tie-in with CBS’s NCAA coverage, the stars of The Odd Couple have filled out NCAA brackets and the show’s twitter feed is encouraging viewers to see how their brackets measure up with those of the stars, Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon. Additionally, the stars have been live tweeting and the show has been posting photos of the different cast members tweeting for both the east and west coast feeds. They even suggested a drinking game, consisting of everyone taking a drink every time that Matthew Perry wears a blue shirt that matches his eyes! So far, they have 3,263 followers, which is a drop in the ocean, compared to ABC’s rival new spring 2015 sitcom, Fresh Off The Boat, which has 16,700 followers. Therefore, The Odd Couple has a way to go before being the number 1 new comedy on Twitter.

TV Business

Website by the students of TRF594

Category Archives: Spring 2015