Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Blindspot” Receiving Full Season!

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“Blindspot” is becoming quite the story of success for NBC. The network recently placed a full-season order for the Monday night drama. The show was the first freshman series to land a full season order. This came only two weeks after the network placed an order for nine additional scripts.

Full season order: http://tvline.com/2015/10/09/blindspot-full-season-order-nbc/

Also, in addition to getting a full season order, the show saw a rise in ratings… and this is week four! The ratings never usually rise in week four of a series. Last Monday night, the show drew in 8.5 million viewers with a 2.5 live rating. This is up a tenth in the target demo. “Blindspot” is also the first freshman series this season to increase in the target demo week-to-week.

Ratings: http://tvline.com/2015/10/13/blindspot-ratings-week-4/

On a really cool side note, I have been tweeting a lot about the show on my class Twitter page. One of the producer’s on the show, Martin Gero, favorited a “Blindspot” related tweet! I just thought that was really cool!

Life in Pieces – Post #6

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A still from Monday night’s episode of Life in Pieces

The fourth episode of Life in Pieces on CBS grabbed an audience of 7.84 million on Monday night, which made it the least watched episode since the show’s premiere. Life in Pieces has lost 1.32 million viewers since last week and 3.44 million since the premiere. Despite the 15% drop in total viewership, Life in Pieces only went down .1 in its 18-49 rating, going from a 1.9 last week to a 1.8 this week.

While critics still remain very lukewarm in their reviews of the show, Life in Pieces is doing pretty well among its sitcom competition. With the exception of its lead-in, The Big Bang Theory, and family-sitcom juggernaut, Modern Family, Life in Pieces has consistently shown stronger viewership than other broadcast sitcoms, both new and not-so-new.

Despite boasting strong total viewership, Life in Pieces still needs to find a way to draw in more 18-49 viewers. Several shows that have lower total viewership are showing better 18-49 ratings. ABC sitcom The Goldbergs, which airs Wednesday nights at 8:30pm, drew in 6.6 million viewers this week with a 18-49 rating of 2.1. The lack of 18-49 viewers may prove to be the biggest hurdle for Life in Pieces as the first season progresses.

Grandfathered Post #6

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After opening up to a decent audience, Fox saw a decline in all three of its Tuesday night programming including Scream Queens, The Grinder, and Grandfathered. Grandfathered in the second week dropped 26%
in viewership, which is staggering and probably very disheartening for Fox Executives. The show received a 1.1rating/4 share and reached only 3.8 milli
on viewers in the key 18-49 demographic.

 

Grinder-Grandfathered-1       The show is already working to generate more fans by tying in some of John Stamos’ previous successes such as Full House, which is in the works as a sequel, Fuller House. Grandfathered will be having Bob Saget guest star on an episode. This is a perfect example of cross-promotion between different shows, but interestingly the shows are not on the same network. Fox’s Grandfathered and Netflix’s Fuller are sharing their talent pool to generate more viewers for hopefully both of the programs.

bob-saget-grandfathered

Grandfathered really needs to improve its fan base not only in the viewership, but also on social media. Currently, the show’s official Twitter has less than 10,000 followers, which compared to Fox’s Scream Queens that is on an hour later, which has about 266,000 followers. This juxtaposition shows that Grandfathered really needs to improve its social media especially in this multifaceted industry, which is integrating more and more social media into television programming.

 

The Grinder: Post #6

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With episode number 3 on its way, Fox’s The Grinder series will soon reveal itself as a success or failure depending on a returning fan base and its numbers. So what can we expect? Will the numbers remain steady or drop for W3?  Lets breakdown the show’s positives and negatives and predict for ourselves what the future holds for Fox’s new Tuesday night comedy.

The Grinder

                          The Grinder

Both leads in the show, Fred Savage and Rob Lowe are no stranger to the camera. Although, mentioned in a previous post, Savage has worked as a director on set for the past decade. They both have starred in successful shows in the past (Ex: The Wonder Years, Parks and Rec.) and understand what goes into making a favorable series. In terms of target audiences, (18-49) The Grinder’s ratings are nothing to gawk at, yet do demonstrate somewhat of a strong foundation as a starting point.

Two weeks in and a slight viewer decrease, it will be interesting to see the numbers in the next two weeks. Due to competitors with a huge fan base such as NBC’s The Voice, I will be sure to keep a close eye.

Code Black -Post 4

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Code Black finally premiered last week on September 30th, and did fairly well. It was up against Nashville and Chicago P.D, and was lead in by Criminal Minds. Code Black had a premiere rating of 1.5 in 18-49, which beat out Nashville who had a rating of 1.1, but fell behind Chicago P.D who had a rating of 1.7. However, Code Black won its time slot for 10 pm in adults 25-54 with a Live + SD rating of 8.5 million viewers. Code Black also had success with their Live + 3 rating, which was 2.3. This was a 53% increase from their live rating of 1.5. The number of viewers also increased to 11.47 in Live + 3.

Looking at these numbers, the Live+3 rating could be an important one for Code Black. The premiere gained over 2 million viewers in 3 days, so in future episodes I am interested to see if the Live + 3 continues to be higher than Live + SD.  Another interesting thing about the Code Black premiere, was that it retained 75 % of the 18-49 audience from Criminal Minds which was Code Black’s lead in.

Code Black’s ratings were decent for the premiere, but it received several mixed reviews from critics.  The Hollywood Reporter praised Marica Gay Harden for her performance, but thought that the other characters were underwhelming and that the show itself was just average. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Daily News complemented Code Black on focusing on the more chaotic, gritty, and realistic side of medicine and the ER as opposed to medical shows that focuses more on romantic relationships and soap opera drama.

For it’s premiere, Code Black did decently regarding ratings and reviews, so I am interested to see the upcoming numbers and opinions from the second episode which is set to air tonight, October 7th at 10 p.m.

The Muppets Post #5 – Jamie Zaslav

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The Muppets went down in its third week and I think it is time to take a serious look at the problems with the show. The 18-49 viewer rating plummeted over .5 points to a 2.45 rating. It’s ratings share for the evening was a 1.6/6. The show got out performed by The Voice and NCIS.

There are some clear problems with the programming. There are groups of mothers up in arms due to some of the sexually explicit themes and innuendoes. The show is not reaching the younger generationg that The Muppets is known for gathering. I think ABC put too much trust in the belief that because it’s the Muppets all children will watch, but they aren’t. It is not the Muppets of the 1970’s. Mothers have been protesting the show for weeks. The new show is aimed at a mature, modern audience.

 

You can find the episode here: http://abc.go.com/shows/the-muppets/episode-guide/season-01/03-bear-left-then-bear-write

 

muppets-tv-show-abc-2015-trailer

Blindspot Staying Strong

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Now into its third week, ‘Blindspot’ is still holding strong in the ratings.  What is even more impressive than the live ratings is the heavy increase in Live+3 DVR ratings.  The ratings for  the 18-49 demo raised 1.6 points, bringing the total to 4.2.  The 1.6 increase beats out the 1.33 lift that NBC saw last year with “The Blacklist.”  This is now the largest DVR lift that the network has seen.  In addition to the higher ratings, viewership increased by 4.5 million viewers, which is the largest increase in viewership for ANY network show of the week.

http://variety.com/2015/tv/ratings/new-show-ratings-dr-ken-premiere-blindspot-1201609441/

Also interesting to note is who is tuning into “Blindspot.”  Currently, “Blindspot” holds the top spot for three race demographics among the new fall shows.  The NBC drama is the most popular premiere among Whites, Hispanics, and Asians.  The show falls into the number four spot among Blacks.  That is still very impressive.

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/tv-shows-minority-report-quantico-diverse-1201607557/

As we get further into the coming weeks, I suspect that, given its proven success, “Blindspot” will stay in its Monday night time slot once networks begin to shift around their Fall schedules.

Life in Pieces – Post #5

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In it’s third week, CBS’s new comedy Life in Pieces saw a slight rise in total viewership as compared to last weeks numbers. An additional 450,000 viewers tuned in this week, bringing the total viewership from 8.71 million to 9.16 million. Despite this viewership increase, Life in Pieces so no change in its 1.9 rating in the key 18 to 49 demographic.

The show, which chronicles the life of a family as told from a point of view of each character, has been receiving generally positive feedback from critics. The show currently holds a 63% “Fresh” approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a score of 64/100 on Metacritic.

Life in Pieces is currently facing two major issues that ought to be resolved if they want to survive their first season. Firstly, while their total viewership is strong, their 18-49 rating is not. Life in Pieces needs to find a way to attract younger viewers. Secondly, while the series certainly hasn’t been critically panned, it also isn’t critically acclaimed. As it stands right now, Life in Pieces is a show that critics and audiences could easily forget.

Minority Report- Post #5 Possibly Losing its Prime Time Spot?

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“Minority Report” falls further and further in ratings every week. This week it fell .2 points again to a .7 rating with a total viewership of 2.3 million viewers. According to Variety, “Minority Report” might end up losing its prime time spot following “Gotham” if these ratings continue. According to Variety its opening night, which brought in 3.1 million total viewers and a rating of 1.1, “was the lowest average for any of the fall’s big Four premiers to date, and it has only gone downhill from there.”

The reviews have been tough on the show as well and USA Today in particular did not have very nice things to say about the show and the storyline. To quote USA Today, “A procedural that tries to use gimmicks to mask the emptiness of its characters and the transparency of its central mystery? Check.” Things are not looking good for “Minority Report” and I’m not sure if there will be much more a season to review.

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/ratings-minority-report-falls-blindspot-strong-1201611332/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/columnist/2015/09/20/review-foxs-minority-report-half-baked-sequel-spielberg-film/32546315/

Grandfathered Blog #5

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Last week, Grandfathered premiered on Tuesday September 29th at 8 PM. The episode introduced the audience to the new characters including John Stamos’ character Jimmy who is a middle-aged bachelor who owns and runs a trendy restaurant and gets the surprise of his life when his unknown son Gerald, played by Josh Peck comes into the restaurant his daughter, Jimmy’s grand-daughter. Within the first few minutes, the audience gains a clear insight to who each of these characters truly are through the comedy writing.

GRANDFATHERED: Pictured: John Stamos as Jimmy. ©2015 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Jennifer Clasen/FOX

GRANDFATHERED: Pictured: John Stamos as Jimmy. ©2015 Fox Broadcasting Co., John Stamos talks about how Grandfathered character is nothing like his real-self.

 

In terms of ratings, the show was competing against The Voice (Results), NCIS, The Flash, and The Muppets, and these shows emphasized the variety of programming for broadcast on Tuesday evenings. Although, the live premiere ratings were not phenomenal with 1.5/5 share rating. The live + same day + 3 days grew 33% and become 7.1 million after the 3 day result. This indicates that many people were curious about this new programming but the time slot might not have worked in their schedule. It will be interesting to see if those curious viewers stick around for another episode.

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