Grandfathered Blog #5

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.

CKYmDTiUMAA9lGP

Rosewood Post #5

Twitter is the new Nielsen. At least that’s how I am viewing it to get an accurate account of how viewers are responding to Fox’s new comedy-drama series “Rosewood”. Twitter provides the reason why viewership for certain series has soared or fell flat over the course of a week. According to TheWrap, there were many harsh tweets about the series premiere, calling it “cheesy” and “painful.” A good portion of the backlash on Twitter is centered on the series’ writing and casting choices. Many viewers believed the writing was cheesy and the casting especially of Detective Annalise Villa, played by Jaina Lee Ortiz, just was not right. Many were angry that Rosewood’s love interest was not of African American descent. One twitter user tweeted, “Was it too much to ask for Morris Chestnut’s love interest to be a black woman? I mean really?! ‪#Rosewood” I will be interested to see if the producers of “Rosewood” will take feedback from Twitter users, and make some changes.

Grandfathered Post #4

Is John Stamos involved in too much?

A simple Google search of John Stamos provides you with millions of results. Unfortunately for Fox, most of the links relate to the Full House spinoff, “Fuller House”. Although the extensive publicity for Fuller House cannot be blamed on Stamos, it could cause some worry for Grandfathered executives who appear to be having difficulty spreading the word about this new show. John Stamos went on the Today Show and had a one-on-one interview with Matt Lauer, but the highlights from the interview revolved around Stamos’ rehab stint and Fuller House. Stamos’ social media platform is also not focused around Grandfathered, which might damage the premiere ratings on September 29th. On the contrary, Josh Peck, the younger star of Grandfathered has been covering his social media accounts with posts about Grandfathered to help create buzz for the show.

John Stamos on the Today Show

John Stamos on the Today Show

 

Also, Grandfathered reviews have arrived from a multitude of sources praising John Stamos for his performance and claiming that he fits really well into television narratives. This positive critical acclaim and lackluster social media presence could lead to unpredictable viewership for the premiere.

More Reviews: Yahoo ReviewNew York Times, & Deadline

 

 

Rosewood-Post #4

Unknown

“Rosewood” premiered last night on Fox as the only series premiere of the night across every network. According to Variety, “Rosewood’s” 2.4 rating in 18-49 makes it the young season’s No. 4-rated series premiere, behind “Blindspot,” “The Muppets” and “Life in Pieces.” Majority of viewership came half way through the show, which comes as no surprise since the season 2 premiere of “Empire” was immediately after “Rosewood.” Also, the show advertised a sneak peak clip at the “Empire” season to come in the commercial breaks during “Rosewood.” Thus, “Empire” helped to draw many viewers to the series premiere of “Rosewood.” “Rosewood” managed to pull one of the top ratings across every network, making it a series to look out for this season. I would be curious to find out if fans of “Legends” and “Nurse Jackie” tuned in to see Morris Chestnut as a leading role. Chestnut has had his share of secondary parts amongst TV series. Looking at the series premiere reviews of “Rosewood” it seems as if viewers agree that it was Chestnut’s time to have his own series.

Scream Queens – Post #3

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!

Grandfathered Post #3

As the premiere for Grandfathered grows closer, Fox Executives and show creators are looking to create better buzz for the show. This past week, Grandfathered was a part of PaleyFest, the Paley Center’s fall event in Los Angeles. This event allows networks to promote their shows for the upcoming season by showing screeings of the premiere and conversations with the casts and creative teams. Grandfathered seized this opportunity for promotion with the hope of creating more publicity for the show.

Generated by  IJG JPEG Library

Generated by IJG JPEG Library

This event provided fans and future fans with the opportunity to hear about the show from the actors themselves. John Stamos alongside creator Danny Chun answered questions about the show and discussed their perspective on its role in the Fall Season. Throughout the interview, their statements were put onto a live twitter feed, which provided the feeling of a first-hand encounter for fans that were not in the actual audience. This kind of multi-media promotion is extremely important in this day in age because it creates a sense of connectivity for viewers and hopefully draws them in week-to-week.

“Rosewood”-Post #3

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!

 

Grandfathered Blog #2

Grandfathered – Blog #2

As Grandfathered prepares for its premiere on Tuesday September 29th, Fox must consider this show’s competition for the upcoming season. Unfortunately, Grandfathered will be directly competing against the CW show, The Flash. The Flash is known for being one of the first Superhero TV show hits in recent years. This along with Jane the Virgin helped boost ratings on CW Network last year. This show and network are targets younger viewers in their teenage years, so Grandfathered might lose some younger viewership to this program.

Also, Grandfathered will be competing against NCIS, which has long-standing viewers that tend to be older. NCIS, draws in a solid following, but their viewers could be becoming bored with their average content and might look to some new programming like Grandfathered. Completely different genres, but hopefully Grandfathered can steal some of this viewership.

ABC will also be premiering a new show at this time, The Muppets. The Muppets, always a fan favorite might cause some shifting in this Tuesday night lineup and it will be interesting to see what age demographic ABC will be targeting.

The Grinder – Post 2

As reported in late August, a new face officially joined the team of The Grinder for Fall 2015. Ben Wexler, from The Comedians, signed an overall deal with 20th Century FOX producers.

As Wexler joins The Grinder, Greg Malins gets swapped out. Malins is said to have exited the series for creative differences. I found it interesting to read on The Hollywood Reporter (THR) website that this is not the only show that has experienced its share of new showrunners for the upcoming season. On that same note, The Grinder has actually become the fourth first-year series to change its showrunner.

THR makes note of the increased pressure for new shows to make their mark fast, and gain as many ratings as possible. As the growing landscape of television viewing continues to change, ratings are scarce and hard to hold on to.

These types of decisions come as production heats up in August and cuts start being made to find the clearest pathway to success for a new series. If creative differences get in the way for showrunners or a cast doesn’t seem quite right anymore, it’s likely networks will make whatever changes need be.

Minority Report- Post #2 Turning Blockbusters In To Series?

As discussed in my last blog post, “Minority Report” is a sequel television series that is based off of the Steven Spielberg/ Tom Cruise 2002 film “Minority Report”. It turns out that this is a current trend for the upcoming fall series and Fox is not the only network to jump on the bandwagon. According to Variety.com, NBC is also bringing back “Problem Child” based on the 1990 John Ritter Film and CBS will be airing the series “Rush Hour” and limitless, both based on old films.

This seems to be the new trend for 2015 pilots, but it makes me wonder if movies being turned television series are just a way to lock in high ratings and an automatic fan base. Are networks running low on ideas or are they just trying to stick to what they know will sell. I’m curious to see if this already existing fan base of the 2002 film, “Minority Report”, will effect the ratings next Monday night when the new Fox series premiers.

Below you can find the trailers for both 2002 film and the 2015 TV series.