Tag Archives: NBC

American Odyssey: Before the Premiere

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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!

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The Slap-By The Numbers

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Since its premiere, The Slap has enjoyed modest ratings. It dipped a bit when it changed timeslots, but for the most part, it has stayed pretty consistent between 3 and 3.5 million viewers with a 0.7-0.8 rating. However, these are not the only numbers that matter. The show has benefited greatly from L+3 viewings. For 2 weeks in a row, The Slap saw a 51% increase in viewers with L+3 numbers. This meant that it gained 1-1.1 million viewers with this delay. In this era of changing viewing habits, these are not numbers that should be ignored.

The show also has a 116 index of adults living in homes with $100K incomes. This upscale audience is likely to bring in desirable advertisers for NBC, which could be a contributing factor as to why the show hasn’t gotten cancelled. If the network is making money from advertisers, they won’t worry as much about the modest ratings.

American Odyssey: The Beginning

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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.

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The Slap-Beyond the Screen

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It seems as though The Slap is getting more comfortable in its new 10 pm timeslot on NBC. After taking a hit on 3/12 and dropping to 2.74 million viewers with a 0.6/2 rating, it rose closer to the numbers from previous weeks with 3.18 million viewers and a 0.7/2 rating. With 2 episodes left, I expect the ratings to stay around this zone.

The Slap was recently prominently featured in a New York Times article. A woman who lives in Brooklyn (where the show takes place) was walking down the street and nearly run over by a young boy on a scooter, prompting her to yell an expletive at the child. His mother was appalled but the “victim’s” community (read: Facebook friends) supported her actions, some even feeling she didn’t go far enough. It seems these kinds of discussions on parenting styles are being fueled by the show. Even if they haven’t seen it, the people of Brooklyn have an opinion. One resident said, “These are some of the most hateful people you will find, until, of course you leave your apartment.” So even if The Slap isn’t winning in the ratings, they seem to have struck a cord of realism, at least in their New York setting.

One Big Happy Pre & Post Season Premier

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As expected, the promotion for One Big Happy dramatically increased as soon as March hit. First, executive producer Ellen DeGeneres talked about and even showed clips from the show during her talk show time. One Big Happy commercials also became more frequent as the premier date approached. Also, The Today Show’s Matt Lauer gave OBH a shout out during the eight o’clock hour. Lauer also conducted an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, asking about her roll as executive producer, and what she wanted the audience to take away from watching the show. DeGeneres said she did not want the show to focus on the lesbian co star, but rather have it just be one of the many components in the show that make it unique. DeGeneres also tweeted about the show several times before the premier.

 

After One Big Happy premiered, I looked to several websites like Rotten Tomatoes, to see what critics thought of the show, and the results were not pretty. Most websites said the show was cute but lacked original humor. Others said the show relied too heavily on the humor from past sitcoms. One critic from Rotten Tomatoes said, “Although Ellen DeGeneres is an executive producer of the show, her influence is undetectable.” Another said, “Obvious, dumb and mostly unfunny, One Big Happy is an embarrassment for all involved.” And the comments only got worse. I don’t see the show surviving for very long.

NBC Says Goodbye to Allegiance

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NBC Cancels Allegiance

After only five episodes, NBC has officially cancelled Allegiance and removed the show from the Thursday night lineup.  The fifth episode premiered on March 5th to a total audience in 18-49 of 3.28 million with a .8 rating/ 3 share which was pretty consistent with the numbers it generated in the first few episodes.  Although Allegiance is cancelled, they will continue to release the rest of the filmed episodes every Thursday online at NBC.com and the Twitter account remains active.  The cancellation was not surprising, TV By the Numbers has been predicting since the second week that NBC would pull it from the lineup.

The fate of NBC Thursday night is facing uncertainty and is struggling since it abandoned its traditional comedy format.  The Slap has been temporarily moved to the Thursday 10 PM slot from 8 PM.  NBC is trying to leverage the success of The Blacklist and will fill The Slap‘s former spot with Dateline: The Real Blacklist.  The two hour Blacklist themed programming block premiered on March 12th.  The program is hosted by Richard Engel and will be about real life conspiracy themed investigations, playing off the theme of the show. “TV By the Numbers” reported that Dateline averages 7 million viewers overall on its regular Friday edition.  On its Thursday premiere, Dateline came in fourth in its time-slot with 4.51 million total viewers in 18-49, less than its average, but not horrible.  Blacklist is the only savior for NBC on Thursdays– it has improved the time period by 9 million people according to Nielsen.  It will be interesting to see if the following of The Blacklist is strong enough to pull in a good audience for the Dateline themed series.

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The Slap–New Timeslot

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Following the cancellation of another new show, Allegiance, The Slap moved to NBC’s 10 pm timeslot on March 12th. This perhaps would have been the slot to start off the show, not to move it to halfway through the episodes. Due to its slightly risque subject matter and somewhat explicit scenes, the 10 pm slot makes more sense for the miniseries. The change also led to a drop in the already low numbers. The show lost over a million viewers when it aired at 10. Perhaps this is also because NBC didn’t properly advertise the change. I only knew about it because I read the trades and am looking out for news about the show. I never saw any advertisements informing viewers that the show would now be on at 10. These ratings also seem to indicate that there is little to no chance of a second season. Since it has been dubbed a miniseries, NBC will likely air the remaining episodes but that will be all we see of The Slap.

The Slap – Post 4

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This week, ratings for The Slap are down yet again. Its rating declined by 0.1, which is not as bad as the week before, but still is not ideal. However, Bob Greenblatt, head of NBC Entertainment, has no regrets about the show. He told Variety earlier this week, “I’m very happy with the critical acclaim and the quality of “The Slap.” I’m not going to regret doing something that is really high quality, but I am disappointed in the rating not being higher.” NBC is standing behind its programming, even if viewers are not flocking to it as they hoped.

One reason for this lack of viewers could be the show’s lackluster social media activity. Their Twitter, at just under 4,500 followers, does not really interact with the viewers. Instead, it live tweets during the show and posts about the upcoming episode. Occasionally, it will retweet a kind word from a viewer, but this does not seem to promote much audience engagement. Perhaps, if it had a larger social media presence, more people would know about the show and get excited about it.

Allegiance Week Four

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The Future of “Allegiance” Looks Bleak

The ratings continued to fall further this week for NBC’s “Allegiance”.  The show pulled in a .8 rating in 18-49 with a 3 share and 3.36 million total viewers, down from last week’s also low .9 rating.  This week the Thursday 10 o’clock hour looked a little different than usual.  “Allegiance” was slated up against the Victoria’s Secret Swim Special on CBS which did slightly better with a 1.0 rating/ 3 share and 4.02 million total viewers in 18-49. ABC had a special two hour Season 1 finale episode of  “How to Get Away with Murder” from 9-11, which pulled in 8.97 million total viewers for a 2.8 rating/9 share.  It will be interesting to see how the numbers of “The Blacklist” and “Allegiance” are affected now that “How to Get Away with Murder” is off until the fall.  “American Crime” will be premiering in the time slot next week which seems like it will be relatively successful from the reviews.  “Elementary” will be back on at its normal time next week as well.

Allegiance is bringing in Giancarlo Esposito who was in Breaking Bad as a new character in March to play an enemy.  In response to that, they did a live Facebook Q&A with him this past Thursday.  The Q&A generated only a little activity.  There were about 70 questions asked and the post got 266 likes.  Seeing as their social media activity is usually so low, I think it would benefit them to do more of these fan engagement types of Facebook and Twitter things instead of posting random promotional graphics sporadically throughout the week.  They seem to be engaging more than before with fans on Twitter and have been retweeting more fan posts, which doesn’t really do much but shows activity.

Here’s the preview for the episode with Giancarlo Esposito:

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The Slap Post 3

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This week, ratings of The Slap went down after a disappointing premiere and luke-warm reviews. Instead of writing about that (since I’m sure I’ll be doing that in the coming weeks), I want to discuss what the show has working for it. First of all, the cast is phenomenal. With names like Peter Sarsgaard, Zachary Quinto, Uma Thurman and Thandie Newton, the cast seems like they should be part of an underrated independent film, not a miniseries on NBC. Besides that, it has some great names behind the camera. Lisa Cholodenko, the Oscar nominated director/writer of The Kids Are All Right, directed 7 of the 8 episodes. The series was created by Jon Robin Baitz, who worked for the successful Brothers & Sisters for ABC, and Walter F. Parkes, a three-time Oscar nominee.

When I look at these names, people who have in the past done truly amazing work, I get excited about The Slap. They all seem like names that would be better suited for cable television, but they have found a (somewhat hostile) home on network television. Though it doesn’t seem hopeful that many more viewers will find this show in the next six weeks, The Slap is a show that works on paper.