LETTERMAN FINALE DRAWS ALMOST 14 MILLION VIEWERS

Wednesday’s finale of CBS’s The Late Show with David Letterman drew a massive 13.76 million viewers from 11:30 p.m.to 12:55 a.m., according to preliminary Nielsen ratings. It was Letterman’s most-viewed telecast since Feb. 25, 1994, when the show followed the network’s primetime coverage of the Winter Olympics. By contrast Wednesday’s telecast followed the final half-hour […]

COMCAST-TWC MERGER COLLAPSES

After federal regulators indicated that they would oppose the planned $45.2 billion Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, Comcast has decided to abandon the deal, published reports said today (Thursday). A formal announcement from Comcast is expected to come as soon as tomorrow. Bloomberg News, which first reported Comcast’s decision, said that TWC executives plan to tell […]

“NBC NIGHTLY NEWS” DROPS TO NO. 2

For the first time since September 7, 2009 — 288 weeks ago — NBC Nightly News has slipped to No 2 in the ratings — among total viewers and those 25-54, the key demographic group for network newscasts. The difference was slight (and statistically insignificant, given the margin for error in Nielsen figures): 7.99 million […]

ANDREW LACK RETURNING TO NBC NEWS: WILL BRIAN WILLIAMS BE FAR BEHIND?

As was widely predicted, Andrew Lack, often credited for the ratings success of NBC News’s principal programs, including Nightly News, The Today Show, Meet the Press, and Dateline between 1993 and 2003, is returning to the Peacock’s nest as chairman of NBC News and MSNBC. He will be expected to jack up the ratings of […]

FCC VOTES TO REGULATE INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS

Film and TV producers, labor leaders, and minority activists joined in applause Thursday for the FCC’s vote to place restrictions on Internet service providers (ISPs) that would assure equal access to the Internet. Studio and network chiefs, however, were conspicuously silent, appearing to take a wait-and-see stance until they could determine how the commission’s action […]

“SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE” SPECIAL SETS HIGH MARK FOR NBC

NBC may have been too timid to air its Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special on a Saturday night. (The general belief is that only sports broadcasts can successfully draw big audiences on that night.) But its Sunday-night telecast — which occupied all of primetime — averaged 23.1 million viewers, spiking to 26.2 million during […]

NY TIMES MEDIA COLUMNIST DAVID CARR DIES IN NEWSROOM

Celebrated New York Times media columnist (“The Media Equation”) David Carr collapsed in the newsroom Thursday night and was later pronounced dead at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. Earlier in the evening he had presided over a panel discussion of the Oscar-nominated documentary Citizenfour with filmmaker Laura Poitras and former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald seated next to […]

BRIAN WILLIAMS STEPPING DOWN AS NBC ANCHOR — TEMPORARILY

After becoming a news story in his own right following his admission that he falsely claimed to have been flying in a helicopter that was struck by enemy fire at the beginning of the Iraq war, Brian Williams is stepping down “for the next several days” from his duties as anchor of the NBC Nightly […]

WILL FALSE ACCOUNT SHOOT DOWN BRIAN WILLIAMS’S CAREER?

Now, even Brian Williams’s friends are deserting him. A pilot who appeared to lend credence to Williams’s account of how his helicopter had been shot down in Iraq during the early days of the Iraq War, has back-pedaled, telling CNN that “the information I gave you was true based on my memories, but at this […]

FINAL SUPER BOWL RATINGS: 114.4 MILLION TUNED IN

Once again, the Super Bowl has set a record as the most-watched telecast in U.S. history. According to final Nielsen ratings, the game, which saw the New England Patriots edge out the Seattle Seahawks 28-24 in the final minutes, was watched by 114.4 million. Clearly fans paid little attention to the series of scandals that […]

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