WITHOUT SUNDAY FOOTBALL, BROADCAST RATINGS PLUNGE

Probably far more people were preparing their barbeque grills Sunday night than watching television. Virtually everything on the air was a repeat, with the exception of CBS’s Big Brother, which averaged 5.5 million viewers. The only show that grabbed a bigger audience was a repeat of 60 Minutes, which attracted 6.7 million viewers. Every other […]

RATINGS FOR RNC COVERAGE SLIPS

Coverage of the Republican National Convention by all three major networks combined was watched by nearly as many viewers as tuned in to the results episode of America’s Got Talent Wednesday night. NBC led the convention coverage with 4.5 million viewers, followed by CBS with 2.8 million and ABC with 2.6 million. But AGT grabbed […]

AMERICA’S GOT TALENT RETURNS AT NO. 1

NBC’s America’s Got Talent, returning from a two-week break for the Olympics, saw no ill effects from the hiatus. Tuesday’s two-hour performance episode averaged 9.8 million viewers, while Wednesday’s one-hour wrap-up averaged 8.3 million viewers. Each show dominated the ratings for the night. However, up against an AGT repeat at 8:00 on Wednesday, CBS’s Big […]

OLYMPICS RATINGS DROP; STILL DOMINANT

Viewers may have become overly saturated with the Olympics. Thursday night’s coverage on NBC saw its audience decrease a whopping 39 percent versus last Thursday night among viewers 18-49. Its 22.86 million total viewers was the lowest number yet for the 30th Summer Games. (One of the reasons for the lower viewer figures is that […]

OLYMPIC RATINGS SOAR ON THURSDAY

Ratings for NBC’s coverage of the Olympics remained in the stratosphere Thursday night with 35.70 million viewers tuning in. The other three major networks between them could not muster even 10 million viewers. Next to the Olympics, the highest-rated show on any of the other networks was CBS’s Big Brother, which drew 5.38 million viewers. […]

ALL-STAR GAME A DECISIVE HIT FOR FOX

Last week’s Major League Baseball All Star Game helped lift Fox to No. 1 in the ratings among the key 18-49 age group and to second place among adults overall. CBS remained the most-watched network of the week, thanks to its summer reality series, Big Brother, and to solid rerun performances by its Thursday-night sitcom […]

BRITAIN’S BIG BROTHER FACING PROBE

OFCOM, Britain’s television regulator, has launched an investigation of the British version of Big Brother after receiving more than 1,200 complaints from viewers who charged that it encouraged bullying, racist remarks, and demeaning epithets, according to the British wire service Press Association. In one episode that generated 114 complaints, one of the Big Brother housemates […]

MADAGASCAR 3 ROARS; CRUISE AND SANDLER WHIMPER (Updated)

It was a jungle out there in Movieland over the weekend as the animated animals of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, created by DreamWorks Animation, pounced on the likes of Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler to take in an estimated $35.5 million in the movie’s second weekend at the box office. The figure exceeded analysts’ […]

CBS THROWS LEGAL ROCKS AT ABC’S GLASS HOUSE; MISSES

Federal Judge Gary Feess indicated today (Friday) that he is not likely to grant CBS’s request for a temporary injunction that would block ABC’s upcoming reality series The Glass House from debuting on Monday. CBS had argued that the show was a virtual copy of its own long-running reality series Big Brother and that it […]

CBS THROWS LEGAL STONES AT ABC’S GLASS HOUSE

Claiming copyright infringement, CBS has asked a federal court in Los Angeles to block ABC’s upcoming reality series Glass House, maintaining that it is a virtual “carbon copy” of its own successful series, Big Brother. The lawsuit further claims that the ABC show’s producers, most of whom had worked on Big Brother, have breached nondisclosure […]

Next Page »