Movie Box Review

Maybe ABC should have left "Bitches" in the title.

ABC:  GCB (aka Good Christian Bitches, aka Good Christian Belles) had a very unimpressive debut, a 2.2 that was way below Pan Am's premiere in the fall.  (In fairness, the DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES lead-in to Pan Am was a lot higher than last night's rating.)  GCB wasn't able to win its hour, and considering that it was only 0.2 ahead of 3rd place CSI Miami, the likelihood is that once it settles into post-premiere numbers, it'll be in last place at 10PM.  ABC was hoping this could be the show that inherits the 9PM Housewives slot next season, but the signs aren't good.  Meanwhile, Housewives itself, as it nears the home stretch of its run (7 episodes left), was up a nice 0.3 from its pre-Oscar week airing.  The queen of ABC's Sunday night, though, is ONCE UPON A TIME, with a terrific 3.4 that was more than a half-point higher than anything else on network TV last night.

NBC:  CELEBRITY APPRENTICE, like every other major reality franchise this year (except The Voice), is substantially down from last season, in the neighborhood of 30%.  (Things aren't going to improve much next week, when its lead-in becomes Harry's Law, a show even CBS thinks skews old.)  But the show still won the 10PM hour, and a win is a win.

CBS:  Even with a solid 2.8 lead-in from THE AMAZING RACE, THE GOOD WIFE took a tumble to a season low 1.8, and while the show probably isn't in danger of cancellation--it's the only classy drama on the network--it had better hope those upscale viewers don't go anywhere.  (It'll be interesting to see what happens March 25, when Mad Men, a show that defines "upscale," makes its return in the same timeslot.)  CSI MIAMI was only 0.1 above its own season low, but faced atypical competition with the much-hyped GCB premiere.

FOX:  Another day at the office for the animation line-up, with every show within 0.1 of its rating 2 weeks ago.  FAMILY GUY and THE SIMPSONS, though, are down 25-30% from last season's average.

It's Monday, and that means SMASHWatch is on.  Tonight is the show's opportunity to hold or even increase last week's rating, thanks to repeats on both ABC and CBS.  Also, tonight was meant to be the 2-hour season finale of ALCATRAZ, but due to last week's rescheduled NASCAR race, it's just a 2-hour episode.  CBS and CW are all-rerun, and CASTLE is a repeat after a new BACHELOR.  

 

A football appetizer, compared to next week's all-you-can-eat buffet.

NBC:  The PRO BOWL, aka the NFL All-Star Game, won the night, but at nowhere near the ratings for regular games, let alone the bonanza the network will reap next week for the Super Bowl, aka The Most Expensive Smash Promo Ever.

ABC:  ONCE UPON A TIME did a very nice 3.4, higher than its last couple of originals (which faced NFL playoff games), but then the night collapsed with a 1.5 for the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, which did not give network executives A Smile As Big As the Moon. 

CBS:  UNDERCOVER BOSS had a solid 3.0, then GOOD WIFE and CSI MIAMI were both in the midranges of their season's ratings with twin 2.2s (which are better than they sound because their seasonal highs reflect NFL overrun nights).

FOX:  All the numbers were way, way down from their last originals, thanks to the lack of an NFL lead-in.  THE SIMPSONS was only 0.1 above its season low with a 2.4, and while NAPOLEON DYNAMITE was an unimpressive 2.1, that was a strong hold of the Simpsons number.  Similarly, FAMILY GUY was only 0.2 above its season low, and then AMERICAN DAD held onto 80% of that rating.

We're a few days from the start of February sweeps, and it's not an exciting night for the networks.  CBS is all-repeat, ABC has a rerun CASTLE at 10PM, and NBC will endure its final pre-Voice/Smash Monday, while FOX hopes ALCATRAZ can keep its momentum going.  The closest thing to an event is the much-hyped 100th episode of GOSSIP GIRL on CW.

Sunday... when NBC can close its eyes and pretend it has a functioning schedule.

ABC:  ONCE UPON A TIME is a bona fide, self-starting hit, with another 3.8 that more than doubled its lead-in (and also more than doubled the similarly-themed Grimm on Fridays).  This may have helped DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and PAN AM a bit, since were both were slightly up.  However, those 2 shows won't be airing again for 3 weeks (preempted by the American Music Awards and a Mitch Albom TV movie), and that's always dangerous.  The promos for the next Pan Am are already putting into play the old "The Episode That Will Change Everything" gambit for December 4, in the hope of garnering some interest.  (On a somewhat related note, anyone with access to Showtime should be watching HOMELAND, whether in its initial Sunday 10PM run or otherwise, because it's the best drama on television right now.)

FOX:  ALLEN GREGORY has been consistent but unimpressive, the lowest rated show on FOX's animation line-up.  (Bob's Burgers, which had a similar Sunday trial run last year and was renewed,  averaged 20% better than Allen Gregory.)

CBS:  After last week's blip, CSI MIAMI is back to doing slightly better than THE GOOD WIFE, but neither is very strong.  On Thanksgiving weekend, the network will experiment with reruns of Person of Interest in the 9-11PM hours, and that may (or may not) be a foretelling of changes to come.

NBC:  New England vs the Jets is a marquee match-up, but the game turned into a blow-out and the week's number was down from the past 2 weeks.  Next Sunday the network gets Philadelphia vs. the Giants, another strong pairing.  The clock is starting to tick toward the end of football season, though...

Tonight's number to watch is TERRA NOVA, which has yet to recover from its baseball preemptions.  

Once upon a time in the fairy-tale world of broadcast television, there was a network that got exactly what it most wished for...

ABC:  And that network was ABC.  ONCE UPON A TIME launched beautifully against male-skewing football and baseball, and was actually within hailing distance of the first half hour of the World Series and Sunday Night Football at 8:30PM (admittedly a wicked witch had cursed the football game, but we'll get to that).  Next week the competition gets a lot tougher with the traditionally very strong "Treehosue of Horror" episode of The Simpsons, but for now it's a tremendous success story.  Once Upon A Time even lifted the leaky boat of DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES to a more tolerable level, although it couldn't do anything for PAN AM, which won't last forever with its current sub-2 rating.

CBS:  The network had the late afternoon football game, so 60 MINUTES received a boost.  THE GOOD WIFE was down by a tick, which isn't good when you don't have many ticks to spare.  CSI MIAMI was also down, but that's probably attributable to the unusual baseball competition on FOX.

FOX:  I'm probably representative of much of America in finding it interesting to hear that this year's Series is a good one, but not enough to actually watch a game.  The Series to date is barely avoiding baseball's basement, but Game 6 should perk up on Wednesday, and a Game 7 would make FOX's month.

NBC:  SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL is disproportionately important for NBC due to the awfulness of its regular schedule, so a game that starts out with a 2-touchdown point spread and turns into a 55-point blowout is a nightmare.  Next week's game should rebound somewhat, as Dallas and Philadelphia are both marquee teams despite their mediocre records this season.

On a night when the most interesting rating is likely to be on cable (the return of Walking Dead on AMC), there wasn't much good news for any broadcast network.

ABC:  ONCE UPON A TIME is premiering 8PM next Sunday, and the night is hardly set up for the new arrival as the network must have hoped.  Although DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES seems to have found its level, that's a painful 30% below last year's average.  PAN AM crept down again, to a lowly 1.8, and given the serialized nature of the show, it's going to be awfully difficult to get that number up.  Creatively, while the show continues to look great visually, it's still having trouble finding compelling storylines, and the espionage plots are an uncomfortable fit with the overall soapy nature of the series.

FOX:  An uncharacteristic night, with X FACTOR airing what should have been last Thursday's episode (which was bumped by Wednesday's episode, which was bumped by an unexpectedly late baseball game...).  All things considered, a 3.3 rating is nothing to feel bad about.  FOX is in the midst of the trickiest part of its fall:  a St. Louis vs. Texas World Series is unlikely to be high-rated, and X Factor will be forced to Tuesdays for 2 weeks while baseball plays out its actual and potential games.  

CBS:  One thing to keep in mind about THE GOOD WIFE is that although its 2.1 rating is mediocre, the network may be able to charge a premium to advertisers if the show gets (as it very well might) an upscale, high-income audience.  CSI MIAMI is still running below last year's average, but it had a welcome uptick last night.  

NBC:  Last night's blowout featuring two teams with losing records was probably as low as SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL can get (although next Sunday, with the Manning-less sad-sack Colts, may not be much better), and it still won the night easily.  However, since football is now propping up NBC's entire schedule, a relatively low-rated game can dent the week's average.

Tonight FOX will hope TERRA NOVA and HOUSE can rebound from their delayed-by-baseball airings last week.

We'll have an updated chart with specific ratings and trends up later today, but meanwhile here's a rundown on how last night's shows fared.  Note that both NBC and CBS will have football-related changes once the night's final, time-zone adjusted ratings are released, and that the CBS schedule slipped by a bit more than half an hour in most of the country due to its football overrun.

ABC:  The night's big headline was that PAN AM is now seriously in trouble.  It had a 1.9 rating last night, which continues a troubling trend for the show (3.1, 2.5, 1.9), and it's running 35% below Brothers & Sisters last season (which, remember, was cancelled for those numbers).  Any further decline and the show's flight could have an unexpected--and final--landing.  Its lead-in DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES was no great shakes either, with a 2.7 rating that continued its own decline (3.2, 2.9, 2.7).  It's now an awful 40% below last season's average, although still the highest scripted performer of the night.  Earlier in the evening, EXTREME MAKEOVER:  HOME EDITION had a 2.0 on one of its final Sunday appearances, and AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS was down slightly to a 1.4.  

CBS:  As noted, a football overrun will likely shift some of these numbers.  As of now, THE GOOD WIFE appears to be steady or up slightly from last week with a 2.2, but CSI MIAMI looks to be disturbingly down to a 2.0 (from 2.3 in the past 2 weeks), which would be off an ugly 45% from last year's average.  In earlier shows, THE AMAZING RACE appears to be down a bit to a 2.7 (from 3.0 in the past 2 weeks), which is about 10% off last year's pace, and SIXTY MINUTES, as of now, appears to be slightly up to 3.6 from last week's 3.5 (but was the show most directly affected by the football overrun).

NBC:  Its NFL FOOTBALL number will also be affected by time-zone modification.  As of now, it's at a 7.9, which would be up from last week's game but down from the previous 3 weeks (10.0, 10.7, 8.3, 7.3).

FOX:  The baseball playoff game was waylaid by rain, forcing a last minute substitution of CLEVELAND SHOW and X-FACTOR reruns.  Consequently, it wasn't a factor with a 1.0 average.

It was a good night to be airing football.

ABC:  PAN AM has moved swiftly from "potential hit" to "possible survivor," but it's not time to bring out the air sickness bags just yet.  The real culprit of the night was DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, which was down a staggering 35% from last year's season average.  Pan Am only lost about 15% of the Housewives rating, a very acceptable drop (last year Brothers & Sisters doubled that decline), and it's still beating CSI Miami in the timeslot.  If Pan Am can hold where it is, ABC will call it a win.  However, we won't really know what ABC's Sunday looks like until the end of October, when ONCE UPON A TIME replaces EXTREME MAKEOVER in the lineup.

CBS:  Not only was the 7PM hour boosted by football runover, but 60 MINUTES also included Andy Rooney's much-hyped final "few minutes," so its number was a one-time event.  THE GOOD WIFE's ratings seem to have stabilized, basically at the same level that it was performing last spring on Tuesdays. It's way below what Undercover Boss and CSI MIAMI were doing last fall on Sundays--however, Undercover plummeted as the season went on, and CSI MIAMI followed suit, so the network is more or less where it was late last season.

FOX:  THE SIMPSONS and FAMILY GUY were about 10% below last year's season averages, but that will even out over the course of the fall as the networks rotate the late football games.

NBC:  Football = Victory.  (Unless you're a Jets fan.)

The season's first week came to an end with more of a whimper than a bang.

ABC:  All things considered, PAN AM got off to a solid start (insert "good take-off," "little turbulence" or similar pun of choice).  Its 3.1, while not enormously impressive, held just about all of what turned out to be a lousy lead-in from DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, and continued steady through the hour.  If it can continue to score in Housewives' neighborhood, the network will be satisfied enough.  The Housewives number, however, suggests that the show will limp through its final season, already 20% below last year's average.  EXTREME MAKEOVER had to compete with football on multiple networks in its first hour, then recovered to last season's average in the second.

CBS:  During football season, preliminary numbers for CBS on Sundays are tricky, because unlike FOX, CBS allows its entire schedule to slide after the late game ends.  So THE GOOD WIFE, which was the major event of its evening, didn't actually air at 9PM in parts of the country.  Based on current numbers, though, the show appears to have made an unimpressive move to Sunday, below last season's average and down from its AMAZING RACE lead-in (as well as from what Undercover Boss was doing in the slot most of last season) .  Race seems to be around its average, but the 60 MINUTES number is particularly suspect because football overruns aired in its first scheduled half-hour.  CSI MIAMI, burdened by its lead-in and aging too, appears to be well below last season's average. With A Gifted Man already looking weak on Fridays, it may not be too long before CBS contemplates getting Good Wife off Sundays and moving it to that night.

FOX:  Their animation line-up thrives with a football lead-in and the young male audience it carries, and everything scored above average last night. 

NBC:  Between now and January, let's just assume that NBC always wins Sunday nights, OK?  Even though last night's game wasn't quite the event it was expected to be, thanks to Peyton Manning's injury (although it was still a good, close game), as usual it devoured everything in is path. 

Mad Men - 1:2

Boardwalk Empire - 11:4

The Good Wife - 5:1

Game of Thrones - 14:1

Friday Night Lights - 16:1

Dexter - 33:1

Mad Men - 1:1

Boardwalk Empire - 7:5

Game of Thrones - 5:1

The Good Wife - 8:1

Friday Night Lights - 11:1

Dexter - 20:1

Mad Men has won 3 years in a row:  can it match The West Wing and Hill Street Blues with 4?  Maybe so, but it's going to be an awfully close race against HBO's Boardwalk Empire  Mad Men's not-so-secret weapon may be its episode The Suitcase, the 2-hander for Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss that was one of the best hours the show has ever aired; but this being an industry award, it could be hurt by the extended and very public AMC/Matthew Weiner travails that didn't leave a good taste in anyone's mouth.  Boardwalk could also be hurt by the support for HBO's other nominee Game of Thrones (although that's probably too much of a genre show to win outright).  The Good Wife, a marvelous show in its own right and the only pure network nominee (Friday Night Lights being an NBC/DirecTV share), is a possible dark horse here.  Friday Night, which richly deserves a statuette, is probably getting an "attaboy" pat on the back on its way out the door.  Dexter's season was markedly inferior to its previous one with John Lithgow as the monstrous Big Bad, and is probably out of the running.

Jon Hamm, Mad Men - 4:11

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire - 23:10

Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights - 14:1

Michael C. Hall, Dexter - 14:1

Timothy Olyphant, Justified - 16:1

Hugh Laurie, House - 20:1

ShowbuzzDaily Odds:

Jon Hamm, Mad Men - 8:5

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire - 3:1

Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights - 6:1

Timothy Olyphant, Justified - 12:1

Hugh Laurie, House - 14:1

The most important name here is the one that's absent: because of AMC's scheduling, Bryan Cranston wasn't eligible for Breaking Bad after 3 wins in a row, opening the way for what will probably be a tight race between Hamm (who's never won) and Buscemi.  The knock against Hamm has been that his Don Draper is too self-contained to appeal to Academy voters, who like their Oscar counterparts prefer their performances big; here again, Mad Man's Suitcase episode may make the difference.  If Friday Night Lights has a chance for any surprise win, it's would be Chandler here.  Olyphant was even better on Justified this season than he was the year before, but it's not an award type role.  Laurie will have a better shot next year if this turns out to be the show's last.  Hall will be hurt by Dexter's sub-par year--and by the fact that he plays, you know, a serial killer. 

Bookie Odds:

Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife - 15:20

Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men - 3:2

Kathy Bates, Harry's Law - 6:1

Mireille Enos, The Killing - 12:1

Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights - 16:1

Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order:  Special Victims Unit - 25:1

ShowbuzzDaily Odds:

Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife -1:1

Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men -2:1

Kathy Bates, Harry's Law - 8:1 

Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights - 12:1

Mireille Enos, The Killing - 25:1

The biggest shock of last year's Emmys was Kyra Sedgwick's win over Julianna Margulies; The Good Wife continues to be a superb show, Margulies is a well-respected former winner, and it's likely the Academy will make amends for its oversight.  Moss has the best chance of unseating her, once again because she's got that episode of Mad Men that could almost have been designed as an Emmy showcase.  One can never underestimate the Academy's attraction to performers of a certain age, which puts Bates in the running as a dark horse.  Britton has deserved this award every year Friday Night Lights was on the air, but no one ever said awards were fair.  Enos has little chance of winning for a show whose finale left many viewers angrier than they'd been since the end of Lost, and Hargitay has won already, with no one seeming to think she needs another.