Movie Box Review

Americans, faced with tragedy, gather around their television sets.  For the death of Whitney Houston, that meant the GRAMMYS.

CBS:  The sudden (and not so sudden) death of Whitney Houston turned the Grammys into An Event that transcended the usual awards-plus-glamor formula, and the result was a giant 14.1 rating, more than 2 rating points higher than last year's Academy Awards (and given this year's Oscar prospects, almost certain to be the season's highest-rated awards show).  Beyond the ratings, the show will undoubtedly give a huge boost in sales to the artists (especially the night's It Girl, Adele) who performed or won awards during the broadcast.  (A side note:  although advertisers are guaranteed a minimum rating for their commercials, and receive compensation if those numbers aren't hit, they get the full benefit of unexpectedly high ratings, meaning that all the sponsors of last night's show received windfalls worth millions of dollars.)

ABC:  Every other network suffered accordingly, and none more so than ABC, whose female-skewing lineup is geared to compete with NFL Football, but not with a colossus that attracts that same audience.  ONCE UPON A TIME was down about 10% from the episodes that competed with NFL playoff games, and that was the good news.  DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES hit a low that was 30% below its previous all-time bottom, and the penultimate episode of PAN AM was an embarrassing 0.7.

FOX:  Young guy-skewing shows weren't immune either, and FOX hit season lows across the board.  Its animated schedule was down 20% even from the weeks when CBS aired the late NFL playoff games.

NBC:  The network had basically given up on this night already (it'll launch the new season of Celebrity Apprentice next week), so comparatively speaking, it had the least to lose.  DATELINE and a FEAR FACTOR special did a 1.6 and 1.5, respectively, and on a cost-benefit basis that was probably the most effective competition of the night.

Tonight NBC bites its fingernails, as it waits to find out how many people will come back for a second helping of THE VOICE and, especially, SMASH.  This still being sweeps, the shows face all-new competition on every network.

FOX suffered a similar fate: The original episodes from 8-10 pm each set season lows against the mammoth ratings on CBS.  Last year 8-10 pm on this night: Simpsons (2.7), Bob's Burgers (2.1), Family Guy (3.2) and Cleveland Show (2.4).

Tonight's Grammy Awards were inevitably somewhat haunted by the awful loss of Whitney Houston barely 24 hours earlier, a tragedy that seemed to have been going on for a decade yet was still shocking when it came to its fruition.  Nevertheless, the show found time to include innumerable music numbers, some of them saluting artists in the CBS demo like The Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, Glen Campbell and Bruce Springsteen, but also an odd Nicki Minaj salute to The Devil Inside, and what appeared to be Katy Perry's very public middle finger to Russell Brand.  Although the actual awards always seem to be of secondary importance on this broadcast, everything that wasn't nailed down went (deservedly, in one listener's opinion) to Adele. 

The Grammys aren't quite the Super Bowl when it comes to movie ads--studios don't pay millions to promote films that won't be opening for months--but it's still a show that gathers a relatively young (especially for CBS) and clearly, considering the featured movies, female audience, and as such it serves as a showcase for quite a few films opening soon.  Here's what the show had for movie fans:

THE LORAX (Universal) - :30 - Featuring stars Taylor Swift and Zac Efron, who have been known to warble a tune every now and then.

THE VOW (Sony/Screen Gems) - :15 - The only current release in the show, this spot was notable for making Vow look much more like a romantic comedy than it actually is.  This could indicate the studio's hope to broaden its audience beyond the weepie crowd as the picture continues in theatres.

JOHN CARTER (Disney) - :30 - One of the few action movies that figured into the evening (possibly on the theory that a shirtless Taylor Kitsch transcends genre).  This was the first promo that attempted to explain just who John Carter is and what what he's doing on Mars, which made it a welcome relief after the incomprehensible Super Bowl spot.

THIS MEANS WAR (20th) - :30 - The film is opening Friday (with sneak previews on Tuesday night), so its ads are in high rotation throughout all network schedules.  One change in this spot from the first wave is that it shows the moment when Reese Witherspoon realizes that both her beaus Tom Hardy and Chris Pine know each other.  This makes her appear a little less clueless, and also allows her to deliver the music-appropriate line "I'm Yoko!"

PROJECT X (Warners) - :30: - Yet another "found footage" movie, this time recounting a teen party from hell and (not coincidentally) produced by Todd Phillips, director of the Hangover movies.  This is a very young-skewing picture, so its promos probably won't be making many more appearances on CBS.

THE HUNGER GAMES (Lionsgate) - :30 - Mostly the same promo that aired on the Super Bowl, but slightly re-edited to emphasize heroine Katniss' feelings about leaving her sister in lieu of spectacle.

21 JUMP STREET (Sony/MGM) - :30 - The same cut-down version of the theatrical trailer that's been running for a while.  It'll be interesting to see if the giant success of The Vow prompts some Channing Tatum-intensive spots between now and the opening.

ACT OF VALOR (Relativity) - :15 - The other action movie of the night, this promo, despite its short length, found time to name the country music stars who supplied songs for the soundtrack.

GOOD DEEDS (Lionsgate) - :15 - The latest from Tyler Perry, it appears to be about a man named Deeds who decides he has to start doing good.  No one can accuse the title of being false advertising.  (Coming soon from Tyler Perry:  "Return of the Man In Woman Clothes.")

WANDERLUST (Universal) ) - :30 - Like most of the spots for this Paul Rudd/Jennifer Aniston comedy, this plays up the "Omigod, they're hippies!" aspect of the commune where the lead couple goes to recharge their batteries.

While ABC was away, the other networks did play (a little).

FOX:  The network seized the opportunity afforded by ABC's all-repeat night to launch the last new series of the "fall" season, I HATE MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER.  The result was a 2.8 that was both far more than the show deserves and unlikely to be repeated when ABC returns to the field.  Despite the lack of competition, X FACTOR had its lowest rating outside of Thanksgiving Eve, but that was still enough to give FOX the win for the night.

NBC:  Even though viewers seem to be in the mood for holiday classics, with The Grinch and Rudolph recently scoring very well, there was little interest in CHRISTMAS AT ROCKEFELLER CENTER, which couldn't manage a 2 and was down from last year.  However, the absence of competition on ABC and an atypical non-procedural 10PM on CBS boosted HARRY'S LAW and SVU to hit or match season highs--which in this case means a still-terrible 1.4 and still-mediocre 2.2.

CBS:  Not a big night for The Eye:  a season-low tie for SURVIVOR, a CRIMINAL MINDS repeat that didn't even do as well as an October repeat of the show had done, and the GRAMMY NOMINATIONS SPECIAL, which scored at the level of a normal CSI repeat.

ABC: All the regular shows took a rest for the night with repeats, and big drops followed.  The worst-hit, not surprisingly, was the serialized REVENGE; least-damaged was HAPPY ENDINGS, which fell less than 35% from its last non-holiday original, drawing the viewers who took a look at the Teenage Daughter promos and ran for cover.

CW:  A MUPPETS CHRISTMAS repeat special actually did pretty well by CW standards with a 0.8, and AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL held that number.

Today's announcement that CBS extended its rights to the Grammy Awards for another 10 years and NBC's recent winning bid for the next four Olympic Games are evidence that broadcast networks are doing everything possible to keep first-class specials programming on their air.  Specials account for about 20% of a network's yearly schedule (approximately 80% of the schedule is regular series programming), with very highly-rated (and very costly) specials accounting for probably 5% of the schedule.  (Other less important specials include special news reports and series episodes appearing on different nights.)

Programs like the Academy Awards, the Grammys, the Golden Globes, NFL playoffs and Super Bowl, Olympics and NCAA March Madness are very important additions to a network schedule.  They provide reliably high ratings (the Super Bowl alone, for example, adds 0.1 to 0.2 of a rating point to a network's season average), and advertisers pay a premium to be in these events because they attract hard-to-reach light television viewers who watch very few regularly-scheduled series.  Moreover, local affiliates love these specials because they differentiate their channels from the competition, and network marketing departments use these broad platforms to promote new shows.  Perhaps most important, these specials allow parent companies to extract higher distribution fees from cable and satellite providers in the increasingly important retransmission consent negotiations for the network's signal.