Movie Box Review

The fairy tale continues for one of this season's new arrivals.

ABC:  The back order for ONCE UPON A TIME should be arriving any minute.  The fantasy soap has clearly found an audience sweet spot, and even with what will probably be the season's strongest Simpsons as competition (not to mention NBC's football and a CBS schedule boosted by the late afternoon game), it held beautifully in its second week.  In an ideal parallel universe for the network, the show would lift DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and PAN AM by more than 0.1 each, but ABC will take its happy ending as it comes.

FOX:  The SIMPSONS Treehouse of Horror episode outrated last year's installment (4.0 to 3.7), but that didn't do anything for the debut of ALLEN GREGORY, which won't be long for the schedule with numbers like last night's 2.4.  (Probably not coincidentally, FOX chose today to announce a back 9 order for Season 2 of Bob's Burgers; clearly the network knew it would have some space to fill on Sundays.)

CBS:  Football and a promotable 60 MINUTES helped the early part of the evening, but GOOD WIFE and CSI MIAMI aren't budging from the 2 neighborhood this season, and it remains to be seen whether the network will find that acceptable in the long term.

NBC:  Not a good game, as it turned out, but the presence of 2 marquee teams did wonders for the network's football rating compared to the past couple of weeks.

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.

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.