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.  

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.

NBC comes face-to-face with its post-football Sunday.

NBC:  No doubt the network thought that whatever the quality of its new series version of John Grisham's THE FIRM (and that quality is quite bad), name value alone would bring it an audience.  Well, not so much:  its disastrous 1.4 put it in last place for 2 hours (tied at 10PM with the certain-to-be-canceled Pan Am).  Where the terrible quality does show is in the constant audience departures throughout the show's running time.  The Firm's blight only affected NBC's Sunday as a one-time event, but there's little doubt it will now taint the network's Thursday nights in its regular timeslot.

CBS:  As expected, the Tebow/Steelers showdown (in overtime yet, albeit the shortest overtime in NFL history) was titanic, and not only gave CBS huge a 7PM boost, but also helped out the network's other shows.  THE GOOD WIFE (which conveniently had one of the niftiest episodes of its season) and CSI MIAMI both hit or matched season highs, and the network swept the night.  (Next week the even more dramatic Tebow/New England blockbuster airs on Saturday night, and FOX has the late Sunday game with NY/Green Bay.)

ABC:  Once football was done for the night, the network survived the pyrotechnics pretty well.  ONCE UPON A TIME had its highest rating in more than a month, and even DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES hit one of its best numbers of the season.  Only poor PAN AM continued unable to fly its way out of  what will surely be its terminal turbulence.

FOX:  THE SIMPSONS ran directly against the Tebow overtime in most of the country, and got slaughtered, hitting a season low.  After that FAMILY GUY improved, but was still at the low end of its season ratings.

Tonight belongs to ESPN.  With the college football championship game airing, both CBS and FOX will be in repeats, with NBC throwing another helping of WHO'S STILL STANDING, FEAR FACTOR and ROCK CENTER at the wall, while ABC airs the female-skewing BACHELOR and CASTLE. 

Another Sunday where there was football... and then everything else.

FOX:  The early evening received a massive boost from the Giants vs. Green Bay game, which went down to the last second.  That lifted THE SIMPSONS, ALLEN GREGORY and FAMILY GUY mightily although Gregory was still down 40% from the Simpsons number.

ABC:  These are the perils of preempting your regular schedule for weeks in a row:  ONCE UPON A TIME, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and PAN AM all hit season lows on their return.  This was particularly troublesome for Once, because it did air last week and still went down another 10% from that number, losing to FOX for the hour.  The night gets even messier from here on, as Housewives and Pan Am won't be back till January, but Once airs another new episode next week.

CBS:  Very stable, although CSI MIAMI was up a bit. 

NBC:  The network is entering the "flex" part of its football schedule, which allows it within certain limits to pick the games it wants to air on Sundays.  Last night's Detroit vs New Orleans game must have looked better on paper than it played, because although of course NBC won the night, it was one of the lower-rated games of the season.  But next week's Giants vs Cowboys game, a match-up of marquee teams with real playoff implications, should be a much bigger event.  The bad news:  only 4 more weeks of regular season games left for the Peacock.

Tonight, CBS airs a regular schedule (including what should be a pivotal episode of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER) against preemptions elsewhere:  a SING-OFF Christmas special on NBC, CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS and PREP AND LANDING cartoons on ABC, and the AMERICAN COUNTRY AWARDS on FOX.  

ABC has announced a slate of midseason premieres, and what's missing may be more notable than what's there.  There was no mention of the returning COUGAR TOWN on the schedule, nor the new (and based on its pilot, exceptionally promising) sitcom APT 23, not to mention Shonda Rhimes' Washington drama SCANDAL.  Vulture says that according to their inside source, Cougar Town will in fact be on the air on February or March, so for now at least we can hit "Pause" on our plan for a new rebel network that starts out with Community, Cougar Town and the return of Arrested Development.  

As for what the network did announce:

SUNDAY:  As had been anticipated since the Upfronts, ABC will give GCB (which is really GOOD CHRISTIAN BITCHES but the Parents Television Council won't let the network say so) the post-DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES slot on Sundays 10PM starting March 4, and then hope it can be the successor to that show's fading audience.  The last show to get a shot at that throne, PAN AM, was given only one extra episode, bespeaking scheduling needs rather than any real encouragement.  Although the show isn't officially dead, ABC's development season would have to be awfully bad for it to come back.

MONDAY:  No changes, but the next cycle of DANCING WITH THE STARS will debut March 19, giving The Voice plenty of time to settle into its Monday slot on NBC, since it starts the night after the Super Bowl.

TUESDAY:  Say goodbye to the awful MAN UP!--and now say hello to the even more dreadful (based on the pilot) WORK IT, a cross dressing comedy that may even now be making Billy Wilder's gravestone weep.  It's inheriting the post-LAST MAN STANDING slot to cement ABC's Tuesday 8-9PM as the worst comedy hour on television.  At 9PM, CELEBRITY WIFE SWAP will have a 5 week run starting in January, then the effectively creepy THE RIVER will take over for 7 weeks until the DANCING WITH THE STARS results show returns to the hour.  BODY OF PROOF only received an extra order of 3 episodes, so the 10PM slot will open up early in 2012, meaning that may be where Scandal (or whatever currently inhabits Scandal's slot) will go.

WEDNESDAY:  You don't mess with what's working:  no changes.

THURSDAY:  In the troublesome 8PM slot, WINTER WIPEOUT will run Jan-March, and then THE MISSING, which looks to be Ashley Judd as Liam Neeson in Taken, takes over.

FRIDAY:  SHARK TANK replaces the 8PM hour of EXTREME MAKEOVER in February.

SATURDAY:  If Cougar Town and Apt 23 go here, I'm starting a boycott.  (They won't.)

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.  

Another Sunday, or as NBC likes to think of it, The Only Night That Should Count.

ABC:  ONCE UPON A TIME barely slipped from last week, proving its full season pick-up was well deserved.  DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES continues its limp to the finish line, while the only good news for PAN AM is that CBS's unexpected slump at 10PM made it competitive in the timeslot.  

FOX:   The "Treehouse of Horror" episode of THE SIMPSONS is traditionally high-rated, so no surprise that the show was down this week even with a football lead-in.  ALLEN GREGORY did as well holding its own lead-in as it did last week, with both shows down 0.3, but that's still a loss of almost 45% of the Simpsons audience.

CBS:  The odd blip of the night was that even though THE GOOD WIFE was up slightly at 9PM, CSI MIAMI took a dive at 10, and actually fell below its lead-in for the first time all season.  Meaningless, perhaps, but it'll be something for the network to be concerned about if things don't correct themselves next week.

NBC:  Ah, football.  If only the network could figure out a spinoff...

Tonight FOX will be scrutinizing the TERRA NOVA and HOUSE numbers and hoping that last week's poor showings were a post-baseball exception.

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.

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.

SUBURGATORY -  Only one airing so far, but it premiered well.

Holdovers - MODERN FAMILY, THE MIDDLE, PRIVATE PRACTICE, CASTLE

REVENGE -  Not really "struggling" yet, but last week's drop was worrisome.  The question is whether it can stop the fall.

PAN AM -  Same here.  It's won the battle of the 1960s shows, and it's beating CBS, but the ratings need to hold where they are now.

GREY'S ANATOMY - As with Glee, this show is still a hit, but it's substantially less of one than it used to be.

DANCING WITH THE STARS - The question is whether this disastrous cycle is just an aberration of bad casting, or if it signals the beginning of the end for this show.  That would be seriously bad news for a network that needs it to fill multiple hours per week.

Holdovers - BODY OF PROOF, HAPPY ENDINGS

CHARLIE'S ANGELS - No one cared to see a remake of this, and besides, it's not any good.  Now that NBC has issued the season's first cancellation, expect this one to be close behind.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES - Dead show walking!  No one expected it to go out as dismally as it has.  A warning of the perils of hanging on for one season too many.

 
GRADE:  C-plus
 

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.