The Friday before a holiday weekend is a time-honored day to release bad news, but one of today’s events was a good one: the announcement that HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER will return for a 9th and presumably final season, at the end of which we will finally really and truly know who the mother is. […]
The X Factor cycle finale dominated a night of specials and reruns. FOX: X FACTOR‘s 3.1 was down a substantial 0.7 from the last cycle finale, but was still enough to win on a weak holiday season night. ABC: The night started with 1.4 for yet another Charlie Brown special, then the CMA COUNTRY CHRISTMAS special only […]
Chicago Fire, not for the first time, responds well when it doesn’t face off directly with CSI. NBC: After the MISS UNIVERSE PAGEANT‘s 1.8 (up slightly from last year), CHICAGO FIRE hit a 1.9, up half a point from last week. FOX: THE X FACTOR was flat at 2.7. CBS: A RASCAL FLATTS CHRISTMAS SPECIAL only scraped to 0.9, […]
Kathryn Bigelow’s acclaimed ZERO DARK THIRTY (Sony) is off to a tremendous start in limited release, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. The real-life drama about the CIA hunt for Osama bin-Laden, despite (or in part because of) being assailed by, among others, members of the US Senate for its depiction of US torture, was on track […]
The weekend before Christmas offers four wide releases and another fairly-wide release. What a collection of underperformers. The weekend should total a very uninspired $112 million for the top 12 films. The 51st weekend of the year averages $172 million, and the last time this weekend started on December 21 (2007), the top 12 films […]
The Voice hasn’t run out of steam just yet. NBC: The cycle finale of THE VOICE hit a 4.9, way up from last week and even more impressively, up half a point from last spring’s finale. Even a rerun of the previous night’s episode at 8PM managed a 2.4, in 2d place for its hour. […]
Viewers bid a fond XOXO to Gossip Girl. CW: The final episode of GOSSIP GIRL earned the show its best rating of the season by a considerable margin, with a 0.8 (although it’s a sign of where the series ended up that this was still below a typical episode of Vampire Diaries or Arrow). The […]
The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between December 10 and December 16 grossed a solid $153 million, up 6% from the four-year average for the week and up 12% from the same week last year. The past six weeks are still 18% above the four-year average and 24% […]