THIS WEEK IN TV * ABC's Wednesday night starts with Lost: A Journey Through Time, a recap of what's happened so far in season 5. * On Friday, NBC will see ABC's special about Michael J. Fox dealing with Parkinson's disease raise with a special about Farrah Fawcett dealing with cancer. * Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (The W at Amazon), Saturday night on ABC. * License To Kill (1989) is the Sunday night movie on The CW. Bond girls are Carey Lowell as Pam Bouvier, and Talisa Sota as Lupe Lamora. * The Saturday Night Live Short Films special that was originally supposed to air about a month ago is airing this Sunday instead. * Stuff airing out of place: Rules of Engagement on Wednesday in addition to its normal Monday showing. CSI: New York airing on Wednesday and Thursday. Special two-hour America's Funniest Home Videos on Friday. * I always check TVWeek.com to get the final national ratings (which usually don't show up until a week later). As I was doing that I noticed that Univision is the 5th most-watched broadcast network in the United States. They beat The CW every night of the week, and they beat MyNetwork every night except Friday (where Univision does about the same viewers that Smackdown! does). If I could get Univision ratings on a day-to-day basis, I'd totally post them. * I guess this is finale week. Between this week and next week, nearly show on broadcast television has its finale. Let's start planning ahead for that vast summer wasteland!
THIS SUMMER ON ABC - we have the return of Here Come The Newlyweds, I Survived A Japanese Game Show, various Primetime miniseries (with themes like Crime, The Outsiders, and Family Secrets), The Bachelorette, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and Wipeout, along with new shows like Dating In The Dark (people date without ever seeing each other; somehow I doubt they'll end up being ugly people, which is the only way this is interesting), The Goode Family (animated Mike Judge series), and The Superstars (which sounds like a sports version of Dancing With The Stars). The Superstar teams include the NFL's Terrell Owens with model Joanna Krupa; MLB's Jeff Kent with model/actress Ali Landry; the NBA's Robert Horry with model/actress Estella Warren; Alpine Skier Bode Miller with Page Hemmis, a designer for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition; Freestyle Skier Kristi Leskinen with professional dancer (from Dancing With The Stars) Maksim Chmerkovskiy; the WNBA's Lisa Leslie with actor Dan Cortese; Tennis player Jennifer Capriati with French actor David Charvet; and from the WPS (that's the Women's Professional Soccer league) Brandi Chastain with Julio Iglesias Jr. (Latin pop singer, Julio Iglesias' son, Enrique Igleasias' older brother).
THIS SUMMER ON THE CW - First there's Blonde Charity Mafia. I read the summary and I still can't quite understand what's going on: "BLONDE CHARITY MAFIA is a docu-series about the lives of Washington, D.C.'s most influential 20-something Alpha Girls. The BCM runs the D.C. social circuit from charity events to society parties. Their events are the hottest ticket in town, and everyone vies for an invitation from Congressmen to Hill staffers. Gossip about the BCM is played out and played up on LATENIGHTSHOTS.com (a local, invite-only social website), where minute-by-minute gossip updates about the BCM's daily (and nightly) exploits are shared for the D.C. public to devour." I feel old. The other show on The CW is Hitched Or Ditched. Since I think any reality show can be described by calling it x reality show meets y reality show, let's call this one Here Come The Newlyweds meets Temptation Island and call it a night.
THIS SUMMER ON FOX - Ugh. This is taking too long. Let's go quick. Glee: Let's say Welcome Back, Kotter meets the c-plot from American Pie? A teacher attempts to rebuild his school's crumbling glee club program, and in the process recruits the star QB. Mental is House with mental disorders. More To Love is reality dating with fat people. And So You Think You Can Dance returns.
THIS SUMMER ON NBC - America's Got Talent returns. I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here is Survivor with "celebrities". Confirmed contestants include Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt, Sanjaya Malakar (from American Idol), former NBA player John Salley, TV host Janice Dickinson, actor Stephen Baldwin, and former WWE star Torrie Wilson. They're airing Merlin, which originally appeared in the UK on BBC1. The Great American Road Trip is part The Amazing Race, part summer vacation to Mt. Rushmore. The Listener is a drama about a telepathic paramedic. Hey, you got your supernatural drama in my medical drama! The Philanthropist. I don't know what to say about this one.
THE FINANCIAL NEWS YOU CRAVE All the parent companies of the broadcast networks released their Q1 earnings recently. I was going to try to find some way to compare the networks bottom line, but it has proven to be impossible. Let me explain:
CBS Corporation had television revenue of $2.23 billion, which was further broken down into advertising (58%, $1.3 billion) on all CBS Corporation networks, both broadcast and cable, and the actual broadcast stations the company owns; television license revenue (21%, $463 million) on shows produced by CBS Paramount Television and its affiliates; affiliate revenue, paid by cable companies for the right to air CBS' cable networks; home entertainment (3%) which is DVD sales; and other (4%). Total Television Income for CBS was $185 million.
General Electric, the parent company of NBC Universal, meanwhile, refuses to divide anything up, telling us only that NBC Universal (which is the NBC Network, Universal Studios, 25 US broadcast stations, NBC's cable channels, various websites, and a couple theme parks) had revenue of $3.524 billion in Q1 2009, and profit of $391 million.
News Corp., does divide things up, but they do it differently than CBS does. They reported revenue of $1.47 billion and profit of $282 million in Filmed Entertainment (which includes both television shows and movies produced by 20th Century Fox and its affiliates), revenue of $1.28 billion (with profit of only $4 million) in Television (which includes the 27 stations owned by News Corp., FOX Network, and STAR TV, an Asian television network), revenue of $1.416 billion in Cable Network Programming (FOX News, Big Ten Network, FOX Business, FOX International, FSN), with a profit of $429 million.
Then there's the mouse. Disney reported Cable Network Revenue of $2.2 billion (ESPN, ABC Family, Disney, all the rest), and Broadcasting Revenue of $1.416 billion (which is advertising revenue from ABC Television Network, advertising at ABC's 14 owned-and-operated stations, and license revenue from ABC Studio's shows). Broadcasting had an operating income of $162 million for the quarter.
So when you take into account whether production company revenue is included with broadcasting company revenue, or whether cable revenue is included with over-the-air revenue, or whether television production revenue is included with movie production revenue, you don't really know anything by way of comparison. If you're annoyed at me for wasting your time, be glad: it took me two hours of research to figure out what it took you 10 minutes to read.
LAST WEEK'S TV RATINGS May I call your attention to the Deal Or No Deal ratings. It's over, Howie. Please show yourself out.
Mr. Boffo, thanks for putting that charts and analysis together! I enjoy your effort each week even if you don't always know which network airs Better Off Ted.
Speaking of which, I'll feel better after the networks announce their schedules next week. I think I saw on Zap2It that signs were starting to pick up for BOT and Chuck, and it is starting to look like Scrubs may be back. Still, we'll see.
I guess I'll mention here that I was surprised about the lack of Office-love on the board this week. I blame everyone watching Star Trek repeatedly over the weekend.
Did anyone want to start a Dollhouse finale thread? Didn't think so...
You believe me, don't you? Please believe what I just said...
Originally posted by EddieBurkett I guess I'll mention here that I was surprised about the lack of Office-love on the board this week. I blame everyone watching Star Trek repeatedly over the weekend.
I blame the fact that it was a horrible filler episode. It felt like MADTV decided to go a full 22 minute tribute to The Office. And not the good MADTV with Artie Lange, Orlando Jones, and Michael Bolton from Office Space. The one with Frank.
If I met Jason Sudakis and he was a prick it would be a HUGE letdown to me. He always plays unlikeable characters as very likeable. A ton of language but fuck it's rated R. Jennifer Aniston is still extremely hot to me. I love her.