Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Herewith, a condensed version of Fox's November sweeps calendar. See what's coming up on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Prison Break, House, Bones and, yes, 24.
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Big Brother by Sonja Flemming/CBS
Thursday's ratings highlights:• The penultimate installment of Big Brother 10 delivered 7.93 million total viewers, a week-to-week gain of 24 percent. • An audience of 5.37 million squeezed Hole in the Wall into their schedule, a slight improvement on the gamer's most recent sneak peek.• Kitchen Nightmares' regular time-period premiere ruled the 9 pm demos and trailed only a CSI repeat in total viewers (with 6.14 million).• Flashpoint, long-benched by this convention and that one, returned to an audience of 8.55 million — an 18 percent increase over its previous outing and a series high.Next week: Smallville and Supernatural return to the mix. (I just got the SPN premiere, cannot wait to pop it in!) — Matt Mitovich
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Shemar Moore in Criminal Minds by Craig Sjodin\ABC Studios/CBS
Lots to talk about with this Wednesday's ratings, so let's jump into it!8 pm/ETPushing Daisies topped the hour in total viewers (8.88 million) and demos, growing 300 thou from its last fresh entry. Kid Nation (7.53 mil, up 380K) placed second, followed by Fox's Back to You (7.3 mil) and 'Til Death (7.36 mil), each of which gained about 900K. Behind Phenomenon, Top Model (5.35 mil) added 280 thou and hit a season high in demos.9 pmCriminal Minds surged 1.16 mil to deliver its largest audience (15.7 mil) since Feb. 7, as well as top Private Practice (11.45 mi, up 220K) for the first time ever in the demos. Kitchen Nightmares drew a series high of 6.98 mil, followed by Bionic Woman (6.3 mil, down another 140 thou). Gossip Girl (2.93 mil) gained 430 thou to enjoy its best outing since the premiere.10 pmCSI: NY inched up 170K, to 13.04 mil, and won the demos. Dirty Sexy Money (8.2 mil) dipped 180 thou, while NBC's Life came to life with a 530K increase.
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Kitchen Nightmares' chef, Gordan Ramsay by Eric Leibowitz/Fox
Your favorite local eatery has been warned. Fox has placed its order for a second season of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, which in its freshman run has improved on its time slot's year-ago delivery by 21 percent in key demos.Conversely, The CW has given the hook to Online Nation. The "what's hot on this Internet thing" series has been drawing roughly the population of the last Mitovich family reunion. Its Sundays-at-7:30 pm slot will be filled with encores of Aliens in America.
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Question: I decided to give Fox's Kitchen Nightmares a try. I knew coming into the show that Gordon Ramsay's conversations were going to be mostly shrouded in bleeps, but after watching the show, I think that more words were bleeped out than actually made it through. I understand that we want to keep reality shows, well, real. But I think TV in general needs to come up with a better solution. The music/radio industry, for example, kindly removes the words as if they were never there. Yet on TV, we get this loud, obnoxious sound that can be heard above all other noises in the house, as if to draw attention to the fact that something bad has just been said. Do you think that the TV industry will ever do away with the bleeps and just have a muted line instead? Or at the very least, make that stupid "beep" about a quarter of the volume that we are currently subjected to?
Answer: So it's the bleeps you're objecting to, not Ramsay's profligate swearing? Clearly, he and Fox and most of
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How I Met Your Mother by Monty Brinton/CBS
Conspicuously MIA from the Apple service for its first two seasons,How I Met Your Mother is suiting up for iTunes starting Tuesday, the morning after the Season 3 premiere airs on CBS. Mother also will be available on Amazon's Unbox.Meanwhile, iTunes is now offering for free the first episodes of Back to You, Kitchen Nightmares and K-Ville, as well as Prison Break, American Dad, Bones and 'Til Death, for two weeks starting the day after their respective premieres.
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Gordon Ramsay by Kharen Hill/Fox
Breaking a three-month silence, celeb chef Gordon Ramsay has slammed the $1 million lawsuit filed by a restaurant owner who claimed that Ramsay's yet-to-premiere Kitchen Nightmares cooked up drama by making the eatery seem worse than it was. "The idea of bringing moldy food in and planting actors [as disgusted customers] is a f--king joke," Ramsay tells TV Week. "[The plaintiff] is a man who got very scared and very embarrassed about his lack of professionalism.... We were issued a writ because, god bless America, if the toilet paper is not thick enough and you come out with a rash on your ass [you get sued]."Is that true? Because the bathroom tissue here at the office is not exactly exemplary.Earlier this month, a judge turned the suit over to arbitration.
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Cavemen by Craig Sjodin/ABC, Bionic Woman by Mitchell Haaseth/NBC Photo
According to a TV Dailies poll of 3,100 people, NBC's Bionic Woman reboot and ABC's Cavemen com are the highest-rated fall debuts in terms of viewer buzz, awareness and intent to watch. Among the 18-to-49 crowd, Jaime Sommers boasts the most awareness and intent to watch, while the GEICO-inspired Cro-Mags are tops in buzz. (I know Ausiello and I disagree on this, but I think Cavemen is kinda cute, with the Nick character being a real scene-stealer.)Placing third were Kid Nation (in awareness and buzz) and Kitchen Nightmares (in intent to watch). Coming in fourth were Pushing Daisies (awareness and buzz) and Private Practice (intent to watch).
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Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Zuleikha Robinson by Julie Dennis-Brothers/Fox
It’s become a pattern every year that after Fox announces its new fall schedule, one of its new shows disappears as if it’s gone into the Witness Protection Program. So you’ve got to wonder if we’re ever going to see New Amsterdam, the drama that stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as a 400-year-old NYPD detective. Last week the network bumped it to midseason, turning its Tuesday at 8 pm time slot over to Bones instead.Despite a tepid reception for New Amsterdam at the recent Television Critics Association press tour, a Fox insider insisted the show would turn up in 2008 when it could be launched with an American Idol lead-in. The thinking is why take a risk with a new show when the network — which has been a perennially slow starter in the fourth quarter — has its first shot in years to be competitive in the ratings this fall. What will make this fall different? Fox doesn’t have the typically low-rated first round coverage of Major League Baseball’s ...
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David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel in Bones by Art Streiber/Fox
In recent years the Fox network has ended each season on such a high (thanks to hot franchises like American Idol, 24 and House) that we almost forget how badly Fox struggles to get traction in the fall.Perhaps sensing another fall disaster in the making, with two dark new dramas threatening to drag down its Monday and Tuesday lineups, Fox has rejiggered its fall lineup by postponing the murky New Amsterdam (about an immortal detective), originally intended for Tuesdays at 8 pm/ET, until midseason. In its place goes Bones, shifting from a tough Wednesday slot (9/8c) where this appealing procedural would have faced CBS' Criminal Minds, ABC's high-profile Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice, NBC's Bionic Woman and CW’s Gossip Girl.This makes Tuesday a pretty powerful night for Fox, with the often underappreciated Bones leading into the mega-hit House. Given the level of angst I tend to hear from Bones fans who can't help themselves from expecting the worst, having been burne...
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