Another night of Idol, another win for Fox. This time, they used it as lead-in to their latest reality crap, Moment Of Truth, and it worked perfectly! Keeping almost 87% of its lead-in audience, Fox’s new game was no less than the highest rated program of the season (23.2 million viewers, 10.2 on the 18-49 demo). Fox’s evil plan is working like a charm it seems…
But American Idol might be the most watched program of the night, its ratings are lower than last year, and every episode lost viewers compared to be one before, last night’s episode for example lost about 3.5 million viewers compared to the previous one. Maybe this is the beginning of the end ?
(S03E13) Before I sat down to watch this episode, I had somewhat bittersweet feelings toward it. On one hand I was happy to see a new episode of Criminal Minds, which I think is a good show, and I was even pretty excited about the last episode which was one of the best of the series, but on the other hand it’s really sad to think that, despite this being only the 13th episode, there won’t be any more, not this season.
This was not intended to be a season finale, but because writers are on strike and things couldn’t get settled rapidly, this is the last episode that was completed and we’ll have to accept that this is how this season, which also started in a very special way as it found Gideon leaving the show unexpectedly.
When I first read about that news, I read it wrong, I read what I may have wanted to read, I read what would have been a really cool thing, but then I realized I read things wrong.
Realizing my mistake, and by “my mistake” I do mean Sci-Fi mistake, obviously, I was so disappointed I didn’t even want to talk about it. Really, it wasn’t worth mentioning given how stupid it was. But then again, even if that’s just a way to spread the word about the return of Jericho, with a new season that’s even better than the first one was, maybe it’s worth a few words after all.
Yesterday I finally posted about late-night shows, and what writing “is”. On the post I also mentioned how things had changed on most of those shows, and how the strike wasn’t as present or mentioned as it used to, especially on the first day(s). I did all that after having this in mind for a few days, and I did it before I watched some of the late night shows of that day.
I’ll be honest, I do watch some of them, despite the strike and all. Usually I watch Conan, cause I’m a fan, Stewart & Colbert, cause they’re great, and that’s about it. Maybe I’ll catch a Letterman if I like a guest, other than that his show ain’t my cup of tea. And of course Leno, well, he’s a sumbag so I stay away.
But I just watched The Colbert Report (of Tuesday’s night, 01.22.08) and there was some mention of the strike alright! Stephen Colbert was just pretty fantastic - not that it’s anything new - and it was definitely some must-see TV. If you missed it, or even if you haven’t, here’s what happened (videos included) :
* But one hour later you can must turn your TV on, because CBS has a new episode of Criminal Minds. And folks, due to the strike, this is the season finale!
* After that, ABC has a new Cashmere Mafia. But let’s face it, the show ain’t really good. Maybe you could stick with CBS, and a new CSI: New-York or head over NBC instead, with a new Law & Order…
So after CBS yesterday, and Fox and The CW today, NBC is now going the same path as Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal, announced that NBC was not going to do pilots, at all.
Presenting this as a way to save as much as $50 million a year, NBC does not plan to reduce its number of pilots order for this season as a reaction to the writers’ strike, but are going for a long-term change : they do not want to do pilots anymore, not ever.
Not that I disagree that the whole pilot thing has been pushed a little too far these days. A lot of pilots were made, and they were not all going any further than that, and it is true that budgets for pilot episodes have exploded (up to $7 million) and we’ve all seen shows were the pilot looked pretty awesome, and then other episodes were quite far from that.
American Idol is still a huge hit, add to that a strong rerun of House (which won its slot, and was the second-most watched program of the night, after its lead-in) and Tuesday was another night for Fox, leaving any competition way behind. If you want to compare with last season, Idol is then loosing viewers, about 4.5 million of them.
Coming second at 8.00 was a rerun of NCIS on CBS with 12.2 million viewers. The rest were all way under 10 million.
At 9.00 as mentioned the rerun of House came first with 14 million viewers and a 5.0 on the 18-49, putting it second on both total viewers and the 18-49 over the whole night. Without Idol to compete with, According To Jim and Carpoolers did much better than last week (2.2 million more and 1 million more viewers, respectively), so did One Tree Hill on The CW with 400 000 more viewers.
Jesus Christ, I’m not sure why, but it seems that someone over at The CW has a grudge against Supernatural or something, cause I can’t really explain this any other way. So not so long ago I reported the schedule for the remaining episodes of Supernatural, since The CW had (finally) decided to air them.
It is not the best, to say the least, since they decided to put the show right against the new season of Lost. Which to me is like saying “let’s have this show to fail so we can get ride of it”, and that sounds like a smart move. I mean, what kind of network would like to have, on their schedule, a show that’s not only pretty damn good, but also comes in with lots of highly dedicated fans, really ?
Chances are you have heard about that famous video of Tom Cruise going crazy over how Scientology made him better than God and all that, you may even have seen it. (If you have not, it should be here.)
Well, the people from Funny Or Die now present you this hilarious parody, starring Jerry O’Connell (of soon-to-be-canceled Carpoolers) doing a really great and spot-on impression of Tom Cruise, giving valuable insight on acting, the writers’ strike, and more.
As you know, late-night shows have all returned to the air now, despite most of them not having writers. So if Letterman and Ferguson, whose shows are owned by Letterman’s independent company, Worldwide Pants, which signed a deal with the WGA allowing them to have their writers back (since they gave them what they were asking for), are back as usual, other shows are not.
And when they all came back, I did watch to see how Letterman, Leno, Conan, Kimmel, Ferguson, Stewart and Colbert would do. If you’re read this blog, you know I wasn’t too happy with a few of them, starting quite obviously with DB-Leno.
But while most of them were supportive of the strike and making sure not to write anything, to comply to the strike rules of the WGA which they’re members of, since then things have somewhat evolved.
By fred | January 24, 2008 
(S03E13) Before I sat down to watch this episode, I had somewhat bittersweet feelings toward it. On one hand I was happy to see a new episode of Criminal Minds, which I think is a good show, and I was even pretty excited about the last episode which was one of the best of the series, but on the other hand it’s really sad to think that, despite this being only the 13th episode, there won’t be any more, not this season.
When I first read about that news, I read it wrong, I read what I may have wanted to read, I read what would have been a really cool thing, but then I realized I read things wrong.
So of course this had to happen.
Well, almost.
Jesus Christ, I’m not sure why, but it seems that someone over at The CW has a grudge against Supernatural or something, cause I can’t really explain this any other way. So not so long ago I reported 
As you know, late-night shows have all returned to the air now, despite most of them not having writers. So if Letterman and Ferguson, whose shows are owned by Letterman’s independent company, Worldwide Pants, which signed a deal with the WGA allowing them to have their writers back (since they gave them what they were asking for), are back as usual, other shows are not.