As everyone knew they would, CBS has taken the top spots for the 2012-2013 TV season for the first time in over 20 years. However, ABC topped adults 18-49 for the final full week of the season and is tied for top spot in the May sweep.
Strong showings from veterans NCIS and The Big Bang Theory, sporting events like the NCAA Tournament and The Masters plus airing the Super Bowl this year, put CBS on top for the season in both viewers and among adults 18-49 for the first time since 1991-1992. With just a couple of days until the season wraps, that breaks Fox’s eight consecutive season hold on the prized demo.
Related: ‘American Idol’ Hits All-Time Finale Low
There were a numbers of factors that contributed to Fox slipping into second place among adults 18-49 but certainly the network was plagued by a sharp more than 20% decline for American Idol, which hit an all time finale low last week. Add to that disappointing X-Factor season 2 numbers, Mob Doctor cratering, a lack of traction among its comedies, a lackluster baseball post-season and plethora of preemptions in the fall and Fox was lucky it was muscular enough to only tumble to second place. For all that change, some things have stayed the same. This season is the second year in a row that sees ABC in the fourth place spot despite a second-season … Read More »
FOX FALL 2013-2014 SCHEDULE
(New programs in UPPER CASE; all times ET/PT)
MONDAY
8-9 PM Bones (fall) / ALMOST HUMAN (late fall)
9-10 PM SLEEPY HOLLOW (fall) / The Following (midseason)
TUESDAY
8-8:30 PM DADS
8:30-9 PM BROOKLYN NINE-NINE
9-9:30 PM New Girl
9:30-10 PM The Mindy Project
WEDNESDAY
8-10 PM The X Factor (fall) / American Idol (midseason)
THURSDAY
8-9 PM The X Factor Results (fall) / American Idol Results (midseason)
9-10 PM Glee (fall) / RAKE (midseason)
FRIDAY
8-9 PM JUNIOR MASTERCHEF (wt) (fall)
9-10 PM SLEEPY HOLLOW encores (fall)
Late Fall:
8-9 PM Bones
9-9:30 PM Raising Hope (late fall)
9:30-10 PM ENLISTED (new; late fall)
SATURDAY
7-10:30 PM Fox Sports Saturday
11 PM-12:30 AM ANIMATION DOMINATION HIGH-DEF
SUNDAY
7-7:30 PM NFL Game (fall)
7:30-8 PM The OT (fall)
8-8:30 PM The Simpsons
8:30-9:00 PM Bob’s Burgers
9:00-9:30 PM Family Guy
9:30-10 PM American Dad
Schedule TBAs: GANG RELATED, SURVIVING JACK, US & THEM, MURDER POLICE
2013-2014 NEW SERIES DESCRIPTIONS
New Comedies — Fall
Brooklyn Nine-Nine — From Emmy Award-winning writer/producers Dan Goor and Michael Schur (“Parks and Recreation”), and starring Emmy Award winners Andy Samberg (“Saturday Night Live”) and Andre Braugher (“Men of a Certain Age,” “Homicide: Life on the Street”), BROOKLYN NINE-NINE is a new single-camera ensemble comedy about what happens when a talented, but carefree, detective gets a new captain with a lot to prove. Detective JAKE PERALTA (Samberg) is a good enough cop that he’s never had to work that hard or follow the rules too closely. Perhaps because he has the best arrest record among his colleagues, he’s been enabled – if not … Read More »

Male-friendly new comedy and drama series dominate Fox‘s new series picks. Fox is launching six new series in the fall — comedies Dads, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Enlisted and dramas, Sleepy Hollow and Almost Human — and one reality series, Junior Masterchef. Midseason will be as important with six new shows slated to unspool then: comedies Surviving Jack, Us & Them and animated Murder Police, dramas Rake and Gang Related and event series Wayward Pines, from M. Night Shyamalan. Without further ado, here is Fox’s 2013-14 schedule, with analysis and new show descriptions below it:
FOX FALL 2013-2014 SCHEDULE
(New programs in UPPER CASE; all times ET/PT)
MONDAY
8-9 PM Bones (fall) / ALMOST HUMAN (late fall)
9-10 PM SLEEPY HOLLOW (fall) / The Following (midseason)
TUESDAY
8-8:30 PM DADS
8:30-9 PM BROOKLYN NINE-NINE
9-9:30 PM New Girl
9:30-10 PM The Mindy Project
WEDNESDAY
8-10 PM The X Factor (fall) / American Idol (midseason)
THURSDAY
8-9 PM The X Factor Results (fall) / American Idol Results (midseason)
9-10 PM Glee (fall) / RAKE (midseason)
FRIDAY
8-9 PM JUNIOR MASTERCHEF (wt) (fall)
9-10 PM SLEEPY HOLLOW encores (fall)
Late Fall:
8-9 PM Bones
9-9:30 PM Raising Hope (late fall)
9:30-10 PM ENLISTED (new; late fall)
SATURDAY
7-10:30 PM Fox Sports Saturday
11 PM-12:30 AM ANIMATION DOMINATION HIGH-DEF
SUNDAY
7-7:30 PM NFL Game (fall)
7:30-8 PM The OT (fall)
8-8:30 PM The Simpsons
8:30-9:00 PM Bob’s Burgers
9:00-9:30 PM Family Guy
9:30-10 PM American Dad Read More »
Gordon Ramsay‘s worldwide restaurant empire is in shambles with splashy eateries closing left and right or sitting empty. But Fox continues to prop up his image by signing a new multiyear deal with the bad-tempered, foul-mouthed chef and ordering a new Masterchef spinoff for the 2013-2014 season as well as additional season orders for Hell’s Kitchen and Masterchef. This now brings to five the number of stale Ramsay shows which Fox will air, demonstrating how unscripted TV czar Mike Darnell is utterly devoid of new ideas and new faces:
FOX has picked up JUNIOR MASTERCHEF, a new culinary competition series for talented kids between the ages of eight and 13 who love to cook, as part of a new multi-year deal with award-winning chef Gordon Ramsay, it was announced today by Mike Darnell, President of Alternative Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting Company.
As part of Ramsay’s new deal, FOX also has picked up one additional season of HELL’S KITCHEN and two more seasons of MASTERCHEF. The deal will extend HELL’S KITCHEN to a 13th season and bring MASTERCHEF to a fifth and sixth season. The addition of JUNIOR MASTERCHEF brings the total number of Ramsay-led shows airing on FOX to five, including MASTERCHEF, HELL’S KITCHEN, HOTEL HELL and KITCHEN NIGHTMARES.
Read More »
While most folks are focused on next week’s Cannes Film Festival, that’s not stopping the Venice Film Festival from churning out the announcements. Last week, the fest said it would honor William Friedkin with a Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion and today it’s set Bernardo Bertolucci as jury president for the 70th anniversary run. This is the second time Bertolucci will head the panel; his first was back in 1983. Bertolucci has been to Venice several times with his own movies including 1962′s The Grim Reaper, 1968′s Partner, 1970′s The Spider’s Strategum, 1979′s Luna and 2003′s The Dreamers. His 2012 film, Me And You, screened out of competition in Cannes.
Following some controversy on awards night in Venice last year, the festival today outlined the rules for competition prizes. Last year Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix shared an acting Volpi Cup for The Master, which also took the directing Silver Lion, making for an unprecedented three prizes. At the time, it was understood that the jury originally wanted to give the top prize Golden Lion to The Master, but the panel was hampered Read More »
Special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, whose work influenced filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson and George Lucas, died
today in London. He was 92. His family announced the death via The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation Facebook page. The Oscar and BAFTA award winner was known as the master of stop-motion animation on such films as
1963′s Jason And The Argonauts, for which he’s remembered for his extraordinary animation of seven sword-fighting skeletons. In 2003, Harryhausen wrote: “Each of the model skeletons was about eight to 10 inches high, and six of the seven were made for the sequence. The remaining one was a veteran from The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad, slightly repainted to match the new members of the family. When all the skeletons have manifested themselves to Jason and his men, they are commanded by Acetes to ‘Kill, kill, kill them all,’ and we hear an unearthly scream. What follows is a sequence of which I am very proud. I had three men fighting seven skeletons, and each skeleton had five appendages to move in each separate frame of film. This meant at least 35 animation movements, each synchronised to the actors’ movements. Some days I was producing less than one second of screen time; in the end the whole sequence took a record four and a half months.” Read More »
Oscar winner Jim Broadbent will play Tommy Butler, the detective who relentlessly sought to bring the gang behind the infamous August 8, 1963 robbery of a Royal Mail train to justice. The BBC‘s two-part drama The Great Train Robbery kicks off with The Robbers’ Tale, the story of how the heist was planned and executed. Luke Evans will play Bruce Reynolds, the mastermind behind the heist. The second part, A Coppers’ Tale, will feature Broadbent leading the Scotland Yard team Butler assembled to bring the thieves to justice in a race against time. Also joining A Coppers’ Tale are Tim Pigott-Smith (Downton Abbey, Alice In Wonderland), Robert Glenister (Law & Order: UK, Hustle), Tom Chambers (Waterloo Road), Tom Beard (Salmon Fishing In The Yemen), James Wilby (Titanic) and James Fox (W.E., Utopia). Read More »

EXCLUSIVE: Larry A. Thompson Entertainment has optioned Missing Mona Lisa, a spec script by Mark Hudelson. It’s a slightly romanticized telling of the fact-based story of how a simple Italian man stole the masterpiece when he worked at the Louvre in 1911. Vincenzo Peruggia walked out one morning with the painting, kept it at first in Paris and then returned to Italy and was outed when he revealed to a gallery owner in Florence that he had brought the Leonardo Da Vinci painting back to its homeland. The gallery owner authenticated it and called the police, who arrested Peruggia. The painting was exhibited all over Italy with great fanfare, then returned to the Louvre in 1913. While Peruggia claimed his theft was an act of patriotism, he went to jail for a short stint but was hailed as a hero in Italy and served in the Italian army in WWI.
Hud
elson is an art history professor at Palomar College near San Diego and has long been obsessed with the Mona Lisa heist. In his script, the art thief is painted entirely as a romantic. “This guy was a simpleton who fell in love with Mona Lisa,” Thompson said, “and in this romanticized version, he claims that in his heart he felt she was lonely and homesick for Italy and that it was his patriotic duty since Napoleon … Read More »
With just 30 days to go in the 2012-2013 TV season and the May sweep starting tomorrow, it seems this week we need to talk about the future as much as the past. The recent past is straightforward but full of shifts: Week 30 of the current season saw CBS remain No. 1 in overall viewership for an eighth week in a row but lose the adults 18-49 top spot after four weeks to Fox. But it was a very tight lead for News Corp-owned network for the week of April 15-21, with competition
breathing down its neck. By competition, let’s be specific. Last week saw NBC’s Monday and Tuesday airings of The Voice prove just how dominant it has become by easily taking the two top spots in adults 18-49 (5.2 and 4.6, respectively) and in viewership (14.448 million and 14.155 million). That closed NBC right up on Fox. With a four-week demo high for the unsteady American Idol on Wednesday, a dip for Glee, growth for Hell’s Kitchen and a strong UFC on April 20, Fox pulled a 1.9/6 in the key demo. However, with The Voice’s results plus coverage from Boston of the marathon bombing and manhunt appearing in primetime throughout the week and lots of repeats overall, NBC tied with CBS in adults 18-49. The two were just behind Fox with a 1.8/4. Third place was also a tie, with ABC and Univision garnering a 1.4/4.
Here’s where it gets a bit sticky. Ratings and sharewise, Fox actually stayed in place from the previous frame, while CBS declined from its Week 29 2.4/7, NBC inched up from its 1.7/5 and ABC did the same from its 1.3.4. The CW rose a tad to 0.4/1 from the 0.3/1 it earned the week before. ABC was second in viewership with 6.62 million compared to CBS’ 8.26 million. Fox was third with 5.61 million and NBC was fourth with 5.56 million. Year-over-year, ABC’s demo rating was down 26% and its viewership down 14%. The CW fell 20% in the demo and 8% in its total audience. Compared with the same frame during the 2011-2012 season, Fox slid 14% in 18-49 and 19% in viewership. CBS stayed the same in the demo and was up 1% in viewership. NBC also went up, by 13% in adults 18-49 and 7% in viewership.
Related: ‘Big Bang Theory’ Repeat Beats ‘Idol’ Head-To-Head In Viewers For First Time
But things are about to get interesting. Read More »
Travel Channel is embarking on its post-Anthony Bourdain life by adding four new series to its 2013 programming slate, which was unveiled today as part of Scripps Networks Interactive‘s upfront presentation today in NY. The lineup includes a new show from host Adam Richman, Adam Richman’s Fandemonium,
which will premiere July 14. The other three greenlighted shows are the wilderness survival series Get Lost, the take-out food series Best Daym Takeout starring YouTube food critic Daymon Patterson, and the antique car restoration show Backroad Gold. Travel Channel also set premiere dates for Season 3 of Hotel Impossible (August 12) and Season 5 of Mysteries At The Museum (August 15).
Food Network is celebrating its 20th anniversary and along with sibling Cooking Channel will add more than 20 new series to its lineup, Scripps said today. HGTV unveiled nine new original series.
Here’s a look at the networks’ new and returning shows: Read More »
There was a healthy dose of reality, lots of repeats and some golf on Sunday’s primetime. With the final round of the 2013 Masters tournament running 56 minutes into CBS’ primetime in the East Coast and Central time zones, the network’s schedule became one big slide and the scheduled 10 PM Mentalist ran way outside primetime in the East and in Central. That means last night’s ratings are approximate and very likely subject to change more than usual. The Masters overrun got a 4.1/13 leading into a 7:56 PM 60 Minutes (2.4/7) which was up 71% over last week because of the game. Basically moved an hour ahead from its regular slot and head-to-head with All Star Celebrity Apprentice on NBC, The Amazing Race (2.0/5) was down 17% from its last original on March 24. The Good Wife (1.7/5) was flat with its last scheduled original three weeks ago. With that, CBS won Sunday in total viewers with 12.41 million watching and among Adults 18-49 with a night average of 2.6.
Related: CBS’ Masters Final Up Strong From 2012
Like last week, it was all reality on NBC on Sunday with something old and something new. The old was repeats of last week’s blind auditions from The Voice (1.0/3). The new was All Star Celebrity Apprentice (1.7/4), which had Trace … Read More »
The no-holds-barred critic and sports host has already tongue-lashed his own network NBC. (Is Bob Costas TV’s Most Powerful Man?) Now he’s starting on competitors. On Friday he excoriated CBS for ignoring the Augusta National Golf Club’s legacy of excluding black and female members from its ranks. “What no CBS commentator has ever alluded to, even in passing, even during a rain delay, even when there was time to do so, is Augusta’s history of racism and sexism. Even when people were protesting just outside the grounds — forget about taking a side — never acknowledging it… I just think somebody ought to have had the guts to do it along the way… Broadcaster, executive, somebody”. CBS has exclusively covered the Masters since 1956. Here’s Costas unloading on the Dan Patrick Show:
Read More »
We’re six days from definitively learning the Cannes Film Festival lineup while hopefuls await a call from fest chief Thierry Frémaux in the hours just preceding Thursday’s announcement. Of the high-profile possibilities, we reported last month that Nicole Kidman-starrer Grace Of Monaco would not be ready, and while that intel remains correct, I’m now hearing that footage from the film will turn up on the Croisette. It’s possible it could be part of an officially sanctioned event, but I understand that has yet to be determined.
By Hollywood standards, if that Weinstein Co. footage were to be an official part of the proceedings, it could be one of the most high-profile parts of the selection since the major studios are largely sitting this one out. With the exception of Warner Bros., whose Baz Luhrmann-directed The Great Gatsby is opening the festival, I’m hearing that either the timing has not aligned or that upcoming studio films don’t jive with Cannes as a platform. “It’s a great place if you have something to promote… But it’s expensive, so it has to be the right thing for the movie,” one insider tells me. Estimates put the cost of an official red carpet Cannes screening and fête at up to $3M and beyond.
Cannes is still considered by Hollywood to be a useful marketing tool, but could it be that’s becoming truer outside of the official selection? Witness TWC, which last year rented a plush room in the Majestic Hotel to screen about 20 minutes of footage from three of its fall films – Django Unchained, Silver Linings Playbook and The Master. The move turned out to be a prescient means to whet the appetite for pictures that TWC was confident would be awards contenders later in the year. If the company repeats that select screening effort – which I understand it might do in a much bigger way – the top picks for this year look to be Salinger, the Shane Salerno feature doc about the Catcher In The Rye author; August: Osage County, John Wells’ Meryl Streep/Julia Roberts-starrer; One Chance, David Frankel’s pic about Britain’s Got Talent’s first winner Paul Potts; Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, the biopic starring Idris Elba, and Lee Daniels’ The Butler.
The above formula proved fruitful for TWC last year in a non-official capacity. However, for the U.S. majors, appearing in official selection is viable to launch Europe, but doesn’t mean much domestically, I’m told by someone who’s been down the road before. Another believes that to merit the whole red carpet pomp & circumstance “it has to be the right movie for the right audience because all eyes are on you. It is not the right place to toe dip… If you’re not going to deliver above expectations, why put yourself in the position?” Even DreamWorks Animation, long termed by Frémaux as a “friend of the festival” and which usually bows a movie in Cannes, won’t be there this year, I understand. Its upcoming Turbo rolls out in Europe in the fall. Typically, high-profile movies that open in Cannes are released theatrically quite quickly after the festival or are films that benefit from a very long lead critical campaign. Read More »
The Elizabeth Banks-starrer Walk Of Shame will bow wide September 20, 2013. That’s the date FilmDistrict originally planned to release its horror sequel Insidious Chapter 2, but the distributor has now shifted that title up a week to a September 13, where it will face Open Road’s Machete Kills and Screen Gems’ drama Battle Of The Year. Steve Brill wrote and directed Walk Of Shame, a romantic comedy about an aspiring reporter (Banks) whose dreams of becoming a network news anchor are compromised after a one-night stand with a handsome stranger (James Marsden) leaves her stranded in downtown LA without a phone, car, ID or money – and eight hours to make it to a big job interview. Read More »

EXCLUSIVE: Tim Burton will direct Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams in Big Eyes, the film that Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski scripted. At the same time, The Weinstein Company is closing a deal to fund and distribute. This is a major development on a project that has followed a long development track. Of all the development projects I’ve written about over the years, this is my favorite that has not yet gotten made. And the casting seems so promising. The film will be produced by Alexander and Karaszewski and Burton, with Electric City Entertainment’s Lynette Howell. This will be Burton’s next film, and production will begin this summer.

Waltz, who’s coming off another Oscar turn in Django Unchained, and Adams, nominated for The Master, will play Margaret and Walter Keane, whose paintings of large eyed children became one of the first mass marketed art sensations in the 50s and 60s. Those prints sold in gas stations and every five and dime store across the country. While Walter was the marketing genius, he also took the bows for doing the brush work. He was a full fledged celebrity, a regular on the TV talk show circuit. His shy wife was the actual artist in the family. When they split and she tried to get … Read More »

The Wachowskis’ new sci-fi drama project Sense8 has landed at Netflix with a 10-episode order for a debut on Netflix Instant in late 2014. The series is produced by Georgeville TV, Reliance Entertainment/Motion Picture Capital’s TV studio, in association with J. Michael Straczynski‘s Studio JMS.
This marks the first foray into TV series for the Wachowski siblings, the masterminds of The Matrix franchise, who are teamed with sci-fi veteran Straczynski (Babylon 5). Sense8 is described as “a gripping global tale of minds linked and souls hunted” that incorporates the Wachowskis’ storytelling style. “Andy and Lana Wachowski and Joe Straczynski are among the most imaginative writers and gifted visual storytellers of our time,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos. Added the Wachowskis, “We’re excited to work with Netflix and Georgeville Television on this project, and we’ve wanted to work with Joe Straczynski for years, chiefly due to the fact his name is harder to pronounce than ours, but also because we share a love of genre and all things nerdy.” The duo, repped by WME and Circle Of Confusion, also shed some light on how the series was conceived. “Several years ago, we had a late-night conversation about the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us, and out of that paradox Sense8 was born.”
Nominees for the 2013 Olivier Awards, Britain’s answer to the Tonys, include a host of well-known names. Helen Mirren is nominated for Best Actress for playing Queen Elizabeth II in Stephen Daldry’s The Audience. No stranger to the role, Mirren won an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth in Stephen Frears’ 2006 feature The Queen. And just to keep things in the family, Oscar-nominated Queen scribe Peter Morgan also scripted Audience. James McAvoy, tackling Macbeth for the first time, is nominated for Best Actor in his well-reviewed turn. Also among the nominees are Rupert Everett as Best Actor in The Judas Kiss; Kristin Scott Thomas as Best Actress for Old Times; and Imelda Staunton as Best Actress in a Musical for Sweeney Todd. The National Theatre’s production of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time leads all nominations with eight, followed by Top Hat with seven and Sweeney Todd with six. The prizes will be handed out April 28 at London’s Royal Opera House. Click over for a full list of nominees:
Related:
James McAvoy Takes Title Role Of ‘Macbeth’
Mirren, Daldry, Morgan Team For ‘The Audience’ Read More »
Ross Lincoln is a Deadline contributor.
Medient Studios, a Los Angeles-based production and distribution outfit with a presence in India, has announced plans to build a $90 million movie studio near Savannah, GA in a deal cleared this week by the Effingham County Industrial Development Authority. Although the deal may end up being good for Georgia, it comes during a precarious time for the Los Angeles-based entertainment economy — even with large-scale expansions underway at NBC Universal, Disney, and Paramount.
Related: NY State Tax Break Tailored For ‘Tonight Show’s Return To NYC
Despite an overall increase in movie, TV and commercial production, Los Angeles saw a steep drop in television drama and reality TV production in 2012, a problem the city has attempted to address at least partially by eliminating fees for pilot production. And places like New York, Louisiana, and Michigan as well as Georgia continue to pursue production business aggressively.
Related: Post Production Work In New York Rises From Higher Tax Breaks
“Of course, we’d prefer these kinds of investments be made in the State of California instead of in Georgia,” FilmLA VP of Integrated Communications Philllip Sokoloski told Deadline. “Although the L.A. region has its own studio developments in progress, infrastructure development elsewhere can only intensify the competition we face for valuable film projects and jobs.” Read More »
Downton Abbey‘s third-season opener and closer on Masterpiece Classic strongly outpaced ratings for comparable Season 2 shows — the February 17 finale even beat all of its broadcast and cable competition in primetime. So, it’s no surprise that national household ratings for the entire season were record-breakers. In news that might make even Carson crack a smile, PBS and WGBH said today that a total of 24M viewers
tuned in to visit with the Crawley family over seven weeks of Season 3 episodes. That’s a 7M-viewer increase from last year and makes the show PBS’ highest-rated drama ever. The season had a 7.7 average and an average season audience of 11.5M viewers, according to Nielsen Live+7 data. Those figures are up 64% and 65%, respectively, over Season 2. On the UK’s ITV, Season 3 was also the biggest so far and had an overall average of 9.7M viewers.
The figures are notable given the high-stakes spoilers that were parading around the Internet while the show was airing in the UK ahead of its U.S. broadcast. They also set up quite a challenge for Season 4, which is currently shooting with a series of new castmembers — and sans some important ones who ducked out last year. Read More »