Oscar ratings up from last year – thanks to a Slumdog?

Dark Knight who? Or is that your Final Answer? The 81st Annual Academy Awards were up in household overnight ratings, total viewers, and 18-49 demo from last year. The increases come despite the lack of a big name in the Best Picture category, which Slumdog Millionaire won – as well as seven other Academy Awards. The movie of course, revolves […]

T Dog’s Four Pack

It is sad I could barely scrape up four positive items to put in this week’s four pack. It just goes to show you how bad this business has really become. T Dog’s Fab Four: – Bones. The procedural’s move to Thursday nights finally puts Fox on the map with a 3.2 A18-49 rating, defeating ABC’s Ugly Betty. – NCIS. […]

"Ugly Betty" to be yanked

It looks like Ugly Betty may be down for the count. ABC has decided to replace the low-rated one-hour dramedy with two half-hour comedies: The new In The Motherhood and the returning Samantha Who? in its’ Thursday night (7 p.m. CT) time slot. The move is effective March 26, but the plan is to put Ugly Betty on hiatus and […]

"Lost" loses steam in the ratings

The fifth season-premiere of Lost didn’t gain viewers as the event notched its lowest-rated season-premiere to date. Lost averaged a 5.0 rating and 12 share among adults 18-49 and drew 10 million viewers for ABC in the 8-10 p.m. (Central) time slot Wednesday night for ABC. While the results were still pretty good, it’s still down from the fourth-season premiere […]

TCA Notes

The major broadcast networks made their presentations at the Television Critics Association’s Winter Press Tour this week. Among the highlights: NBC – NBC announced Conan O’ Brien’s final night on Late Night will be on Feb. 20, just three months before he is scheduled to take over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno in Los Angeles. Replacing him is Jimmy […]

"Odd Couple" returns to local TV

For the first time in… I don’t know… many years, repeats of The Odd Couple are back on TV. On Thursday (an odd day to start airing a TV show on a “strip” basis), WWME-TV (or Me-TV) began airing The Odd Couple weeknights at 11:30 p.m. The sitcom, based on the Neil Simon play (and also spun off a 1968 […]

T Dog’s Groovy Grab Bag

– SciFi orders new Caprica: The SciFi Channel has greenlighted a new prequel for Battlestar Galactica titled Caprica. The prequel is set fifty years before Galactica‘s Cylon attack, with two rival families dealing with life on Caprica, including an emerging artifical intelligence sector on the planet. – The Big three networks have announced their new mid-season prime-time schedules, if you […]

Fox drops Saturday cartoons – for infomercials

Foxhas announced it is trading in Sonic the Hedgehog – for a bunch of people riding around in Hoveround chairs. In a move that ends children’s programming on Fox after 18 years, the network announced it is dropping the 4KidsTV block it had been airing on Saturday mornings. This comes after 4Kids sued Fox for a refund, alleging it owed […]

Fox dumps BCS; heads for ESPN

Chalk up another victory for The Worldwide Leader in B.S. And the coup involves an organization that put the B.S. in BCS. After Fox Sports rejected to match an offer, the Bowl Championship Series – or BCS – is headed for ESPN beginning in 2011 in a four-year, $500 million deal. The deal means the Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Sugar […]

WLS-TV, ABC dominate Election Night

ABC and its O&O in Chicago (WLS-TV) took home the ratings crown on Election Night, a night where Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first African-American president. ABC led all networks on a national basis with 13.6 million viewers. Locally, ABC’s coverage led with WLS-TV leading the 10 p.m. hour (when Obama gave his victory speech) with a 17.6 household […]

Items of note

Usually this post would be called “T Dog’s Groovy Grab Bag”, a roundup of media notes, but an item here is a tragedy and it involves a helicopter and a radio tower: -Four people were killed Wednesday Night when a medical helicopter slammed into the radio tower in Aurora of west suburban WBIG-AM. Three adults and an one-year old were […]

Opportunities run out for ABC’s "Knocks"

After three episodes, the opportunities have run out for Opportunities Knocks. ABC pulled the plug on the Ashton Kutchner-produced game show after languishing in its Tuesday night time slot against CBS’ NCIS, NBC’s The Biggest Loser, Fox’s House, and The CWs 90210. The program was hosted by J.D. Roth, who also hosted the kids’ game show Fun House, which ran […]

"Do Not Disturb" checks out

If you had Do Not Disturb in your pool as the first program to be canceled this new season, you win! Fox officially dropped the Faulty Towers rip-off after three episodes. The program starred Jerry O’Connell and Niecy Nash (and where do outlandishly bad TV shows go when they are canceled? They head to The T Dog Media Blog TV […]

Tribune scrubs CW logos off its stations

Tribune has scrubbed The CW monkier off almost all of its’ affiliates websites, and its sending a message to the beleaguered network – improve your ratings. Tribune has even changed the branding of many of its CW stations. For example, WDCW-TV in Washington, D.C. goes by the name “DC 50” instead of “CW 50”. For KWGN-TV in Denver, it’s now […]