Here's a look at the Top 5 TV news stories of the week!
The 73rd Annual Emmy Awards were held on Sunday nights and the wins were not very surprising but still deserving with Ted Lasso, The Crown and The Queen's Gambit taking the top prizes in comedy, drama and limited series respectively. They were uneventful wins but those were also the winners in my personal awards so it was well deserved. In Drama, The Crown completed a complete Schitt's Creek style sweep including surprise wins for Tobias Menzies (over the late Michael K. Williams) for Supporting Actor and Olivia Colman (instead of co-star Emma Corrin) for Lead Actress. In comedy, Hacks was a threat to Ted Lasso with the expected win for Jean Smart for Lead Actress but also wins for Writing and Directing. The Limited Series genre had more spreading out of awards as Mare of Easttown took three of the four acting awards, Ewan MacGregor was a surprise winner for Lead Actor for Halston and Michaela Coel took home Writing (receiving one of two standing ovations for a win, the other was for Smart). As for the ceremony itself, it had a couple nice moments including great speeches by Hannah Waddingham, Kate Winslet, Jean Smart and Jason Sudeikis. I loved the Schitt's Creek bit and the fact that the Schitt's cast got a chance to shine after having their big sweep last year with no audience. Jennifer Coolidge was funny and Conan O'Brien was ridiculous. Cedric the Entertainer was pleasant as host when he was just engaging with the audience but his many bits or pre-taped segments did not work at all and the telecast felt very long. In terms of ratings, the return to a more normal ceremony and a football lead-in helped the telecast rise 16% in total viewers and half a demo point. It even topped the 2019 ratings in the demo so that was welcome news for the beleaguered award show ratings across the board.
Once upon a time (even within the last decade), the biggest TV news story of Premiere Week would be how the new shows performed in the ratings. Now in an era of diminishing returns where linear ratings only tell a small fraction of the story, it really isn't that big of news and honestly probably a little generous to put it at #2 on this list. Delayed viewing is still a thing and so is streaming. How many people watched The Wonder Years on Hulu or how many will in the coming days? We won't ever know the full picture but we can at least see how shows performed relative to each other in the linear ratings. And the results of premiere week showed there's a reason why networks are getting less and less creative. Shows like the FBI trio on Tuesday night and the Chicago trio on Wednesday night were pretty solid as were long time franchises The Voice, Survivor and The Masked Singer. NCIS handled itself pretty well in its first move ever out of Tuesday nights too. As far as the new shows, FBI: International was the most successful in a crossover premiere with its fellow FBI shows. The Wonder Years could probably be considered a bit of an underperformer given all the promotion it had but it still outperformed Ordinary Joe and Alter Ego, which were slow starters airing out of two of the top shows of the week (The Voice and The Masked Singer). NCIS: Hawaii was a little sluggish airing out of NCIS on Mondays. The biggest loser of the week was FOX which saw almost no interest in The Big Leap and a slightly better, but still disappointing, result for Our Kind of People. Even in an era of not getting the full picture with linear ratings, it seems like it will be an uphill climb for The Big Leap to survive.
Saturday Night Live announced its hosts and musical guests for the first four weeks of the season beginning October 2. The hosts, in order, are Owen Wilson, Kim Kardashian West, Rami Malek and SNL alum and recent Emmy winner Jason Sudeikis. Musical guests, also in order, are Kacey Musgraves, Halsey, Young Thug and Brandi Carlile. Of course the news everyone is more interested in is which cast members are returning. There's been speculation about the future for Cecily Strong, Pete Davidson, Kenan Thompson, Aidy Bryant, Kate McKinnon and others. I have a feeling the lack of news means most if not all are returning but we'll have to hear something next week so maybe that will be a story for next week's Top 5.
#4 - "PITCH PERFECT" SERIES COMING TO PEACOCK
Peacock announced this week that it will do a TV adaptation of Pitch Perfect, which received a straight to series order. The series will center around Adam Devine's character, Bumper Allen. While I really liked the first Pitch Perfect movie (I never saw the second) and think a TV adaptation could work, I am very uninterested in seeing one with Devine's character as the star. He was not the reason Pitch Perfect was so charming and fun so I think this will be a miss.
#5 - SCRIPTED PREMIERES THIS WEEK
Premiere Week has come to an end but there's still plenty coming in the next week!
Today: Apple TV+ has one of their two big genre swings this fall with Foundation, a sweeping sci-fi drama based on the book series. Apple hasn't really done much genre stuff yet so it will be interesting to see if this can cut through. Netflix has Midnight Mass, from the creator of their successful fall Haunting offerings in recent years. This limited series isn't part of that franchise but seems very similar and could be a buzzy show for this time of year. Amazon drops the fourth and final season of Goliath, which was last seen in October 2019.
Sunday: Starz debuts BMF (which stands for Black Mafia Family). Starz has had a hard time cutting through recently, even with a buzzy show like P-Valley so I'm not convinced this will be able to make much of a dent. ABC has the return of The Rookie and FOX returns its animated lineup of The Simpsons, The Great North, Bob's Burgers and Family Guy.
Monday: The second official week of the season kicks off with the only premiere being ABC's fifth season premiere of The Good Doctor.
Tuesday: NBC premieres La Brea, another network genre swing that seems destined to go the way of so many others in the past 15 years. Shows like The Crossing, Emergence, The Event, Terra Nova and others spring to mind.
Thursday: ABC has the return of Grey's Anatomy for what could be its final season, but we'll see. It's surrounded by premieres of spinoff Station 19 as well as the second season of Big Sky on a new night. HBO Max has the premiere of the animated Ten-Year-Old Tom.
My most anticipated premiere of the week: My most anticipated premiere is not a scripted show, it is The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV+, which is arriving on Thursday. I can't wait to have Stewart back on TV on a regular basis. Among the scripted premieres, nothing really excites me though I'm sure I'll at least check out Midnight Mass and La Brea.
Check back next week for a new week of blog posts!
No comments:
Post a Comment