Latest from Next TV in Major-crimes

USA Tops Weekly Ratings Charts

thomas.umstead@futurenet.com (R. Thomas Umstead) — Thu, 09 Jul 2015 19:45:00 +0000

USA Network was the most watched cable network in primetime over the seven-day period that included the July 4th holiday weekend, according to Nielsen.

USA averaged 1.6 million viewers to top all cable network during the week of June 29 to July 5, topping Discovery Channel, TNT and Fox News who tied for second with 1.5 million viewers.

HGTV and Disney Channel finished fifth with 1.4 million viewers, followed by TBS (1.2 million viewers), History (1.1 million) and FX and Food Network (1 million.)

Cartoon Network was the top choice for viewers on a 24-hour basis averaging 1.3 million viewers, followed by Disney Channel with 1.2 million viewers and Nickelodeon with 1 million viewers.

Discovery Channel was the most watched network among adults 18-49 in primetime during the week, while Adult Swim took top honors in the demo on a 24-hour basis.

TNT drama series Major Crimes and Rizzoli & Isles captured the top two slots among the most watched shows during a rare week in which a major live sporting event did not finish among the top 10, according to Nielsen.

Most Watched Shows On Cable During The Week Of June 29 to July 5

DateProgramNetworkTotal Viewers

6/29 Major Crimes TNT 4.3 million

6/30 Rizzoli & Isles TNT 4.2 million

7/3 Alaskan Bush People Discovery 3.5 million

6/29 WWE Monday Night Raw (9-10 p.m.) USA 3.5 million

6/29 WWE Monday Night Raw (10-11:17 p.m.) USA 3.4 million

6/29 WWE Monday Night Raw (8-9 p.m.) USA 3.3 million

6/30 The Haves and The Have Nots OWN 3.2 million

7/5 Island Of The Mega Shark Discovery 3.2 million

7/5 Monster Mako Discovery 3.2 million

6/29 Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta VH1 2.9 million

Source: Nielsen

For Someone to Save Your Pilot, Better Call … Tuco?

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 12:00:00 +0000

Better Call Saul heads into its season-one finale tonight (April 6) a solid hit, averaging 6.1 million viewers per week (on a live-plus-three-day basis) and 3.8 million in the 18-49 and 25-54 demos, per AMC.

The Wire theorizes a segment of the former Breaking Bad audience might have bailed on this this clever-but-quirky prequel after watching the pilot — but for the surprise last-seconds appearance of Raymond Cruz as Tuco Salamanca.

Cruz, who was in four Breaking Bad episodes as the meth-fueled, psychopathic drug dealer, also featured in the second Saul episode, torturing two would-be con men who had tried to scam Tuco’s abuela.

Bob Odenkirk’s character, now known as Jimmy McGill (he’s not Saul Goodman yet), talks Tuco into merely maiming the hapless pair instead of killing them in the New Mexico desert.

The Wire asked Cruz — who plays Det. Julio Sanchez on TNT’s long-running Major Crimes and, earlier, The Closer — if anyone else told him he saved Saul.

“People loved what they saw, what else do you want?” he said. “They were happy with it, it surprised the hell out of them and it was a good story.”

Cruz chatted during his first week back on the set of Major Crimes, and said fellow cast members enjoyed his Saul turn and riffs on the word “biznatch,” an insult to Tuco’s grandmother that inspires the desert beat-down.

Cruz’s Detective Sanchez on Major Crimes, by the way, is the essence of quietude. “Everything is so underplayed — completely the opposite of Tuco,” he said.

“I love doing this character and it’s great to take a character over a long period of time like this. I wish every actor had that opportunity.”

He said it was interesting Tuco five-plus years before Breaking Bad’s events, and before he was over-ingesting blue meth. He’s “a little more contemplative, a little more hesitant. But he’s still a live wire.”

He also enjoyed sharing a scene with Odenkirk’s character for the first time.

Cruz also stars in Lifetime’s upcoming movie Cleveland Abduction. He plays the real-life character Ariel Castro, who kidnapped a 21-year-old single mother, Michelle Knight (played by Taryn Manning), and held her captive in his home for 11 years, then abducted and imprisoned two teenagers, one of them Amanda Berry.

“That character is all over the map, because he’s so soft-spoken and he’s a menace,” Cruz said. “He’s this horrible human being who has just terrorized these three girls. They weren’t even women, they were girls. He’s a child molester.”

“The difficulty in this role is finding the humanity in this character,” he said. Cruz had to find moments in the script to “create a window to let people at least get to know this character.”

To get to know Cleveland Abduction, tune in Saturday, April 25, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT). And to learn how the Better Call Saul season ends, watch AMC on Monday, April 6, at 10 p.m. (ET/PT).

Spy vs. Spy, Museum Style

AMC has turned to an even more appropriate venue for the second-season premiere pre-screening in Washington of its drama, Turn: Washington’s Spies, which is, appropriately enough, about spies recruited by George Washington during the American Revolution.

The first season kick-off event in Washington, D.C., was held at the Nat ional Archives, whose nat ional treasures include the document that helped launch that war and necessitate all that spying: the Declaration of Independence.

This time around, the April 7 event — a reception, screening and panel session — will be at the International Spy Museum, “the only public museum in the United States solely dedicated to espionage,” says the museum on its website, though presumably that means showcasing rather than engaging in it.

Lined up for the Turn panel discussion are Barry Josephson, executive producer of the series; Alexander Rose, author of Washington’s Spies, on which the series is based; and star Jamie Bell along with co-stars Heather Lind and Burn Gorman.

Josephson said the new season will “ratchet up the action” and the “conflict,” which means more spying — and running and getting shot at — by the farmer/ spies who are the focus of the series. Viewers will be able to judge for themselves Monday, April 13, with a two-hour premiere at 9 p.m. (its regular timeslot is Monday at 10 p.m.).

Turn averaged 2.2 million viewers — per to live-plus-seven-day viewing data — during its 10-episode first season.

According to Spy Museum spokesman Jason Werden, as part of the AMC event the museum will display an artifact from its collection that directly relates to the Turn era of spying — a letter from George Washington to Nathaniel Sackett offering him $50 a month to become a spymaster and recruiter. That letter essentially launched the spying operation that the show chronicles, as Washington branched out to include colonists without military or espionage training but who knew Long Island, N.Y., and could be the army’s eyes and ears there.

— John Eggerton

It’s All In the Wrist[watch], Even the Remote Control

Thanks to the popularity of Internet-powered apps, the tablet and the smartphone have all taken the form of virtual remote controls, complementing all of those button-filled, much-clunkier single-purpose predecessors. So it’s only a matter of time before the functions of the remote control get squeezed inside a new class of smart watches.

Check that. The time is apparently already upon us.

Ooyala, the multiscreen video-tech company now owned by Telstra, said its customers can use its iOS software development kit to enable TV playback controls on the new Apple Watch. Among the capabilities is an “AirPlay” button that would enable content to be slung from a mobile device to the Apple TV device for viewing on the big screen.

Ooyala hasn’t announced any takers for this remote control integration for Apple’s latest doodad. “We’re just getting ahead of the curve,” an official told The Wire. But some of the company’s announced clients include Univision, Comedy Central and NBCUniversal.

Ooyala’s work is representative of the increasing amount of TV industry action centering on the really small screen.

ESPN and The Weather Channel, for example, have introduced apps for the Pebble smartwatch. ESPN’s most recent iteration (version 1.4, issued in February) tracks multiple games at a glance and makes the watch vibrate amid score updates and lead changes. Weather’s app provides the wearer with local weather conditons and access to a three-day forecast that can be pulled up with the shake of the wrist.

The Internet of Things is upon us, so watch out!

— Jeff Baumgartner

‘The Librarians’ Debut Books 5.4 Million Viewers For TNT

thomas.umstead@futurenet.com (R. Thomas Umstead) — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 20:30:00 +0000

TNT’s action/adventure series The Liberians drew 5.4 million viewers Sunday night, the most watched new series premiere on cable in 2014, said the network.

The series, based on TNT’s movie franchise of the same name, outdrew the 5.3 million viewers for TNT's June premiere of The Last Ship. The Librarians also drew a combined audience of 7.3 million viewers in Live + Same Day delivery for its two-hour premiere.

The series, which stars Rebecca Romijn (X-Men), Christian Kane (Leverage, Angel), Lindy Booth (Dawn of the Dead, The Philanthropist) and John Kim (Neighbors, The Pacific), also drew 2.1 million adults 25-54, and 1.6 million adults 18-49.

The episode was also the most watched year-to-date in live + same day delivery of adults 25-54, according to Turner. The Liberians,which centers on an ancient organization hidden beneath the Metropolitan Public Library dedicated to protecting an unknowing world from the secret, magical reality hidden all around, is now on track to join other TNT series Rizzoli & Isles, The Last Ship, Major Crimes, Murder in the First and Falling Skies among the top 10 most watched scripted series on cable in 2014.

Theo Huxtable Grows Up

MCN Staff — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:00:00 +0000

Actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner has been entertaining television viewers for the more than three decades since he burst on the scene as teenager Theo Huxtable in the 1980s megahit sitcom The Cosby Show. The 44-year-old actor has most recently turned his acting efforts to cable with a role as a Special Investigative Services lieutenant on TNT’s top crime series, Major Crimes, and as a biker-gang member in FX’s drama Sons of Anarchy.

Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead caught up with Warner to discuss the veteran actor’s career, as well as to talk about television’s diversity efforts both in front of and behind the camera. An edited transcript follows.

MCN: You’re well known for your comedy roles, particularly as young Theo Huxtable onThe Cosby Show. Has the transition from doing comedy shows to cable drama series been difficult for you?

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: No, I always jump at the chance to do something different, and the whole single-camera world is the kind of a place where I want to be. So, the transition has been pretty cool, and because I’ve been doing some guest spots on onehour shows, it’s kind of given me a chance to exercise some of my drama muscles.

MCN: How has the industry changed in terms of the roles that you’re getting? You have not been typecast as a child actor, or certainly have not suffered through the transition from a child actor to an adult performer that some actors have. What’s your secret?

MJW: Well, I think I was very clear and very vocal all throughout the show on Cosby that I didn’t want this show to be the end-all and be-all of my career. So I was very aware of the typecasting issue that could possibly arise. Even during Cosby, I always sought out work and characters that were different from Theo.

I’ve done a lot of theater, doing characters that were different from Theo, because I was always clear that I could plant the seed in people’s minds that there was more to me than just that character. And longevity was something that my mother had really impressed upon me, literally, during season one of the show. So for a lot of my teenage years, I grew up with this maniacal obsession with not wanting to be one of those “Where Are They Now?” kids.

MCN: When you were onThe Cosby Show— a show that featured an African-American family — it was one of the biggest shows on television. As we’ve gone through a number of decades since, do you think television has become better in terms of reaching out to African-American viewers with content that appeals to them, or have we gotten away fromThe Cosby Showmodel and are not seeing that type of broad-reaching show anymore?

MJW: I think it’s a little bit of both. I do think it’s very much so the latter, and that may be hard to swallow, but we probably will never have a show like that again. I also think that given the dumbing down of America all across the board and entertainment being so spread out, I think the industry has definitely reached out and satisfied a lot of the voices that have a want.

As black people, we are multifaceted, so there are a ton of people who love, let’s say, Tyler Perry-type entertainment, and those voices are being heard, and that demand is being supplied. I think for people who may have different interests, we don’t necessarily make our voices heard enough and make that demand loud enough for it to be supplied, if that makes sense.

MCN: It definitely does. There are a lot of African American-targeted shows out there that don’t necessarily rise up to the quality in content thatThe Cosby Showpresented during its run.

MJW: At the same time, we also have to look at whether there are [predominantly] white shows that are living up to that as well. I’m really interested to see how it comes out because television’s different and the television viewing audience is different. And I also think a lot of what’s happening on television is because there are so many outlets. Television, just like the record industry, is not making the kind of money that it was making before. So, I think … and again, in an attempt to supply the demand that’s being heard … television’s kinda trying to reach that. The problem is that there’s so much stuff on cable, Netflix and Amazon that a paradigm shift is happening, so it’s almost like everybody’s desperate and grasping for straws, trying to grab whatever viewers they can grab.

(Pictured is Malcolm-Jamal Warner -- photo credit: Mary Lou Sandler of www.cubestudios.com)

TNT Renews 'Last Ship,' 'Major Crimes'

Tim Baysinger — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 15:30:00 +0000

TNT renewed a trio of summer series on Friday.

The Turner Broadcasting network handed out a second-season order to freshman skein Last Ship, as well as a fourth season for Major Crimes. The network also renewed sci-fi drama Falling Skies for a fifth and final campaign.

The Michael-Bay produced Last Ship premiered to a strong 5.3 million viewers for its premiere last month, and has averaged over 7.2 million viewers on a live+seven basis over its first few episodes. Last Ship will see its episode count bumped to 13 for its second season, from the 10 it will air this year.

Major Crimes returned up for its third season with 5.2 million viewers last month, and has been drawing over 7 million viewers (Live+7) this season. Major Crimes served as a lead in for fellow freshman drama Murder in the First, which has yet to be picked up for second season.

Falling Skies returned down this year with 3.7 million for its premiere last month, and has averaged over 5.5 million viewers (Live + 7) this season.