The first results of NBC’s Olympic promotion are in, and they’re not encouraging. Over on cable, the news was much better for TNT with their big series finale for ‘The Closer’, and premiere of ‘Major Crimes’.
The London Olympic Games took over all of television last week. The networks largely went with the run and hide philosophy. The shows that did brave the games met with varied success, and failure.
If there’s one thing we all have learned by this point… people, in the general, do like a good opening ceremony. As expected, the ‘Olympic Games’ got off to a great start for NBC. Over on cable, the starts weren’t quite as good for ‘Warehouse 13′ and ‘Alphas’.
Baseball led the way on broadcast and cable last week, taking a bit of the shine off of premieres for ‘The Closer’, ‘Perception’, ‘Covert Affairs’, ‘White Collar’, and ‘NY Med’.
A slow holiday week was headlined by gymnasts making a case to go to London on the broadcast networks. On cable, Showtime had premieres for ‘Weeds’ and ‘Episodes’ as Charlie Sheen took a big drop, but the big numbers were for the ‘BET Awards’.
FX had the big story on cable with the premiere of Charlie Sheen’s ‘Anger Management’, but it was surprisingly upstaged in the viewer department by ‘Good Luck Charlie’. On the broadcast networks, NBC got the Olympic machine fired up a little early.
TNT was the big story on cable with the premiere of ‘Falling Skies’. On the broadcast networks, everything again took a back seat to the NBA Finals.
