Latest in Love Bites

About two decades ago, drama series started a big shift from close-ended procedurals to serialized series, with HBO’s The Sopranos among those leading the way. Comedy series eventually caught up with the trend via a slew a series such as The Office, Community, Arrested Development and Veep.  Then five years ago, Americ…

What do American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, Survivor, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, Hell’s Kitchen, Big Brother, So You Think You Can Dance, America’s Got Talent and Wipeout have in common? They are broadcast TV’s biggest reality franchises of the past decade. And they all launched in the summer. Summer used to be…

Overall usage was down 6% last night versus last Thursday, and ratings were down by at least as much across the board. At 9 PM, CBS’ Big Brother (2.3/7) was the top-rated program of the night by a mile, but it was down 18% from last Thursday’s premiere. Paced by Big Brother and helped by strong rerun numbers for The Bi…

ABC launched its summer Thursday lineup last night with the official season premiere of Wipeout (2.3/8 in adults 18-49, down 12% from its Thursday premiere last summer), the debut of Mark Burnett’s new reality series Expedition Impossible (2.3/7), which held onto its Wipeout lead-in, and the second-season premiere of…

It’s hard to get excited about ratings on a night featuring only two hours of original programming on the English-language broadcast networks. With the NBA Finals over, it was down to a reality show (Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance) and a scripted burnoff (Love Bites) last night in terms of fresh offerings. From 8-9…

Game 5 of the NBA Finals on ABC was once again the top program last night. The game, in which Dallas held off Miami's fourth-quarter rally to win 112-103, delivered a 12.6 overnight household rating. And again, that was slightly down from last year’s Game 5 between the LA Lakers and Boston Celtics (12.8 rating) but…

The Dallas Mavericks-Miami Heat thriller scored a 10.5 overnight rating and is poised to easily win the night in 18-49 and total viewers. Game 2 of the NBA Finals, which the Mavericks rallied to win by two points, was down 4% from last year’s second game between the L.A. Lakers and Boston Celtics but did better than…

Eight months after its original premiere date, NBC’s hourlong anthology comedy Love Bites will debut in its original Thursday 10 PM time slot. Love Bites‘ premiere is set for June 2. Once a high-flying prospect, Love Bites was prominently featured at NBC’s updront presentation last May when it was assigned the…

NBC has cut the order to midseason dramedy Love Bites from 13 to 9. The anthology series, originally slated for a fall launch in the Thursday 10 PM slot, was pushed to midseason after a series of setbacks, including the pregnancy of star Becki Newton, the decision by creator/executive producer Cindy Chupack to step…

While it hasn’t been as quick on the trigger to cancel underperforming new series as its counterparts Fox and ABC, over the past week NBC has been closely monitoring its schedule, which has not performed as well as the network’s executives had hoped. I hear that the intention is to make as fewer scheduling moves as…

Former Will & Grace executive producers/showrunners Tracy Poust and Jon Kinnally have inked a two-year overall deal with Universal Media Studios. Under the pact, said to be seven-figure per year, the two have joined new NBC/UMS anthology dramedy series Love Bites as executive producers. They will serve as writing…

While his My Boys co-stars Jordana Spiro and Kyle Howard had to pull out of their regular roles on new NBC series Love Bites and Perfect Couples because of their commitment to the TBS comedy, Reid Scott quietly booked a heavily recurring role on Showtime’s upcoming dark comedy series The Big C. The Sony/Original…