Democrats beat GOP in 1st night ‘TV confab audience’
HBO cancels ‘Project Greenlight’
NEW YORK, July 27, (Agencies): Democrats beat Republicans in the TV ratings for the first night of the Democratic National Convention, according to early data on Tuesday.
Data from the six main TV and cable news networks showed some 25.8 million Americans watched Monday evening’s 10 pm to 11:30 pm hour when First Lady Michelle Obama and Senator Bernie Sanders were among the key speakers in Philadelphia.
That is about 2.8 million more TV eyes than for the first night of the Republican convention last week, when White House contender Donald Trump’s wife Melania was the keynote speaker.
Final figures were expected later on Tuesday.
In 2012, the Democratic convention generally drew more nightly TV viewers than the Republican gathering, when Mitt Romney was running for the White House. However, Monday’s TV audience for the Democratic convention was slightly down on the first night of the party’s 2012 gathering.
All in all, some 23 million Americans watched the first night of the Republican convention last week - in line with the audience for the 2012 event.
Trump’s big acceptance speech in Cleveland on Thursday night last week, however, failed to deliver the record audiences many TV executives had been expecting but was watched by 32.2 million people.
TBS has issued a formal mea culpa for a satirical video produced by one of its comedy websites that equated Hillary Clinton to a hyena.
The short video featured footage of the Democratic presidential nominee laughing juxtaposed against the sounds of hyena cries. The video was created by TBS’ The Heckler website last week and redistributed via TBS’ official Twitter account.
The crassness of the video prompted TBS’ own Samantha Bee to publicly criticize the Time Warner-owned cabler via Twitter, although she deleted the message shortly after it was issued Monday night. Bee fired off “delete your account” to TBS, a reference to a tweet that Clinton directed to her Republican rival Donald Trump last month.
“This post was obviously a poor attempt at humor and has been taken down,” TBS said. “Moving forward we’ll leave political satire to professionals like Samantha Bee.”
The TBS flap underscores how much the presidential race has become fodder for pop culture content across all media. Clinton’s status as the nation’s first female presidential candidate from a major party has led to heightened scrutiny of how she is presented in a critical and satirical light.
HBO will not be moving forward with a fifth season of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s docuseries “Project Greenlight.”
“When we picked up a new season in 2014, we imagined a one season revival and decided in early 2016 another season did not make sense for us,” said HBO in a statement. “We are proud of the show and were pleased with its run throughout the years.”
The fourth season of “Project Greenlight,” which fell to 1.3 million viewers, was surrounded by a fair bit of conflict, namely between producer Effie Brown and project director Jason Mann, but also between Brown and Damon.
Damon broke the news in an interview with the Associated Press, saying “I’m not one to question. They do such a great job. But we have to take it out again.” He said he would shop the show around to other outlets, particularly a streaming service.
The show itself has bounced around, airing for its first two seasons on HBO from 2001-2003, heading to Bravo for its third season in 2005, and then being resurrected on HBO a decade later.
AMC has renewed Revolutionary War drama “Turn: Washington’s Spies” for a fourth and final season, the network announced Tuesday. The 10-episode final run is scheduled to premiere in 2017.
Season three of “Turn” ended June 26. The series averaged 1.2 million viewers per episode and nearly 600,000 adults 25-54 for season three.
“’Turn: Washington’s Spies’ has always had a lofty goal - to tell the real story of the American Revolution from the ground up. To capture the truth about the choice regular people had to make to support what has become the United States of America. It frequently involved turning against friends and family, and it always involved risking everything,” said Joel Stillerman, president of original programming and development for AMC and SundanceTV.
“Craig Silverstein, Barry Josephson, and their incredible team introduced us to the Culper Ring who have reminded us that without human intelligence, the war may have had a very different outcome. We are excited to see this story of betrayal and rebellion, and the sacrifices therein, through to completion in a fourth season.”