Here are a few entertainment stories that have the town buzzing…
The Walking Dead is Very Much Alive
The season premiere for AMC’s post-apocalypse zombie series “The Walking Dead” garnered huge ratings on Sunday night. Neilson reports that nearly 11 million people watched the episode when it first ran. That’s 50 percent more people than watched last year’s premiere. Once repeats were factored in that number grew by five million. No doubt DVR has added more since then. And within that vast audience of Walking Dead Heads there were a huge number of people between the ages of 18 and 49 years old. That’s that key demographic that advertisers are always trying to reach. In fact more people in that demo watched “The Walking Dead” than all other cable and broadcast TV shows in that time slot. And if you weren’t amazed at the love for this show or the appeal for zombies consider this: There are 14 million households out there with Dish satellite network who don’t have AMC anymore so they couldn’t even get the chance to watch. This marks a big win for AMC and a big win for Zombies.
Golden Globes Don’t Put Women in Binders
This week the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced that two beloved comedians and TV personalities — Tina Fey and Amy Poehler — will co-host the awards ceremony in January. This comes after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced a few weeks ago that Seth MacFarlane (“Family Guy”, “Ted”) will host the Oscars. The news kicked off much discussion over which show could eclipse the other in terms of host-i-ness and in terms of viewers. There’s still little dispute that in terms of prestige…the Oscars carries more weight—even with the fairly limited voting block that the Academy has—when compared with the meager 80 member Foreign Press Association.
“Paranormal Activity 4″ to bring in Latino audience?
The latest installment in the Paranormal Activity franchise opened last night to a $4.5 million box office take. That’s nearly half of what “Paranormal Activity 3” pulled in on its opening night. Still, the new one is bound to bring in those devoted genre fans and according to an article by John Horn of the Los Angeles Times (who’s a weekly contributor to KCRW’s The Business) Latinos may very well be a significant part of that viewing audience. In the article Horn writes: “According to 2010 U.S. Census data 16 percent of Americans identify themselves as of Latino or Hispanic descent, up from 13 percent in 2000. Paramount’s movie theater exit data reveals that Latinos make up nearly a third of all “Paranormal Activity” ticket buyers, which is even higher than the horror genre’s average attendance by Latinos, which ranges from 20 percent to 25 percent.”
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