Posted on 05/29/2012 2:27:36 PM PDT by Bratch
The most spectacular success of the summer season on television may have come before summer has even started: the miniseries “Hatfields & McCoys” on the History Channel attracted a monster audience Monday night, 13.9 million viewers, the second largest for a cable program that did not involve sports.
By comparison, the finale this month of NBC’s singing competition hit, “The Voice,” attracted 10.5 million viewers. Most hit shows on cable are in the range of two million to four million viewers, though “The Walking Dead” on AMC reached what seemed then to be an impressive nine million for its finale in March.
But that did not come close to the total Monday night for the History Channel’s depiction of the legendary American family feud, which stars Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton. The viewership even dwarfed the biggest competition on the broadcast networks on Monday, NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” which brought in just over 10 million viewers.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com ...
I couldn’t get into it. Too much of a guy movie.
Both actors did a convincing job. Costner, for some reason tends to be an actor I can't really stand unless he's starring in a western, and then he's great!
I didn't even realize it was Tom Berenger playing Hatfield's violent uncle until I saw his name on the IMDB entry after the film was over. Powers Boothe, as always, is great in this genre.
My only complaint is the "Romeo and Juliet" sub-plot between Roseanne McCoy and Johnes Hatfield seems a little sappy. I wonder if this was true to history or if they added it to try and appeal to younger viewers?
Looking forward to Part 2!
I’ll have to catch a repeat of it.
I suspect the cable numbers are pretty good, since they form the basis for renewal negotiations, i.e. how much the channels will get for their content from the cable/satellite/phone company. Today's digital set-top boxes probably have the capability to send information about what's being watched back to the cable/satellite/phone companies.
I liked it.
Very interesting look at the complexities of the time. One McCoy brother a union soldier, the other confederate soldier and POW. Anse Hatfield a confederate deserter and friend of McCoy. All living in close proximity. And that was all before they got to the hog that supposedly touched it all off.
I enjoyed the episode as well....but Costners bad southern accent was distracting. (Seems he has trouble with accents...ie: Robin Hood and his bad english accent)
Don’t forget Tin Cup as the best pure golf movie either (as opposed to Caddyshack being the best golf comedy) . Still watch it before every club tournament I play in...
Dollar bills...
Have you seen the IMAX production of the Lewis and Clark expedition? Extremely well done. I highly recommend it.
When TV and Movies do good stuff, people watch.
When they do leftist propaganda stuff, people don’t watch.
The formula is relatively simple.
He was pretty ruthless in 3000 miles to Graceland opposite of Kurt Russell.
I believe Paxton got his first role in Terminator. He played one the punks that confront AH-nold in the first scene of the movie.
The Roseanne Johnes IS true. Johnes actually left her later, while she was pregnant, and married her cousin Nancy McCoy.
It would be an entire History Channel season in one episode.
Maybe you'd be more in favor if you lived in Romania, which is where they actually shot it.
cherry pie!
Actual history? I thought they didn’t know what caused the feud, much less that it was a pig. Or at least that’s what I gathered during the 30 seconds it held my attention.
Not near as much as AMC spent hyping Mad Men before it's first episode...
“Either I’m going deaf or something is seriously wrong with the sound quality or audio/mic settings used during production of this program.”
Perhaps the show is being authentic. I can barely understand anyone here much further east than Richmond.
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