The MindShare Top 50
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened to $360.1M, the biggest domestic weekend ever recorded, and takes No. 1 at 46.4. Across 4,487 theatres that is an $80,252 average per screen. Last week I wrote that The Odyssey's 23.9 was the lowest score any No. 1 had posted. This week's No. 1 is nearly double it. Both weeks are honest readings of the same scale: the chart measures against a rolling 52-week peak, and what changed is not the yardstick but the week. The Odyssey, seven days after becoming the first film ever to lead this chart, falls to No. 6 at 16.7. It held $51.0M in weekend three. It just ran into the biggest opening in history.
National television news is on the chart for the first time. Today enters at No. 3 and Good Morning America at No. 4, ahead of everything except Spider-Man and one Netflix documentary. ABC World News Tonight is No. 8, NBC Nightly News No. 14, CBS Mornings No. 16 and CBS Evening News No. 28. The morning shows outscore the evening newscasts, which surprised me: World News Tonight has three times the audience of Today and still finishes behind it, because two hours a morning across five mornings simply accumulates more time than a half-hour bulletin. Elsewhere Netflix's The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare debuts at No. 2 on 21.3, and music thins to 3 entries from seven. That is not a collapse: 27 artists cleared the candidate floor, about the usual number, and Morgan Wallen rose to No. 15. A record opening and six news entries pushed the bubble line to 9.1, and the middle of the music block sits just under it.
Two things changed in how this chart is scored, and one thing is missing from it. Reality and competition programming now carries more weight and national news carries less, which crosses the two over: the old table treated social co-viewing as a reason to discount reality, and that reads backwards, because being talked about is how reality generates attention. Depth also now follows what a title is rather than the platform it arrived on, so a film on a streaming service is scored as a film and not as prestige television. Both changes were written into the methodology before they were applied here, and no published chart was rescored. The missing piece: national news enters as broadcast news only. Cable news primetime is in scope but no source published per-programme figures for this week, so rather than substitute a monthly average for a weekly one I left the category off. This is what national news looks like without Fox News, MS NOW and CNN in it, and that block will look different when those numbers exist.
National television news is on the chart for the first time. Today enters at No. 3 and Good Morning America at No. 4, ahead of everything except Spider-Man and one Netflix documentary. ABC World News Tonight is No. 8, NBC Nightly News No. 14, CBS Mornings No. 16 and CBS Evening News No. 28. The morning shows outscore the evening newscasts, which surprised me: World News Tonight has three times the audience of Today and still finishes behind it, because two hours a morning across five mornings simply accumulates more time than a half-hour bulletin. Elsewhere Netflix's The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare debuts at No. 2 on 21.3, and music thins to 3 entries from seven. That is not a collapse: 27 artists cleared the candidate floor, about the usual number, and Morgan Wallen rose to No. 15. A record opening and six news entries pushed the bubble line to 9.1, and the middle of the music block sits just under it.
Two things changed in how this chart is scored, and one thing is missing from it. Reality and competition programming now carries more weight and national news carries less, which crosses the two over: the old table treated social co-viewing as a reason to discount reality, and that reads backwards, because being talked about is how reality generates attention. Depth also now follows what a title is rather than the platform it arrived on, so a film on a streaming service is scored as a film and not as prestige television. Both changes were written into the methodology before they were applied here, and no published chart was rescored. The missing piece: national news enters as broadcast news only. Cable news primetime is in scope but no source published per-programme figures for this week, so rather than substitute a monthly average for a weekly one I left the category off. This is what national news looks like without Fox News, MS NOW and CNN in it, and that block will look different when those numbers exist.