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"Seinfeld" is arguably the greatest sitcom to ever air on network television, so it would follow that its core-four ensemble ranks as one of the most brilliant casts in the history of the form. Over its nine seasons, the "show about nothing" made us howl over such mundane experiences as waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant, trying to find your car in a parking garage, and ordering soup.

It's impossible to conceive of a better version of "Seinfeld," but fans of the series have likely wondered every now and then what might've happened had show co-creator Larry David opted to play George Costanza, the character based on his real-life friendship with the show's titular star. Though David was a relative unknown to television viewers at the time, he'd performed on "Fridays" and "Saturday Night Live," and was a seasoned stand-up comedian. Seinfeld had only acted in a handful...

41 years ago, HBO, then the most subscribed-to pay cable network in the United States, decided to expand its original programming (which consisted largely of stand-up comedy specials and boxing) with the uplifting, based-on-real-life film "The Terry Fox Story." Though it didn't set the world on fire, the movie did receive decent reviews, which gave competing premium cable channels the itch to try their hand at making movies of their own.

And so, in 1984, Showtime took a crack at film production with a zany comedy called "The Ratings Game." While this film was notable at the time for being the channel's first original movie, it's now most significant for being Danny DeVito's directorial debut. If this is the first you're hearing of "The Ratings Game," there's a good reason for that. It's a sporadically funny film based around a dated Nielsen ratings scam that's basically Mel Brooks' "The Producers" for television.

In the new Netflix documentary “Sly,” Sylvester Stallone reflects on a time in his career when he felt he lost his way — basically, a rare period during which he wasn’t making “Rocky” or “Rambo” movies. To hear Stallone tell it, taking a break from his two signature roles was misguided folly, corrected only when he wrote and directed “Rocky Balboa” in 2006 and followed it up with a new “Rambo” two years later.

“Sly” director Thom Zimny seems to more or less accept this version of film history, and if one’s only measure of value is box office grosses the idea has some validity; there’s no arguing with the fact that whenever Stallone strayed too far from his franchises (after “Rocky” and “Rambo” he managed to find one more with the “Expendables” series), audiences tended to stay away. Zimny doesn’t even need to spend much time on...

Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman's on-screen collaborations are always fun, such as in films like "Matilda" and "The Ratings Game." Despite having small roles, DeVito and Perlman elevate the comedy in "10 Items Or Less" with their funny and charming portrayal of Big D and Mrs. D. Perlman's guest appearance on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" in 2023 continued their history of working together on projects for film and television.

Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman's history extends much further back than their Hollywood careers and on-screen collaborations, but they have appeared in eight movies and TV shows together. Originally, the pair began dating in 1971, going on to get married in 1982 and having three children together. After 30 years of marriage and more than 40 years together, the pair decided to separate in 2012 but appeared to overcome their issues and got back together in 2013 before separating again in 2017. Despite the challenges, Perlman revealed...

In Hollywood it only takes one role to turn you into an icon, and one moment to take it all away. Long before cancel culture was a phrase, one iconic celebrity had a meltdown of epic proportions that helped usher in the age of the viral video. As many TV stars have found out, life after a hugely successful show can be quite tough for some. With Julia Louis-Dreyfus winning countless Emmy’s, Jason Alexander returning to his stage roots and Jerry Seinfeld continuing his legendary stand up career, its time we find out what happened to the other member of Seinfeld’s iconic cast: Wtf Happened to Michael Richards? Ya know… Kramer!

But as always we must begin at the beginning and the beginning began on his birthday July 24, 1949 in Culver City, California. After starting on the stand up circuit in 1979, Richards career would take off when he was...

In 1984, Danny DeVito made one of the most assured and entertaining directorial debuts in comedy history when he helmed The Ratings Game, a hilarious satire that premiered on Showtime only to disappear from circulation in the decades that followed. The movie tells the story of a New Jersey trucking mogul (DeVito) who moves to Los Angeles with dreams of making it in the TV business. When he falls in love with a woman (Rhea Perlman) who works for a ratings service, he figures out a way to rig the system in his favor, rising to the top with a […]...

The Ratings Game is a weeklong series exploring what the new world of TV ratings means for your favorite shows. As a kid growing up in the 1980s, a few things were guaranteed to bring instant happiness: a fresh roll of quarters and an open Ms. Pac-Man machine, the fall preview issue of TV Guide, the voice of Ernie Anderson informing me this week’s The Love Boat would be a two-hour event. Nothing, however, delivered more consistent joy to my latch-key childhood than page three of the "Life" section in the Wednesday edition of USA Today: The paper printed a full, night-by-night Nielsen ratings chart every week. I marveled as Cheers transformed from also-ran to juggernaut, watched in horror as Moonlighting frittered away its once substantial numbers, and mourned the inability of Amazing Stories to ever really find an audience. Every kid loved watching TV, but I also enjoyed...

The Ratings Game is a weeklong series exploring what the new world of TV ratings means for your favorite shows. Outside of the casket industry, where the core product is designed to be used once and then buried deep in the ground, there is no business model more in thrall to failure and the extravagant waste of resources than that of broadcast TV. For every new scripted series that earns a renewal, another three don't see a second season. Whether it’s the $8 million drama pilot that never cracks the prime-time lineup or the established show that can no longer meet its ratings guarantees, failure can be a very expensive proposition. But as live-tv viewing continues to erode at a dizzying clip, it has become increasingly difficult for network executives to establish a benchmark for futility.According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, 35 of the 62 scripted series currently airing on the...

The Ratings Game is a weeklong series exploring what the new world of TV ratings means for your favorite shows. As we reported earlier this week, the rapidly changing way viewers consume TV these days is forcing networks to adapt how they measure shows — and success. Series that once would’ve been yanked after a couple weeks are being given more time to find an audience, and networks are figuring out fresh ways to make money off of these new viewing platforms. One exec called these different streams “puzzle pieces,” and said his job was to figure out how they all fit together. To better illustrate that point, Vulture decided to take a look at three shows on Fox’s Sunday-night comedy lineup. Geared toward young men, and competing against football on NBC and a slew of big cable dramas, the lineup doesn’t generate big overnight ratings. But with...

The Ratings Game is a weeklong series exploring what the new world of TV ratings means for your favorite shows. Vulture asked Kurt Sutter, Adam Pally, Liz Tigelaar, and more to tell us what the cold weekly judgment of their hearts and souls feels like. Jeff Probst, host and executive producer of SurvivorMy history with ratings anxiety has an unusual beginning. Survivor premiered in 2000. It was my big break, my first network show, and I didn’t know a thing about television ratings. Our season finale was watched by 52 million people. I had no idea how big a deal that was. So I woke up, saw the ratings, and thought, Ah, cool. Fifty-two million. Total naïveté. It’s akin to flying first-class on your first flight. Over the last 16 years, we’ve been very fortunate to consistently win our Wednesday-night time slot, but every Thursday morning, it is still the...

The Ratings Game is a weeklong series exploring what the new world of TV ratings means for your favorite shows. Almost every artistic endeavor in Hollywood comes attached to a ranking of some sort, a numerical report card that allows the town to declare said project a success or failure — and then gossip about it endlessly. Whether it’s Monday morning box office or the overnight Nielsens, everything gets judged. The one exception to this Tinseltown truism: Netflix. Three years after House of Cards announced its arrival as a programming powerhouse, the streaming-video pioneer has managed to mostly keep secret all but the most basic bits of information about how series perform with its subscribers. And it’s not just the media or the public in in the dark: Producers of Netflix originals claim to know precious little about who’s watching their shows. This almost unprecedented lack of data...

The Ratings Game is a weeklong series exploring what the new world of TV ratings means for your favorite shows. I’m what the TV business calls a non-writing executive producer on Fresh Off the Boat and The Grinder. What does that mean? I like to compare myself to a restaurant manager: I’m a part of putting these things together from the beginning — from idea to script and then staffing and crewing, I do everything I can on a daily basis to keep these shows running and on the air. Plus, I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by incredibly talented people like Nahnatchka Khan, Randall Park, Constance Wu, Jarrad Paul and Andy Mogel, Rob Lowe, Fred Savage, and my partner of many years, Jake Kasdan. And along with all employees of the network TV business, my fate is determined by the daily arrival of ratings. People often compare...

The Ratings Game is a weeklong series exploring what the new world of TV ratings means for your favorite shows. As recently as the mid-2000s, measuring the popularity of a TV show was an incredibly uncomplicated proposition. Each morning, just before noon on the West Coast, the iconic research company Nielsen issued a report listing the previous evening’s most- (and least-) watched programs. The higher a series ranked on the list, the better. “You could just look at the numbers and say, ‘That show is worthy, and that show is not,’” one TV-industry veteran remembers. “It was a pretty simple formula.” But in a development that could prove to be good news for viewers, the calculus involved in determining success or failure for TV shows has grown infinitely more complex. The rapid rise of nontraditional viewing platforms such as Netflix and video on demand means networks now operate...

The Ratings Game is a weeklong series exploring what the new world of TV ratings means for your favorite shows. To kick things off is Liz Meriwether, creator of Fox's New Girl. Hey, everyone! I hear you want to know about the Nielsen ratings? Sure! I created a network television show, which obviously means I’m an expert in everything. The Nielsen ratings are a way of measuring how many viewers are watching a TV show live. For those younger people reading, a television is a large electronic box that hangs on the wall or is freestanding in what is sometimes called a media center, which is a late-20th-century term for big cabinet. If you can believe it, you turn on that television at the exact moment that a television show starts. You can’t be late. Just like an airplane or a train! Then you watch the commercials.

There aren’t a lot of shows with the ratings history of Heroes that would spawn a revival/respawn/sequel. While the show launched to huge ratings, and had an impressive first season, it continually declined for the rest of its run, ultimately falling far enough that by the fourth season it wasn’t any surprise that the show was going.

Apart from the pure ratings approach to popularity, there was something of a backlash before long, and though a solid base of fans complained when the show left, it wasn’t in the pop culture spotlight.

Now, after some 8 years have gone, the show returns with Heroes Reborn.

It isn’t quite the next greatest thing, mostly because it has too much to do, and there’s no way to fit it all in, but it isn’t going to disappoint fans, and it balances the mystery with the...

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HollywoodNews.com: Danny DeVito, star of the hit TV show It’S Always Sunny In Philadelphia, a veteran of numerous television and films and an Emmy® and Golden Globe® award winner, was honored today with his first-ever star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on the occasion of his 40th anniversary in show business and the launch of Season 6 of the popular original FX series on Blu-ray and DVD on September 13.

DeVito is one of the entertainment industry’s most versatile players, excelling as actor, producer and director. He wrote, directed and produced several short films in his early Hollywood years before emerging as a feature-length filmmaker. Dark comedic themes characterize his trademark films, including “The Ratings Game,” “Throw Momma From the Train,” “The War of the Roses,” “Hoffa” and “Matilda.”

DeVito is the principal of Jersey Film’s 2nd Avenue, a predecessor company of Jersey Films which has produced more than 20 motion pictures,...