Last week ought to have been the week when the big talent-contest shows, American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, were trouncing everything in sight. To be sure, they still represented potent factors on the Nielsen ratings list, but they were no longer the force that they once had been. Indeed, the most-watched show of the week remained CBS’s stalwart, NCIS, which attracted 18.2 million viewers. The performance installment of American Idol on Wednesday was only the second-most-watch show with 16.5 million viewers. (In a ratings anomaly, it was actually edged out for second place on the Nielsen list by ABC’s Dancing with the Stars with 16.4 million viewers.) An Associated Press report noted that the series finale of ABC’s Desperate Housewives went out in style on Sunday night with 11.1 million viewers — but it wound up in 15th place. Among the nightly newscasts, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams remained on top with 7.95 million viewers. ABC World News with Diane Sawyer remained a contender with 7.37 million viewers, while the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley trailed with 5.73 million. For the week, CBS again led with a 6.3 household rating and an 11 share. ABC placed second with a 5.1/9. Fox followed with a 4.5/8, while NBC trailed with a 3.6/6.

The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research:
1. NCIS, CBS, 11.7/19; 2. Dancing with the Stars (Monday), ABC, 10.6/16; 3. American Idol (Wednesday), Fox, 10.0/16; 4. American Idol (Thursday), Fox, 9.5/16; 5. NCIS: Los Angeles, CBS, 9.2/14; 6. Dancing with the Stars (Tuesday), ABC, 9.0/14; 7. The Big Bang Theory, CBS, 8.2/15; 8. Person of Interest, CBS, 8.1/13; 9. The Mentalist, CBS, 8.0/13; 10. Castle, ABC, 7.9/13.

The debut of Howard Stern on America’s Got Talent failed to boost ratings for the flagging talent show. In fact, the season premiere saw ratings plunge 30 percent from a year ago — to 10.3 million viewers, according to overnight Nielsens — versus the series’ season premiere a year ago. However, the Los Angeles Times noted that Talent opened earlier this year than last and thus faced tougher competition than it did then. For NBC, which remains the lowest-rated broadcast network, the results must have proved disappointing — particularly given the network’s nonstop promotions for Stern’s debut. Commenting on Stern’s performance, the Times observed, “It seems we can look forward to him being, at turns, self-effacing and self-promoting, sincere and sassy, surprisingly in command and sometimes downright sentimental.”

Until now, DISH network’s plan to provide DVRs to subscribers that will allow them to skip commercials automatically has received a muted response from network executives. But CBS chief Les Moonves warned today (Wednesday) that his network plans to battle DISH over the DVRs. “They can’t just take our signal and change it and put on a black spot where our commercials were,” Moonves said during a news conference as he unveiled the network’s new fall schedule. DISH’s new “Hopper” DVR allows users to bypass commercials without having to use their remotes to do so. Moonves warned that unless DISH disables the devices, he plans to yank CBS programs from the satellite operator. Referring to the chairman of DISH, Moonves asked, “How does Charlie Ergen expect me to produce CSI without ads?”

At a time when the major studios seem to be vying to produce the most expensive and gigantic blockbusters in history, a slight, charming film about a pair of tweens discovering first love appeared to captivate critics as it opened the Cannes Film Festival today (Wednesday). At a news conference, the stars of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, who include Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban and Edward Norton — many of whom have appeared together in Wes Anderson movies before — talked about their modest and casual working conditions. It was all like a “fun adventure,” said Murray. Norton remarked that he had always fantasized about becoming part of a company of actors like Orson’s Welles’s Mercury Theater Players. “I used to dream about how fun it would be to be in a troupe like that.” For him, making the movie was like “being in summer camp,” he said. “Every movie that we start is like a bigger reunion,” Anderson himself said. The actors talked about wearing their own clothes and putting on their own makeup. The film was shot in Super 16mm, sometimes with cameras that were so small that they had to be handheld, and as a result, Anderson said, “they gave us a freedom that was something new to us.” Some day, Anderson said, he will probably be forced to make movies with digital cameras — even Technicolor is getting out of processing film, he observed; however, he said, digital is “no substitute” for film. But of course the movie is being transferred to digital media and will be screened with digital projectors. Being a throwback to Hollywood’s past, it would appear, can only go so far. The film is due to open domestically on May 25.

Warner Bros. is going all-out to promote its 70th anniversary edition of the Humphrey Bogart/Ingrid Bergman classic Casablanca including a one-night-only streaming of the movie on Facebook on May 16 — free. Warner Bros. Digital Distribution said that it will stream at 7:00 p.m. in the Eastern and Western time zones, but it was not clear whether that meant that viewers in the West would be able to watch the movie at 4:00 p.m. and viewers in the East, at 10:00 p.m. To make matters even more confusing, the company said that viewing must begin “within two hours of the Pacific start time.” The free availability of the movie comes following the release of the Blu-ray/DVD combo package of Casablanca, containing almost everything you wanted to know about the movie, including the documentaries Casablanca: An Unlikely Classic; Michael Curtiz: The Greatest Director You Never Heard of; The Brothers Warner; You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story and Jack L. Warner: The Last Mogul. If that still doesn’t satisfy film buffs, there’s also an ebook being released called Inside the Script, containing Hal Wallis’s shooting script and additional items including Warner Bros. founder Jack Warner’s telegrams and memos concerning the movie.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator is arriving today (Wednesday),, instead of on Friday, in an apparent effort to avoid the fate of several fellow dictators of late. The relatively low-budget comedy is arriving at a time when the box office is deluged with $100-200-million blockbusters. Baron Cohen has been relentlessly promoting the movie for months — on the red carpet at the Oscars, on a host of TV talk shows, on an extravagant website, and even at Cannes, where the movie is not being screened but where an impressive ad for it covers the entrance to one of the classy hotels in Cannes during the current film festival. (Baron Cohen also rode a camel down the Cruoisette.) Reviews have been mixed but tip toward the favorable. Roger Ebert begins his review in the Chicago Sun-Times with these words: “The Dictator is funny, in addition to being obscene, disgusting, scatological, vulgar, crude and so on. … He establishes a claim to be the best comic filmmaker now working.” Likewise Michael Phillips dispenses with all the conflicting adjectives to describe the movie, settling on “maddeningly uneven.” However, he continues, “I stuck with it, though, because Cohen at his best is both brazen and sly.” And Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News suggests that audiences will share her conflicted feelings about the movie: “The easily offended will be appalled. The rarely offended may be appalled. But they’ll have to stop laughing long enough to realize it.” But A.O. Scott in the New York Times is not amused, insisting that most of the jokes “fall flat” and are “half-baked.” He concludes, “The main insult of The Dictator is how lazy it is.” But most reviewers — those praising the movie and those frowning on it — agree that a scene in which the dictator delivers a speech about the failings of fascism is worth the price of admission. Comments Peter Howell in the Toronto Star: “It’s one of the few times when a single scene redeems an entire movie.”

CNN is getting into the movie business. The website TVNewser.com reported on Monday that the cable news network is planning to develop “tentpole” documentaries under the banner CNN Films to be distributed theatrically and air on television — presumably over its own channel. They are expected to cover a variety of subjects. The first movies, which will have limited theatrical releases and hit film festivals, are expected to debut in 2013, according to the website. CNN declined to comment on the report.