The move, which starts March 23, “marks the start of a commitment and investment into topical entertainment programming” on the weekends.”
Winfrey and a group of medical experts and patients addressed the myths surrounding obesity and the growing class of weight management injectables in An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution.
Veteran programming executives and rising talk show talent from Debmar-Mercury, Telepictures, Allen Media Group, E! News and Fox Television Stations will discuss the timeless essentials of a good talker and the more unconventional — and multiplatform — ways of thinking that will take the genre forward in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference at the NAB Show on April 14. Register here.
Free TV Networks, the new company started by Jonathan Katz and backed by Warner Bros. Discovery, Lionsgate and Gray Television, said it has added new carriage agreements for its The365 and Outlaw channels with Tegna, Sunbeam and HC2-owned stations. The new distribution puts The365 in 29 new markets with carriage now in 111 million homes, or 89% of U.S. households, by the second quarter of this year.
‘Beast Games’ Competition Series From YouTuber MrBeast Ordered By Prime Video With $5 Million Payout
Prime Video has handed a series order to reality competition series Beast Games from YouTube personality MrBeast (né Jimmy Donaldson) and Amazon MGM Studios, with a $5 million grand prize – the biggest payout in TV history.
NBC is setting up another reality summer. The network has unveiled premiere dates for its summer slate including America’s Got Talent, American Ninja Warrior, Password, The Wall and Weakest Link.
Sony Pictures Television said it is launching a 60th Diamond Collection campaign to mark the three-score anniversary of the long-running answer-and-question game Jeopardy. The year-long celebration will including a new “Why Not You?” campaign to recruit contestants kicking off March 30, which is being designated as “JeoparDay!”
Cable TV’s collapse is forcing the Disney property out of its comfort zone, from hiring risky talent to a streaming gambit that ticked off the NFL.
Why CBS Thinks It Can Survive The Streaming Wars
The failure of Hollywood studios to strike a timely deal with writers and actors last summer meant the traditional fall TV season was canceled in 2023. But while all of the Big Four broadcasters experienced some Nielsen pain as a result, none took a bigger hit than CBS. George Cheeks, the president and CEO of CBS and chief content officer for news and sports at Paramount+, does not attempt to sugarcoat his network’s fourth-quarter struggle.
Winners for this year’s NAACP Image Awards — which celebrate the accomplishments of people of color in the fields of television, music, literature and film — were announced daily this week, culminating in the live telecast that aired Saturday night on CBS and BET.
CBS’s Blue Bloods was Friday’s most-watched show with 5.2 million viewers, while Fox’s Friday Night SmackDown coverage led the night in the coveted 18-49 demo.
The brackets for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament — aka “March Madness” — were revealed Sunday, bringing joy and tears in equal amounts to teams selected and shunned. The defending champions from 2023, the UConn Huskies, were announced as the No. 1 overall seed playing out of the East region.
NBC is partnering with AMC to bring select live coverage of the Paris Olympics to 160 theater locations, offering a unique communal viewing experience. Tickets for the screenings, taking place July 27-Aug. 11, will be available through AMC and Fandango.
‘9-1-1’ Grows With ABC Move
9-1-1 christened its new network with a hair over 5 million total viewers and a 0.6 demo rating, improving on its average Season 6 audience while rock-steady in the demo. It gave the ABC time slot its largest audience in at least two-and-a-half years.
The NCIS prequel series at CBS has added Mariel Molino to its cast. Malino joins previously announced series lead Austin Stowell in the series, which is titled NCIS: Origins. The series was originally ordered at CBS in January with plans to launch during the 2024-25 broadcast season. Mark Harmon, who played Gibbs for nearly two decades in the mothership series, will serve as the show’s narrator and executive producer.
The former Apple and Hulu Executive is tapped to lead the new joint venture from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Curb Your Enthusiasm is known for inviting guest actors onto the HBO improv comedy series to play versions of themselves and go toe-to-toe with Larry David’s onscreen persona. The latest actress to do so was Lori Loughlin, who came on the sixth episode of the 12th and final season to confront her post-college admissions scandal reputation in Hollywood. The setup was that Loughlin, who loves to play golf, was being black-balled from L.A. country clubs due to her role in the 2019 scandal. (Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli were among the high-profile parents charged with paying fixers to get their children into top U.S. universities, nicknamed Operation Varsity Blues by the FBI.)
While The Bear is currently in production on Season 3, sources confirm to Variety that FX is already cooking up Season 4, which will film back to back with the third season. FX renewed the Chicago-set restaurant dramedy for Season 3 in November and has not announced a Season 4 renewal.
Disney is Swift-ifying its homepage with collections of movies and TV shows like Fearless (Disney’s Version) to coincide with the streaming release of The Era’s Tour (Taylor’s Version).
Netflix debuted the sixth season of Love Is Blind on Valentine’s Day, and the show captured a lot of viewers’ hearts — or at least their eyes. The dating show easily led Nielsen’s original streaming series rankings for Feb. 12-18, drawing 907 million minutes of viewing time in the United States. It also finished third overall, behind library shows Bluey (1.17 billion minutes on Disney+) and Young Sheldon (1 billion on Netflix and Max). Those two swapped spots from the previous week.
NCAA’s “March Madness,” the three-week men’s college basketball tournament on CBS and Turner cable networks and platforms, has seen TV advertising price increases of mid- to high-single digit percentage gains with overall ad-revenue volume of similar percentage hikes.
‘Survivor’ And ‘Abbott’ Rise, ‘Amazing Race’ Returns Bigger
CBS’s Survivor was Wednesday’s most-watched and highest-rated show, with NBC’s #OneChicago still in rerun mode.
ABC is piloting a new Alzheimer’s comedy starring and exec produced by Ty Burrell. The project, which comes from Punky Brewster duo Eugene Garcia-Cross and Robin Shorr, is now moving forward.
The NFL-owned cable channel and its streaming service NFL+ will stream the slate of live games starting next month.
With shows like Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building showing up on Disney’s ABC, legacy media companies are finding that exposure on TV networks can help expand the audience for their streaming series — and avoid leaving money on the table.