A change is coming at the helm of Chicago Med: after nine seasons, co-showrunners Diane Frolov and Andy Schneider will step down at the end of the season. The duo led the Dick Wolf series to nine successful seasons on NBC. The series has continually won its 8 p.m. Wednesday time period by averaging more than 10.5 million viewers.
NCIS has been a top 20 series for 18 of its 20 full seasons and has ranked as the No. 1 drama for the last five consecutive seasons – and 13 of the last 14. Now in its 21st season, NCIS is the No. 2 entertainment program this season, trailing only Tracker on CBS. The renewal brings NCIS through its 22nd season. The Neighborhood is averaging 5.83 million viewers season to date and is TV’s third-ranked comedy. This renewal brings the sitcom through its seventh season.
Wall Street barely budged Tuesday as it braces for Wednesday's inflation report. The dominant question hanging over Wall Street is whether inflation will cool enough to convince the Federal Reserve to deliver the cuts to interest rates that traders are craving and have been betting on.
In an unusual move, the five major broadcast and cable news networks have prepared a joint open letter that urges President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump to participate in televised debates ahead of Election Day, according to two people with direct knowledge of their plans. The letter — endorsed by ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News — thrusts into public view a question that has swirled within media and political circles: whether the presidential debates, one of the nation’s last remaining mass civic rituals in a polarized age, will occur this year at all.
Sunday’s final was watched by more people than any other basketball game in the past five years, including NBA and NCAA men’s events.
If TV is all about football these days, so are the Sports Emmys. The New York-based National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences revealed the nominations for its 45th annual Sports Emmy Awards, and the NFL Network’s NFL 360 led the pack with 11 nods — followed closely by the CBS and Nickelodeon coverage of this year's Super Bowl, with 10. Also in the hunt: ESPN’s E60 doc series and Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football, with nine each.
Spinoffs International and Most Wanted will also return on one-year pickups for 2024-25.
NBCUniversal said it has sold $1.2 billion worth of advertising in the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, putting it on track to be the gold medal winner for most ad revenue ever generated by an Olympics Games. The revenue total includes about $350 million from new advertisers. Digital ad revenue has already set a record, the company said.
CBS News and Stations is making moves to better unify CBS News, its owned stations and CBS Media Ventures, and better cover breaking news, as Wendy McMahon, president and CEO of CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures, shared at a town hall meeting today. One initiative involves building a larger coverage footprint across the country, which the company refers to as a national movement of community journalism. CBS said the following cities will get new multimedia journalists, and perhaps become what the company calls a “news hub”: Cleveland; Columbus, Ohio; Des Moines; Kansas City; Nashville; New Orleans; Raleigh, N.C.; San Antonio; St. Louis; Phoenix; Las Vegas; Houston; and Tampa.
Tennis Channel’s Petko Unfiltered will be translated into Spanish using AI tech. Sinclair commits to responsible and transparent AI practices, joins authenticity and provenance organizations CAI and C2PA.
The ownership structure shades deal talks, leaving regular shareholders with few options aside from voting with their feet.
Trump Media’s shares were hovering around $36 as of Monday morning, after closing at about $40 Friday. The latest numbers mark a steep fall for the Truth Social parent, whose shares initially climbed above $79 after going public nearly two weeks ago.
Roku has filed for a new patent that will allow it to show ads while TVs powered by its operating system are paused, event if the television is under the control of a different device ecosystem connected to it via HDMI. The scheme would allow Roku to expand its advertising business, even to those engaging with other TVOS platforms, say Apple TV, on Roku-powered TVs.
Beyond the college women's basketball tournament, the WNBA and National Women’s Soccer League have inked new rights deals that could increase exposure at a time when popularity is surging. Morry Gash/AP
Chatter about possible M&A that the David Zaslav-led company could engage in is likely to surge now that the two-year Reverse Morris Trust lockup period for big deals involving WBD has ended.
Jeremy Berg, director of digital video at NBCUniversal Local, will share the group’s unique approach to building multiplatform content for linear, streaming, podcasts and more as a highlight of TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference on Sunday, April 14, at the NAB Show in Las Vegas. Register here.
South Carolina defeated Iowa in front of a record-breaking national audience on Sunday. The NCAA Women’s Championship delivered 18.7M viewers across ABC and ESPN, which marks an 89% increase in viewership year-over-year. Not only is that the most-watched women’s college basketball game on record, the matchup is also the second most-watched non-Olympic women’s sporting event ever on U.S. television. It comes in behind only the 2015 Women’s World Cup Final, according to Nielsen data. Pictured: South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley cuts down the net after her team's 87-75 victory. (Morry Gash/AP)
New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include 13 openings in news, sales, digital and engineering.
Social media stars who’ve parlayed content niches into massive, cross-platform audiences will share their unique approaches to content creation in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference at the NAB Show on April 14. Register here.
Morris Multimedia’s WWAY Wilmington secured Center for Quality Care as an interactive sponsor for its Weather Photo of the Day user-generated content (UGC) segment. Sponsored UGC segments can be a great source of revenue for local broadcasters and an excellent opportunity for brands looking to drive instant leads and sales.
Companies may now create master accounts, buy TVN Plus subscriptions in bulk and assign “sub-accounts” to their executives, managers and professionals. Try it here.
