Programming

On Monday night, the ABC show’s back-to-back finale rose to a season high rating and total viewership tally. The first episode scored a 0.6 rating and 3 million total viewers, the second a 0.5 and 2.6 million. ABC has yet to make a decision no whether it will bake a second loaf of Baker and the Beauty. Earlier in the night, a Celebrity Family Feud replay scored a 0.8 and 5.1 million viewers.

Roku, a leader in the on-demand streaming world, is adding more than 100 free live and linear channels to The Roku Channel and has created a channel guide to help viewers find what they want to watch. The change, starting Monday evening, comes at a time when streaming viewing is up, particularly news viewing amid a pandemic and rioting.

Starting today, all 11 seasons of the fabled comedy/variety show, which aired on CBS  from 1967 to 1978, will stream on shoutfactorytv.com, Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV and Android apps.

All five English-language broadcast networks had heavy pre-emptions for news coverage, either local or national, on Sunday of protests over the death of George Floyd. Thus the fast national ratings below are subject to change more than usual. As it stands now, the season premieres of ABC’s Celebrity Family Feud and Press Your Luck are tied for the lead among adults 18-49, and CBS’s 60 Minutes is the most-watched show in primetime.

DirecTV could lose two CBS, one NBC, two ABC and two CW affiliates next week due to a retans fee fight with their owner, Lilly Broadcasting.

In an internal memo, ViacomCBS President of Entertainment and Youth Brands Chris McCarthy announced that all entertainment and youth brands and platforms will be going dark for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, which marks the time in which George Floyd was killed. The time will not only serve as a tribute to Floyd but as a tribute to all those who have been victims of racism including Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless others.

Herbert Stempel, the Bronx-born brainiac who became a central figure and whistleblower in the game show rigging scandals of the 1950s, a cultural turning point later chronicled in the 1994 movie Quiz Show, died April 7. He was 93.

The series will join its flagship, Big Bang Theory, on the WarnerMedia-backed streamer.

Krolik, 63, managed the RSNs for nearly 15 years, and led the group during the sale from Fox to Disney and the subsequent sale from Disney to Sinclair.

Following a labored debut last week, Labor of Love grew a little bit with its second episode, while Holey Moley retained 100% of its premiere ratings. The new Fox series scored a 0.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 1.1 million viewers, which represents a 50% increase in the former metric and a 22% increase in the latter. Earlier on the network, Celebrity Watch Party came in even at a 0.3 rating and 1.6 million viewers.

Following the news last month that Tom Ascheim would depart as head of Freeform to lead Warner Bros.’ kids and young adults division, the young adult cabler has named producer and former Netflix exec Tara Duncan as its new president. She will step into the role on June 8, overseeing strategic planning, brand development, content strategy, original programming, production, scheduling, finance, research, marketing and communications.

The most-watched sports league in the world will return, pending a sign off from health authorities, but will play in stadiums without fans and with stringent health protocols.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returned for its seventh and final season to solid numbers on Wednesday night, while CBS’ new game show Game On! won the night with its premiere. Game On, an equal parts comedy and game show from James Corden and hosted by Keegan-Michael Key, scored a 0.6 rating and 4.5 million viewers, topping the night in both metrics.

AT&T has reached a multi-year deal with Fox to allow DirecTV to offer the network’s programming in approximately 12 rural markets where the satcaster does not provide local channels.

NBC and the show’s producers say an outside review found Gabrielle Union’s complaints of racism were unfounded and had “no bearing” on the show’s decision to drop her as a judge,

CBS averaged 7.58 million viewers in primetime, down 15% from last season, Nielsen said. Second-place NBC averaged 6.5 million viewers, down 10% from last year and fourth-place ABC had 5.4 million, down 4%. Fox was up 17% to 6.3 million, primarily because the network had a package of Thursday night NFL games in the fall that it didn’t have the season before. Fox’s ratings were also juiced by showing the Super Bowl in February. CBS won in primetime again last week, averaging 4.1 million viewers.

HBO Max has cleared one of the last remaining distribution hurdles in its streaming rollout, announcing a distribution deal with Comcast, the No. 1 U.S. cable provider. The deal makes HBO Max, which launched earlier Wednesday, available to customers of Comcast’s Xfinity X1 video package and Flex, a broadband video offering that is free for Comcast subscribers.

ViacomCBS plans to institute another round of layoffs that will affect the CBS Entertainment Group. The new round of layoffs come a month after an earlier round of cuts (about 100 people), that included Sarah Babineau, head of content and creative enterprises at Comedy Central, and Smithsonian Networks President Tom Hayden.

In what is perhaps television’s most COVID-19-proof schedule for 2020-21, Fox’s MyNetworkTV is welcoming back an array of off-net staples and adding even more Dateline and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Unlike its corporate siblings at the Fox broadcast network, which is contending with coronavirus on the live sports and primetime fronts, MyNetworkTV has long been rooted in off-net syndicated fare. Seven of its 10 primetime hours a week are derived from uber-producer Dick Wolf, himself a rock of stability in an otherwise fragmenting broadcast landscape.

Almost everything else in first run was hard-pressed to improve at all amid pandemic preemptions during the week ending May 17.