Programming

Amazon is planning to launch an advertising-supported tier of its Prime Video streaming service as it looks to further build its ad business and generate more revenue from entertainment, according to people familiar with the situation. The discussions, which the people said are in the early stages and have been going on over the past several weeks, come in the wake of cost-cutting reviews across the company’s businesses, resulting in tens of thousands of layoffs.

NBC’s America’s Got Talent easily led Tuesday both in the demo and in total viewers with 6 million/0.6). Superman & Lois (666,000/0.1) inched up to its best audience since April 4 (and third-largest of the season), with just two episodes left to go.

#PayUpHollywood, the organization founded in 2019 to promote pay equity for Hollywood’s assistants, said Wednesday that it has relaunched its Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund as a permanent emergency fund to aid film and TV support staff impacted by the ongoing Writers Guild strike and any other industry work stoppages in the future.

Tiffany Haddish is expanding into unscripted series after inking a development deal with the Hearst Media Production Group. The Emmy-winning actress, comedian and author will initially executive produce two original unscripted series. The first is a documentary about successful women who had long romantic relationships with homeless men.

The CW is the new home for Inside the NFL. The show debuted on HBO in 1977 and moved to Showtime in 2008, then Paramount Plus in 2021. In its broadcast TV debut, Inside the NFL premieres on The CW Tuesday, Sept. 5. It will be season 47.

The GM of Fox’s Houston duopoly will now also head programming for the streaming network.

The company says the quarterly report provides streaming metrics at the local market level for the first time.

The PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia-backed challenger LIV Golf avoided calling their proposed partnership a merger. But their shock announcement is already raising serious concerns with US and European antitrust enforcers, according to people familiar with the matter. The tie-up, which was announced Tuesday, is being viewed by officials as a brazen play loaded with red flags, not the least of which is creating a giant monopoly in an industry that had only recently gained a competitor, said the people, who asked not be identified discussing non-public matters.

Tucker Carlson launched his promised new show, Tucker on Twitter, Tuesday with talk of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, UFOs, who killed JFK and what really went down on 9/11 — and the one-time Fox News host was a hit. In just over four hours, the low-tech 10-minute video posted on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform attracted 27 million views.

The CW, which is under new ownership following Nexstar’s acquisition last year, is developing its own true-crime strand. Heather Olander, head of unscripted programming at The CW, said Tuesday that the network is currently working on its own version of NBC’s Dateline, CBS’s 48 Hours and ABC’s 20/20. “What’s nice about true crime is it also can be scaled, you can do a lot of episodes, and it’s very efficient,” she said.

The Directors Guild of America’s national board of directors has unanimously approved the tentative agreement reached by the guild’s negotiating committee late Saturday, a deal that aims to set parameters around the use of artificial intelligence and boost streaming residual rates. With the board’s approval, the contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers will be sent to a ratification vote by DGA membership. The guild expects to send materials to its members this week.

Two of the program categories most immediately impacted by the Writers Guild of America strike registered advertising-revenue growth in the first quarter before the picket lines went up and production stopped. According to MediaRadar, ad spending on TV talk shows was $221.4 million in the first quarter, up 11% from a year ago. Spending on soap operas was $59.4 million in the first quarter, up 23%.

After that, the newly merged golf entity’s broadcast rights need to be hammered out.

NBC’s American Ninja Warrior (3 million/0.4) tied ABC’s Celebrity Family Feud (3.5M/0.4)rerun for the Monday demo win, while the latter also delivered the night’s biggest audience.

the PGA Tour and European tour agreed to a merger with Saudi Arabia’s golf interests, creating a commercial operation designed to unify professional golf around the world. As part of the deal, the sides are dropping all lawsuits involving LIV Golf against each other effective immediately.

ABC is working to bring back Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to the network after the format’s brief dalliance with HGTV. The network is developing a reboot of the series, which ran on ABC between 2004 and 2012, with Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, who created global lifestyle brand The Home Edit.

The membership of SAG-AFTRA has voted overwhelmingly to approve a strike authorization, maximizing the guild’s leverage ahead of negotiations that begin on Wednesday. The guild announced Monday night that 97.91% of the voting members supported the authorization. Turnout was 47.69%. The vote comes as the Writers Guild of America strike enters its sixth week.

Citytv has greenlit a crime drama set in Canada’s largest city and based on Dick Wolf’s mega-franchise.