Programming

The seven-year agreement will take effect in 2022 and includes a Tuesday night game as well as additional postseason games. It also includes expanded digital rights for Bleacher Report and other WarnerMedia platforms. Turner will pay an average of $470 million per season.

Chris Rock will host the Oct. 3 season premiere of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, with Megan Thee Stallion as musical guest. The announcement was made by SNL in a tweet today.

Pete Bevacqua, who joined NBC Sports in 2018 as its first president in nearly a decade, has been elevated to the top role at the NBCUniversal-owned unit. Bevacqua, the former CEO of the Professional Golf Association, was named chairman of NBC Sports Group, filling a role that was vacated when Mark Lazarus took on a bigger role within the parent company.

The season premieres of the two comedies back a week. Superstore will debut on Oct. 29 rather than Oct. 22, and Connecting…, a COVID-era show from Blindspot creator Martin Gero and Brendan Gall, is set for Oct. 8 instead of Oct. 1.

Following last year’s weekday test, Debmar-Mercury’s syndicated magazine will launch for the full 2020-21 season with two original weekly half-hour episodes.

Fox’s animation will be dominating for the foreseeable future: Sunday-night staples Family Guy and Bob’s Burgers have each been renewed for two more seasons, the network announced Wednesday. Family Guy has been picked up for Seasons 20 and 21, while Bob’s Burgers will be back for Seasons 12 and 13. Each show will now run through at least 2023.

NBC is moving up the premiere date of This Is Us to Nov. 10, giving it one of the earliest debuts of any network “fall” drama as production starts to ramp up.

Hank Price: “I, for one, did not expect Ellen’s initial nervousness and lack of comfort [in her first show of the new season].  The past few weeks must have been far more difficult than anyone imagined.  Instead of naturalness, Ellen had to call on her inner reserves and go into full actor mode. A highly placed executive who is not part of the show told me: “No one looked more relieved than Ellen when it was over.”

ABC’s Dancing With the Stars‘ special Tuesday outing featuring Season 29’s first elimination delivered 5.85 million total viewers and a 1.0 demo rating, down 27% and 23%, respectively, from its opener but still topping the night in the demo.

North Carolina officials have approved a quintet of film and television projects to being filmed in the state as a part of its 25% rebate on production expenses, with shooting starting by the end of October. The news was announced Tuesday, six months after almost the entire entertainment industry halted production due to the COVID-19 pandemic. State officials said the new projects will generate a direct in-state spend of more than $107 million while creating 8,671 job opportunities, including 650 crew positions for the state’s film professionals.

Liv Tyler has opted out of season two of Fox’s 911: Lone Star. The actress, who had a multiple-year deal for the Fox procedural, will not return to the Tim Minear drama amid issues related to the coronavirus pandemic. Tyler had previously commuted from London to Los Angeles, where the Austin-set series is filmed.

NBCUniversal has promoted Janine Jones-Clark to executive vice president, inclusion – talent and content, NBCUniversal Film, Television and Streaming, the company announced on Tuesday. Jones-Clark will retain oversight of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group’s diversity, inclusion and equity strategies, and will add NBCUniversal’s entertainment, streaming and television studio teams to her purview.

The CW announced Tuesday that its Melissa Benoist-led Arrow spinoff Supergirl will conclude with its upcoming sixth season. The final season, which is slated to return to production later this month in Vancouver, will consist of 20 episodes and premiere in 2021.

With channels like E!, Oxygen and Syfy on borrowed time, the media company pushes deep cuts and centralizes program decisions.

The comedy and winner of nine Emmys this week will debut in national syndication on Sept. 28.

Paramount Network is shifting strategies — and changing names. Variety has learned that the ViacomBS-owned cable net is planning to move out of long form series television and instead focus its efforts on made-for-TV movies featuring big name stars. To that end, the network will be rebranded as the Paramount Movie Network. The rebrand will take place globally within the next year.

The long-running morning favorite shot up 27% in the week ending Sept. 13 from the previous frame to a six-week high 1.9 live-plus-same-day national Nielsen rating. That was good enough to tie a steady Dr. Phil for first place in talk.

the debut of L.A.’s Finest on Fox delivered 2.9 million total viewers and a 0.5 rating, landing in a three-way tie for Monday’s second best demo number (behind ABC’s share of Monday Night Football).

When Sterling K. Brown joked at Sunday’s Emmys that he was going to show up for work “tomorrow”… he was close. This Is Us is poised to start production on its upcoming Season 5 on Thursday, Sept. 24, sources confirm. A rep for the show declined to comment.