Programming

Patrick Morris, Phil McGraw’s personal attorney, is speaking out against accusations of a toxic workplace environment against the long-running daytime talk show Dr. Phil. A dozen current and former employees of the long-running series spoke to BuzzFeed News about the verbal abuse, fear, intimidation and racism they faced behind the scenes of the production.

For the first time in the show’s run, Prime Video is not dropping the entire season in one fell swoop. Instead, the streamer is adopting a more traditional weekly-release format, albeit with a twist: Two new episodes of the eight-episode season will debut each Friday (beginning Feb. 18) for four consecutive weeks. And series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino could not be happier about the development.

Nearly 10 years after it signed off, Futurama has been revived for a 20-episode run on Hulu, the third platform for the animated comedy from creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. The series that aired its first five seasons on Fox before being revived for three more at Comedy Central will return to production this month for a 2023 premiere. Original creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen will return alongside voice stars Billy West and Katey Sagal, among others.

ESPN and The Walt Disney Co. said they reached an expanded agreement with Peyton Manning and his Omaha Productions. The new deal adds a fourth 10-game season of Monday Night Football with Peyton & Eli, which appeared opposite Monday Night Football on ESPN2.

For the second straight Olympics, the emotional health of athletes performing on the biggest stage has become a focus of discussion. The experiences of gymnast Simone Biles and tennis player Naomi Osaka last summer were fresh in the mind of NBC’s critics, and the online blowback was fierce after Mikaela Shiffrin skied out for the second time in Beijing.

Maggie Mull, co-creator of the upcoming Hulu comedy series Maggie, has signed a multi-year overall deal at 20th Television. At the studio, she will continue working on Maggie while also creating new series and supervising other live-action and animated comedies for all platforms. Mull’s previous credits include writing and producing on Fox’s vFamily Guy and the CBS series Life in Pieces.

Among the six events scheduled are the group’s first NATPE Hollywood in June, providing new benefits for members and focusing on new business opportunities in television, streaming and film. The annual IRIS Awards are slotted during the upfronts in New York on May 17.

Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated West Side Story will makes its streaming debut on Disney+ in the U.S. and most international countries on March 2, the streamer announced today. In addition, an ABC one-hour special called Something’s Coming: West Side Story – A Special Edition of 20/20 is available to stream on Disney+ now.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has put one of its members on probation while it investigates claims of sexual misconduct.

Amid the rising popularity of NFL games this season, one industry estimate predicts the Super Bowl’s live TV viewership will return to growth — rising between 110 million and 117 million viewers, according to PredictHQ, a marketing “demand forecasting” company. At 117 million viewers, that would be 20% higher than last year’s results, which pulled in 97.3 million viewers when totaling linear TV and streaming TV results, according to Nielsen.

Wendy Williams will not be returning to her daytime talk show this season, but the future of her show remains in flux. Meanwhile, Sherri Shepherd is in advanced discussions with Lionsgate’s Debmar-Mercury for her own daytime talk show, which could potentially replace Williams’ series, sources say.

Byron Allen, founder, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group and Entertainment Studios, is unyielding in his efforts to get corporate America to spend 15% of its ad budgets on Black-owned media and redress generations of inequity, including a yawning absence of minority-owned media. “America should not be proud of the fact in 2022 you are looking at the one and only Black person in America that owns Big Four network affiliates,” he says.

ABC is planning a spinoff of The Rookie with Niecy Nash set to star. The new show will be introduced in a two-episode backdoor pilot during The Rookie’s current fourth season. While the mothership show focuses on the LAPD, the potential new show would focus on the FBI.

This year, Disney will hold an in-person upfront presentation at Basketball City at Pier 36 in New York’s Lower East Side, according to a memo sent by ad sales and partnerships chief Rita Ferro to the company’s clients Tuesday. Ferro told clients that the new May 17 event would be “unlike anything you’ve ever seen from Disney.”

The top-rated game show slipped 2% to a 6.5 live-plus-same-day national Nielsen rating, even though its champion contestant was upset in a last-second thriller on Jan.27 after 40 consecutive victories.