Fox’s Our Kind of People wrapped its freshman run with 1.3 million total viewers (its best audience in four episodes) and a 0.3 demo rating (ticking up a tenth week-to-week). On NBC, This Is Us (4.6M/0.7) dipped yet still led Tuesday.
‘Dr. Phil’ Has The Rx For Syndi Health
In the week ending Jan. 16, the talker hit a new season high, up 33% over the previous three weeks.
The Sony-based studio has tapped Dr. Jennifer Turner to serve as EVP, filling the void created in November when former division topper Kathryn Busby departed to head originals at Lionsgate’s Starz. In her new role, Turner will report to Sony Pictures TV Studios Co-President Jason Clodfelter.
ESPN is contemplating a pursuit of legendary play-by-player Al Michaels for Monday Night Football. The potential interest in returning Michaels, 77, to his TV football home — he was the longtime voice of MNF — comes as Michaels is deep into negotiations with Amazon Prime Video about becoming the main voice of its exclusive Thursday Night Football package that begins next fall, according to sources.
Exclusives
Bills-Chiefs Is Most-Watched TV Program Since Super Bowl
Last weekend’s four NFL playoff games averaged 38.2 million TV and digital viewers, up 20% over last year and the best ever for the league’s divisional round of playoffs, Nielsen said on Tuesday. Blessed with the weekend’s best game, and in the evening, CBS won the week, averaging 10.4 million viewers in primetime. Fox had 7.9 million, ABC had 4.1 million, NBC had 3.1 million, Univision had 1.5 million, Ion Television had 1.1 million and Telemundo had 940,000. Fox News Channel led the cable networks with an average of 2.38 million viewers in prime time.
On the podcast Howie Mandel Does Stuff, he tells Leno he should have publicly defended himself in the Tonight Show rivalries of decades past, when Leno and David Letterman and then Leno and Conan O’Brien tussled over the plum job of host.
Republican leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have sent a letter to NBCUniversal executives voicing concerns about “the extent of influence the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) may have over NBCUniversal’s coverage of the games.” the letter, addressed to NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell and NBC Olympics President Gary Zenkel, asks NBC how it plans to use its “investment in the Games to shed light on China’s history of human rights abuses.”
Jorja Fox is leaving CBS’s CSI: Vegas ahead of the second season of the CSI revival spinoff series. She tweeted: “I personally just can’t split Sara and Grissom up again. So goes Grissom…..So goes Sara. Wherever they go, they belong together.” Fox is referring to her co-star William Petersen only signing on for the first 10-episode season of the show, reprising his original CSI role as Gil Grissom, the husband of her CSI character, Sara Sidle.
Looking to try to grab a big audience for springtime professional football, the new USFL’s first regular season game will be broadcast live by both NBC and Fox in primetime on April 16. NBC Sports and Fox have split the broadcast rights to the new league under multiyear deals. The game will feature the New Jersey General playing the Birmingham Stallions at Protective Stadium in Birmingham, Ala.
ABC’s Promised Land premiered to barely 1.9 million total viewers and a 0.2 demo rating, well below the lowest numbers that The Good Doctor ever did (3.6M/0.4) in the time slot this fall. Opening ABC’s night, The Bachelor (3.4M/0.7) tied Fox’s 9-1-1: Lone Star and CBS’s The Neighborhood for the Monday demo win.
NBCU today pledged to hold forth from Radio City Music Hall once again, just as it has for many years before the coronavirus pandemic scuttled the in-person extravaganzas that have become so much a part of the TV networks’ annual pitch to advertisers. The owner of the NBC, MSNBC and USA networks said it would kick off the industry’s annual Upfront Week on May 16, with an evening event aimed at promoting Spanish-language outlet Telemundo, marking a return to at least some of the traditions of the annual market, when U.S. TV networks try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory for their next programming cycle.
Single-camera comedy series Maggie, originally picked up by ABC for the 2021-22 season, now will stream exclusively on sibling Hulu in the U.S. as a Hulu Original. The decision, underscoring the blurring of the lines between linear and streaming at the major media companies, was made in order to get Maggie in front of audiences instead of keeping it on the bench because of a lack of available slots on the network.
Reigning Jeopardy champion Amy Schneider is coming for Ken Jennings’ hall-of-fame spot. She may have a long way to go, but on Monday, Schneider claimed her 39th victory, making her the contestant with the second-most consecutive wins in the game show’s history. Only Jennings, who newly took over hosting duties from the late Alex Trebek, has a longer winning streak, notching an unprecedented 74 back-to-back triumphs in 2004.
he network has picked up first-year breakout Ghosts for a second season and renewed its Monday block of The Neighborhood and Bob Hearts Abishola as well. The three series join Young Sheldon, which is in the first year of a three-season pickup, on CBS’s roster next season. Led by Young Sheldon, the four shows are the most watched comedies on TV for the current season.
While the focus has been on its conservative programming rival One America News and its recent carriage struggles, Newsmax has also quietly lost distribution on a number of pay TV systems in recent weeks. It’s unclear as to whether the carriage disruptions are part of an expiration of a master carriage deal Newsmax originally signed back in 2015 with the National Cable TV Cooperative, which negotiates carriage agreements for around 700 member companies.
If she manages one more victory on Monday’s episode, the current Jeopardy phenom, Amy Schneider, will surpass Matt Amodio’s 38-game streak, making her the contestant with the second highest number of consecutive wins in the show’s history.
CBS’s broadcast of the wild, rollercoaster, overtime NFL divisional playoff game between the Chiefs and Bills averaged 34.5 million total viewers on Sunday night (per early numbers), up 20% from the comparable Bucs-Saints game on Fox a year ago. Leading out of that (starting a bit after 10 ET), the specially scheduled kickoff to NCIS: Hawai’i‘s two-parter (concluding tonight) retained 9.9 million viewers (along with a 2.2 demo rating)..
Paramount Network is safe, for now. ViacomCBS has reversed plans to rebrand the cable network, home to Kevin Costner-fronted hit series Yellowstone, as Paramount Movie Network. The company has put the plans, which first emerged in September 2020, on hold, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a major impact on production. The original strategy was to turn Paramount Network into the Paramount Movie Network, which would air 52 original movies a year with one miniseries or scripted series airing per quarter.
The new arrangement comes as a direct result of NBCUniversal’s RFP last year to social media platforms to propose new content, product and monetization approaches for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.
NBC Sports this week made the not-too-surprising announcement that much of its Beijing Olympics team would be covering next month’s Winter Games from afar, in Stamford, Conn., as the COVID pandemic once again disrupts the event. But the international outcry over human rights abuses in China, leading to a U.S. diplomatic boycott, has put extra scrutiny on how the network covers the games, starting with the telecast of the opening ceremonies on Feb. 4, with Mike Tirico hosting from Beijing and Today‘s Savannah Guthrie in the states.
Evoca, a multichannel TV service built on NextGen TV broadcast technology, is launching its service, which includes the Altitude Sports regional network, in Denver. For $25 per month plus a receiver — which costs $5 per month to rent or $250 to buy — with no contract and a guaranteed price for two years, new Evoca subscribers will get access to live games from the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche along with Colorado State University and University of Denver games. The service also includes NFL Network, Game Show Network, Curiosity Stream, Bloomberg and other channels along with access to ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates through a provided antenna.
