Programming

NBC’s on-the-bubble Manifest this week drew not quite 2.8 million total viewers — marking a new audience low — while matching last week’s series-low 0.4 demo rating. Fox’s Last Man Standing (2.5M/0.4) was flat with its hour-long series finale.

Lawmakers passed a bill named for Javier Ambler II, who died in 2019 after officers arrested him in front of a Live PD television crew. If the governor signs it, this would mean the end of police cooperation with reality TV shows.

As the daytime titan prepares to step down after a swirl of controversy, a host of big names have been thrown into the mix as her successor.

Video streaming is in an increasingly serious post-pandemic slump as far as original series hits … except for maybe Mare of Easttown on HBO Max, which Nielsen still refuses to measure.

ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy said farewell to its third series regular this season. Greg Germann, the Ally McBeal grad who has played Dr. Thomas Koracick for four seasons, exited the Shonda Rhimes-created medical drama during its May 20 episode.

She was a key behind-the-scenes figure in the landmark series Omnibus before becoming the Paley Center for Media’s first curator.

The last shift for Brooklyn’s semi-finest has an official starting point. NBC said today that the eighth and final season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine will launch with back-to-back episodes starting at 8 p.m. Thursday, August 12, and the show will air in those time slots all season. The network said last week that the Andy Samberg-led cop comedy would return during the week after the Tokyo Olympic Games, whose Closing Ceremony is set for Aug. 8.

CBS’s SEAL Team celebrated its renewal/eventual move to Paramount+ by ticking up in the demo (to a 0.5 rating) and holding steady in total audience (with 3.5 million viewers). NBC’s Chicago Fire (6.7M/0.8) dipped, though it drew Wednesday’s biggest audience.

Just in time for the unveiling of its 2021-22 schedule next week, The CW has secured its largest affiliate group for the next season and beyond. The broadcast network and Nexstar Media Group (as well as its operating partners) have reached multi-year agreements to renew CW affiliations in 37 markets across the country (28 Nexstar- and 9 partner-owned television stations), which cover more than 31% of the U.S. audience, serving more than 38 million television households.

HBO Max’s long-awaited, ad-supported tier will roll out in the first week of June, at $9.99 a month — $5 less than the ad-free version launched a year ago. The price of the less-expensive tier had been widely expected, and the company already had said June would be the launch month, without specifying a date. The ad-supported launch comes as the service begins to roll out globally, reaching dozens of territories in Latin America and elsewhere by year-end.

Bankers are already starting to salivate over what other megadeals could be in the offing following this week’s surprise pair-up of WarnerMedia and Discovery. AT&T’s desperation to drop a company that it spent $85.4 billion and a year and half in legal fights to acquire raises the immediate question of what else might be possible in an era when Wall Street is pressuring big media conglomerates to keep generating content for audiences hungry to stream their favorite dramas and comedies. (Illustration: Cheyne Gateley for Variety)

When it comes to its original series, CNN has long found a sweet spot in politics and pop culture. Whether the subject is latenight TV (The Story of Late Night), or a presidential run (Race for the White House), the channel has continued to expand its slate in those genres. Patagonia marks the network’s first natural history effort, while Nomad introduces a new host to the travel-food genre launched by Anthony Bourdain and continued by Stanley Tucci.

Fox’s Prodigal Son ended its two-season run with 1.7 million total viewers and a 0.3 demo rating — hitting and matching series lows. On NBC, The Voice (5.3M/0.5) dipped week-to-week, while This Is Us (4.7M/0.8) and New Amsterdam (3M/0.4) were steady in the demo — with the former topping Tuesday in the demo.

NCIS is a series you could set your clock by. For its entire 18-season run to date, the venerable crime drama starring Mark Harmon has had one time slot, always airing Tuesdays at 8 p.m. That is changing next season when CBS‘s most watched series will move to Monday for an FBI Tuesday lineup consisting of mothership FBI, new entry FBI: International and FBI: Most Wanted. The one-night, three-dramas, one-franchise scheduling conducive to frequent crossovers has become a Dick Wolf special, with CBS’s FBI Tuesday mirroring NBC’s One Chicago Wednesday and new Law & Order Thursday, giving the uber producer three consecutive nights across two broadcast networks.

A deal would add Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s 4,000 films to Amazon’s streaming library, including the James Bond, Rocky and Legally Blonde franchises.

While ABC programming is available on Hulu, Craig Erwich knows his broadcast network and Disney’s ad-supported streaming platform have two different audiences. The executive, who added the network to his purview last year, also opens up about how Hulu and ABC complement one another, drawing top talent to broadcast and why Rebel, the first original series from Grey’s Anatomy showrunner Krista Vernoff, was canceled after airing only five episodes.

While affiliates face significant collateral damage in the streaming wars and networks’ role in them, Disney and NBCU would be smart to invite those affiliates into their platforms as ViacomCBS has done and continue a strong, long-lucrative partnership. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

The Chuck Lorre-produced comedy starring Allison Janney ended last with her title character in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The episode attracted 6.2 million viewers, the biggest audience of its final season.

With another television season winding down, CBS was the most-watched network in primetime last week, averaging 5 million viewers. NBC had 3.7 million, ABC had 2.9 million, Fox had 2.3 million, Univision had 1.29 million, Telemundo had 1.27 million and Ion Television had 930,000. Fox News Channel led the cable networks, averaging 2.29 million viewers in primetime. MSNBC had 1.44 million, HGTV had 1.19 million, CNN had 915,000 and TNT had 905,000.

Discovery announced Tuesday it’s extended the employment contract of president and CEO David Zaslav employment contract through Dec. 31, 2027. His previous contract ran through 2023. The extension was made in connection with the definitive agreement between AT&T and Discovery Inc. to combine WarnerMedia’s entertainment, sports and news assets with Discovery to create a new standalone entertainment company. Zaslav will lead the proposed new company. Above, AT&T CEO John Stankey (l) and Zaslav at Monday’s press conference announcing the deal.

The multi-hyphenate talent will participate in an NAB Show Main Stage event and a separate Q&A session in October.

Telemundo Deportes will air exclusive Spanish-language coverage of Super Bowl LVI live on Telemundo next year from Los Angeles — calling it the first time the event will be televised on a Spanish-language broadcast network in the U.S.

“We will look at all of the sponsorships across all of our business going forward and make sure that they reflect the potential and the audience,” Rita Ferro, Disney’s ad sales chief, says.