Programming

Her self-titled syndicated series has been renewed for a second season, with CBS-owned TV stations serving as the flagship station group. The pickup comes on the heels of a decent ratings bump in the early part of 2021.

NBC’s This Is Us returned from its latest mini-hiatus to 4.8 million total viewers and a 0.8 demo rating, slipping to new series lows but tying CBS’s NCIS for the Tuesday demo win.

This is the 10th year that CBS and Turner have teamed up for March Madness. While the deal provides the NCAA with its largest source of revenue, it has also turned a profit for both networks as well as benefiting fans because all of the games are available nationally. The success of the partnership, which will last until at least 2032, has exceeded the expectations of CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus.

The CBS talk show will stay on hiatus for another week after a discussion about racism involving co-host Sharon Osbourne went off the rails last week. Osbourne reacted with anger and profanity when asked to talk about her support and friendship with British TV personality Piers Morgan.

That’s enough for television executives to worry about whether this is just pandemic-related or if they can no longer depend on these traditional attention-getting events. CBS won the week, averaging 4.9 million viewers in primetime. NBC had 4 million, ABC had 3.4 million, Fox had 2.6 million, Univision had 1.4 million, Ion Television had 1.2 million and Telemundo had 1 million. Fox News led the cable networks, averaging 2.45 million viewers in primetime. MSNBC had 1.84 million, CNN had 1.29 million, HGTV had 1.15 million and ESPN had 1.06 million.

Relative Justice is the first show to launch into syndication from Lexington, Ky.-based Wrigley Media Group, owned by Wrigley Media’s Midsee Wrigley Miller. The half-hour court show is cleared in 75% of the U.S., including the top 43 markets, on the CBS, Sinclair, Nexstar, Scripps, Tegna, Weigel and Gray station groups. It had been slated to launch in fall 2020 but, like so many other shows, was pushed back due to the pandemic.

The status quo was everywhere in the ratings for the week ending March 7 with show standing pat in most of first-run and off-net.

The Bachelor‘s Season 25 finale on ABC drew 5.75 million total viewers and a 1.4 demo rating, ticking up week-to-week and topping Monday in the demo. That said, it was down sharply from its year-ago closer (which did 7.7M/2.2).

Killing Eve is coming to an end with its delayed fourth season but BBC America is developing a number of potential spinoffs. The cat-and-mouse thriller, which stars Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh, is set to start filming season four in the U.K. and across Europe early this summer and the eight-episode run will premiere in 2022. The network and production company didn’t disclose specific spinoff ideas and sources suggest that there’s nothing firm in the pipeline but it’s clear that the AMC Networks-owned channel is keen to extend the Killing Eve universe.

For the first time in the history of the franchise, The Bachelorette will produce two cycles in the same calendar year. The summer staple has been renewed by ABC for Seasons 17 and 18 to air in 2021. They will be headlined by two Bachelor Nation favorites, Katie Thurston and Michelle Young, who both had been heavily speculated to be the next Bachelorette after becoming breakouts of the just concluded, marked by controversy 25th season of The Bachelor.

Though there are currently no plans for the show to return to NBC, the Universal Television Alternative Studio — a division of Universal Studio Group — still owns its format, which has been adapted all over the world in countries like Thailand, the Philippines and Poland.

Fox plans to invest in Tubi, its entry in the fast-growing over-the-top connected TV market, and those investments include original programming. Fox CFO Steve Tomsic says that adding Fox hits like The Masked Singer has given Tubi a boost, and the company is looking to put original programming on Tubi.

The quarterback great joined NBC Sports on Monday, a day after announcing his retirement from the NFL. He will serve as an analyst for Notre Dame games as well as work from the studio during Football Night in America on Sunday nights.

CBS’s broadcast of this year’s Grammy Awards took an expected downturn, as all awards shows have in recent times. With a preliminary audience of 7.9 million and a 1.9 demo rating, the Sunday night kudoscast is on pace to report about 9 million total viewers and a 2.2  rating once Nielsen finals trickle in later on. Despite a vibrant and socially distanced but refreshingly non-virtual production, plus Beyonce making some history, those numbers would mark a decline of 50% and 60% from last year’s pre-pandemic gala, to all-time lows.

The Talk will go on a brief hiatus, canceling its live shows for Monday and Tuesday. The news comes after CBS announced that it would be launching a probe into an episode last week that saw Sharon Osbourne get into a heated exchange with co-host Sheryl Underwood after defending Piers Morgan’s comments about Meghan Markle. The plan is currently to return to filming on Wednesday, a source says, but the show will evaluate and see where they are before moving forward. CBS declined comment, and pointed to its earlier statement on its investigation on Friday.

The news comes as the show is currently in production on Season 6, which was supposed to begin last year but was delayed due to the pandemic. Season 7 of the popular series will be based on the seventh book in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, An Echo in the Bone. It will consist of 12 episodes.

After a pandemic year that shuttered most movie theaters, none of the expected best-picture nominees will have hardly any box office to speak of. It will be an Oscars not just without blockbusters but with many movies that have hardly played on the big screen. Streaming services are set to dominate Hollywood’s biggest and most sought-after awards. Nominations will be announced beginning at 8:19 a.m. ET and the film academy and ABC will telecast the Oscars on April 25 (delayed two months due to the pandemic).

Lisa Knutson, president of E.W. Scripps’ national networks, says the company is targeting cord-cutting viewers who are pairing a handful of paid streaming subscriptions with free over-the-air options and “assembling their own TV packages.” 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.

“Chris Harrison will not be hosting the next season of The Bachelorette,” ABC and Warner Horizon said in a statement on Friday. Former Bachelorettes Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe will step in for Harrison as co-hosts of the upcoming season.