Programming

With many shows able to exclude the very low-rated Thanksgiving and Black Friday from their averages, Live with Kelly and Ryan moved to the top of the talkers in the week ending Dec. 1 with a season-best 2.1.

NBC got an early holiday gift in Tuesday’s ratings with the debut of Ellen’s Greatest Night of Giveaways. The special, in which Ellen DeGeneres and a host of other celebrities give gifts to deserving people, drew 6.81 million viewers and a 1.2 rating in adults 18-49. It grabbed a bigger total audience than a Tuesday edition of The Masked Singer on Fox and tied The Voice for the night’s second-best demo rating.

The country music/lifestyle channel will debut in more than 50% of U.S. TV households on stations from Gray and CBS. A companion OTT premium service is slotted to launch in late spring 2020.

Two-year deals for The Weather Channel’s weekly Storm of Suspicion and Weather Gone Viral get a firm “go” from station groups including Fox, Scripps, Nexstar, Meredith, Gray and Hearst for 2020 and 2021 debuts.

Willa Paskin: “Friends, bingers, countrymen, I come to bury television, not to praise it. 2019 was the first year I started to look askance at something I have said thousands of time: ‘I love television.’ This phrase, which had previously seemed so pedestrian and yet so true, the cozy benediction lobbed at a loved one on their way out the door, suddenly became strange.”

This past year saw some jaw-dropping moments that found huge audiences, whether it was a royal interview or a viral alien. The Associated Press has put together a list of the best TV moments in 2019.

If Netflix’s figures are accurate, that would make Martin Scorsese’s 3 1/2 hour crime epic one of this year’s most widely watched Oscar contenders. On Monday it received five Golden Globe nominations, including best film, drama.

Seven of the week’s top 10 shows were either football games or their pregame shows. CBS’s perennial ratings generator 60 Minutes was the week’s top non-football show, in fifth place with more than 13 million viewers, and the network’s Young Sheldon was the top scripted show in ninth with 8.39 million.

NBC’s The Voice delivered its biggest total audience in six weeks on Monday, and it also led the adults 18-49 rankings for the night. Part two of The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover drew solid numbers, while The Moodys took a big hit on Fox.

In TV time, 36 seasons is unspeakably ancient, but this year game veteran Jeopardy exploded into one of TV’s most talked-about shows. The Sony Pictures Television-produced game show hit multiyear highs, led all of syndication in the ratings several times, was memed all over social media and discussed around dinner tables across the nation.

Fox’s broadcast of the Miss Universe competition Sunday brought in smaller ratings than it did a year ago. Sunday Night Football was also down (though still dominant), and the series finale of CBS’s Madam Secretary is at season highs in the early numbers. The CW’s Supergirl also hit season highs with the start of the network’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover.

The shutout, believed to be for the first time, of the broadcast networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, The CW and PBS — made for a seemingly awkward situation for NBC, which will host the awards ceremony Jan. 5 and covered the nominations live on Today. It was a crowining moment for Netflix, which got 17 TV nods, to go with its 17 on the movie side.

Nick Maniatis, who ran the New Mexico’s film office before going to work for Netflix, spoke to a group of hundreds of business leaders and elected officials who were gathered Thursday in Albuquerque. He described it as a “golden era,” saying the amount of content that’s out there is amazing. Above, ABQ Studios in Albuquerque, where Netflix announced at the studio complex that it chose Albuquerque as a new production hub.

The prolific actor best known for his roles on the television shows Benson and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine died Sunday. He was 79.

Caroll Spinney, who gave Big Bird his warmth and Oscar the Grouch his growl for nearly 50 years on Sesame Street, died Sunday. He was 85.

Amazon Studios’ campaign for The Aeronauts illustrates the challenges of making “events” out of movies that will primarily be seen online, not in theaters.

Despite an aggressive effort to drive sign-ups, Wall Street worries about the long-term value of Hulu’s promo push.

Fox’s Thursday Night Football is on track for one of its biggest audiences of the season, and the game dominated Thursday’s primetime results. ABC’s movie Same Time, Next Christmas, meanwhile, drew a so-so audience, one in line with Hallmark Channel’s most recent holiday films.

Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman drew 13.2 million total viewers over its first five days on Netflix, according to Nielsen. That average-minute audience is more than El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (8.2 million) and less than Bird Box (16.9 million).