‘American Idol’ Closes Gap With ‘The Voice’
The Voice rebounded from last week’s season-low numbers and led Monday’s ratings across the board. American Idol also improved and finished as close to its NBC rival as it has so far this season.
The Alliance for Women in Media Foundation will honor Sandra Oh, Tisha Thompson, Rachel Maddow, Connie Britton, Elizabeth Perkins, Patricia Arquette, and Leah Remini among others on May 21 in Los Angeles. Local and student award winners will be honored at the Gracie Awards Luncheon on June 26 in New York.
NEW YORK (AP) — Big Bird, Elmo and stars of “Sesame Street” are leaving their quiet neighborhood and embarking on a road trip. The nonprofit Sesame Workshop said Tuesday a […]
The pay channel said the 17.4 million viewers who watched Sunday’s episode either on TV or online represent a season-opening high for the fantasy saga. HBO Now also posted its biggest streaming night ever, the channel said Monday.
Exclusives
The channel is well into the hunt for a worthy successor, with one possibility an untitled prequel to “Game of Thrones” created by Martin and Jane Goldman and starring Naomi Watts. Set to begin shooting a pilot in June, it’s among several potential “Thrones” spinoffs being weighed, with discussions at HBO about “how many is too many,” said programming chief Casey Bloys.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Georgia Engel, who played the charmingly innocent, small-voiced Georgette on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and amassed a string of other TV and stage credits, has […]
Alex Piper is joining the YouTube Originals team as head of unscripted, North and South America, leaving Fox Broadcasting after five years. Piper takes over the job at YouTube from Ben Relles, who moved into a new role as YouTube’s head of innovation, overseeing interactive programming. Both Piper and Relles report to Susanne Daniels, global head of original content at YouTube.
The revived brand will feature live coverage of America’s most fascinating trials all day. Closing Arguments with Vinnie Politan will anchor the primetime schedule.
‘American Idol’ Improves As Voting Begins
ABC’s American Idol led the night among adults 18-49, rebounding from the prior week’s series low as it entered the audience-vote phase of the competition. Sunday’s show drew a 1.3 in the demo, up from 1.0 a week ago, and 7.18 million viewers, a17 percent improvement over last week’s 6.12 million.
Disney is still considering spinning out its RSNs to shareholders as it prepares to move forward and take final bids for the 21 sports networks on Monday.
Five New Jobs In Sales, News Promotion
New TV jobs posted on TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings in news promotion and sales for stations owned by Sinclair, Hearst and Cox in Boston; Columbus, Ohio; Orlando, Fla.; and Nashville.
CBS Television Distribution’s Face the Truth will not return for a second season in strip syndication, sources confirmed Friday, but the company’s The Doctors and Daily Mail TV will both be back for seasons 12 and three, respectively.
CBS was a huge beneficiary of Woods’ win. It was on the air for 10 hours on Sunday because the final round was moved up due to possible inclement weather. CBS started at 9 a.m. ET and had six hours of live coverage followed by a four-hour recap show.
Sinclair Broadcast Group and Jerry Reinsdorf’s Stadium wants to be America’s biggest sports network. And it doesn’t want to be on cable. Stadium, which reaches some 25 million homes — the majority of them on free TV — is a bet on the future of broadcast television.
NBC has picked up a third season of drama series Good Girls, from creator Jenna Bans. Good Girls became the first series on a Big 4 broadcast networks to land a pact under Netflix’s co-licensing model where the streaming giant pays a significant fee for distributing a show outside of North America. The pact helped Good Girls land a Season 2 renewal after a modest midseason debut on NBC last year.
Fox is pushing deeper into unscripted programming after the breakout of The Masked Singer, re-teaming with producer Dick Wolf on First Responders Live. Hosted by Josh Elliott, the show will premiere June 12.
The pickup comes after star Tom Selleck signs a new deal and will keep the Friday night staple going in 2019-20.
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Wendy Williams has filed for divorce after nearly 22 years of marriage to her husband and manager. Her attorney, Mary Vidas, says the papers were filed […]
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Cruises On Soft Thursday
The ABC drama is the only original show in primetime Thursday to make it over a 1.0 rating among adults 18-49.
Nexstar Rallied Its Stations For March Madness
The renewal comes after NCIS star and executive producer Mark Harmon has signed a new agreement with the series’ producer, CBS TV Studios, to continue on the long-running crime procedural.
Disney’s Investor Day culminated with a special clip of The Simpsons gang saluting their new Disney “corporate overlords,” leading to the announcement that Disney+, the upcoming Disney direct-to-consumer platform, will be the exclusive SVOD home of the classic 20th Century Fox TV-produced series.
Disney Plus, has been in the works for more than year, but Thursday marked the first time that the longtime entertainment powerhouse has laid out plans for its attack on Netflix and a formidable cast of competitors, including Amazon, HBO Go and Showtime Anytime. The new service will cost $6.99 a month when it launches Nov. 12 in the U.S., with a full-year option of $69.99, or $5.83 a month.
The CBS competition and the ABC comedy grab the top two spots in both adults 18-49 and total viewers. CBS’s Survivor scored its fifth consecutive Wednesday ratings victory among adults 18-49, and with NBC’s shows taking the night off, it also finished first in total viewers.
The original disruptors of broadcast TV’s status quo are under siege from a slew of new low-cost streaming competitors. They’re also facing an uphill climb in carriage negotiations with programmers that have bulked up in the past few years to bring more clout to the table even as they also pursue direct-to-consumer plans that take the cable middleman out of the equation.
