Programming

Last year’s NCAA women’s basketball championship set an all-time ratings record for a women’s game on ESPN. A rematch of that game — albeit two rounds earlier in the tournament — on Monday night drew an even bigger crowd. Iowa’s 94-87 victory over LSU averaged 12.3 million viewers for ESPN, the largest TV audience ever for a women’s basketball game in the United States. The previous record was set more than 40 years ago, when CBS’ broadcast of the 1983 title game — featuring USC legend Cheryl Miller — drew 11.83 million people. LSU’s 102-85 win in last year’s championship game was the previous ESPN record, drawing 9.9 million viewers across ABC and ESPN2.

One look at the schedule for the 2024 NAB Show and you might be convinced that artificial intelligence (AI) offers the solution for all that troubles today’s media businesses. Planned […]

Shari Redstone is getting one step closer to selling her media empire. Paramount, home to one of Hollywood’s most storied movie studios as well as CBS and cable networks like Nickelodeon, has been discussing entering into exclusive talks with the media company Skydance for a potential deal, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions. Moving to exclusive talks would be a significant step forward in a process that has been shrouded in uncertainty for months.

Grey’s Anatomy continues to be in a league of its own, landing a renewal for a 21st season. The pickup, which comes three episodes into Grey’s Anatomy‘s landmark 20th season, extends its record as the longest-running primetime medical drama, which it initially set in 2019, and the longest-running ABC primetime scripted series. Season 21 is expected to consist of 18 episodes, up from the 10-episode strike-impacted 20th season.

Women’s basketball is heating up on ESPN. The network just scored its most-watched NCAA Women’s Sweet 16 on record with 2.4 million viewers across all games. That’s up 96% year-over-year, per Nielsen. The Iowa Hawkeyes defeated the Colorado Buffaloes in the most-viewed Sweet 16 game, tallying a huge audience of 6.9 million, making it the best Sweet 16 audience ever recorded and the second most-watched women’s college basketball game since 1995.

Spanish-language media company Estrella Media said that Major Market Broadcasting’s KMMC has become an EstrellaTV affiliate in the San Francisco market. Major Market Broadcasting was founded in 2009 and says it is now the largest Asian American-owned broadcast group in the U.S. with more than 20 TV stations.

Overall, the NCAA Tournament is averaging 9.4 million viewers on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV, a 4% increase over last year. Pictured: North Carolina State’s Michael O’Connell (12) reacts after a basket by DJ Burns Jr. (30) against Duke during the second half of an Elite Eight college basketball game in the NCAA Tournament in Dallas, Sunday, March 31. (Tony Gutierrez/AP)

Wednesday executive producer and former MGM President of Motion Picture Group Jonathan Glickman has been officially named CEO of Miramax, taking over for Bill Block who exited. Glickman starts effective immediately and he’ll be responsible for building out the studio and exploiting its 700 title library which includes such Oscar lauded movies as Chicago, No Country for Old Men, The English Patient, and Shakespeare in Love as well as Pulp Fiction, Halloween, Scary Movie and Gangs of New York.

Amid much commentary about the negative impact high-valued sports streaming initiatives could have on local TV stations and MVPDs there’s another much more optimistic view emerging from the ranks of several publicly traded station groups. In sharp contrast to those who feel threatened by sports rights owners’ surging embrace of streaming, these station owners contend they are making significant headway with opportunistic adjustments to the new reality.

The season seven premiere of 9-1-1 in March delivered a cumulative audience of 11.76 million total viewers within the first seven days, and marked the series’ highest-rated multiplatform telecast in nearly two years in Adults 18-49. It paid homage to the disaster thriller The Poseidon Adventure. The drama stands as ABC’s most-watched current series across all platforms this season.

Game Show Network is gearing up to premiere three new original series this year: Beat The Bridge, hosted by Cameron Mathison, based on BBC’s Bridge of Lies, in June; Tic Tac Dough, hosted by Brooke Burns, in August and previously announced Jaleel White-hosted Flip Side, which is launching in national syndication, in September. The news was announced by GSN as part of Sony Pictures Television Advertiser Sales upfront today in New York City. Pictured: Beat the Bridge, Tic Tac Dough and Flip Side.

The talker is cleared in 95% of the U.S. on stations from groups including Fox Television Stations, Nexstar, Sinclair, Hearst, Gray and Scripps.

The specials will be part of the Beat the Odds nationally syndicated sports betting and entertainment television series produced by Tupelo Media Group and KVVU. They begin this weekend for college basketball and will also air on dozens of Gray’s stations.

WDJT and WMLW, Weigel Broadcasting’s CBS and independent stations in Milwaukee, debut Deer Wisconsin, a 30-minute lifestyle program centered around food, fun, entertainment and people.

The partnership will see a wealth of Lionsgate and Starz content featured on Amazon streamer MGM+ including Outlander, Power Book and The Serpent Queen. It is the third instalment in a series of content deals that MGM+ has closed recently with Lionsgate for Europe and Latin America.

Social media stars who’ve parlayed content niches into massive, cross-platform audiences will share their unique approaches to content creation in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference at the NAB Show on April 14. Register here.

Georgia lawmakers have rejected a bill that would have limited what the state can spend on tax incentives for film and TV production.

WWE’s weekly shows saw improvements in the Q1 key demo ratings year over year while remaining mostly steady in total viewership. Compared to the same time period last year, Smackdown is up 15% in the adults 18-49 demo to an average of 892,000 viewers per episode and up 3% in total viewers with 2.4 million viewers per episode. It should be noted, though, that those numbers do not include the episode that aired on March 29. Raw is up 6% in the demo with an average of 733,000 viewers, but down 7% in total viewers with 1.7 million viewers per episode. NXT saw the biggest increase percentage-wise of the three shows, up 31% in the demo to 242,000 viewers and 7% in total viewers with 646,000 per episode.

AXS TV said it will be running a new series from Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship starting April 4 at 11 p.m. Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship will continue to appear in that time slot until April 18, which it will move to 10 p.m. With 13 hour-long episodes, the series will debut  with a review of top matches from BKFC 38 and feature fighters including Dat Nguyen, Daniel Straus, Bostwick and Isaac Doolittle.

The police procedural diginet is now available on ABC Owned Television Stations that add more than 4 million new, over-the-air TV households as well as 3.73 million new pay TV/cable households.

The city of Oakland plans to present MLB‘s Athletics ownership with an offer to extend the team’s lease for five years, with an opt-out after three. The Athletics have announced plans to move the franchise to Las Vegas, where a proposed stadium is scheduled to be completed by 2028. The current Athletics lease in Oakland ends this season, leaving a substantial gap in their home schedule.