Programming

Among other commission moves to lighten regulation on broadcasters, a suggestion by Commissioner Michael O’Rielly to study whether the E/I rules are still necessary is being seen by some as a trial balloon. Broadcasters would welcome such a move and have offered specific suggestions. Above, Litton Entertainment’s Jack Hanna’s Wild Countdown has been an E/I staple since 2011.

Viacom has started another round of staff layoffs as part of its ongoing cost-cutting effort. The job cuts, which are expected to not reach triple digits, will be focused on support employees — so not those directly involved in content creation. The affected staff represents less than 1% of the company’s 10,000 employees.

It makes the movie instantly profitable for the studio, Paramount, which avoids a (likely) theatrical misfire and costly marketing campaign.

The show was seen by just under 27 million people, its largest audience ever and the highest for any show with the coveted post-Super Bowl time slot in six years. With the help of the game, NBC averaged 23.1 million viewers in primetime. CBS had 6.1 million viewers, ABC had 3.8 million, Fox had 2.9 million, Univision and the CW tied with 1.42 million, Ion Television had 1.3 million and Telemundo had 1.1 million.

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a beautiful day in the postal neighborhood. The U.S. Postal Service plans to issue a new stamp featuring Mister Rogers, the children’s television host known […]

Discovery Communications said today that the European Commission has cleared its $14.6 billion acquisition of the Food Network and HGTV owner Scripps Network Interactive. The European regulatory body agreed the deal on the condition that Discovery continues to offer third-party distributors the right to broadcast Scripps’ Polish channels TVN24 and/or TVN24 BiS in the country.

The Time’s Up movement has upended entertainment business. Awards season has been transformed by industry professionals using it as a platform to advocate for change. Executive searches, such as the one taking place at Amazon for a new entertainment chief, have seen the stock of female candidates rise. Now broadcast TV development, where gains in diversity and inclusion have come only slowly, appears to be building momentum toward achieving some of its goals.

In a night of season finales, Better Late Than Never on NBC managed to climb to a season high in the key demo. Airing at 9 p.m., Better Late drew a 1.1 rating in adults 18-49 and 5.3 million viewers. That narrowly edges out the previous demo high set by the show’s season premiere, which drew a 1.05. That is also up by over 20% compared to the episode of the show that aired last week. Earlier on NBC, The Wall (1.5, 6.7 million) had its highest-rated episode since February of last year.

With a big drop in PUT levels, ratings for all first-run shows are either flat or lower in the week ending Jan. 28, just prior to the start of the February sweep.

The cable and satellite network Family Entertainment Television (FETV) is now available in the Windy City. With the addition of Comcast in Chicago, FETV raises its subscriber count to more than […]

Discovery Communications wants a more complete picture of who’s tuning in to watch the Winter Olympics this month, so it’s aggregating data from linear broadcast, digital platforms and social media engagement metrics. Tying TV and digital viewing patterns together has become more of a conundrum as content consumption has shifted online and split across screens.

An estimated 103.4 million people watched the Super Bowl on NBC, a 7% drop from last year and the smallest Super Bowl audience on television since 2009. Does that mean television’s biggest event may have peaked in popularity?

In Frasier, the hit Cheers spinoff that aired on NBC from 1993 to 2004, Mahoney played Martin Crane, a disabled ex-policeman who parked himself in a battered old armchair in Frasier’s chic Seattle living room. He was 77.

Super Bowl LII will no doubt take in a massive ratings haul, but the early numbers have it down slightly from last year. In metered market households, Sunday’s game on NBC drew a 47.4 rating. Super Bowl LI in 2017 on Fox drew a 48.8 rating, meaning this year is down just three percent in that measure from last year.

The Arizona independent says Dish pulled the plug, while the satellite service says the station is at fault.

Ellen DeGeneres kicked off her two-hour 60th birthday celebration on The Ellen DeGeneres Show with its highest rated episode in nearly 3 years (3.4 household rating). The birthday bash also ranked No. 1 in its time period among adults and women 25-54 in the top three markets — New York (1.6/13 adults 25-54 rating/share), Los Angeles (1.4/12) and Chicago (1.2/10).

In the 1990s, the commercial became the show as infomercials ruled the night. Were we all just looking for televised Prozac?

NBC’s new comedy series AP Bio failed to generate significant numbers in the Nielsen overnights during its premiere on Thursday. Airing at 9:30 p.m., it drew a 0.9 rating in adults 18-49 and 3.2 million viewers. That is upslightly from Great News‘ average in the same time slot in Live+Same Day (0.7, 2.9 million). However, it was the only NBC program of the night to draw less than a 1.0 in the demo.

The creators of these original shows were white (and mostly male). The top-billed actors on these shows were white as well. It’s not hard to see the potential downsides to this in terms of who are getting opportunities now.