Why CBS Thinks It Can Survive The Streaming Wars
The failure of Hollywood studios to strike a timely deal with writers and actors last summer meant the traditional fall TV season was canceled in 2023. But while all of the Big Four broadcasters experienced some Nielsen pain as a result, none took a bigger hit than CBS. George Cheeks, the president and CEO of CBS and chief content officer for news and sports at Paramount+, does not attempt to sugarcoat his network’s fourth-quarter struggle.
The NCIS prequel series at CBS has added Mariel Molino to its cast. Malino joins previously announced series lead Austin Stowell in the series, which is titled NCIS: Origins. The series was originally ordered at CBS in January with plans to launch during the 2024-25 broadcast season. Mark Harmon, who played Gibbs for nearly two decades in the mothership series, will serve as the show’s narrator and executive producer.
NCAA’s “March Madness,” the three-week men’s college basketball tournament on CBS and Turner cable networks and platforms, has seen TV advertising price increases of mid- to high-single digit percentage gains with overall ad-revenue volume of similar percentage hikes.
The two shows join Tracker in securing a spot in the network’s lineup for next season.
The 51st Annual Daytime Emmy Awards will air live Friday, June 7, on CBS and will stream on Paramount+, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences said Tuesday. Ceremonies will take place at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles. This marks the 18th time the Daytime Emmys will have streamed on CBS, the most of any network.
CBS Studios’s joint venture with the NAACP is developing a new daytime drama about a Black family that is expected to air on the CBS Television Network. The series, The Gates, will be co-produced by P&G Studio, a division of big advertiser Procter & Gamble.
Brian Beneker, a script coordinator on the show who claims “heterosexual, white men need ‘extra’ qualifications” to be hired on the network’s shows, is represented by a conservative group founded by Trump administration alum Stephen Miller.
Austin Stowell (Catch-22 TV series) is taking on Mark Harmon’s signature NCIS character Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Stowell has been cast as young Gibbs in CBS’s new drama NCIS: Origins, a prequel to the venerable procedural, which has a straight-to-series order for the 2024-25 broadcast season. CBS Studios is producing.
The series premiere aired directly after the Super Bowl — which Nielsen measured as the most-watched telecast of all time — and reached 18.4 million viewers, a number that Paramount Global says has now grown to 30 million across platforms. Three more episodes have aired since, and continue to perform strongly without football lead-in: Episode 2 hit 6.9 million viewers, Episode 2 hit 7.1 million and Episode 3 hit 7.4 million.
Deaf artists Shaheem Sanchez, Anjel Piñero and Daniel Durant were introduced during the game before their performances. Sanchez performed Lift Every Voice and Sing with Andra Day, Piñero was introduced to perform alongside Post Malone’s America, The Beautiful and Durant interpreted the National Anthem alongside Reba McEntire. “I am absolutely SHOCKED at CBS for introducing the Deaf performers at today’s pregame #SuperBowl and then not showing even one second (or more) of their performance… as has been tradition for the last 30 years. WHY!?” Matlin posted on X.
“What a thrill to be able to say that we witnessed an overtime Super Bowl game and what will go down in history as one of the greatest games of all time and the longest Super Bowl game of all time. That’s what I’m trying to process right now,” Nantz said after the Kansas City Chiefs 25-22 overtime victory over the San Francisco 49ers. “I’m thrilled for our team and thrilled for the sport. It was an unbelievably fitting finish to a remarkable football season.” Pictured: Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce with Jim Nance (George Walker IV/AP)
On Sunday night, Mike Benson gets a little over seven minutes to cap off weeks of work. The CBS marketing chief will use promo time allotted to Paramount Global during the Super Bowl to turbocharge a broad array of campaigns he has set in motion in the past few months aimed at getting viewers excited about one of the most unorthodox TV seasons in history.
The storied network is facing a wave of change, including new leadership, the possible sale of its parent company and the continued challenge of streaming. (Kamil Krzaczynski/AP)
The network will use 165 cameras this Sunday for its coverage of the game in Las Vegas as well as pregame, halftime and postgame shows, which CBS says is the most ever for a Super Bowl. They will be supported by 19 mobile production trucks. And CBS’s 1080p HDR production from Allegiant Stadium will also be used as the backbone of an alternative broadcast on the children’s network Nickelodeon, Super Bowl LVIII Live from Bikini Bottom, that will use enhanced graphics and augmented reality to incorporate characters from the popular SpongeBob SquarePants animated series into live game coverage. Plus, there are the “doink cams.”
CBS said the president declined its invitation to appear ahead of what may be the highest-rated television broadcast of the year.
Dolly Parton has teamed up with CBS to present the Dolly Parton’s Pet Gala special which is slated to premiere on CBS Network and on Paramount+ on Feb. 21 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The special will air live and on demand for Paramount+ with Showtime subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs.
Morena Baccarin (Deadpool franchise) is set to appear in an upcoming episode of CBS’s Fire Country, playing a sheriff character that could lead her own series. Baccarin will guest star in the Season 2 episode with an option to become a series regular in a potential spinoff series. Like the mothership series, the proposed offshoot would be produced by CBS Studios.
The group reups KIMT Rochester, Minn.; KHSL Chico, Calif.; WTHI Terre Haute, Ind.: WLFI West Lafayette, Ind.; and WEVV Evansville, Ind.
CBS debuted its newest latenight show on Tuesday and the numbers are. After Midnight, hosted by Taylor Tomlinson, was watched by an average of 686,000 viewers in the 12:37am hour, per Nielsen’s live+same day fast national data. This compares to The Late Late Show with James Corden’s live+same day average of 806,000 for its final season.
In the latest TV show ratings, Part 1 of NCIS: Sydney‘s Season 1 finale on CBS was Tuesday’s most-watched program, while Fox’s The Floor tied ABC’s Celebrity Jeopardy! for the night’s highest demo rating.
It is the third time the trio will call the big game together. The telecast will be produced by Jim Rikhoff and directed by Mike Arnold.
New York governor Kathy Hochul announced Saturday that Sunday’s Pittsburgh Steelers-Buffalo Bills playoff game schedulled for 1 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount+ will be rescheduled for 4:30 p.m. ET on Monday, thanks to the massive winter storm hitting the area. The game had originally been scheduled for 1 p.m. ET on Sunday.
The likely straight-to-series comedy would focus on Montana Jordan and Emily Osment’s characters, Georgie and Mandy.
CBS has unveiled its new structure for unscripted and specials following the departure of Jack Sussman who was EVP, specials, music, live events and alternative programming, CBS Entertainment. In his place, Mitch Graham, as EVP, alternative, will oversee unscripted and Mackenzie Mitchell will lead its specials team.
Sussman, EVP, specials, music, live events and alternative programming, CBS Entertainment, is stepping down but will remain in business with the network as an exec producer of both The Tony Awards and The Kennedy Center Honors.
The streaming veteran is tapped to fill a newly created role “working closely with the executives of News, Stations, CBS Media Ventures, Sports and all other studio and division heads,” according to Wendy McMahon, CEO of CBS News and Stations.
The ceremony on CBS had the benefit of an NFL lead-in, as well as an especially starry gathering that drew Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Timothée Chalamet, Kylie Jenner, Leonardo DiCaprio and many more. The night’s biggest winner, Oppenheimer, was also a huge ticket-seller, with nearly $1 billion in box office. Pictured: Golden Globes host comedian Jo Koy (Sonja Flemming/CBS via AP).
The week of the 2024 Super Bowl will see the network use the famed Fountains of Bellagio as the backdrop of its central broadcast location. CBS will offer weeklong, multiplatform coverage of the Super Bowl in sports, news and entertainment, all leading up to CBS Sports’ presentation of the game on Sunday, Feb. 11. The location will be home to shows from four CBS divisions across broadcast, cable and streaming from Monday, Feb. 5 to Sunday, Feb. 11, with four outdoor sets shared across the various shows.
Gibbs is returning to the NCIS universe as the lead of a new CBS drama, which serves as a prequel to the long-running procedural. The network has given a straight-to-series order to NCIS: Origins, about young Leroy Jethro Gibbs, for the 2024-25 broadcast season. The project comes from the two actors who have portrayed Gibbs on NCIS, Mark Harmon and his son Sean Harmon, veteran NCIS writers-producers, Gina Lucita Monreal and David J. North, as well as CBS Studios, which is behind the NCIS franchise.
The network will debut the latenight show, hosted by comedian Taylor Tomlinson and based on Comedy Central’s @midnight, on Jan. 16 — or technically Jan. 17, as it debuts at 12:37 a.m. ET/PT, but at the tail end of the Jan. 16 broadcast day.
Comet and Charge! are now available on CBS Affiliates in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco while TBD and The Nest can be seen on KCAL Los Angeles.
CBS has given a straight to series order to a drama series that will see Morris Chestnut star as the iconic literary character Dr. John Watson, the companion of master detective Sherlock Holmes. The show, titled Watson, is a contemporary story set one year after the death of Holmes at the hands of his archnemesis Moriarty. The show is expected to air during the 2024-25 broadcast season.
The cable network and broadcaster held merger talks 20 years ago. A possible mega-deal between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount could bring those ideas to the forefront again.
Following a very successful second season, the cast of the paranormal comedy have renegotiated their contracts, landing big salary increases while adding an optional year to their existing deals. Produced by CBS Studios in association with Lionsgate Television and BBC Studios, Ghosts, an adaptation of a British format, stars Rose McIver and Utkarsh Ambudkar as Samantha and Jay, a young couple living alongside ghosts in a country house they’d inherited. According to sources, McIver and Ambudkar have seen their paychecks double to $250,000 an episode. All the actors playing the ghosts have been bumped up to $100,000 per episode.
“He embodies the caliber of leadership and industry expertise we sought for this pivotal role,” said Deborah Collura, president and general manager of CBS Sacramento.
Hosted by Entertainment Tonight’s Nischelle Turner, the special will celebrate the groundbreaking career Of Norman Lear.
The CBS show will be in repeats this week. The news means that guests including Sarah Paulson, Jason Isbell, Mark Ruffalo, Nicki Minaj, Sara Bareilles and Rep. Liz Cheney will no longer appear on the show.