coronavirus

Journalists from NBCLX, AJ+ and NBCU- and Graham-owned stations will share their novel approaches to news and weather storytelling in a remarkable year at TVNewsCheck’s virtual NewsTECHForum event in December. Register here.

A number of returning network series have made decisions to incorporate a near-real time response to the summer’s resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests, cries for police reform and general social activism into their formats. But doing so has not come without challenges and narrative changes for these already-established series, especially as production was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

TV stations are still hiring during the pandemic, but HR executives say they’ve had to get creative in their largely virtual environments, turning to social media and marketing tools to fill key positions, particularly account executives, producers and executive producers.

Richard Schiff, star of ABC’s The Good Doctor, and his wife, actress Sheila Kelley, who recurs on the ABC medical drama, provided an update Monday about their ongoing COVID-19 fight. The two had tested positive Nov. 3. The Good Doctor remained in production in Vancouver following Schiff’s and Kelley’s COVID diagnosis. Shooting is continuing, with the filming schedule reshuffled to accommodate the duo’s temporary absence.

The FCC has extended its existing COVID-19-related waivers related to the Lifeline phone/broadband communications subsidy through Feb. 28, 2021. The waivers deal with the program’s “recertification, reverification, general de-enrollment, usage and income documentation requirements.” Without the extensions, those waivers would have expired Nov. 30.

After the timing of the coronavirus pandemic upended the NCAA tournament last season, the NCAA is taking steps to make sure it will be played in 2021. The NCAA is moving its men’s basketball tournament from the usual multi-city format to a single-site location in an effort to safely conduct the event that crowns the season’s Division I national champion, the organization said Monday.

Netflix comedy Dear White People is the latest high-profile series to halt production as a result of COVID-19. The series, which is produced by Lionsgate, has paused filming for two weeks after several team members tested positive for the virus. The show has been filming its fourth and final season in Los Angeles.

The Ivy League canceled winter sports for the 2020-21 season, the conference announced Thursday. The conference also postponed spring sports until at least the end of February and won’t conduct competition for fall sports during the spring semester.

David Zurawik: Confusion over statements from the current administration “is why I have come to so value the medical doctors and public health experts like Dr. Vin Gupta on MSNBC and Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Leana Wen on CNN. I have watched hundreds of appearances by them on cable TV the last eight months and have found their analyses and advice consistently informed by science and always easy to understand.”

The Big Ten’s Maryland-Ohio State matchup this weekend has been canceled, joining a slate of SEC games already on the sidelines because of COVID-19 positive tests. Maryland-Ohio State was nixed after the Terrapins paused team activities Wednesday while announcing that eight players had tested positive. The game will not be made up, which could have crucial implications for major power Ohio State’s national championship aspirations in an already-shortened season.

NBC’s Chicago Fire has paused filming its ninth season for two weeks due to multiple positive COVID-19 tests. The Chicago-based firefighter drama shut down production on Sunday, Nov. 8. Several individuals on the Chicago Fire production team, believed to be in Zone 1, produced positive results when tested as part of the show’s COVID safety protocols.

The Canadian import boom continues after NBC picked up medical drama Nurses. The network acquired the U.S. rights to the hospital drama from eOne and ICF Films. It will add the show, which features Riverdale’s Tiera Skovbye, to its primetime lineup in December.

The Marquee Broadcasting NBC-CBS affiliate in Bowling Green posted on its website: “Out of an overabundance of caution, WNKY 40 Television is choosing to send our employees home who may have come into contact with someone from outside the company who has tested positive for COVID.”

Rachel Maddow said today that she is quarantining at home and will not be in studio for tonight’s MSNBC coverage of the vote count in the 2020 presidential race. Maddow said on Twitter that she tested negative for COVID-19 after a close contact tested positive. She said that she will be at home “’til it’s safe for me to be back at work without putting anyone at risk.”

TNT dramedy Claws has paused filming its fourth and final season for the next 14 days due to a team member testing positive for COVID-19. According to sources, the asymptomatic diagnosis was confirmed as a result of required and ongoing testing for all employees on productions of Warner Bros. TV, the studio behind Claws.

Halfway through the season, through eight weekends so far, the NFL has seen an 8% decline in Nielsen-measured viewership versus a year ago to 14.5 million viewers per game. Analysts and network executives attribute the decline to an overload of sports TV competition due to the end-of-the-season NBA playoffs and finals and Major League Baseball’s World Series TV games.

Charmed is the latest scripted series whose restarted production has been disrupted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Filming on the CW drama has been paused for a day Wednesday as an individual from the production has tested positive for COVID-19, Deadline has learned. CBS Studios, which is behind Charmed, is following COVID protocols and conducting contact tracing, sources said.

The rise in retransmission fees has more than compensated for the COVID-19 hit on TV station revenue, at least in the early months of the pandemic. That is according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. The report also found that ad revenue for network news–ABC, CBS, and NBC–were actually up in 2Q 2020, while cable news revenue held steady, though only thanks to Fox, whose large increases covered declines at CNN and MSNBC.

The NFL tells Adweek it is “exploring” having a Super Bowl with around 20% capacity at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.

The NAB, Independent Film & Television Alliance, Fox Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, ViacomCBS, the MPAA and the NCTA have boarded a broad new coalition to tackle public-private business continuity insurance, the latest push to offset the financial devastation of COVID-19 and future pandemics.

The network has scheduled winter premiere dates for a dozen shows, including network cornerstones The Flash and Riverdale. Newcomers Walker, starring Jared Padalecki, and Superman & Lois will join the lineup alongside returning shows All American, Batwoman (with new lead Javicia Leslie), Black Lightning, Charmed, Legacies and Nancy Drew.

A total of five production crew members on the ABC drama have tested positive for coronavirus, Variety has confirmed with sources. Despite the outbreak, the show’s producer Entertainment One has made the decision to continue production, stopping briefly for a “deep cleaning” of the set.

The relationship between the show and the folks who make it began to shift in March, when the latter were informed that Ray would, in response to the rapid spread of COVID-19, shoot the remainder of the 2019-20 season remotely from her house in upstate New York without on-site assistance from anyone beside her husband — and that displaced crew members would not be paid for the five scheduled shoot days remaining in the season. That move prompted a dispute by IATSE, which claimed that its contract with the show covering 18 union camera operators, audio engineers and other technical crew requires producers to pay those furloughed workers for all remote shoot days that had originally been planned for the studio.

The Ellen DeGeneres Show is bringing back its live studio audience for the first time since the pandemic began. The daytime host is welcoming a limited amount of people for her tapings, starting with her Wednesday, Oct. 28, episode of the show.

The potential exposure and quarantining of several top Fox News stars has raised alarm among network staffers who feel some of their colleagues don’t take the crisis seriously.

Jay Wallace, president of Fox News Media and several of the network’s top anchors — Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum, Dana Perino and Juan Williams — have been advised to quarantine after being exposed to someone on a private flight who later tested positive for the coronavirus, two people with direct knowledge of the situation said on Sunday.

Total national TV entertainment advertising sank 25% in September to $2.0 billion — mostly due to the lack of TV network primetime programming for the new TV season, according to MediaRadar. Major TV networks experienced massive TV production delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which in turn has pushed out many new TV shows and content launches for the 2020-21 TV season to start in November or later.

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s regional sports business and its creditors are preparing for a possible restructuring of its roughly $8 billion debt load, a sign of the pressure on the sports industry from COVID-19, according to people familiar with the matter. Sinclair subsidiary Diamond Sports Group’s bondholders have hired legal and financial advisers as it deals with the dearth of live sports during the coronavirus pandemic and the loss of some carriage deals with pay TV distributors.

Days Of Our Lives is returning to production sooner than originally planned. Filming on the NBC daytime drama was suspended on Oct. 12 for two weeks after a production team member tested positive for COVID-19. Taping is now slated to resume Oct. 26.