Fox

Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj kick off their American Idol season Jan. 16, while Kevin Bacon’s The Following slips into the Mob Doctor slot Jan. 21.

The X Factor may be down from last year, but it still has been the strongest ratings performer for Fox this fall, so the network is renewing the singing competition for a third season.

On the heels of freshman The Mindy Project getting a pickup for two more episodes, bringing its first season order to 24 episodes, Fox has done the same with its two returning live-action comedies, New Girl and Raising Hope.

Fox will extend primetime on Oct. 23 to re-air that installment of The X Factor that was preempted this week by a rain delay for the Giants-Cardinals NLCS game.

After a scheduling move by NBC pitted the network’s The Voice and Fox’s The X Factor during their premiere week, the two singing competition series will go head-to-head again on Tuesday after Fox rescheduled Wednesday night’s episode because of baseball rain delay.

Fox Broadcasting Co. today elevated Shana C. Waterman to senior vice president, current programming. In this role, Waterman will assume more senior responsibility in overseeing production and serving as a […]

Today, two prominent media analysts issued reports expressing concern about the new season. So far, few new shows have taken off and ratings have tumbled at ABC, CBS and Fox in the adults 18-49 demographic that advertisers covet. Both CBS and Fox are off by more than 20% while ABC is down 13%.

Fox has made the first lineup change since the start of the season. It will delay the second season of Touch until January. The drama starring Kiefer Sutherland was scheduled to begin its second season on Oct. 26 in the Friday 8 p.m. slot. It will now be replaced by Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, originally slated to warm up that slot for a month before Touch launches.

Under the terms of its freshly signed eight-year agreements, Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN, News Corp.’s Fox and Time Warner Inc.’s TBS will pay a combined $12.4 billion — about twice as much as what baseball received for TV rights in previous contracts. “This is a remarkable day for baseball,” Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan “Bud” Selig said in a conference call today.

Fox has announced a major partnership with analytics shop trueAnthem to track social TV across its properties. The “research and technology partnership” will be “focused on tracking the social sharing of Fox’s digital television content and measuring its social influence.”

Major League Baseball has secured its media rights deals through the start of the next decade, coming to agreements with Fox and Turner Sports on a pair of new eight-year pacts worth billions. According to sources with knowledge of the negotiations, while the requisite legal papers have not been signed, the league has an agreement in principle in place with both media companies. A formal announcement could arrive as soon as Sept. 24.

Young-skewing Fox Broadcasting wants to make sure it’s following — and valuing — social media interaction with its TV shows. To that end, it has signed a deal with digital media researcher trueAnthem to track social sharing of Fox’s digital television content and measuring its social influence.

Fox is in the leadoff position for a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar broadcast rights deal with Major League Baseball. Rival broadcaster CBS, which had talked to Turner Sports about a joint bid, is no longer interested. NBC put a bid on the table but came up short, sources say.

News Corp. announced Friday that Tom Rothman would be leaving Jan. 1, 2013, and that Jim Gianopulos, his fellow co-chairman for the last 12 years, would take over the helm of the movie studio. The move comes as Fox is restructuring the studio operation, putting television under News Corp. COO Chase Carey. For the last three years, television production had reported to Rothman and Gianopulos.

The strong ratings of Gordan Ramsay’s reality show at 9 p.m. helped Fox finish first for the night. Among 18-49s, Fox averaged a 2.6 average and a 7 share. NBC was second at 1.9/5, Univision third at 1.5/4, CBS fourth at 0.9/3, ABC fifth at 0.7/2, Telemundo sixth at 0.6/2 and CW seventh at 0.3/1.

In TV rights negotiations, Fox has told Major League Baseball officials that it not only wants to renew its current rights, but also acquire those that Turner now holds, according to sources. Fox needs the extra games to implement plans to convert Speed into an all-sports network. Fox would continue to air league championship games and World Series on broadcast network. Fox is not alone in the bidding. Turner and NBC are in the game, too.

In TV rights negotiations with Major League Baseball, Fox has told MLB officials that it not only wants to renew the rights it has now, but also those that Turner has, according to sources. Fox’s wants to use the super-sized package of games to undergird plans to convert Speed into an all-sports network. Fox would continue to put league championship games and World Series on its broadcast network. Fox is not alone in the bidding for rights. Turner and NBC are still in the game.

Depending on how the rights negotiations play out, CBS could have baseball for the first time in almost two decades or Fox could acquire rights to even more games and use them to launch a cable sports channel that would look to challenge Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN.

The last of the original judges on the Fox reality smash will transition to a mentor role in the upcoming season 12, according to the gossip site.

Fox Sports and the Los Angeles Dodgers began preliminary talks in May on a multi-billion dollar cable TV deal, a person familiar with the talks said, the latest in a string of rich cable TV contracts for teams in the largest U.S. TV markets.

The network points to Dish’s own moves, which it says “concedes” that the original Auto Hop service was infringing.

Kevin Reilly, formerly the president of entertainment for the company, will oversee all the network’s  programming, scheduling, marketing, research, digital and business affairs.

Spanish-language MundoFox, which premieres today, hopes to find a niche by emulating U.S. programming in every way except the language in which it is delivered.

The complaint notes that since last Tuesday the defendant, BarryDriller Content Systems, owned by Alki David, has infringed on Fox’s copyrights and trademarks by retransmitting its broadcast shows online without the company’s permission. It specifically cites Fox-owned shows taken from KABC and KTTV Los Angeles

For its fiscal fourth quarter ending in June 2012, News Corp. said its Fox network unit had lower TV advertising, largely due to lower American Idol ratings. But revenues were offset by retrans revenues, which doubled versus the prior-year period.

The networks will get $1.6 million from Alki David, one of their big legal adversaries. Yet David plans to go forward anyway with plans to add networks to his online TV service.

NEW YORK (AP) — Kimberley Locke wants to fill that vacant judge’s chair on American Idol. The season 2 finalist feels having a former contestant on the show can bring […]