Fox has started making decisions about its bubble dramas, canceling sophomore drama Prodigal Son Monday. The series was a co-production between Warner Bros. Television and Fox Entertainment and hailed from super-producer Greg Berlanti.
Kat’s cat café will remain open after Fox handed freshman comedy Call Me Kat a second season. However, Darlene Hunt, who was the showrunner and executive producer of Season 1, is leaving the show and negotiations are underway for her replacement.
The network said Tuesday it had reached a six-year agreement with the South American governing body CONMEBOL for English-language U.S. rights that include this year’s tournament in Colombia and Argentina from June 13 to July 10 and the 2024 tournament, likely to be played in Ecuador.
Fox has ordered the dramedy The Big Leap to series for the 2021-22 broadcast season. The one-hour show was originally ordered to pilot last year, but production was shutdown by the pandemic. Inspired by the UK docuseries Big Ballet, the show is about a group of diverse, down-on-their-luck characters attempting to change their lives by participating in a potentially life-ruining reality dance show that builds to a live production of Swan Lake.
Exclusives
The fight between broadcasters (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and Locast is nearing its day in court, but the lawyers representing the broadcasters (plaintiffs) have filed a request for summary judgement with the U.S. District Court in New York as they do not believe, and provide reasoning, as to why Locast is not a nonprofit entity and therefore cannot rebroadcast their signals.
Over the past year, the scheduling chiefs at Fox, The CW, NBC, CBS and ABC have busted out every trick in the book in the name of “keeping the lights on,” and especially during a long stretch where it was unclear when productions might resume (and how slow a trickle of episodes would then follow).
Fox has shared its summer premieres, which include Beat Shazam returning June 3. Jamie Foxx hosts the interactive game show as it enters season four.
Crime Scene Kitchen, a new baking competition series hosted by comedian, actor and author Joel McHale and judged by chef Curtis Stone and cake artist Yolanda Gampp, will premiere May 26 at 9 p.m. on Fox.
Just ahead of its Season 2 premiere next month, Fox renewed animated sitcom Duncanville for Season 3. “Watching Amy [Poehler] bring her incredible talent to Duncanville both on and off the screen these past two seasons has been an amazing experience,” said Fox Entertainment President Michael Thorn.
Fox has canceled the animated comedy from creator Emily Spivey. The series, a co-production between Disney’s 20th Television and Fox Entertainment, will wrap its second and final season in May.
Fox is building on its success in Lego with a new knock-em-down competition series featuring dominos. The network has ordered Domino Masters from its own nascent production studio Fox Alternative Entertainment. The series will premiere in the 2021-22 season.
The $113 billion deal
announced by the NFL and media companies last Thursday spreads professional football content broadly, with CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, ESPN and Amazon all getting pieces, and locks it in at a time little else can attract such a wide audience. “If you think of the future of network television, there is nothing more important to it than the NFL,” said Rich Greenfield, a media analyst for LightShed Partners, an industry research firm. During the current television season, the eight most-watched recurring programs are football.
Fox Corp. is integrating its programming portfolio into Operative Media’s cloud-native sales management platform, AOS. This makes Fox the first multimedia company to move linear ad sales to a single cloud system, according to the companies. The partnership — unveiled as the industry prepares for the annual upfront media buying round — will allow Fox to oversee client inventory across its portfolio and manage the full advertising sales lifecycle across linear, digital and advanced audiences in a unified way, within a single solution, they report.
Fox Corp. said it is using technology company Operative Media’s cloud-based system to manage its ad sales portfolio. Operative’s AOS system gives Fox visibility across its portfolio of linear, digital and advanced audiences in a converged platform. The move will accelerate Fox’s advanced advertising capabilities including near-real-time ad creative substitution, automated rate cards and optimization.
Fox plans to invest in Tubi, its entry in the fast-growing over-the-top connected TV market, and those investments include original programming. Fox CFO Steve Tomsic says that adding Fox hits like The Masked Singer has given Tubi a boost, and the company is looking to put original programming on Tubi.
Fox’s fresh take on America’s Most Wanted, features new host Elizabeth Vargas and uses technology like 3D avatar of suspects to enlist viewers to help solve crimes and identify perpetrators.
President Biden is giving a primetime address on Thursday night and the networks are shuffling their schedules accordingly. The president will mark the one-year anniversary of the shutdowns linked to the Covid pandemic in the U.S., which has led to the death of over 525,000 Americans. ABC, NBC and Fox have confirmed that they are airing the address, which is set to start at 8 p.m. ET, and is expected to last 15-30 minutes. CBS has yet to confirm but is likely to.
The pickup will keep the Disney-owned comedy on the air through its 34th season in 2023.
The network will open a second animation block on Monday nights in the summer. Newcomer Housebroken, featuring the voices of Lisa Kudrow, Nat Faxon, Will Forte and Sharon Horgan, will pair with second-year show Duncanville, starring Amy Poehler, beginning May 31. Duncanville will premiere with two episodes on Sunday, May 23, before moving to its regular berth.
The NFL is in active discussions on renewal rates with all four of its existing network partners — NBC, CBS, Fox, and Disney-owned ESPN, according to people familiar with the matter. The NFL is hoping to get its primary package renewals completed by March 17. NBC, CBS and Fox are likely to accept increases closer to 100% than Disney, which is currently paying much more than the three broadcast networks for its Monday Night Football package, said the people.
Fox sats it will be holding its upfront presentation on May 17 and that, in addition to its entertainment and sports programming, this year’s event will showcase Tubi, the ad supported streaming service it bought last year.
The Masked Singer will premiere its fifth season this March on Fox with a new lead-out series, the broadcast network said Monday. The hit whosungit series will debut Season 5 on Wednesday, March 10 at 8 p.m. ET and be immediately followed by the series premiere of the new Wayne Brady-hosted variety show Game of Talents at 9. In the fall, The Masked Singer acted as the lead-in for I Can See Your Voice, which was renewed for Season 2 at Fox in January. The broadcast network has decided to slot Game of Talents in its place for this spring cycle.
The show set in ancient Greece stems from a direct broadcast deal the Rick and Morty co-creator signed at the network.
The broadcaster has renewed the unscripted series hosted by Ken Jeong following a solid debut run in the fall. Jeong, who’s also an executive producer, and judges Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Bailon-Houghton are set to return.
Fox acquired the first two seasons, or 12 episodes, of the CBC original drama that stars Being Erica and General Hospital actress Vinessa Antoine as Marcie Diggs, a star corporate lawyer who reconsiders her priorities and moves to work in a legal-aid office after her beloved aunt takes her own life following the pressures of a malicious prosecution.
Varun Narang has been named chief product officer at Fox, where he will oversee the company’s Fox-branded streaming products, platforms and engineering. Narang had been chief product officer with Disney Plus Hotstar, which he joined in 2015, before it was sold by 21st Century Fox to Disney.
The National Football League will allow CBS, NBC and Fox to sell an additional two minutes of commercials during the playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl, according to network and league officials. That will mean several million dollars of new revenue for the networks, as NFL postseason games are among the most sought-after content for advertisers. A spot usually runs as high as $1 million during the early playoff rounds and can top $2 million for the conference championships that determine who plays in the Super Bowl, network executives said.
The Oscar winner has joined the network’s drama Prodigal Son for its second season. She’ll be a series regular and foil for Michael Sheen’s character in the series. It’s her first series role on a U.S. broadcast network.
The New Orleans Saints and the Minnesota Vikings game on Christmas Day proved a strong lure for sports fans isolated from their typical family gatherings by the pandemic. The game drew a 10.1 demographics score and provided an NFL record performance, as Saints running back Alvin Kamara scored six touchdowns.
Following the NFL on Fox doubleheader on Jan. 3, the network’s new animated series The Great North is getting a special preview at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT, ahead of its Feb. 14 series premiere, following the series premiere of multi-cam comedy Call Me Kat, starring Mayim Bialik at 8 p.m.
Even though games may look the same, most of the processes around broadcasting the games have changed. Interviews for pregame features are being done remotely, announcers are socially distanced while being separated by plexiglass, and sideline reporters are in the stands.
Fox and Sinclair Broadcast Group said they reached an agreement renewing the Fox Broadcasting affiliation for stations in 25 markets. The Sinclair Fox affiliates affected by the deal cover about 11% of U.S. households.
The network has handed a straight-to-series order to a contemporary reboot of the late-’70s/early ’80s ABC drama, to hail from executive producers Liz Craft and Sarah Fain (The 100) and air in summer 2021.
