Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb will also be part of the Olympics opening ceremony coverage, set to take place around the River Seine in Paris.
A change is coming at the helm of Chicago Med: after nine seasons, co-showrunners Diane Frolov and Andy Schneider will step down at the end of the season. The duo led the Dick Wolf series to nine successful seasons on NBC. The series has continually won its 8 p.m. Wednesday time period by averaging more than 10.5 million viewers.
NBC has decided not to proceed with a third season of its Quantum Leap reboot starring Raymond Lee. The news comes more than a month after the two-hour Season 2 finale aired Feb. 20. The development is not entirely surprising as the series, from Universal Television, had been on the bubble. That is in contrast to last season when Quantum Leap received a very early renewal in December 2022.
The Big Four affiliates want federal regulators to drop plans of keeping a record of signal blackouts that result from contract disputes between TV stations and cable and satellite TV providers. Lawyers for some 600 stations affiliated with ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox networks delivered that message to the FCC this week along with a fresh request that online linear video providers like YouTube TV should be classified as the legal equivalent of cable and satellite TV operators and brought within the carriage distribution system known as retransmission consent.
The NFL is breaking new ground this season with a September game in Brazil, the first time a regular-season contest will take place in South America. The Week 1 game will be exclusively streamed on Peacock, giving NBCUniversal three stand-alone games in the first week of the season.
Exclusives
Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU will be back for the 2024/25 season after NBC renewed the pair of shows but spinoff Law & Order: Organized Crime is in a slightly more precarious position. The network has renewed Law & Order for Season 24, while Law & Order: SVU will be back for Season 26.
NBC has renewed all three One Chicago series — Chicago Med, Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. — for the 2024-25 season. Med was renewed for Season 10, Fire for Season 13 and P.D. for Season 12. The trio of shows returned in January following a long break due to the dual writers and actors strikes with shortened seasons.
Focusing its measurement efforts on the upcoming TV and video upfront market, NBCUniversal will be integrating its first-party identity data with that of VideoAmp for NBCU’s One Platform Total Audience. The expanded deal with VideoAmp for One Platform will offer audience-based cross-platform planning and measurement — looking for the overlap of viewing usage of linear and streaming audiences.
At the company’s One24 tech showcase Wednesday, execs touted the new aspects of the streaming experience for both consumers and advertisers. Peacock will carry more than 5,000 hours of live coverage, including all 329 medal events, in Paris from July 26 to Aug. 11. Two new features of note are Live Actions and Discovery Multiview, which are aimed at helping viewers find and engage more deeply with Olympic programming.
New Amsterdam might have bowed out after the conclusion of its fifth season in 2023, but that doesn’t mean the hospital’s stories are finished. Series creator David Schulner is developing a spin-off series centered around Dr. Max Goodwin’s daughter Luna for NBC, the network said Tuesday.
NBC is setting up another reality summer. The network has unveiled premiere dates for its summer slate including America’s Got Talent, American Ninja Warrior, Password, The Wall and Weakest Link.
NBC is partnering with AMC to bring select live coverage of the Paris Olympics to 160 theater locations, offering a unique communal viewing experience. Tickets for the screenings, taking place July 27-Aug. 11, will be available through AMC and Fandango.
Clarkson and Manning are expected to join Mike Tirico to host the opening ceremony, the network announced Tuesday night. The ceremony’s live coverage will air July 26 on NBC and Peacock at noon ET.
The network has since 2014 used its 10 p.m. slot on Saturdays to run Saturday Night Live repeats from across the show’s decades-long run, a move that whets fans appetites’ for the 11:30 p.m. main showing of the popular late-night series. The 60-minute cut-down of the archival selection is known as SNL Vintage. In recent weeks, however, the archives have stayed shut. Instead, NBC has been sticking with repeats of episodes from this season or last — a bid, perhaps, to keep the focus on the show’s current cast of players.
NBC is developing Something Wicked, a multi-camera comedy starring June Diane Raphael and written and executive produced by Raphael and Dickinson creator Alena Smith. Something Wicked is described as a comedy with a Bewitched-type premise and an homage to TV sitcom classics. It examines the condition of modern adult womanhood and how even with witchcraft, balancing everything is impossible.
Reba McEntire, fresh off her run as a coach on NBC’s The Voice, will star in an untitled comedy that has earned a pilot order at the network. The multi-camera vehicle will reunite McEntire with former Reba showrunner Kevin Abbott, who is set to write the script for the project.
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.
Tegna is the largest independent owner of NBC affiliates. The 20 markets renewed cover more than 21 million households, nearly 17% of U.S. TV households.
Some DirecTV customers were able to watch a national programming feed of NBC in areas where the local affiliate has been unavailable for weeks due to a prolonged dispute with Tegna, StreamTV Insider confirms. The test appears to be a first step toward replacing local broadcast affiliates with national network feeds in order to offset the loss of programming during programming disputes, like the one DirecTV currently faces with Tegna.
The new contract covering stations in 56 markets replaces one that was set to expire at the end of the year.
The first-year dramas, one of just a few scripted originals to air in the fall, have performed solidly.
The annual telecast was seen by 28.5 million viewers on NBC, the largest ever recorded in its telecast history and the most-watched entertainment program of the year on linear TV.
NBC, the only broadcast network to have original, homegrown scripted series on the fall schedule with The Irrational and Found, will also launch most of its strike-impacted scripted slate the fastest. The network has announced its midseason premiere dates, which include mid-January returns for Wolf Entertainment’s three Chicago and three Law & Order dramas on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.
Season 3 of the NBC sci-fi drama La Brea will be its last. The series will conclude with an abbreviated season that will consist of 6 episodes. La Brea will premiere on Tuesday, Jan. 9, at 9 p.m. and serves as a lead-in to the season’s final two episodes of the hit fall drama Found.
Chicago Fire will say goodbye to Kara Killmer during the NBC show’s twelfth season. It is as yet unknown how many episodes her character Sylvie Brett will appear in. Killmer joined the popular procedural during its third season with Sylvie serving as a central character throughout.
Chicago Med is staffing back up, adding a new doc for the upcoming ninth season — and he’s already got a history with one of the hospital’s finest.
The actor took a leave of absence from the NBC drama in the latter part of the 2022-23 season.
Titled Barry Manilow’s A Very Barry Christmas, the one-hour special will air on NBC Dec. 11 at 10 p.m. ET/PT and will be available to stream the next day on Peacock. It will be filmed at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino where he performs his hit show, Manilow: Las Vegas – The Hits Come Home!
Chicago P.D. is losing another member of Intelligence. Tracy Spiridakos, who portrays Hailey Upton, will be leaving after Season 11, multiple sources confirm. It is unknown how many episodes she will appear in in the upcoming season.
There’s change at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. A.D. Miles, who was previously head writer on the NBC show and also worked with Fallon on Late Night, is returning to the show as head writer. Mason Steinberg, who was hired in the role last year, is exiting.
NBC is adding another medical show to its roster. The broadcast network has greenlit Dr. Wolf, a drama inspired by the life and work of Oliver Sacks with Zachary Quinto set to star as the famed neurologist.
Saturday Night Live was welcomed back to the airwaves with open arms. The Season 49 premiere managed 4.8M viewers on NBC, according to Nielsen data. That marks a 19% audience increase versus the Season 48 premiere. The episode, hosted by Pete Davidson with musical guest Ice Spice, also scored a 0.96 rating among the 18-49 entertainment demographic, which is up 31% over last year to become the best demo performance since the season premiere in 2020.
