There were constant reminders of the diminished influence of broadcast television networks this past week, when entertainment companies Paramount, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBC Universal and Fox hawked their upcoming wares to advertisers in flashy New York presentations. None was more glaring than the fact that Craig Erwich and Kelly Kahl, chiefs of the ABC and CBS entertainment divisions, watched from the sidelines. (Image: Associated Press)
Dick Wolf does not take anything for granted. Not even his prowess as one of Hollywood’s most prolific producers. Wolf and his loyal team of producers and showrunners have come a long way since the dark day, 12 years ago this month, when NBC executives unceremoniously plucked out the jewel in his crown, Law & Order, canceling the show after 20 years of yeoman’s service to the network. He speaks at length about the changes in television and the revitalization of his Wolf Entertainment banner over the past half-dozen years.
The surprise of Magnum P.I. getting cut by CBS is due in part to the fact that broadcasters have sharply cut down on cancellations in the past two seasons.
NBC is opting for a pretty stable on-air schedule heading into the 2022-23 season — while also emphasizing the cross-platform availability of its programming. The most notable change is the addition of a one-hour comedy block on Friday nights featuring the new multi-camera Lopez vs. Lopez (above).
Camila Cabello is joining NBC’s The Voice for Season 22, the multiplatinum recording artist announced Sunday afternoon on TikTok. She will serve as a full-time coach alongside Blake Shelton, Gwen Stefani and John Legend. She thus replaces Kelly Clarkson, who is stepping away from the singing competition for the first time since she became a coach back in Season 14.
Young Rock will be back for a third season. Starring Dwayne Johnson, Young Rock focuses on different chapters of Johnson’s life. From growing up in a strong and resilient family to being surrounded by the wild characters of his professional wrestling family to playing football at the University of Miami, the show explores the crazy rollercoaster that has shaped Dwayne into the man he is today and the larger-than-life characters he’s met along the way.
Exclusives
Kenan Thompson’s comedy Kenan has been canceled after two seasons by NBC. During its second season, Kenan has averaged a 0.4 rating among adults 18-49 and 2.4 million total viewers, according to Nielsen’s “most current” ratings, which include a week’s worth of delayed viewing where available.
NBC has canceled the heist drama, which stars Morena Baccarin as criminal mastermind, after one season. The series comes from Nick Wootton, Jake Coburn, Justin Lin and Julie Plec. Universal TV is the studio.
NBC has set its comedy lineup for the 2022-23 season. The network has renewed second-year series Young Rock and rookies American Auto and Grand Crew. The three shows — all produced by NBC’s sister studio Universal Television — will join new half-hours Lopez vs. Lopez and Night Court on the schedule next season. NBC has also canceled Kenan, starring Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson, and the Ted Danson-led Mr. Mayor after two seasons, along with first-year drama The Endgame.
The pickups mean all nine of producer Dick Wolf’s scripted series — across two networks — will return in 2022-23.
TV’s annual springtime rite of (anxious) passage known as “Bubble Watch” is coming down to the wire. With the traditional upfront week set to get underway May 16, the five broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and The CW — are poised to decide the fate of roughly two dozen in-limbo series.
Fox and NBC got more than a quarter of their primetime audience this season from live sports, while ABC and CBS are less dependent.
It’s official: Quantum Leap is returning to NBC. Nearly 30 years since the Scott Bakula-led original series signed off after a five-season run on NBC, the broadcast network has handed out a formal series order to the sequel series starring Raymond Lee.
Warren Leight is leaving Law & Order: SVU after serving as an executive producer and showrunner on the venerable NBC crime drama for the past three seasons. It was his second stint at the helm of the Wolf Entertainment series. Leight announced his exit on Twitter Tuesday night, after wrapping production on the current 23rd season of SVU.
NBC has renewed its game show College Bowl for a second season — and is bringing aboard a revered producer to run it. Former Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune executive producer Harry Friedman has signed on to be the showrunner for Season 2 of College Bowl. The Peyton Manning-hosted quiz show is set to return in the 2022-23 season.
Advertisers Making Last-Minute Buys As USFL Opening Night Draws Near
The upstart professional football league’s April 16 season opener will see advertisers paying up to $35,000-$40,000 for a 30-second spot with some hard-sell tactics from NBC and Fox to move inventory.
“Her whole family has it. You know how it is. Everyone gets it, they quarantine, and then 5 days later, everything’s going to be just fine,” Hager’s co-host Hoda Kotb said during Wednesday’s show.
NBC has greenlit a summertime revival of the iconic game show Password, to be hosted by Keke Palmer and feature Jimmy Fallon — who has made the guessing game a part of his late-night talk shows over the years — as a recurring celebrity player. The premiere episode will be dedicated to the late Betty White, who is well remembered for her appearances on the original Password and occasionally participated in Fallon’s Late Night version. The eight-episode season will culminate with a special episode featuring a star-studded, all-celebrity lineup playing for charity.
The Television Academy and NBC said Wednesday that the 2022 Emmys will take place Sept. 12, which is a Monday. The show will air live coast to coast at 8-11 p.m. ET/5-8 p.m. PT on NBC.
NBC has shared with TVLine its complete slate of season finales, including for the #OneChicago trifecta, its three-pack of Law & Order shows, Transplant, Young Rock and others.
Kristen Hager is leaving NBC medical drama Chicago Med, but executive producers Diane Frolov and Andy Schneider are leaving the door open for a return. “We all really liked Kristen and would welcome her character coming back in the future,” Frolov and Schneider said in a joint statement.
At least four years ago, over dinner at Frankies in Brooklyn, Jimmy Kimmel threw out a wacky idea to fellow latenight host, Jimmy Fallon: What if the two switched shows for a night? Nearly half a decade later, on April Fools’ Day, the two Jimmys pulled it off, surprising their latenight audiences and everyone watching at home, when they came out on each other’s shows: Kimmel as host of NBC’s The Tonight Show from New York and Fallon emceeing ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live from Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles. To ensure the whole thing remained a secret, only a cadre of relevant producers, writers and network executives were let in on the gag.
“You can’t just put your show on broadcast and hope the show’s going to do a big number,” says David Corvo, senior executive producer of Dateline. “You have to accumulate that number over a number of different platforms.” Soon, one of those will be Peacock, where the show’s producers expect to launch a new Dateline format, one that isn’t tied to the rhythms of broadcast TV and will have an almost documentary style to it.
NBC has released its lineup of summer unscripted series, and it includes usual suspects America’s Got Talent and American Ninja Warrior — along with a show that last aired on the network a decade ago. Who Do You Think You Are?, a genealogy series executive produced by Lisa Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky, will premiere on Sunday, July 10 — 10 years and two months after it last aired on NBC.
It’s an interesting time to be the executive producer of a network late night show. In the span of less than a year, the 11:30 programs on NBC, ABC and CBS will have undergone leadership changes at the top. On Friday The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon announced that Chris Miller would become the new showrunner starting in May, succeeding Jamie Granet-Bederman, who will move to a role developing new projects for Fallon. Miller joins from syndicated talker The Drew Barrymore Show, where he was one of the executive producers.
The series premiere of NBC’s Renée Zellweger-led limited series The Thing About Pam has increased its key demo rating by nearly 400% when counting a week’s worth of delayed and digital viewing. The debut episode of the Blumhouse Television-produced show, which aired at 10 p.m. on March 8, initially managed a 0.4 rating among adults 18-49 and 2.9 million total viewers in Live + Same Day Nielsen data. When adding in seven days of delayed viewing across linear and DVR, plus digital platforms Hulu, NBC.com, the NBC app and Peacock, the Pam series premiere jumped to a 1.93 demo rating (up 387%) and 8.7 million viewers (+205%).
The Regency-era-inspired reality dating competition The Courtship has moved from NBC to USA Network, where it will air Wednesday nights at 11 p.m., after Temptation Island, NBC confirmed. The decision was made after the series’ lackluster debut in the 8 p.m. slot on March 6 and its even worse performance the following week, where it lost 37% of the premiere’s 990,000 viewers.
Medical drama New Amsterdam will end with its previously announced fifth season during the 2022-23 broadcast season. The Ryan Eggold-led series was previously renewed for its third through fifth season back in January 2020 and, despite being owned in-house by Universal Television, has continued to see its ratings slip. Season four, which ends in May, ranks as one of the network’s least-watched dramas and has subsequently been bounced around the schedule.
Titled An Audience with Adele, the two-hour special, which aired last fall in the U.K., will premiere Sunday, March 20, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, and stream the following day on Peacock. The special will find the British chanteuse performing in her hometown at the London Palladium, in front of a star-studded audience.
With 100 contestants competing over 50 days on a remote island, NBC is going big into the adventure reality space.
Star and executive producer James Spader announced the pickup Tuesday during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, a few days before the show’s return from a month-long hiatus. The renewal will also take the series past the 200-episode mark early in the 2022-23 season.
These Olympics were a disaster for the network: a buzz-free, hermetically-sealed event in an authoritarian country a half-day’s time zone away, where the enduring images will be the emotional meltdown of Russian teen-agers after a drug-tainted figure skating competition and a bereft Mikaela Shiffrin, sitting on a ski slope wondering what went wrong. Viewers stayed away in alarming numbers, and NBC has to wonder whether it was extraordinarily bad luck or if the brand of a once-unifying event for tens of millions of people is permanently tainted.
The 2022 Super Bowl scored more than 100.2 million viewers according to Nielsen data from NBC and Telemundo. Cracking that 100 million ceiling, the burly Super Bowl LVI viewership is very nice bounce from the total audience of 96.4 million viewers on CBS and a plethora of platforms and outlets that the Tampa Bay-hosted Super Bowl LV had in early February last year.
Snoop Dogg and Kelly Clarkson are set to host NBC’s upcoming musical competition series, American Song Contest, the network announced Sunday. Based on popular European Song Contest — which is watched by 200 million viewers annually — the live series premieres March 21 and will run for eight weeks.
The variety game show “That’s My Jam” has been renewed for Season 2 at NBC. Hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the hourlong music and comedy variety game show draws inspiration from popular Tonight Show games. Each episode features two teams of two celebrities competing for a charity of their choice in a series of music, dance, and trivia-based games and musical performances.
Through the first four nights of competition, NBC is on track for the lowest-rated Winter Games in history. Friday night’s coverage on NBC, USA Network and Peacock averaged 12.8 million viewers, significantly down from the 27.8 million average in Pyeongchang four years ago. NBC saw a steady increase in viewers Saturday and Sunday night, but the ratings are down more than half compared to Pyeongchang.
The Games are central to the network’s brand, and NBC will have to navigate complications resulting from the pandemic and politics.
