Consumer product giant Procter & Gamble has partnered with Walmart for a fourth family friendly two-hour movie/backdoor pilot to air on NBC as a time buy.
The move is part of an effort to promote the show’s redesigned website and new Internet home.
Mitch Metcalf, NBC’s top programming executive, is leaving the network. The decision is mutual, a network insider says. It comes as new NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt looks to assemble his own team and reinvigorate the network.
Exclusives
The NFL and the players’ union decided Thursday to keep the current collective bargaining agreement in place for an additional 24 hours so that negotiations can continue.
NBC said Thursday that George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush will gather for the hourlong All Together Now: A Celebration of Service, which will air March 28.
U.S. District Judge David Doty on Tuesday overturned an earlier ruling and said the league’s TV contracts with CBS, NBC, ESPN, Fox and DirecTV — which allowed the NFL owners to still be paid a combined $4 billion in rights fees even if there were no NFL games next season — violated the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association. That’s a big win for the union and a blow to the league. But, winners and losers aside, the judge might have just equaled the playing field and hastened a settlement.
The Primetime Emmy Awards will continue to air on the four major broadcast networks with a new deal between the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox . The new pact, expected to close in about two weeks, is said to mirror tne TV Academy’s most recent agreement with the four networks.
By halting production on the eighth season of Two and a Half Men, CBS Corp. and Warner Bros. are turning away from a proven hit with both viewers and advertisers.
NBC has renewed three unscripted programs for the 2011-12 season, including the popular weight-loss competition series The Biggest Loser. Who Do You Think You Are?, from Lisa Kudrow, and the singing competition series The Sing-Off are also returning.
NBC will hold its presentation of its fall schedule on Monday morning, May 16, leading off the broadcast networks’ annual upfront week. Like last year, NBC will hold its upfront at the Hilton Hotel in New York and its event will be followed in the afternoon and evening by Fox’s presentation and party at Central Park’s Wollman Rink. ABC will present on Tuesday and CBS on Wednesday.
Bill Monroe, a Washington journalist best known for moderating the NBC Sunday talk show Meet the Press during the 1970s and ’80s, died this morning in suburban Washington. He later became Washington editor of the Today show and won a prestigious Peabody award for his work. He also served as president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association.
Just-ousted NBC Universal President-CEO Jeff Zucker yesterday praised AOL’s $315 million acquisition of The Huffington Post. He said NBC had tried for 18 months to buy the popular blog but “could never agree on price.”
Today show hosts’ Behind the Royal Wedding documentary will chronicle everything from the flowers to the dress design to the guest list.

Two of the most prominent television news anchors covering the protests in Egypt this week, Brian Williams and Katie Couric, have exited the country. The anchors’ departures came on a day of increasing violence and intimidation directed at journalists in Egypt.
Another apparent primetime casualty at NBC: The network has yanked under-performing drama Chase from its midseason schedule. The network pulled Chase from Wednesdays after trying out two hours of game show Minute to Win It last night.
A year after upended its latenight world, order has quietly been restored: is back on The Tonight Show and topping the ratings virtually every week. NBC executives say this proves that a latenight show can be broadly appealing and still bring in more young viewers than any other entertainment show in the same time slot.
The NFL collective bargaining agreement is set to expire on March 4, and as both sides remain entrenched, a lockout now seems all but inevitable. In a worst-case scenario, the entire 2011-12 campaign would be scuttled, resulting in losses of hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue and sending media buyers scrambling for replacements. Indeed, the NFL plays such a critical role in the TV market that even the loss of a handful of games could be catastrophic to the spring upfront.
Television crews in Cairo fought to stay on the air on Friday as protests enveloped major cities in Egypt. Egyptian authorities adopted various tactics to halt live broadcasts from the capital city, but for the most part networks like CNN and NBC were able to send signals out.
NBC’s new chief, Bob Greenblatt, the programming executive who transformed Showtime into a pay TV powerhouse, is telling Tinseltown producers that he’s going to push the boundaries of broadcast television in a bid to revive the Peacock network.
