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.
The cable net will add the off-CBS sitcom from Warner Bros. Domestic Television in 2015.
Exclusives
TBS has gained exclusive television rights to the new American League and National League wild card playoff games this year and next, and the MLB Network will air postseason games for the first time, it was announced today.
‘Cougar Town’ Gets New Address: TBS
The cable network will air season 4 of the Courteney Cox sitcom and gets the rights to the earlier three seasons that aired on ABC.
Cougar Town is very much on the bubble but a possible cancellation by ABC would not necessarily spell the end of the underrated comedy about a group of wine-loving friends. TBS has been in talks with Cougar Town producer ABC Studios about potentially picking up the series starring Courteney Cox if ABC ends up canceling it.
TBS is launching a Team Coco “synch” app for iPad and Android tablets, allowing viewers to interact live with exclusive content and features developed specifically for a co-viewing experience. If not from the start, it’s a sure bet advertising will become a big part of the app soon.
NEW YORK (AP) — Conan O’Brien’s got his desk job for at least two more years. TBS said Wednesday that its late-night host, who premiered with “Conan” in November 2010, […]
TBS’s pricey Conan O’Brien experiment is flopping—and is about to get even more expensive.In the nine months since Conan‘s debut, TBS has canceled its only other late-night show, George Lopez’s Lopez Tonight, and viewership of Conan has tumbled, by about 60% since its high-profile debut last fall. Despite O’Brien’s shrinking audience, TBS is doubling down on the red-haired comedian, paying for costly lead-in programming in an attempt to protect its investment.
Turner Networks Promises ‘Closer’ Spinoff
How much will ABC dance away with this spring? Can CBS ride the Hawaii 5-0 wave? Can the new bosses turn around NBC? Here’s a handy guide to what the big names in TV have going for them, and what baggage they carry.
Big Start For March Madness Games
Parsing the performance of the NCAA tournament this year, with three networks carrying games in addition to CBS, will be complicated. Ratings for CBS, the sole carrier of the games for years, were down versus 2010. But measured collectively, the four networks carrying March Madness saw big gains over last year. In fact, they delivered the biggest start to the tournament in 20 years. CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV averaged a collective 5.7 household rating for more than 12 hours of game coverage yesterday, up 24% from a 4.6 last year, when only CBS had the games.
Affils, Viewers Upset By B-Ball On Cable
As the NCAA basketball tournament gets into fall swing today, over-the-air viewers and some affiliates are uphappy with the new TV schedule, in which games are appearing on TNT, TBS and TruTV for the first time as well as CBS. Affils are disappointed that they no longer can pick games with local interest. “I think all hell is going to break lose,” says Tom Griesdorn, GM at WBNS Columbus, Ohio, which will not be showing Ohio State game. “In years past, viewers would just go to channel 10. It’s going to be interesting.”
Commercial time during the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament is virtually gone, despite the complications introduced by showing games on four channels instead of one. March Madness, as the NCAA tournament is more commonly known, is nearly sold out of TV and digital inventory on CBS and Turner’s TNT, TBS and TruTV. That’s the earliest the event has sold so much inventory in recent memory.
Research conducted by Turner Broadcasting suggested that programmers could surround the online streams of their TV shows with even more ads.
NEW YORK (AP) — TBS says Conan O’Brien scored another robust audience his second night back on the air. But it was down by one-third from his premiere. The cable […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Conan O’Brien relaunched his TV career on Monday night with a stylishly back-to-basics hour that radiated hard-won lessons from his brief stay hosting “The Tonight Show.” […]
NEW YORK (AP) — TBS has a veteran late-night producer who worked with David Letterman on hand to work on George Lopez’s talk show. The hiring of Robert Morton as […]
