Programming

Hall of Famer Troy Aikman is expected to leave Fox Sports to become the main analyst for ESPN’s Monday Night Football, the New York Post is reporting. Aikman’s ESPN deal will be for five years, according to sources, and his yearly salary is expected to approach or exceed the neighborhood of Tony Romo’s $17.5 million per year contract with CBS. The deal is not yet signed, but it is near completion.

The grand finale of ABC’s Jeopardy! College Championship Tournament drew 5.5 million total viewers and a 0.7 rating, marking series highs and tying NBC’s This Is Us for the Tuesday demo win. Leading out of that, Abbott Elementary enjoyed its largest audience in four episodes (2.9M) and tied its demo high (0.6).

Peacock has won rights to the American version of the hit British series in what it calls a “highly competitive situation.” The NBCUniversal-owned streaming platform has picked up two seasons of Love Island, with the first set to air in the summer. The show, produced by ITV America’s ITV Entertainment, had aired on CBS for the past three seasons.

Sinclair Broadcast Group said it plans to launch its direct-to-consumer product in the five markets where it has rights to stream baseball teams in the first half of 2022. Sinclair said that following rights renewals with the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, its Bally Sports regional sports networks have rights to launch DTC products with a total of 33 teams.

One prominent show that did not experience a severe decline due to the Olympics preemptions, schedule changes and sharply upgraded competition was the renamed Family Feud, which became the No. 1 game show in the nation and the overall syndication leader for the first time this calendar year.

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.

In a letter sent Tuesday to members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the group’s president, David Rubin, said that the awards for film editing, production design, sound, makeup and hairstyling, music (original score) and the three short film awards (documentary, live-action and animated) will be presented at the ceremony before the March 27 live broadcast begins on ABC.

NBC’s AGT: Extreme officially debuted to a 0.7 demo rating — topping Monday in that measure — and 4.3 million total viewers. On ABC, Promised Land (1.6M/0.2) was steady with its final ABC airing (it moves to Hulu next Tuesday). On Fox, 9-1-1: Lone Star (4.9M/0.5) dipped to season lows but drew Monday’s biggest audience.

After growing its audience in 2021, Fox Soul has ambitious plans to expand its programming and generate revenue. The two-year-old, ad-supported streaming service operates under the wing of the Fox Television Stations group. Fox Soul said its viewership climbed 131% to 61 million viewers and minutes viewed jumped 191% to 700 million in 2021.

The New York-based daily talk show with Sherri Shepherd, the actress, comedian, best-selling author and daytime Emmy winner as longtime co-host of The View, will take over the Fox O&O time slots currently held by Debmar-Mercury’s The Wendy Williams Show.

NBCUniversal’s airing of the 2022 Beijing Olympics suffered a 42% decline in average primetime viewers across its TV network and streaming platform versus the 2018 Winter Games. Preliminary total audience delivery — for the NBC Television Network, USA Network, CNBC and the streamer Peacock — averaged 11.4 million viewers for the 18-day event, according to data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

Over its 75 years, the station has punched above its weight, playing an important role in Los Angeles’ history and setting trends that revolutionized TV news. Despite belt-tightening and ownership changes at the station, along with dramatic shifts in viewer behavior over the last decade, KTLA’s newscasts continue to attract hundreds of thousands of viewers. Its coverage of the annual Tournament of Roses Parade still draws millions; Angelenos are particularly partial to the station’s ad-free 8 a.m. telecast.

“Homer at the Bat,” which featured the voices of nine active major leaguers and made its debut Feb. 20, 1992, was more than a quirky one-off in celebrity stunt casting. The 17th episode of Season 3 emboldened the minds behind The Simpsons to push the boundaries of what an animated half-hour series could do and show.

TV has been home to an infinite number of one-season wonders — but what about the shows that were practically yanked before the first commercial break? In the wake of ABC’s decision to pull Promised Land after five episodes, TVLine is taking a look back at more than 35 of TV’s most (in)famous flame-outs — some beloved, others not so much.

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.

This marquee package for fans is still exclusively on DirecTV, but a new deal could make ESPN, Amazon or Apple players too.

“The adults in the room left her alone,” NBC Olympics host Mike Tirico said from a studio during the network’s Thursday night coverage of the Games. “Portrayed by some this week as the villain, by others as the victim, she is, in fact, the victim of the villains. The coaches and National Olympic Committee surrounding Kamila Valieva, whether they orchestrated, prescribed or enabled all of this is unclear, but what is certain: They failed to protect her.”