Programming

Few properties attract more fan curiosity than NFL Sunday Ticket. The out-of-market viewing platform, exclusive to DirecTV since it debuted in 1994, could soon be on the move. Appearing on CNBC, Brian Rolapp, NFL EVP and chief business officer, said there have been “lots of conversations” with both “traditional companies and tech companies.” He added that the deal to be done entails more than just Sunday Ticket.

Late Monday night in Beijing, NBC sportscaster Mike Tirico boarded a chartered jet for one of the most remarkable travel stretches in sports broadcasting history. He’d been in China for two weeks, waking at about 4 a.m. local time to host the network’s prime-time coverage of the Winter Olympics, and now he was headed toward the NBC studios in Stamford, Conn. After laying over in Japan and spending Tuesday adjusting to the 13-hour time difference, Tirico returned to hosting primetime Olympics coverage Wednesday and Thursday. Then on Friday, he flew to Los Angeles to begin hosting the network’s Super Bowl programming as well — and Sunday, which NBC branded “Super Gold Sunday,” he’ll do something unprecedented — hosting both the Olympics and the Super Bowl in the same day.

Super Bowl 30-second unit ad rates are up 5% year-over-year, according to just-released projections from Standard Media Index’s Forward Bookings intelligence. The rates for the 2021 Super Bowl on CBS averaged $4.53 million, while this year’s preliminary data so far shows a $4.77 million average for NBC.

For the week of Jan. 10, Netflix’s Cobra Kai led the pack with just over a billion minutes viewed across 40 total episodes. With the release of its second season, Cheer — whose Jerry Harris this week pleaded guilty to child pornography charges (that were discussed in Season 2) — placed second with 629 million minutes over 15 total episodes.

Fresh off the gold medal wins for Nathan Chen and Chloe Kim, NBC’s coverage of 2022 Winter Olympics ventured to new heights with Thursday earning the highest demo of the games so far. Per fast affiliates, Thursday’s primetime broadcast of the Beijing games raked in a 1.9 rating the 18-49 demo and 9.86 million viewers, up in both measures from the previous evening’s fast affiliates (1.8/9.65M).

NBCUniversal’s Peacock service has yet to score a breakthrough hit comparable to its streaming rivals. But the first-time showrunners of the Will Smith-produced Bel-Air are bullish about their ability to do so, given its iconic roots and the marketing push surrounding its Super Bowl Sunday debut.

Marg Helgenberger is officially back on the (crime) scene, having inked a deal to reprise her role as Catherine Willows on CBS’s CSI: Vegas. The franchise vet — whose absence from the revival series’ first season was addressed in the opening episode — starred in the first 12 seasons of the original CSI, and returned briefly in its’ 14th/final season to commemorate the show’s 300th episode.

Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal is finalizing a plan that would drastically change its partnership with Hulu, shifting high-profile programming to its own Peacock streaming platform, according to people familiar with the matter. Starting this fall, new episodes of shows like The Voice, Saturday Night Live and American Auto would no longer be available on Hulu soon after they air as a result of that plan, they said.

CBS’s Celebrity Big Brother on Wednesday drew 2.9 million total viewers and a 0.6 rating, marking its best numbers since its premiere and placing second in the demo behind NBC’s Olympics coverage.

As the Winter Olympics near the halfway point, NBC’s viewership is nearly half of what it was four years ago and is on pace to be the lowest in the event’s history. An average of 12.3 million nightly viewers per day have watched the Winter Olympics on Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal TV and streaming channels through Feb. 8. That compares with about 23 million viewers at the same point for the 2018 games in PyeongChang, South Korea, according to an NBC spokesman.

Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is set to make its broadcast TV debut. The Oscar-nominated documentary will air Feb. 20 on ABC, the network said today. Acclaimed musician Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson made his directorial debut with the film, which tells the story of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival at Mount Morris Park — just 100 miles south of Woodstock.

Nielsen calls discussion “premature” on its Nielsen One next-generation cross-platform service, and the value of overnights is questionable, but NBCU is touting iSpot Olympics data daily.

The Super Bowl is the biggest U.S. TV broadcast of the year — and this coming Sunday, NBCUniversal hopes that the NFL championship game gets a massive streaming turnout, too. The hope is that cord-cutters will sign up for Peacock to catch the Rams-Bengals in the Super Bowl — and stay for the thousands of hours of TV shows and movies on the service. “We want to get them to the game, but also talk about all the other things happening on Peacock as well,” said EVP Jim Denney.

Patrick Morris, Phil McGraw’s personal attorney, is speaking out against accusations of a toxic workplace environment against the long-running daytime talk show Dr. Phil. A dozen current and former employees of the long-running series spoke to BuzzFeed News about the verbal abuse, fear, intimidation and racism they faced behind the scenes of the production.

For the first time in the show’s run, Prime Video is not dropping the entire season in one fell swoop. Instead, the streamer is adopting a more traditional weekly-release format, albeit with a twist: Two new episodes of the eight-episode season will debut each Friday (beginning Feb. 18) for four consecutive weeks. And series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino could not be happier about the development.

Nearly 10 years after it signed off, Futurama has been revived for a 20-episode run on Hulu, the third platform for the animated comedy from creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. The series that aired its first five seasons on Fox before being revived for three more at Comedy Central will return to production this month for a 2023 premiere. Original creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen will return alongside voice stars Billy West and Katey Sagal, among others.

ESPN and The Walt Disney Co. said they reached an expanded agreement with Peyton Manning and his Omaha Productions. The new deal adds a fourth 10-game season of Monday Night Football with Peyton & Eli, which appeared opposite Monday Night Football on ESPN2.

For the second straight Olympics, the emotional health of athletes performing on the biggest stage has become a focus of discussion. The experiences of gymnast Simone Biles and tennis player Naomi Osaka last summer were fresh in the mind of NBC’s critics, and the online blowback was fierce after Mikaela Shiffrin skied out for the second time in Beijing.