Programming

The three most-watched entertainment shows on all television this season-to-date are the three long-running syndicated games shows.

The Entertainment Studios chief says the trade show needs to “adapt to new realities in television programming” with a shift to TV’s production hub and a spot on the calendar where it will be more useful to the syndicated production cycle.

Joe Ferullo: “The nation seems to be in the midst of yet another contagion — not the omicron variant, but reality celebrities convinced they should be high-profile political leaders.”

Will Arnett will return as host and executive producer of the competition show.

The new eight-part docuseries series March following the Prairie View A&M University Marching Band premieres Monday, Jan. 24.

NBC’s production of Annie Live! averaged 5.2 million total viewers and a 0.9 demo rating (per fast nationals), easily leading Thursday’s non-NFL fare in the demo. Thursday Night Football on Fox (13M/3.0) was up sharply from the preliminary numbers for its pre-Thanksgiving outing.

Netflix’s action-packed Western The Harder They Fall generated nearly 1.2 billion minutes of viewing in the U.S. from Nov. 1-7, making it subscription streaming’s most watched show in the U.S. that week, according to Nielsen figures.

Dave Morgan and Pete Sniderman will leave the independent production and distribution company at year’s end.

Mayim Bialik will begin her job as host of Jeopardy primetime specials in the new year with the premiere of Jeopardy National College Championship on ABC, the broadcast network said Thursday. The event will kick off Tuesday, Feb. 8, at 8/7c on ABC. Jeopardy National College Championship is a “multiconsecutive-night event that features 36 students from 36 colleges and universities from across the country, battling head-to-head for nine days of intense competition,” per its official description.

The team of Jerry Springer and Steve Wilkos who sat in for two of the five days, helped boost the talker 14% in the week ending Nov. 21.

Fox’s The Masked Singer this Wednesday drew its second-smallest audience ever (4 million) and slipped to an all-time demo low (with a 0.8) opposite family-friendly fare on NBC. That said, it still landed in a three-way tie for the nightly demo win.

She will now oversee the overall strategic vision for African American-focused diginet, including brand strategy, programing, marketing, social media, digital and community relations.

Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO Chris Ripley said Tuesday that additional streaming rights deals for its upcoming direct-to-consumer RSN service could be coming soon, adding that he believes the company has enough content in hand now to launch the product successfully. Ripley said Sinclair is in “active and ongoing negotiations,” with the NHL and the NBA for streaming rights, and that although it has rights from only four MLB teams, that could change.

The strategy, management’s equivalent of a strike under federal labor law, ended the sport’s labor peace after 9,740 days over 26 1/2 years. Teams decided to force the long-anticipated confrontation during an offseason rather than risk players walking out during the summer, as they did in 1994. Players and owners had successfully reached four consecutive agreements without a work stoppage, but they have been accelerating toward a clash for more than two years.

In time for International Day of Persons with Disabilities, this Friday, Dec. 3, ABC Owned Television Stations has produced Our America: Accomplices – The Story of Ady Barkan, which is set to premiere the same day on Hulu.

For the week in primetime, NBC led with an average of 6.8 million viewers. CBS had 4.8 million, Fox had 3.4 million, ABC had 3.2 million, Univision had 1.3 million, Iom Television had 990,000 and Telemundo had 840,000. ESPN led the cable networks, averaging 2.83 million viewers in primetime. Fox News Channel had 2.11 million, Hallmark had 2.01 million, Paramount had 1.18 million and TBS had 888,000.

Consumers are spending less time watching TV and movies and more time playing video games and listening to music and podcasts, according to new research by Interpret, which is resulting in an increased diversity in time spent on consumer entertainment, particularly among young consumers.

Netflix said it has fulfilled a pledge to move two percent of its cash holdings, around $100 million, into Black-led banks and financial institutions, a plan it first announced in late June of 2020, and announced how the funds have been distributed. The idea is that better capitalized institutions will mean more home and small-business loans and better opportunities for Black communities.

NBC’s already-renewed La Brea wrapped Season 1 on Tuesday night with a five-week audience high (4.8 million total viewers) while steady in the demo (with a 0.5). Opening NBC’s night, The Voice (6.6M/0.7) dipped in the demo week-to-week yet led Tuesday in both measures (with CBS in rerun mode).

Honoring transformative achievements in broadcast television, the Iris Awards Luncheon will headline the Station Group Summit as part of NATPE Miami 2022, live from the Fontainebleau in Miami on Jan. 19.

A representative for Fox Television Stations said Tuesday that Dr. Oz has been pulled from its stations in the New York and Philadelphia markets now that the celebrity surgeon has made his candidacy official. Other stations that reach Pennsylvania TV households are likely to at least temporarily drop the program as well. The decision to pull the program is necessitated by the FCC’s equal time provision for TV stations. If a declared candidate for political office is given free airtime on a station, the same opportunity has to be given to other contenders.

Dr. Mehmet Oz announced on Tuesday that he is running for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat, as a Republican — thus calling into question the future of his syndicated daytime program.