Programming

ABC’s American Idol drew 5.3 million total viewers and a 0.7 rating, dipping week-to-week yet still leading Sunday in the demo. CBS’s 60 Minutes led the night in viewers (with 7.3M).

One month after the 2021 Major League Baseball regular season threw out its first pitch, virtual multichannel video programming distributors YouTube TV, Hulu Plus Live TV and Fubo TV are still without Sinclair Broadcast Group’s regional sports networks, now rebranded as Bally Sports Networks. Pricing appears to be the reason for the decision to do without the channels, and apparently there has been little movement on either side regarding negotiations.

Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s total compensation for 2020 was $37.7 million, down 18% from $45.8 million in 2019, according to a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The big change in Zaslav’s pay was that he received no option award for 2020. Last year, he received nearly  $7 million in options.

As the end of the TV season draws near, the major five U.S. English-speaking networks are poised for another dismal year, according to one longtime Nielsen metric. But considering all the issues resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, it might have been worse. With just a few weeks to go before the official end of the TV season, total primetime viewers dropped 12% to a collective 21.6 million viewers versus a year ago, for CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and The CW, according to Nielsen-measured live program-plus-same-day time-shifted viewing.

CNN’s six-part documentary series The Story of Late Night is a historical deep dive into the origins of the genre that still resonates today as well as a love letter to the medium. It has been overseen by Bill Carter, a man who knows a thing or two about latenight, as the former New York Times media correspondent and author of The War for Late Night and The Late Shift.

Byron Allen, founder, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group and The Weather Group, will continue his crusade to win equity and inclusion for Black-owned media in the world of advertising by headlining  the first Black-Owned Media Upfront. The event, set for May 11 and 12 from noon to 2:30 p.m. ET, will turn a spotlight on the programming and audiences of his companies and others involved in the movement. Register here to participate.

NBC is staying in business with Dwayne Johnson and Kenan Thompson. The network has renewed comedies Young Rock and Kenan for second seasons. It marks the latest comedy renewals at the broadcaster, having ordered a second season of Mr. Mayor last month.

Nielsen and the networks it serves have long been at odds, like a student might be with a particularly tough college professor who always offers a B- but never an A. But lately, tensions have begun to boil over into the public sphere, raising anew the prospect that advertisers and media outlets may start using a broader range of measurement services as the benchmark for advertising and sponsorship sales.

Vanessa Lachey will star in NCIS: Hawai’i, becoming the first female lead of a show in the long-running franchise. Yasmine Al-Bustami and Jason Antoon have also signed on as series regulars. CBS gave a straight to series order to the spinoff, which had been in the works for several months, on April 23.

ABC’s coverage of the NFL Draft averaged 4.2 million total viewers and a 1.0 rating, easily leading Thursday night in the demo. Over on CBS, Young Sheldon (7M/0.7) was steady week-to-week and handily delivered Thursday’s biggest audience.

Roku has followed through on its threat to remove streaming bundle YouTube TV from its platform, in a dispute it has characterized as more about principle than dollars. The streaming provider had warned on Monday that it would unplug YouTube TV unless the Google-owned streaming outlet agreed to certain curbs on search and data use. It charges that YouTube has leveraged Google’s massive resources to manipulate search results in a way that compromises Roku users’ experience and hoards sensitive customer data.

Sling TV, the live streaming service owned by satcaster Dish, has added two more betting information channels, one for baseball and one for hockey. The channels, which are produced in collaboration with digital gaming company DraftKings, follow a marketing agreement last month between Dish and DraftKings to bring the latter’s sportsbook and daily fantasy sports gaming features to Dish and Sling subscribers.

The extension comes as California is slowly but surely emerging from the grip of the coronavirus. All signs are pointing to Los Angeles County moving into the least restrictive yellow tier of social distancing mandates within another week or so. That will allow indoor gatherings including concerts and sporting events to be held at 75% capacity, which will be a boon to the area’s live performance economy.

For the first time, all four outlets the ratings service measures places a show among the top 10 original series.

The CW has made its summer plans. The network today set premiere dates for new seasons of series including DC’s Stargirl, Masters of Illusion and Roswell, New Mexico, among others, and announced a new date for Riverdale‘s return. It also set the final sixth season of Supergirl to launch in August.

Kelly Donohue, the Jeopardy contestant whose on-air hand signal has been misinterpreted as his endorsement of white supremacy, has posted a lengthy statement on Facebook unequivocally condemning racism and reasserting his explanation that the three-fingered gesture was simply meant to denote his third win.

The 2020-21 TV season isn’t over yet, but CBS has claimed the crown in total viewers for the 13th consecutive year. The Eye network on Thursday projected it will end the pandemic-battered season with an average of 6.3 million total viewers, with help from the Super Bowl telecast in February, which fell below the 100 million viewer threshold but set a record for streaming viewing on that Sunday, and the success of The Equalizer reboot starring Queen Latifah that launched right after the big game (20.4 million viewers).

Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress last night was both a very traditional and untraditional affair, but it was no Donald Trump – in more ways than one. In unadjusted fast affiliate data, the president’s speech drew around 11.6 million viewers in the 9 p.m. ET hour. Add, Univision to that batch of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox and the result inches up to 12.62 million for the speech that started around 9:10 p.m. ABC was in first place with 3.5 million viewers in that 9 p.m. ET hour. CBS was close behind with 3.3 million, followed by NBC’s 3.2 million and Fox’s 1.6 million.

A group of former Jeopardy contestants on Wednesday posted an open letter to the syndicated game show over a hand gesture used by returning champion Kelly Donohue on Tuesday’s show that has been widely condemned as a symbol of white supremacy.

As NBCUniversal turns off the lights on its sports network, expect other Hollywood giants to cull their sprawling linear offerings as they prioritize billions of dollars toward direct-to-consumer platforms.