Programming

Judge Jerry, the court show hosted by daytime TV veteran Jerry Springer, has been renewed for a third season by NBCUniversal Syndication Studios. The show premiered in national broadcast syndication in fall 2019 as the highest-rated syndicated court show premiere in five years, NBCU said. It is averaging 1 million daily viewers for Season 2 while delivering one of the youngest audiences among its court show competitors.

Last night’s move, which also saw the host return to his longtime home of Studio 6B, makes it likely the first nightly, network latenight program to bring back an audience since the pandemic began.

Once again, the vast majority of first-run shows are flat or down. In fact, in the week ending March 14, only two entries were up from the previous session, led by Judge Jerry.

CBS’s Monday coverage of two NCAA men’s basketball tourney matchups averaged 5 million total viewers and a 1.2 rating, easily leading the night in the demo. CBS’s coverage peaked in the 8 o’clock hour, with 6.2M and a 1.5.

Fuse Media is doubling down on delivering to blended households and young, Latinx and multicultural viewers. As cord-cutting accelerates and viewing hours increasingly favor streaming, the media company has built a new streaming division to do it.

The $113 billion deal

announced by the NFL and media companies last Thursday spreads professional football content broadly, with CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, ESPN and Amazon all getting pieces, and locks it in at a time little else can attract such a wide audience. “If you think of the future of network television, there is nothing more important to it than the NFL,” said Rich Greenfield, a media analyst for LightShed Partners, an industry research firm. During the current television season, the eight most-watched recurring programs are football.

The Ellen DeGeneres Show, a sturdy daytime hit, has had a steep ratings decline since the host addressed accusations by former staff members that led to firings and an internal investigation.

Survivor has been one of the most challenging shows to get up and running during the Covid-19 pandemic but season 41 is finally moving into production. Host and exec producer Jeff Probst revealed that the team is returning to Fiji to start shooting — a year after initially hoping to do so.

NBC has renewed Mr. Mayor for a second season. The latest series penned and executive produced by dynamic comedy duo Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, starring Ted Danson, Holly Hunter, Vella Lovell, Mike Cabellon, Kyla Kennedy and Bobby Moynihan, opened to solid numbers on its Thursday night debut on Jan. 7, representing the network’s best Thursday comedy launch in total viewers (6.6 million in Live+7) since the premiere of the Will & Grace revival in 2017.

CBS’s lineup topped Sunday in both total viewers and in the demo, thanks in part to a half hour of March Madness spillover. Leading out of the Syracuse-West Virginia matchup (which from 7 to 7:30 drew 10 million viewers and a 2.0 rating), 60 Minutes did 7M (the night’s largest non-sports audience)  and a 0.8 rating (tying ABC’s American Idol for the demo win).

CBS on Monday announced the season finale dates for a total of 19 shows, including the aforementioned series finales as well as one two-hour season ender

The broadcaster’s production arm is venturing into foreign-language programming with the German spy show Ze Network, a dark comedy starring Hasselhoff that will debut next year on TV Now, a video-on-demand platform that is a unit of Germany’s Mediengruppe RTL.

Amid the ongoing probe into comments made by Sharon Osbourne during a heated exchange between her and fellow The Talk co-host Sheryl Underwood, CBS is further extending the daytime talk show’s hiatus through at least this week, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The Big Bang Theory producer Chuck Lorre’s latest — the midseason series United States of Al — is being criticized for casting a non-Afghan actor in its titular role, and for the character’s depiction in general, while one of the show’s executive producers has issued a staunch defense.

“Our plan is that this year’s Oscars will look like a movie, not a television show,” said show producers Jesse Collins, Stacy Sher and Steven Soderbergh in a statement Friday. They’ve enlisted Emmy and Tony Award winning director Glenn Weiss to direct the live broadcast on ABC on April 25.

Perhaps a sign that consumers are longing for the good times, they are literally watching shows like Good Times. It’s true, the growing abundance of media choices is helping people across the country find something to smile about when they want to turn away from the news and get that happy feeling again. And comedy programs are coming to the rescue.

Shelly Palmer: “Whenever I’m asked about the fate of the television business, I always answer, ‘As goes the next NFL deal, so goes TV.’ Well, as everyone with even the slightest interest in the subject already knows, the NFL/TV deal is done—but times have changed. The NFL deal makes it very clear that it is time for the FCC to think seriously about reclaiming the spectrum gifted to the local broadcast industry. It is also time for Congress to craft policies that not only respect the state of today’s technology but aspire to leverage the technology of tomorrow.”