Programming

Fox plans to invest in Tubi, its entry in the fast-growing over-the-top connected TV market, and those investments include original programming. Fox CFO Steve Tomsic says that adding Fox hits like The Masked Singer has given Tubi a boost, and the company is looking to put original programming on Tubi.

The quarterback great joined NBC Sports on Monday, a day after announcing his retirement from the NFL. He will serve as an analyst for Notre Dame games as well as work from the studio during Football Night in America on Sunday nights.

CBS’s broadcast of this year’s Grammy Awards took an expected downturn, as all awards shows have in recent times. With a preliminary audience of 7.9 million and a 1.9 demo rating, the Sunday night kudoscast is on pace to report about 9 million total viewers and a 2.2  rating once Nielsen finals trickle in later on. Despite a vibrant and socially distanced but refreshingly non-virtual production, plus Beyonce making some history, those numbers would mark a decline of 50% and 60% from last year’s pre-pandemic gala, to all-time lows.

The Talk will go on a brief hiatus, canceling its live shows for Monday and Tuesday. The news comes after CBS announced that it would be launching a probe into an episode last week that saw Sharon Osbourne get into a heated exchange with co-host Sheryl Underwood after defending Piers Morgan’s comments about Meghan Markle. The plan is currently to return to filming on Wednesday, a source says, but the show will evaluate and see where they are before moving forward. CBS declined comment, and pointed to its earlier statement on its investigation on Friday.

The news comes as the show is currently in production on Season 6, which was supposed to begin last year but was delayed due to the pandemic. Season 7 of the popular series will be based on the seventh book in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, An Echo in the Bone. It will consist of 12 episodes.

After a pandemic year that shuttered most movie theaters, none of the expected best-picture nominees will have hardly any box office to speak of. It will be an Oscars not just without blockbusters but with many movies that have hardly played on the big screen. Streaming services are set to dominate Hollywood’s biggest and most sought-after awards. Nominations will be announced beginning at 8:19 a.m. ET and the film academy and ABC will telecast the Oscars on April 25 (delayed two months due to the pandemic).

Lisa Knutson, president of E.W. Scripps’ national networks, says the company is targeting cord-cutting viewers who are pairing a handful of paid streaming subscriptions with free over-the-air options and “assembling their own TV packages.” Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

“Chris Harrison will not be hosting the next season of The Bachelorette,” ABC and Warner Horizon said in a statement on Friday. Former Bachelorettes Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe will step in for Harrison as co-hosts of the upcoming season.

The fallout from the charged discussion during The Talk on Wednesday continues, with the network issuing a statement to Deadline Friday night. “We are committed to a diverse, inclusive and respectful workplace,” CBS said. “All matters related to the Wednesday episode of The Talk are currently under internal review.” During Wednesday’s episode of The Talk, which is not made available online by CBS, Sharon Osbourne broke down after being called out by co-host Sheryl Underwood for giving “safe haven” to Piers Morgan’s allegedly racially-charged comments about the Duchess of Sussex.

In what could be a major departure in strategy, the streaming giant in recent months has explored licensing some of its movies and series to other TV outlets owned by companies like NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS, say people familiar with the situation. The discussions indicate how Netflix, long the 800-pound gorilla in the streaming market, may be more open than previously thought to a decades-old way of making money from its programming—basically selling shows to a variety of media outlets to be aired at different time periods. This approach emphasized limited availability, unlike the streaming strategy of making every program available all the time for the price of the subscription. The streaming strategy in recent years has undermined the long-term value of programming, eroding the profitability of Hollywood.

With a rebroadcast tonight on CBS, the final numbers are not totally in for the agenda-setting Oprah with Meghan and Harry: A CBS Primetime Special. However, the royal sit-down has now clenched the crown of most watched non-sports show of the television season so far. A whooping 61 million around planet have tuned in so far to the Harpo Productions special that was licensed to CBS domestically. The special was distributed internationally by ViacomCBS Global Distribution to dozens of markets.

Associated Newspapers, which owns the U.K. Daily Mail tabloid, has written to ViacomCBS demanding the deletion of “offending content” in Oprah Winfrey’s high-profile interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Lawyers for Associated Newspapers took exception with images in a newspaper headline montage they claim have been altered or misrepresented and demand that they be edited out of the TV special.

With President Biden’s primetime address about the COVID vaccine plan forcing some schedule-shuffling, almost every regularly scheduled network program was understandably down this Thursday night. Biden’s address amassed north of 18 million viewers across its primetime coverage on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.

AT&T has set June for the launch of its ad-supported HBO Max option. The WarnerMedia parent company also updated its subscriber forecasts. They’re now much higher. The company now expects 120-150 million worldwide HBO Max and HBO subscribers by the end of 2025.

PBS earned $27.2 million in net income for the first half of the fiscal year that ends in June, a figure that vastly exceeds what it had budgeted. PBS budgeted for $200,000 in net income by the end of December but earned $27 million more resulting from a pair of one-time gains, an increase in streaming and lower operating costs due to the coronavirus pandemic.

A winner of 16 Sport Emmys, he produced the groundbreaking pregame show The NFL Today and the highest-rated Olympics ever, the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, at CBS.

NBCUniversal’s Access Hollywood companion series All Access has been canceled after a year-and-a-half run. The half-hour entertainment news program, which featured Access Hollywood hosts Mario Lopez, Kit Hoover, Scott Evans and correspondent Sibley Scoles, debuted in September 2019.

Fremantle, the RTL-owned global production empire behind shows including American Idol, Too Hot To Handle and We Are Who We Are, suffered a 39% drop in earnings as the coronavirus pandemic wiped out TV shoots across the world.

Andrea Downing has been named president of PBS Distribution (PBSd), the for-profit outlet for public media content. Downing will head up strategic, financial and operations for the distributor, which offers more than 4,000 hours of content. She had been co-president with David Bernstein.

Fox’s The Masked Singer opened Season 4 with 5.4 million total viewers and a 1.2 demo rating, down from both its fall premiere (5.9M/1.6) and its Season 4 averages (6.6M/1.7), yet still leading Wednesday in the demo. CBS’s SEAL Team (3.4M/0.4) slipped, hitting a new series low.

Advertising inventory in NCAA’s Men’s College Basketball Tournament — “March Madness” — is “virtually sold out,” says John Bogusz, EVP sports sales and marketing at CBS Television Network. “There were [price] increases in all rounds through the championship weekend,” he added, speaking on a call with reporters Wednesday. Bogusz did not provide details.

Ad sales have been “remarkably strong” following last year’s cancellation. Turner and CBS have now had an entire year to prepare for the return of March Madness, which is going to look a little different from 2019. All 67 games will be staged entirely in Indiana, and 10 production teams will work the event, up from the usual eight.