MipTV in April is moving online as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc with the film and TV calendars. Organizer Reed Midem confirmed the news today. Sister events MipDoc and MipFormats will also be digital.
Hulu+ Live TV to launch the Nexstar cable network in January. The agreement adds more than 4 million new streaming subscribers to WGN America’s reach.
TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp talks with writer Paige Albiniak about TV’s rethink on how to collaborate amid the pandemic’s forced virtualization as well as lessons learned by station groups like E.W. Scripps, Tegna and Fox.
As he begins his final weeks in office, amid a winter surge in coronavirus deaths, President Donald Trump has mentioned to confidants that he’s thinking about resurrecting The Apprentice or The Celebrity Apprentice reality TV show, two people with direct knowledge of the situation, and another person close to the president, tell The Daily Beast.
The University of Maryland canceled its last football game of the regular season on Thursday after more than a dozen UMD players tested positive for COVID-19. The game, originally scheduled for Saturday against Michigan State, may not be Maryland’s last of the season if the team decides to compete in the postseason. Six members of the Terrapins’ coaching staff also tested positive, according to the school.
Exclusives
Heather Olander, executive vice president of alternative development and programming for NBCUniversal’s USA Network, Syfy and Peacock, is exiting the company after nine years as part of the greater corporate restructuring of the last few months.
The executive, who spearheaded numerous streaming deals for the company during her two-decade tenure, becomes the latest to depart as a result of the conglomerate’s restructuring.
Sports TV ratings plummeted this year, and it doesn’t look like they’ll surge back 2021, either. The pandemic has likely changed viewing habits forever. While sports leagues will still reap the rewards of multibillion-dollar TV contracts well into the next decade, they will be forced to adjust. The landscape is dramatically shifting.
The maker of the leading streaming-media player has taken up brash negotiating tactics over its terms to carry services like WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock. At issue is how to divvy up the spoils of video streaming — and who will reign in the new order of entertainment distribution.
ABC is in early development on Pine Valley, a primetime version of the classic daytime soap opera All My Children. Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are attached as executive producers under their Milojo Productions banner,
The Netflix series had the highest single-week total to date in the streaming rankings, with viewers watching 3.36 billion minutes of the show from Nov. 16-22. The previous high was 3.01 billion minutes for The Umbrella Academy from Aug. 3-9.
Fox’s The Masked Singer closed out Season 4 with 7.1 million total viewers and a 1.7 demo rating, dominating Wednesday in both measures. Among regularly scheduled outings the finale drew the season’s largest audience and second-highest demo number (trailing only the premiere). And CBS’s The Amazing Race (4.3M/0.8) ticked up to season highs with its finale.
The founder, president and chief executive officer of the Katz networks, is tapped by Scripps to lead the entertainment brands including Bounce, Laff, Grit, Court TV Mystery and the Ion networks.
The Rookie is modifying its production schedule after a number of positive COVID-19 tests. The ABC cop drama is going to reduce the shooting schedule for the rest of December as a result of the new cases, which were discovered through its strict health and safety protocols.
Syndicator Telco Productions is offering a variety of new shows for fall 2021, including Ready, Set, Renovate!, a weekly half-hour series featuring families changing their lives with improvements to their […]
Samantha Bee will have another year to vent to her heart’s delight on her TBS program, Full Frontal. The WarnerMedia-backed network will renew Bee’s satire-and-talk show for a sixth season, which will debut on Wednesday, Jan. 13 at 10:30 p.m. ET.
ABC’s The Bachelorette drew 4.3 million total viewers and a 1.0 demo rating, down two tenths in the demo week-to-week but still topping Tuesday in that measure. Over on NBC, The Voice‘s Season 19 finale did 7.1M and a 0.9, dominating Tuesday in total audience (with CBS dramas on the bench).
Missed Ross Live 2020? It’s all here on demand
Two seasons of 2020 Ross Live presentations, videos and webinars dove into new products, solution updates, best practices and expert conversations. Topics included remote production, education, government, sports broadcast, news, corporate virtual solutions and esports. Watch the Keynote, the Solution Talks, and the Tech Talks on-demand at any time at RossVideo.com/live.
Comcast has reached an agreement with local broadcasters to continue carrying 35 local channels in 38 different markets which the cable operator said last month would be dropped on Dec. 22.
The network has handed a straight-to-series order to a contemporary reboot of the late-’70s/early ’80s ABC drama, to hail from executive producers Liz Craft and Sarah Fain (The 100) and air in summer 2021.
In a letter addressed to the leaders of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, Hulu and HBO Max, Sen. Angus King of Maine urged the platforms to make their content available to the masses for free during the holidays, which he believes could encourage Americans to stay home and therefore slow the spread of COVID-19.
Twin Football Games Leads Fox To Ratings Win
Fox averaged 7.3 million viewers in primetime for the week ending Dec. 13. NBC was second with 5.2 million viewers, CBS had 4.6 million, ABC had 3.8 million, Univision had 1.4 million, Telemundo had 1.01 million and Ion Television had 960,000.
