Programming

The Tom Ellis show has rocketed its way to the top of Nielsen’s weekly top 10 shows on streaming list for the week of Aug. 17, removing The Umbrella Academy from top spot for the first time. Season 5 of Lucifer premiered that week, hence its hellishly strong performance.

At 98, Betty White has many gifts, including her unique perspective on the evolution of television. The Los Angeles native starred in her first experimental TV broadcast in Hollywood a few months before NBC pulled off its broadcasting feat at the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Queens.

Long before Ellen DeGeneres’ show came under fire, culture problems were rife at several shows produced by Telepictures: “What you had at ‘Ellen’ are showrunners who came from notoriously toxic environments.”

The CBS broadcast of the virtual, pandemic-delayed Academy of Country Music Awards averaged 6.6 million total viewers and a 1.0 demo rating, down about 33% from last year (when it aired in-season, in April) but still dominating Wednesday in both measures.

With a leading 26 Emmy nominations this year, HBO’s Watchmen is certainly a juggernaut when it comes to the Creative Arts Emmys and Sunday’s Primetime Emmys ceremony. On the third night of the Creative Arts ceremony Wednesday, Damon Lindelof’s alternate-universe adaptation of the critically acclaimed graphic novel took home four trophies, which may be just the start for the sci-fi drama starring starring Regina King.

The breakout series starring Cobie Smulders, which was renewed for a second season in May, will not be going forward with the Season 2 order. The studio behind the show, ABC Signature, plans to shop it and find a new home for it.

Wilmore, his new weekly series for the Peacock streaming service, came together on the fly but, as he describes it, promises to be a better fit for the writer, performer and producer of shows like Black-ish and The Mayor. The half-hour show debuts Friday with soccer great Megan Rapinoe, Missouri Democratic Congressional candidate Cori Bush and comedian-writer Amber Ruffin, another new Peacock host.

Chris McCumber, president, Entertainment Networks — USA Network and Syfy, is leaving NBCUniversal after 19 years at the company’s flagship entertainment cable networks. He just notified his team in an internal memo.

NBCU consolidated all of its English-language linear networks into one group, overseen by Berwick on the business side. Berwick will have operational oversight of all networks and dayparts and be responsible for commissioning and acquiring content to be optimized across these platforms. Additionally, Berwick’s team will implement windowing and scheduling strategies across the NBC broadcast network and the cable entertainment networks.

Leading technologists from Fox Sports, Colorado Studios, Sinclair Broadcast Group and LiveU will discuss what they’ve learned producing events during the global coronavirus pandemic, and how months of increased remote production are accelerating long term industry trends. Pictured, clockwise from left: Janel Fleming, LiveU director, sports sales; Brad Cheney, VP field operations and engineering, Fox Sports; Don Roberts, VP sports engineering and production systems, Sinclair Broadcast Group; Glen Dickson, contributing editor, TVNewsCheck and the webinar’s moderator; and Phil Garvin, president, Colorado Studios. To join the webinar, please register here. 

For the week ending Sept. 6, the between-season session leading into Labor Day weekend, Judy rose 2% to a four-week high 5.6 live-plus-same-day national Nielsen rating, and crushed the other court shows for a remarkable 1,250^th week in a row — or every week for the past 24 years.

ABC’s The Presidential Town Hall: Your Voice, Your Vote, Your Questions: Pennsylvania drew 3.8 million total viewers, marking Tuesday night’s third-largest broadcast audience (behind America’s Got Talent and Big Brother). In the 18-49 demo, the town hall scored a 0.6 demo rating.

The Big Ten announced that its Council of Presidents and Chancellors has voted to allow the league to play football this fall. The Big Ten will open its season on the weekend of Oct. 24 with teams playing eight games in eight weeks and a Big Ten Championship Game scheduled for Dec. 19, sources tell CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd. That would make the Big Ten eligible for the College Football Playoff as the final CFP Rankings announcement of the season is set or Dec. 20.

The Katz channel, now available on Sky Television, provides British viewers access to, and expert analysis of, true-life courtroom dramas taking place in the U.S. today.

To little surprise, ABC has opted to cancel the multicamera family comedy after one season. The series, a co-production between Sony Pictures TV and ABC Studios, had a late summer burn-off and wrapped its eight-episode run in August with 3 million same-day total viewers.

A schedule of opening week games brought viewers back to their sets last week, led by a Hall of Fame caliber matchup between Tom Brady, a new member of the Tampa Bay Bucs, and Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints.

The second of this week’s virtual Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremonies Tuesday focused on the Variety genre, with top honors including fourth consecutive wins for two series and a director. NBC’s Saturday Night Live won its fourth consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series and SNL‘s Don Roy King won his fourth consecutive Emmy for directing. Apple TV+’s Carpool Karaoke: The Series also won its fourth consecutive Emmy for Directing for a Variety Series.

Dancing With The Stars samba’d, tango’d and fox-trotted its way to the top of Monday’s primetime broadcast ratings, delivering a 1.3 in the adults 18-49 demo and netting 8.10 million viewers. The final numbers for the live premiere are expected to be adjusted due to an NFL preemption in parts of the country, but the numbers were still big enough to lead the night.

CBS All Access is trading in CBS for Paramount. ViacomCBS revealed Tuesday that the rebranded streaming service will be called Paramount+ beginning early next year. The rebranding is the second, and much bigger, phase of the two-phase expansion of CBS All Access, which first launched in 2014 and was among the earliest entrants in the streaming space.