Programming

ABC’s The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons — Ever! returned from a three-week break to its lowest ratings yet. The Bachelor highlight show scored a 0.2 rating among adults 18-49 and drew only 1.5 million, roughly a 20% drop on both metrics from the previous episode. It remains to be seen whether the show can boost things a little with its final episode of the summer next week.

The show’s triumph came despite its airing in relatively lightly viewed daytime periods and being hit with months of massive coronavirus coverage preemptions. It gave the wildly popular jurist first place in first-run syndication for a remarkable 11^th year in a row with a 6.2 full-season rating as of the week ending Aug. 23, the latest for which national ratings are available. That was nearly triple the full-season rating of any other strip in the daypart.

The Boston-based public broadcaster, which has long operated both a radio and TV station, announced Monday that it is dropping the “W” and rebranding simply as “GBH.” WGBH officials say the new name reflects their commitment to “digital-first content” of streaming, apps, podcasts, social media, educational curricula and virtual events since more than than half of its audience impressions come through digital platforms.

Following the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman Friday, ABC aired Black Panther and a tribute to Boseman on Sunday night. Both programs scored big numbers for the Disney-owned network, as viewers tuned in to see the likes of fellow Avengers stars Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Winston Duke, Mark Ruffalo, and Paul Rudd discuss the significant legacy that Boseman has left behind. In total, 6.1 million viewers watched Black Panther, delivering a Sunday night-high 1.4 rating for the Disney-owned network. The remembrance special A Tribute For a King, followed with a 1.1 rating and 4.7 million viewers, the second largest tally on the night.

Gaga won five honors Sunday, most of them for her No. 1 hit with Ariana Grande, Rain on Me, which the pop stars performed live for the first time. The Weeknd, the first performer of the night, paid tribute to Jacob Blake and Breonna Taylor — two Black people who were shot by police officers — after winning video of the year and best R&B for Blinding Lights.

Questions and answers about the coming National Football League season in the time of the coronavirus pandemic.

The New York Times will no longer include the programming lineup in its print edition, ending an eight-decade run. Gilbert Cruz, the Times’s culture editor, said the time had come because of the increasing number of digital on-demand options. “We are firmly in the streaming age,” he said, “and the TV grid no longer reflects the way people consume television.”

In a joint statement released Friday, the league and the players association said they would immediately establish a social justice coalition, made up of players, coaches and owners, that would focus on issues such as voting access and advocating for meaningful police and criminal justice reform.

CBS’ unscripted combo Big Brother and Love Island helped the network to the top ratings spot Thursday, on a night President Donald Trump’s 70-minute speech from the White House lawn in primetime wrapped the Republican National Convention. Big Brother scored a night-leading 1.0 rating and 4.01 million viewers, with the all-star edition off a tenth from Wednesday’s episode, which had matched season-best numbers in the demo. As for that final night of the RNC at 10 p.m., ABC (0.4, 2.25 million) led among the broadcasters in early numbers from Nielsen, as it did for the final night of the Democratic National Convention.

In yet another marriage of sports media with the rising tide of legalized sports betting in the U.S, NBCUniversal and PointsBet announced a multi-year partnership by which PointsBet becomes the official sports betting partner of NBC Sports. As part of the agreement, NBC Sports will provide PointsBet with year-round, multi-platform media and marketing opportunities across its portfolio of events. The company’s sports programming includes NBC Olympics, the Golf Channel, NBC Sports Regional Networks, and the Olympic Channel.

The NHL has decided to postpone all of its playoff games Thursday and Friday amid the growing sports-led boycotts to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, by a police officer.TH

NBC has set fall premiere dates for some of it scripted series, with This Is Us and all three Chicago series to return in November. NBC, like many of the other broadcast networks, will kick off its fall season with an unscripted- and import-heavy schedule next month as scripted series begin get back into production after delays caused by the pandemic. Though previously announced for a fall premiere, the Christopher Meloni-led SVU spinoff Law & Order: Organized Crime will be held until 2021

The NBA has postponed the three playoff games which were scheduled to take place Thursday, as players continue to strike in light of protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake. However, the season is not officially over, as multiple outlets are reporting that players have voted to resume the playoffs at a later, as-yet-undecided date.

CBS set the bar for Wednesday ratings, topping the night with a new episode of Big Brother: All Stars, which climbed one tenth from last week to a 1.1 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic and 4.24 million viewers. The reality series matched season-best numbers in the demo. Tough As Nails (0.5, 2.90 million) also climbed a tenth from last week while the broadcaster saw an uptick in early numbers for Night 3 of the Republican National Convention (0.3, 1.64 million).

In an unusual television season marked by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has kept production mostly at a standstill, ABC is rolling out a fall schedule that so far only includes unscripted series, though the network plans to announce scripted premiere dates in the near future.

A growing number of analysts and insiders are reaching a startling conclusion: While the NFL and its sky-high viewership may be critical to networks as marketers look to unleash their budgets on holiday shoppers, the scrapping of the college Division I football season actually might come with as many silver linings as drawbacks — maybe even more. Why? Because buying the rights to college games has become so expensive that sometimes networks are better off if the games aren’t played at all.

Fox has set September premiere dates for Season 4 of The Masked Singer and the new Ken Jeong-hosted musical game show I Can See Your Voice, the network announced Wednesday. I Can See Your Voice was not on the original fall schedule Fox released back in May, but the show was fast-tracked to debut next month, taking the Wednesday night timeslot previously designated of MasterChef Junior.