DirecTV has quietly begun selling a streaming version of the NFL Sunday Ticket to any non-DirecTV subscriber in 29 select markets. The 29 markets include the home cities for 26 of the 32 NFL teams.
TV audiences for hockey and golf are surging, and baseball is bringing in younger viewers, as people look for a break from streaming.
Exclusives
The show, as they say, must go on, and in the case of the Billboard Music Awards, said show will go on this fall. NBC and Dick Clark Productions have announced that the 2020 Billboard Music Awards will be held Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 8 p.m. ET, to air live with host Kelly Clarkson.
Sara Haines will be returning to The View in September as a co-host for Season 24 of the ABC daytime talk show. Haines, 42, is no stranger to the Hot Topics table. She served as a View co-host for two seasons — from the fall of 2016 through the summer of 2018 — where she offered her takes on the headlines of the day, pop culture and celebrities. Prior to The View, Haines was a lifestyle anchor for GMA Weekend.
CBS’s Big Brother aired its first Thursday episode of the year, which coincided with the first eviction of season 22. Last night’s episode, which saw Keesha Smith evicted on a crushing 13-0 vote, topped the TV ratings table with a 1.0 rating among adults 18-49 and around 4.1 million total viewers. ABC managed to snag an overall win on the night, thanks in no small part to Holey Moley, which carded an 0.6 rating (up from a 0.5 last time around) and 3.3 million pairs of eyeballs.
Broadcast TV series are very slowly and cautiously heading back to production amid the coronavirus pandemic. CBS drama stalwart NCIS and spinoff NCIS: Los Angeles have been assigned tentative dates to start production on their upcoming seasons under strict COVID-19 protocols — Sept. 9 for the mothership series and Sept. 3 for NCIS: L.A. Both series, produced by CBS TV Studios, film in Los Angeles.
NCAA President Mark Emmert said Thursday there won’t be fall NCAA championships because there are not enough schools participating due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a decision that affects 22 championships.
‘Big Brother’ Rolls Over ‘Talent’ In Demo
CBS’s Big Brother easily led NBC’s America’s Got Talent among adults 18-49 in Wednesday’s primetime ratings, as the latter drew a series low in the key ad demographic for the second consecutive night. NBC did lead primetime among total viewers, and the Agents of SHIELD series finale on ABC built a little on its recent performance.
No crowd scenes. Few locations. Limited romance. Hollywood entertainment is about to get really strange.
When television production shut down in the spring, a few showrunners began working on pandemic-themed series that could be shot mostly from afar. But will viewers even want more shut-in stories? Above, Dan Levy stars in the socially distanced HBO special Coastal Elites, which was originally written to be a filmed three-night live event. Plans changed.
The Big 12 Conference on Wednesday announced that its fall sports season would go on, one day after the Big Ten and Pac-12 Conferences called off their 2020 plans amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Emmy-winning syndicated talk show The Doctors is getting a major makeover in the coronavirus era. The long-running series will launch with a new format and sole host, Dr. Ian Smith, when it premieres its 13th season on Sept. 21. Production is slated to begin this month.
The network has handed out a speedy second-season renewal for the reality competition series from The Amazing Race‘s Phil Keoghan.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sarah Cooper, whose lip-sync parodies of President Donald Trump are an online sensation, is coming to Netflix with a variety special. “Everything’s Fine,” starring the writer […]
‘America’s Got Talent’ Tops Tuesday
America’s Got Talent continued its weekly ratings drop, but nevertheless emerged way out ahead of slim competition on Tuesday night. The NBC talent show, which last night saw Kelly Clarkson fill in for Simon Cowell who sustained a serious back injury over the weekend, scored a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49 and drew 6.7 million total viewers. While that represents a 0.1 ratings point drop from last week, it does represent a 500,000 viewer increase on the previous edition.
ESPN and Fox shared bragging rights as the 41st annual Sports Emmys were handout out Tuesday night. They tied atop the network leaderboard with seven wins apiece. ESPN scored one more nod to lead all sports groups, as it came into the night with the most nominations (58) to Fox Sports Media Group’s 48. CBS’s coverage of the Masters won the marquee Outstanding Live Sports Special category, and the network also scooped the Outstanding Live Sports Series for its NFL on CBS.
