Programming

The Bachelorette posted its best ratings in two years with Tuesday’s finale. America’s Got Talent, meanwhile, recorded an all-time low in adults 18-49.

The cable TV channel he helped start turned food from fuel into entertainment. The network eventually reached about 100 million U.S. households and created a new culture and language around what people eat. He was 85.

“We’re going up on a high wire and there’s no safety net underneath it,” says Jeffrey Katzenberg, the founder of the upcoming short-form video streamer that is paying top dollar and making star-friendly deals to counter questions about whether consumers will respond.

Zeke Stokes, chief programs officer for the media monitoring nonprofit GLAAD, said the struggle for inclusion has become easier as a number of LGBTQ writers and producers have made their way into positions of influence, though they’re still a fraction overall.

Without scripted series, Nielsen’s Top 20 last week was crowded with game shows and, in the wake of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony before the House, five of Fox News Channel’s prime time programs.

The CW is adding a live, ad-supported linear extension of its six-year-old digital network CW Seed, with PeopleTV onboard as launch content partner. CW Seed Live will come online in late fall 2019 via CWSeed.com and the CW Seed app. The app has distribution on Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, iOS, Android, Xbox, Chromecast and Android TV. PeopleTV draws from material in Meredith’s People and Entertainment Weekly media brands.

Later this summer, AT&T will retire the name of the over-the-top TV service, first launched in December 2016, which will be rebranded “AT&T TV Now.” The change comes as the telco plans to launch test pilots in select markets of a new internet-streaming TV service called AT&T TV. Both the AT&T TV and AT&T TV Now services will be accessed through the same AT&T TV app on either mobile devices or connected TVs.

The breadth of first-time acting Emmy nominees on the ballot this year — from Jodie Comer (BBC America’s Killing Eve) to Benicio Del Toro (Showtime’s Escape at Dannemora) to Stellan Skarsgård (HBO’s Chernobyl) — marks an awards season with a notably wide-open playing field. In an era of peak TV, the number of scripted series being produced ­— and the diversity of stories being told — means that new faces and longtime veterans alike are being recognized with their first nominations.

In a slow summer week, Family Feud is the only first-run genre leader to post a weekly gain in the session ending July 21.

The ABC franchise delivered a 1.9 rating among adults 18-49 and 7.15 million total viewers, up from 1.7 and 6.6 million a week ago. Monday’s show also improved on The Bachelorette‘s 2018 (single-night) finale, which drew a 1.8 in the 18-49 demographic and 6.7 million viewers, and had the biggest audience for any episode of the series since the 2017 finale.

PBS has signed a landmark multiyear deal with YouTube TV that secures carriage for all PBS stations and the PBS Kids network on the live television and on-demand subscription service owned by Google.

As expected, the ongoing impasse between CBS and AT&T is wreaking havoc on WBBM’s already low ratings. The blackout of CBS 2 on DirecTV, DirecTV Now and U-verse cable systems appears to have cost the CBS-owned station more than a quarter of its viewership.

Tom and Dick Smothers — aged 80 and 82, respectively — reunited Monday for several appearances at the Chautauqua Institution and the nearby National Comedy Center in Jamestown, N.Y., to commemorate the day 50 years ago when CBS canceled their show over their political impudence.

Already the public broadcaster’s longest-serving president, Paula Kerger will remain through 2024. She has been with PBS since 2006 and during her tenure it has moved from the 14th most-watched network in the United States to No. 6.

Sunday’s numbers play out in similar fashion to recent weeks, with Big Brother topping the 18-49 demo but ABC taking the nightly crown.

Susy Schultz, the Chicago journalist, educator, writer and strategist, has been hired as executive director of the Museum of Broadcast Communications.Effective Aug. 19 she will succeed Julian Jackson, who resigned in March. Since 2013 Schultz has been president of Public Narrative (formerly Community Media Workshop), a nonprofit community media training organization.