Programming

Two decades ago ago, Barbara Walters had a groundbreaking idea. She wanted to launch a talk show where she could stop by, on top of her full-time job on 20/20, to spar with a multi-generational panel of women about the headlines of the day. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of a show that changed the rules of daytime TV, ABC is re-airing the first episode of The View this Friday.

For those existing Xfinity TV customers who pay $5.99 for a monthly upgrade, they can get FX+, a commercial-free option of FX Networks: FX and FXX. It will be available Sept. 5.

Fox’s American Grit closed out its second season Sunday with a modest showing in the overnight ratings. Big Brother (1.9, 6.6 million) on CBS was again the top-rated and most-watched show of the night. Candy Crush (0.5, 2.2 million) was even at 9.

There are rumblings at the highest executive levels that AT&T’s top executives are considering divesting some Time Warner assets — including news organization CNN and celebrity gossip site TMZ — after they merge.

If this is the Platinum Age of Television, why is everything starting to look rusty? The commercial broadcast networks last week trotted out the casts of their fall shows at the annual Television Critics Association meeting in Los Angeles. The new season, about six weeks away, looks shockingly like previous ones. Where’s the creativity? Where are the fresh ideas?

How much lived experience should a person have before tackling certain TV or movie projects? I’m talking about shows and films that confront stories, maybe controversial stories, about communities long pushed to the margins by Hollywood. How much — from the inside — does a writer or director or producer need to know and understand, in their bones, about a place or a culture in order to portray and explore it with nuance and intelligence?

ABC is going against the prevailing winds in TV and making a big bet on family values. The network is banking on the strength of its comedy roster this fall by expanding its Tuesday sitcom block from one to two hours. The clutch of family-centric laffers that will air from 8 to 10 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday represent the most well-defined comedy brand among the Big Four networks at present.

ABC has renewed Celebrity Family Feud and The $100,000 Pyramid. The renewals were announced Sunday after the network picked up an additional season of fellow summer game show Match Game.

An email purported to be from the hacker or hackers behind the HBO breach is making a fresh wave of threats against the network. While the sender of the email appeared to use a pseudonym, the sender offered evidence of hacked materials to buttress the claim.

Brown Sugar, the new subscription-video-on-demand service from Bounce, is now available on the Roku platform. Roku customers can now watch Brown Sugar’s library of iconic black movies, all un-edited and commercial-free as they were originally seen […]

The NFL Hall of Fame game on NBC easily beat out all of its broadcast competition in the Thursday overnight ratings. The game, which saw the Arizona Cardinals square off against the Dallas Cowboys, is currently averaging a 2.3 rating in adults 18-49 and 7.8 million total viewers. However, due to the nature of live sports, those numbers are not time zone adjusted and will likely change later today when the final numbers are calculated.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Steve Harvey says he learned two things after catching heat for a leaked memo. In an email to his staff for “The Steve Harvey Show,” […]

NBC wants business writers and critics to focus more on overall viewing, not just live program viewing measures. The revenue from delayed viewing is “significant,” says Bob Greenblatt, chairman, NBC Entertainment.

ABC has postponed its live-musical version of The Little Mermaid. The live production of the Broadway musical based on the classic Disney animated film had been scheduled for Oct. 3. No new premiere date has been set.

In addition to the 13-episode renewal, NBC has also ordered four more episodes for season one.

GSN, the company comprising GSN TV and GSN Games, has promoted Mark Feldman to president and CEO. The former EVP and general counsel replaces David Goodhill, who announced in April that he was exiting after a decade as CEO.

NBC is pledging to hire more female directors. The broadcast network is upping its inclusion efforts with an annual initiative called Female Forward, which will help work toward gender parity among scripted series directors across the network.

A new Big Brother, slightly lifted from the previous Wednesday, propelled CBS to a winning night. The reality show, paired with back-to-back episodes of drama Salvation, led primetime with an average 1.9 rating among adults 18-49 and 6.5 million viewers. As for Salvation, its two-hour block averaged a steady-ish 0.5 rating among adults 18-49 and 3.6 million viewers.