Programming

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How does a company like Netflix ramp up the production infrastructure needed to streamcast NFL football … and make it cost-effective for just two games a season? Amazon had to make that commitment for Thursday Night Football, and it cost them a fortune. As much free cash flow as it may have right now, Netflix isn’t Amazon.

For two decades Coleman labored in movies and TV shows as a talented but largely unnoticed performer. That changed abruptly in 1976 when he was cast as the incorrigibly corrupt mayor of the hamlet of Fernwood in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a satirical soap opera that was so over the top no network would touch it, forcing producer Norman Lear to syndicate it. Coleman won a an an Emmy Award for best supporting actor in Peter Levin’s 1987 small screen legal drama Sworn to Silence. Some of his recent credits include Ray Donovan and a recurring role on Boardwalk Empire, for which he won two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Coleman was 92.

Thursday marked the conclusion of the third week of negotiations between IATSE and the AMPTP on a new three-year deal for the L.A. Locals. The union had planned to wrap up talks on the basic agreement by the time the clock struck midnight, but the parties were unable to reach an agreement and will be extending talks.

Fox’s nascent sales house has struck its first third-party distribution agreement for a TV series, taking rights to Australian docu-soap Billion Dollar Playground.

The Big Bang Theory prequel series wrapped things up on Thursday night, and the two-episode finale scored 8.95 million viewers, according to live plus same-day Nielsen data. Not only was it the top broadcast of the night, it was also the most-watched episode of Young Sheldon in four years — since the Season 3 finale in April 2020. That episode managed 10.15 million same-day viewers.

Warner Bros. Discovery and the NBA continue to have discussions about reaching a new broadcast deal. WBD has matching rights if the NBA signs a deal with NBCUniversal for a package of games. If WBD matches NBCU’s bid, it’s unclear if the league has full discretion to walk away from the matched offer, sources say.

“All the shows that are bubble shows, I guess you would call them, we love them all, you know, probably can’t do them all,” Brad Schwartz, the CW’s president of entertainment, said on Thursday.

The buzzed-about Netflix series ranks third among original series and ninth overall.

NFL fans don’t have to worry about streamers like Netflix, Amazon and Peacock gobbling up all of 2024’s games. In the wake of Netflix’s Christmas Day partnership with the league, NFL heads assured in a Thursday press conference that most of their games will remain free to watch.

In its biggest completed deal so far, the company adds the production firm behind such series as The Traitors (pictured), Squid Game: The Challenge and The Tourist, and films like 1917 to its media portfolio.

The CW is looking to keep acquiring sports rights and is eyeing an expansion on Sundays as well as potential team-ups with other rights holders, President Dennis Miller said. In an upfronts briefing alongside Brad Schwartz, president of Entertainment, Miller said the pace of sports rights dealmaking has surprised “everyone, from Perry [Sook, CEO of parent company Nexstar] on down.”

The company’s name and logo were announced this morning by CEO Pete Distad. The service expects to launch this fall in the U.S., though it faces a legal challenge from pay-TV company Fubo and resistance from some corners of the industry and federal government. The companies first revealed plans for the initiative last February.

The CW’s transformation under new owners Nexstar is almost complete, with only two pre-merger series, the final season of Superman & Lois and veteran improv comedy Whose Line It Is Anyway?, on the network’s fall schedule. What’s more, there is an unprecedented scheduling turnover, with only three shows from the current 2023-24 season making it to next fall, Whose Line, Sullivan’s Crossing and Inside the NFL.

When YouTube launched nearly two decades ago, its first clip was a grainy video of co-founder Jawed Karim speaking to the camera while standing in front of the elephants at the San Diego Zoo. Since, then the online video giant has increasingly been the entertainment of choice for billions of people. And while the Google-owned service is still often thought of as being the destination for people watching funny short videos on their smartphones, the way that Americans watch it has changed in a big way.

The seven-year run of the hit series, which ends on Thursday, mirrors the story of the television business during that time.

Diamond Sports Group said negotiations with Comcast Corp. remain open despite warnings from Major League Baseball that the cable provider’s decision to drop its regional sports channels could force the league to set up alternative broadcasts for fans of a dozen teams.

CBS’ FBI (with 6 million total viewers and a 0.4 demo rating) was Tuesday’s most-watched show and landed in a three-way tie for the nightly demo win. Fox’s newly renewed The Cleaning Lady (1.1 mil/0.2) ticked up in the demo.

The Sun’s 92-71 win over the Fever in Clark’s WNBA debut on the league’s opening night on Tuesday drew an average of 2.1 million viewers on ESPN2, ESPN+ and Disney+, including a high of 2.3 million viewers between 7:45 p.m. and 7:59 p.m. That topped ESPN’s previous mark of nearly 1.5 million viewers for a Phoenix Mercury-Connecticut Sun game on May 22, 2004, in Diana Taurasi’s rookie season. (Jessica Hill/AP)

Two familiar faces will return for the upcoming Young Sheldon spinoff Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage. Will Sasso and Rachel Bay Jones, who recurred as Mandy’s parents in Young Sheldon, return to reprise their roles as series regulars in the spinoff series. Both joined the mothership series in Season 6 as Jim and Audrey McAllister.

Warner Bros. Discovery announced new advanced advertising products marketers can buy on its Max streaming service during its upfront presentation Wednesday that include shoppable ads, advanced contextual targeting and interactive video formats.

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