The syndicated entertainment news and talk variety strip will fade to black on April 28 after two seasons.
End Of The Road For ‘Hollywood Today Live’
Nexstar Broadcasting and Fox Television Stations announced Friday that the final telecast of their one-hour, nationally syndicated daily entertainment news and talk variety show Hollywood Today Live will be on April 28. Nexstar said: “Fox Television and Nexstar conducted a thorough analysis of Hollywood Today Live and were unable to find a sufficient audience to support continued national syndication.”
The show is produced by Nexstar’s BiteSizeTV, which the company says will now focus on Nexstar’s “organization-wide commitment to local programming and content production.
Commenting on the announcement, Perry A. Sook, chairman, president-CEO of Nexstar Media Group, said: “Nexstar is in the local media business and we remain focused on extending our legacy of local programming and content leadership by supporting the evolving needs and interests of our local viewers, hometown businesses and community organizations that we proudly serve each day. We are now evaluating other opportunities where we can create value from BiteSizeTV to generate positive results. Nexstar looks forward to continuing our relationship with Fox Television Stations and our partners at Fox Television.”
Nexstar obtained BiteSizeTV as part of its acquisition of Media General Inc. earlier this year. Hollywood Today Live began as a pilot program on Fox-owned stations in July 2014. Following its initial debut, Media General and Fox launched Season 1 of the nationally syndicated show across their respective broadcast platforms in September 2015 and Season 2 began airing in September 2016.
Comments (3)
Kristina Veltri says:
April 7, 2017 at 9:02 pm
Not much of a shocker; most of the Media General clearances were well after network late night and the Gray stations sold off in the Nexstar merger took it off the moment they lost their tether to MG master control, and they went through a litany of hosts, leaving a lot of unhappy people who hated the format changed month to month. Now let’s see if Nexstar does something else with that studio space or mothballs it for the rest of the lease.
John Livingston says:
April 10, 2017 at 8:03 pm
I thought that Nexstar would have taken it for all there station since they were merging with Media General for season 2 but they never did. Hollywood Today Live came on at 5PM on WOTV I enjoyed the show I thought it was pretty good didn’t watch it everyday 2 or 3 days a week.
John Livingston says:
April 10, 2017 at 8:10 pm
I enjoyed Hollywood Today Live pretty good show being only on FOX Stations mainly on MYNet TV stations and very late as well like Media General stations. I wonder if HTL will be repeat until fall or if there outright just going to air it after ARP 28TH I just hope that WOTV doesn’t put 24 Hour News 8 at 5PM & 5:30PM don’t like newscast repeating at the same time. Could take Right This Minute which WOTV did air at 1:30AM before WXSP took it in Jan at 5PM moving Celebrity Page from 5PM to 7AM which I don’t think is coming back could be wrong.
Not surprise that Gray cancelled HTL on WBAY thought whoever was going to buy the station was going to cancel it.