Fox

CBS and Fox weighed in on their upfronts today, following NBC last week. CBS has closed its 2024 selling season up “low-to-mid single digits” in dollar commitments. Fox Corp. showed gains in news and is looking at a fall slate of sports, animated and unsripted content. Both companies, along with the rest of the television industry, have been in unusually protracted negotiations amid unprecedented Hollywood labor action and a problematic ad market.

Several of the country’s biggest entertainment and streaming companies are teaming up to fight hundreds of local broadcasters over a years-old provision that would determine whether they are forced to negotiate directly with those local stations for distribution deals.  The Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition, which launched Wednesday, is made up of major entertainment companies and their broadcast networks, including Disney/ABC, Paramount/CBS, Fox Corp./Fox, NBCUniversal/NBC/Telemundo, Warner Bros. Discovery, Univision and Roku.

The United States’ 3-0 victory over Vietnam in the Women’s World Cup drew 6.26 million viewers, making it the most-watched soccer telecast in the U.S. since last year’s men’s World Cup final. It is also the largest combined English- and Spanish-language audience for a U.S. women’s group stage match.

Other than its Sunday animation block, the network will rely on reality shows to start the 2023-24 season.t

The series will debut with a special two-episode preview on Sunday, Sept. 24, immediately following the NFL doubleheader that night.

If the long-established law behind the FCC character clause has any validity, it must be enforced against Fox Broadcasting where internal documents from the cable news side of the corporation shows that profit comes before truth or the national interest. Based solely on the facts and the law, Fox does not deserve a license to own a broadcast station.

A petition from the Media and Democracy Project (MAD) and former Fox executive Preston Padden asking the FCC to hold a hearing over and block a Fox-owned TV station’s license renewal isn’t likely to lead to agency action and would raise First Amendment concerns if it did, according to communications attorneys.

The first half of 2023 has been a colossal disappointment for media executives who wanted this year to be a rebound from a terrible 2022, when a slowdown in streaming subscribers cut valuations for Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global roughly in half. Instead, investors have once again become excited by Netflix’s future prospects as it’s cracked down on password sharing, potentially leading to tens of millions of new signups. Netflix shares have surged the past five months, outpacing the S&P 500. Meanwhile, the legacy players can’t get out of their own way.

Less than three months ahead of the planned Sept. 18 ceremony and live telecast, sources say that organizers are actively discussing multiple contingency plans — including delaying the event altogether — if the town’s labor strife hasn’t been resolved later this summer.

CBS, Cox and Fox have agreed to pay a total of $48 million to end claims in Illinois federal court that they participated in a scheme among major U.S. broadcasters to artificially inflate television advertising prices.

The Super Bowl helps Fox to a victory among adults 18-49, while CBS runs its total-viewer winning streak to 15 seasons.

During Wednesday’s MoffettNathanson Inaugural Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, the CEO also said sports will stay on Fox linear: ““Fox has a unique strategy, in that we are keeping our premium sports on our broadcast network. And we think that’s very important because it means that the traditional pay TV ecosystem is still what serves consumers best, serves the leagues best, with the most reach, and serves advertising clients. So we’re going to continue to do that.”

Fox made its annual upfront pitch to advertisers at the Manhattan Center on Monday afternoon, pushing the messages of Fox Entertainment, Tubi, Fox News and Fox Sports, all while promising the audience that don’t worry, we’ll get you hammered soon. Coming off of presentations hampered by the pandemic in recent years, Fox was back in nearly full force, with the writers’ strike limiting the number of network stars in attendance. The event also featured some football antics courtesy of Rob Gronkowski and some well-placed cursing by Gordon Ramsay.

The network has renewed the cooking competition show from Gordon Ramsay for two more seasons, which will take Next Level Chef through Season 4. The renewal came just ahead of the show’s season finale Thursday night.

Broadcasters — including their primary lobby group in Washington and affiliate associations — have told the FCC that if it does not extend its waiver of the requirement to provide oral descriptions of weather radar and other visual emergency information, they may have to cut back on those graphics for everyone.

The network has renewed its comedy series Animal Control, about a group of municipal animal control officers who work better with the creatures they handle than other humans. The show, starring Joel McHale, is Fox’s first wholly owned live-action comedy.

Effective June 2023, Gearhart (pictured) will oversee all editorial, business, and administrative functions for KTTV, reporting directly to station Senior Vice President and General Manager of KTTV and KCOP Steve Carlston.

Marianne Gambelli, president of ad sales for Fox Corp., says in an interview that she believes the company will stand apart in the TV industry’s looming “upfront” sales session by not pressing potential sponsors to snap up commercial inventory in multiple venues.

No more tropical island escapes for Fox: the network is not renewing Fantasy Island for a third season. Fox greenlit the contemporary version of the classic drama series in 2021. The series, which takes place at a luxury resort, starred Roselyn Sanchez stars as Elena Roarke, a descendant of the original series’ enigmatic Mr. Roarke. The series was done under a low-cost business model, so its threshold for success was lower. But Fox still decided to have the sun set on its summer series.

On Friday, the network canceled comedy Call Me Kat after three seasons. The show has seen dwindling ratings, particularly in its third season.

Fox News is opposing a renewed effort by the Associated Press, the New York Times and NPR to unseal documents related to its recently settled defamation lawsuit, saying it would do nothing but “gratify private spite or promote public scandal.”

Fox has renewed 9-1-1: Lone Star, starring Rob Lowe, for a fifth season. It will be the only 9-1-1 series on the network next season as flagship 9-1-1 is not being renewed. (It is moving to ABC.)

In a clear sign of broadcast’s evolving business realities, Fox has opted not to renew its highest rated scripted series, 9-1-1, produced by 20th Television. The upcoming Season 6 finale on May 15 will be its last episode on Fox. But it will not be a series finale for the first responder drama, from creators Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear, which has been picked up by 20th TV sibling ABC and will join the Disney network’s lineup next season, making for one of the highest-profile series moves ever.

Paul Cheesbrough is tapped to lead the new business unit as CEO, while Farhad Massoudi is out. A new CEO of Tubi Streaming will be announced later.

In this repeat of the Talking TV episode from Nov. 18, 2022, Andrew Craft, senior digital journalist with Fox’s LiveNOW streaming channel, shows TVNewsCheck’s Michael Depp how to multitask as producer, director and anchor while on the air for hours at a time.

TV’s nail-biting season has arrived. Although most of the cancellation headlines continue to be focused on the continuing purge at big streamers and premium cablers like Showtime, attention has begun to shift to the beleaguered Big 5 broadcasters as the May upfronts draw closer. While many in-limbo shows are a lock to return (NBC’s #OneChicago and Law & Order troikas and ABC’s Good Doctor, Station 19, The Conners and assorted Rookies), there are a handful of high-profile series on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and The CW that remain very much on the bubble.

The network has canceled its medical drama after six seasons. The decision comes nearly three months after The Resident, produced by Disney’s 20th Television, finished its 13-episode sixth season.

Fox on Wednesday revealed summer premiere dates for shows including Crime Scene Kitchen, Beat Shazam, Don’t Forget The Lyrics, Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars and MasterChef. Dates for So You Think You Can Dance and Domino Masters are among the titles yet to be announced.

Fox has handed out its first series pickup for a new live-action show for the 2023-24 season. The broadcast network has given a straight-to-series order to Doc, a medical drama based on an Italian format. The show centers on the Dr. Amy Elias — chief of internal and family medicine at a Minneapolis hospital, who’s also recovering from a brain injury that has wiped out the last eight years of her memory. Sony Pictures Television and Fox Entertainment are producing the series, which comes from writer and showrunner Barbie Kligman (Magnum P.I., Private Practice) and fellow executive producers Hank Steinberg and Erwin Stoff.

Fox has appointed Diana Ruiz its new executive vice president of experiences and design. Ruiz will report to Fox Entertainment and Fox Sports chief financial officer, Jeff Acosta, and have responsibility for the development and execution of marketing, publicity, sales, hospitality and corporate events and experiences.

Fox is beefing up its scripted series roster for the 2023-24 season. The network has renewed first-year dramas Accused and Alert: Missing Persons Unit for second seasons. The two shows, which bowed in January, have found decent-size audiences and get substantial viewing on streaming platforms.

The Fox Corp.-owned broadcast network has thrived for years on outlays from movie studios and fast-food chains, but in 2023, it’s looking to expand its relationship with something that might be more hearty. Armed with its recent launch of Studio Ramsay Global with celebrity chef and entrepreneur Gordon Ramsay, Fox is eager to court more food advertisers and marketers who are eager to woo consumers who like food experiences.

A former Fox executive was convicted Thursday of paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to nab broadcasting rights to the World Cup and other top soccer matches. A second ex-executive was acquitted. A Brooklyn federal jury deliberated four days before returning the verdicts.

Soon after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Fox Corp. explored acquiring rights to The Apprentice, the competition show that Donald Trump hosted on NBC before he became president, according to court filings from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News and Fox Corp. Rupert Murdoch, Fox’s chair, and his son Lachlan Murdoch, the company’s executive chair and chief executive, discussed acquiring the show in November 2020, according to court documents released this week.

Fox said it hired former Nielsen executive Mainak Mazumdar as the company’s first EVP, chief advertising research and analytics officer. The addition is designed to boost Fox’s data-driven, client-first, cross-divisional advertising sales strategy, the company said. Mazumdar will report to Marianne Gambelli, president of advertising sales at Fox.

The new MVP program — Mission, Vision Purpose — is designed to help advertisers “really amplify what their corporate purpose is and give them time on our Fox platforms to tell their story,” according to Suzanne Sullivan, Fox executive VP of ad sales.