Programming

Bob’s Burgers, Frontline, Killing It (shown) and A Spy Among Friends were among the series that gave us some of the best episodes of television this year.

The transaction announced in August adds 6,500 film and television titles to Lionsgate’s large library; diversifies and strengthens its scripted and unscripted television businesses; extends its portfolio of brands and franchises; and expands its presence in Canada and the U.K. The deal is for $375 million in cash plus the assumption of some production financing loans.

The NBA on Wednesday approved Cuban’s sale of a controlling interest in the Mavericks to the Adelson and Dumont families, who run Las Vegas Sands Corp. The deal was approved just shy of a month since Miriam Adelson and Sivan and Patrick Dumont announced their intention to buy the club. The purchase is in the valuation range of $3.5 billion.

Prime will include ads beginning on Jan. 29, the company said in an email to U.S. members this week, setting a date for an announcement it made back in September. Prime members who want to keep their movies and TV shows ad-free will have to pay an additional $2.99.

Tom Smothers, half of the Smothers Brothers and the co-host of one of the most socially conscious and groundbreaking television shows in the history of the medium, died Tuesday at 86.

The new contract covering stations in 56 markets replaces one that was set to expire at the end of the year.

Streamers and networks are creating live experiences to promote series like Squid Game and Only Murders in the Building. But do they amount to anything more than just marketing?

Amazon announced in September that ads were on the way for Prime Video‘s entertainment content. Now we have a date. On Jan. 29, 2024, commercials will be introduced to series and movies airing on the service in the U.S., UK, Germany and Canada. That will be followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia later in the year. The move was announced in a letter sent to subscribers that described the addition of what was termed “limited advertisements” to allow the service “to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.”

The mega-merger will enable Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to create the country’s largest media and entertainment business.

A relic of a bygone TV era, broadcast pilot season has been on the chopping block for years as networks aimed to get out of that springtime crunch by focusing on year-round development. But sales are still happening, and pilots will indeed be produced during the January-April period that has traditionally been deemed “pilot season,” according to multiple network programming executives and agency sources. But not many.

Jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for investigative reporter, integrated digital specialist, local sales manager. key accounts manager, director of sales, creative services director, a news anchor/reporter, nightside news reporter and video technical support coordinator.

As 2023 comes to a close, syndication’s one big swing for 2024 looks to be Debmar-Mercury’s talker starring and executive produced by Ken Jeong. Other potential offerings include a true-crime strip from Warner Bros. Discovery’s Telepictures, one or two shows from Sinclair and possibly new games from CBS Media Ventures and Sony Pictures Television. It’s early, though, as station groups and studios are making budget decisions before deciding whether to go forward with their latest projects.

Lionsgate announced that its television and motion picture studios will become a publicly traded company in a $4.6 billion deal. The transaction, separating the studios from Lionsgate’s Starz unit, includes merging the studios with a special purpose acquisition company, Screaming Eagle Acquisition Corp., and is expected to raise $350 million for Lionsgate. The proceeds will strengthen Lionsgate’s balance sheet and help it pay for the acquisition of eOne from Hasbro.

This is something we don’t see often — reruns of an ongoing broadcast series airing concurrently on another broadcast network in primetime. Under a deal with Lionsgate, the CW has acquired the five existing seasons of ABC’s comedy series The Conners. Back-to-back repeats of the Roseanne spinoff will air Thursdays at 8:30-9:30 p.m., flanked by original episodes of Canadian comedy imports Son of a Critch at 8 and Children Ruin Everything at 9:30. The Conners, which airs Wednesdays on ABC, will begin its CW run Jan. 4 at 8:30 p.m. with the series’ first two episodes.

Analysts and industry sources have already raised a number of questions about what a WBD-Paramount combo would look like and the effect it could have on the larger TV and film landscape. The first piece of the puzzle in any serious integration plans would be sorting out what’s to be done with WBD and Paramount’s U.S. cable networks, MoffettNathanson’s team of media analysts wrote in a research note Thursday, after news of the merger talks broke Wednesday afternoon.

The competition show based on Netflix’s runaway hit is the top series in Nielsen’s rankings for Thanksgiving week.

The Dec. 23 contest, the first to be exclusively on Peacock, will be commercial free. NBCUniversal says there will be a 40% reduction in the standard ad time for an NFL game that should result in at least 12 additional minutes of game-related content.

Lone Star NYE: Countdown To 2024 will air across five states on Dec. 31. Originating from KXAS Dallas, it will also be seen on 23 stations in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri and Louisiana.