Programming

In April author Demetrious Polychron published a book called The Fellowship of the King that he claimed was a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. He planned for the book to be the first in a seven-part series. The author then filed suit against both Amazon and the Tolkien estate, claiming the streaming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power had borrowed from his sequel and infringed his copyright. It can now be reported for the first time that a California judge summarily dismissed Polychron’s lawsuit with prejudice in August.

WOOD Grand Rapids, Mich.; KELO Sioux Falls, S.D.; and WMBB Panama City, Fla., will carry CW’s primetime entertainment and live sports programming, on subchannels.

Signaling a major thaw in the icy relationship between Major League Baseball and bankrupt regional sports networks operator Diamond Sports Group, lawyers for the league on Friday said they’d agreed on a framework through mediation to keep 11 MLB clubs on Bally Sports channels through the 2024 season.

Walt Disney Co. is suddenly teeming with former executives. A number have returned or are angling to come back — from retired CEO Bob Iger, who resumed his duties a year ago, to former finance chief Jay Rasulo, who is seeking a board seat as part of a dissident investor group led by billionaire Nelson Peltz.

HBO/Max’s Sesame Street, Disney+’s The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and Jack Black and Tony Hale were among the winners Sunday at the Children’s & Family Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. The ceremony capped a full weekend for the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which hosted the Children’s & Family Creative Arts Emmys on Saturday.

Fox has picked up psychological crime drama Murder in a Small Town, starring Rossif Sutherland (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Kristin Kreuk (Smallville), for the 2024-25 season. The network has acquired U.S. rights to the series, based on the Karl Alberg books by L.R. Wright,, which hails from head writer Ian Weir (Edgemont), director Milan Cheylov (The Cleaning Lady) and Canada’s Sepia Films in association with Fox Entertainment and Future Shack Entertainment, the company of former USA Network President Jeff Wachtel. This marks Fox’s first green light to a scripted series co-produced with an international studio.

The quest for a new way to measure TV audiences has taken years of tests, dozens of efforts to sample upstart technologies and hours of debates among big media companies, Madison Avenue buying firms and blue-chip advertisers. At present, no one seems to have devised a perfect solution. So Byron Allen decided to try.

The monthly sports magazine helmed by Bryant Gumbel is calling it quits in its 29th year. The final, 90-minute episode premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET. Gumbel is 75, at the end of a contract, and HBO is now controlled by a company, Warner Bros. Discovery, on the hunt for cost savings. While the show’s exit makes sense, the fear is that a form of sports journalism is leaving for good, too.

Following a very successful second season, the cast of the paranormal comedy have renegotiated their contracts, landing big salary increases while adding an optional year to their existing deals. Produced by CBS Studios in association with Lionsgate Television and BBC Studios, Ghosts, an adaptation of a British format, stars Rose McIver and Utkarsh Ambudkar as Samantha and Jay, a young couple living alongside ghosts in a country house they’d inherited. According to sources, McIver and Ambudkar have seen their paychecks double to $250,000 an episode. All the actors playing the ghosts have been bumped up to $100,000 per episode.

Thorsten Kaye and Jacqueline MacInnes Wood of The Bold and the Beautiful won lead acting honors at the Daytime Emmy Awards on Friday night, when General Hospital collected six trophies, including four for acting. Susan Lucci received the Lifetime Achievement Honor for her 40-year run as Erica Kane on All My Children. Pictured: Jacqueline MacIness Wood accepts the award for outstanding performance by a lead actress in a daytime drama series for The Bold and the Beautiful during the 50th Daytime Emmy Awards. (Chris Pizzello/AP)

“Sony has informed me that I will no longer be hosting the syndicated version of Jeopardy!” Bialik wrote Friday on Instagram. “I am incredibly honored to have been nominated for a primetime Emmy for hosting this year and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of the Jeopardy! family.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner said in the autopsy report released Friday that the former Friends star also drowned in “the heated end of his pool,” but that it was a secondary factor in his Oct. 28 death, deemed an accident.

Here is a list of awards shows, events and the like as the film-awards conversation starts to pick up again.

ABC News Studios continues to provide true-crime docuseries to Hulu. The studio is behind two new series for the streamer including Daughters of the Cult and Me, Hereafter as well as a second season of Death in the Dorms. It is the third slate of true-crime docs from ABC News Studios since its 2022 launch and follows series such as Killing County, Betrayal: The Perfect Husband and three seasons of Wild Crime.

Winners will be honored at the 2024 Producers Guild Awards on Sunday, February 25. Details about the location and timing will come at a later date. The PGA’s nominees for Theatrical, Animated and Streamed/Televised Films; TV Series/Specials will be announced on January 12.

With help from the first four episodes of the final season, the Netflix series garnered 943M minutes viewed from November 13 to November 19.

TVNewsCheck Editor at Large Harry Jessell and Editor Michael Depp look back over an eventful year in broadcast business news and ahead to the steepest challenges it will confront in 2024. A full transcript of the conversation is included. [Ed. note: Jessell erroneously noted Nexstar stock took a 32% hit, when it actually lost 32 points. Since this episode was recorded, its stock rebounded to 155 yesterday.]

In the latest TV show ratings, CBS’ Survivor dominated Wednesday both in total viewers and in the demo. Survivor rose 10% to a season high in audience (5.2 million viewers) while steady in the demo with a 0.8 rating. The Amazing Race‘s finale similarly hit a season high in audience (3.2 million) while steady in the demo with a 0.4 rating.