PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
Hallmark Channel is expanding its slate with reality series Meet the Peetes, chronicling the lives of Holly Robinson Peete (21 Jump Street) and her husband, former NFL star Rodney Peete. Tremendous! Entertainment is producing. (The couple knows what they’re getting into – they starred on OWN docu-series For Peete’s Sake.) “We’re excited to move into primetime, unscripted programming and we know our viewers will embrace the Peetes’ story and fall in love with them as much as we have,” said Michelle Vicary, EVP, programming and network publicity, Crown Media Family Networks. Production begins this fall for a February 2018 premiere.
Showtime gave a pilot order for comedy Ball Street, starring Don Cheadle (House of Lies) and Andrew Rannells (Girls). Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg will direct and exec produce the pilot for the show, while creators David Caspe (Happy Endings) and Jordan Cahan (My Best Friend’s Girl) will serve as exec producers and showrunners.
Netflix grabbed Ryan Murphy drama series Ratched, starring Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story) as a younger version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest horror show Nurse Ratched. The movie’s producer, Michael Douglas, will exec produce with Murphy.
NEW & RETURNING SERIES
IFC’s Portlandia is back for its eighth and final season on Thursday, January 18 at 10p. Among the numerous guest stars for the comedy’s sendoff are Rashida Jones (Angie Tribeca), Cherry Jones (Transparent), Aidy Bryant (Girls), Tracee Ellis Ross (black-ish) and Henry Rollins (Sons of Anarchy).
Velocity is jump-starting season 14 of Wheeler Dealers on Wednesday, October 4 at 9p with a supersized, 70-minute episode featuring a hard-to-find1995 Ford Escort RS Cosworth.
Syndicated Today’s Homeowner launches its 20th season with most-ever 91% coverage across the country, available in 109 million homes. Season kicks off the week of September 18 with episode “Renter’s Renovations.”
TV One is adding Thou Shalt Not! to its True Crime Monday lineup. New series about people breaking the Ten Commandments follows the 9p season 7 premiere of Fatal Attraction on Monday, September 11.
A&E docu-series Undercover High, following 7 young adults embedded for a semester in a Kansas high school, premieres Tuesday, October 10 at 10p. A half-hour conversation will follow the premiere, expanding on topics raised in the episode.
Nat Geo 4-part docu-series American High School also explores the lives of teen students, following the stories of seniors in Orangeburg, SC starting Tuesday, September 26 at 9p.
Spanish-language movie channel Cinelatino premieres its first original investigative docuseries, Expedientes Criminales (Criminal Case Files), tonight at 11p. Twelve-parter focuses on notorious organized crime cases in Central America.
Home renovation series Bargain Mansions launches Tuesday, November 7 at 9p, turning rundown wrecks into dream homes.
Laila Ali is joining season 7 of OWN daytimer Home Made Simple, returning Saturday, November 4 at 9a. The boxing champ/daughter of Muhammad Ali is also a cookbook author and lifestyle brand creator.
Season 2 of FarmHer launches tonight at 9:30p, with encore airings Saturdays at 11a, Sundays at 9:30p and Wednesdays at 8:30a. Episodes focus on women in agriculture.
Hearst Television’s Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien has been renewed for the 2017-2018 season, expanding its reach to 85% coverage in the U.S. “Thanks to the show’s differentiated content as well as the determined work of our production team and the support of our station and distribution partners, we have in a very short period of time established the program as a significant new voice in the Sunday morning landscape,” said Emerson Coleman, VP, programming at Hearst TV.
COMING UP
Animal Planet’s Surviving Harvey: Animals After the Storm profiles the heroic efforts of rescuers who saved animals displaced by the hurricane. Special airs tomorrow, September 9 at 8p.
Among the celebs added to tonight’s EIF Presents: XQ Super School Live, airing on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, are Justin Timberlake, U2, Ringo Starr, J.J. Abrams, James Corden, Sean Hayes, Allison Janney, Gayle King, Norman Lear, Joel McHale, David Muir and Al Roker. The one-hour live special, focused on rethinking the future of American high schools, airs at 8p.
ABC comedy The Goldbergs joins Nick at Nite’s lineup on Monday, September 18, airing daily at 1a.
Science Channel’s Space’s Deepest Secrets: Cassini premieres Tuesday, September 19 at 9p. The show captures the months leading up to the crash of the NASA spacecraft, as well as images taken right before the crash. The network will go live on Friday, September 15 at 7:50a to broadcast Cassini’s final moments.
During Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15), Telemundo is launching #NuestroOrgullo, a campaign celebrating the culture, traditions and contributions of Latinos in the United States. Under the banner of its corporate social responsibility initiative, “El Poder En Ti” (The Power in You), the company-wide campaign will feature Telemundo talent in PSAs, and weekly in-show segments across network shows and daily digital and social content that highlight cultural pride and moments of inspiration. “Today, at 57 million strong and with $1.7 trillion in buying power, Hispanics don’t just have a voice, this community has the strength of a nation,” said NBCUni’s Cesar Conde.
The season 6 finale of truTV’s Impractical Jokers will salute the troops with military-themed challenges, filmed in front of an audience of active military members, veterans and their families. Airing November 2 as part of a 2-hour special event, the special episode will be preceded by a half-hour pre-show and followed by Impractical Jokers After Party.
Also honoring the military is a 2-part The Fowl Life with Chad Belding, airing on Outdoor Channel Saturday, September 9 and September 16 at 5:30p. The hunt involves a Navy SEAL chief who returned from hundreds of missions with shrapnel in his brain, described by Belding as “the literal embodiment of American bravery.”
ANNIVERSARIES
CBS is celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Carol Burnett Show with a 2-hour special on Sunday, December 3 at 8p that will film on the show’s original soundstage. Burnett will be joined by original cast members Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner and costume designer Bob Mackie as well as Jim Carrey, Kristin Chenoweth, Stephen Colbert, Harry Connick Jr., Bill Hader, Jay Leno, Jane Lynch, Bernadette Peters, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short and more. “If social media existed then, clips from the broadcast would have quickly gone viral,” noted Les Moonves, chairman and CEO, CBS Corp. of the groundbreaking sketch comedy.
getTV celebrates another 50th anniversary with the airing of an episode of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on Sunday, September 17 at 9p, five decades after its initial broadcast. The landmark show featured a performance by The Who, during which secretly installed explosives went off and injured drummer Keith Moon; Pete Townsend later blamed the incident for his hearing loss.
Syfy has big plans for its 25th anniversary this month, with a celebration of the history of science fiction. Among the programming is SYFY 25: Origin Stories Podcast Series, a 15-part podcast series hosted by Adam Savage (MythBusters), featuring discussions with genre creators and experts. Also on tap: A Battlestar Galactica marathon (September 22-24), and more.
ADVERTISING
Y&R North America launched an 8-week-long cultural immersion project, Days Out: The Middle, aimed at better understanding the values of people across Middle America. “To create relevance with this target audience, it’s important to not simply look at people through their data points, but really get at the heart of who they are through a more connected and thoughtful approach,” said Dick de Lange, chief strategy officer of Y&R North America. “Through eXploring, we can witness what is important to families, experience the challenges they face, understand what they value and most importantly, discover what connects us all.”
The Advanced Target Standards Group, a consortium of network TV programmers, along with CIMM’s Advanced TV Committee, working with clypd, outlineded progress made since the group’s inception one year ago, including guidelines for advanced target linear transactions, methodology recommendations, a research paper and a set of 110 pre-defined targets based on Nielsen advanced data-sets. “All this work has helped the industry progress and we are close to achieving a solution where advanced audience transactions will be considered business as usual,” said Keith Kazerman of Discovery Communications. “With participation from a broad range of industry stakeholders, we are closer to achieving an easier path to transact at scale with advanced audience segments.”
Bringing custom messaging to national TV ad spots for the first time, Omnicom’s OMD and Publicis’ Zenith have teamed with two-year-old tech firm Adcuratio Media on a platform that upgrades national ad inventory. Covering both broadcast and cable nets and across multiple cable operators, it creates the potential to deliver targeted ads to 108 million U.S. households. Brands involved include Clorox, with Axciom participating as data provider.
KID STUFF
Kids originals headed to Amazon Prime this fall include Wishenpoof (Tuesday, September 26), centered on a fairy who grants wishes; Sid & Marty Krofft’s Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (Friday, October 13), If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (Tuesday, November 7), based on the book you’ve read a zillion times if you have children; and The Stinky & Dirty Show, based on the I Stink! series, later in the season.
Nickelodeon is premiering original movie Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, based on the children’s book, on Monday, October 9 at 7p. Nick’s slate of upcoming original TV films also includes Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie, Tiny Christmas and Blurt.
VIDEOS IN SHORT
A+E Networks reports its new short-form series Bae or Bail reached over 24 million viewers on Facebook’s Watch platform, with over 230,000 shares and 35,000 comments since last week. A new episode will premiere every Wednesday.
Think it would be fun to watch Taylor Swift playing with her cat? AT&T video customers can watch the “Blank Space” singer fight, eat and thumb wrestle on digital short Taylor Swift NOW. Hand-curated by Swift, the VOD content is organized in themed chapters.
DIGITAL DOINGS
Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch media conference that his company’s upcoming ad-free direct-to-consumer streaming service, expected by late 2019, is “going to launch big, and we’re going to launch hot.” In addition to 4-5 films and 4-5 series made exclusively for the service, the app will have original short-form content, and hundreds of films and thousands of TV episodes from the Disney library. Marvel and Star Wars films will move from Netflix to the new service.
Eleague’s coverage of the Eleague CS:Go Premiere 2017, starting tonight at 10p on TBS, will include biometrics, a VR experience and the use of advanced analytics to enhance fan experience. And that’s just the beginning. “We’re looking forward to working closely with our technology partners as we continue to drive innovation across our growing esports portfolio,” said Robert Occhialini, VP, esports products and technology, Turner Sports.
Clearly, the esports industry is moving fast. To get up to speed on the essential elements in this game-changing world, as well as the dollars it could bring to your business, register for the September 15 Cynopsis Esports Master Class: http://www.cynopsis.com/events/2017-esports-master-class/.
Two out of 3 Americans get news via social media, according to a new report from Pew Research Center, and for the first time, over half (55%) of those 50 and older turn to social media for news, up 10% from 2016. Also of note: “Not only have Americans grown somewhat in their use of social media for news overall, but now they are more likely than ever to get news from multiple social media sites,” said analysts Elisa Shearer and Jeffrey Gottfried. About a quarter of all U.S. adults get news from two or more of these sites, up from 18% in 2016 and 15% in 2013.
Complex Networks renewed unscripted comedy Top Grier for seasons 2 and 3, launching on Rate Red on go90 in early 2018. Series focuses on 17-year-old digital phenom Hayes Grier.
fuboTV inked a new carriage deal with NFL Media, adding NFL Network to the Fubo Premier base package, and NFL RedZone to the Sports Plus add-on.
The first four shows to launch on Indie Lens Storycast, a docu-series channel debuting Tuesday, September 12 on YouTube under the PBS Digital banner, include Iron Maidens (September 12) about an all-girls robotic team; The F Word (September 14), focused on a gay couple’s journey into the foster care system; Divas of Karachi (October 24), exploring the lives of upper-class Pakistan women; and Pops (October 26), telling stories of African Americans from different socio-economic backgrounds.
Danny Kanell is joining CBS Sports Digital covering all sports, including college and NFL football, across digital platforms, including CBSSports.com and the CBS Sports app for mobile devices and connected TVs. The job begins tomorrow, with SEC Live coverage.
GOING GLOBAL
Fox Networks Group Iberia announced a multi-season licensing agreement with CBS Studios International for the exclusive basic pay TV rights in Spain to CBS’ new fall series Seal Team and new midseason series Instinct.
Endemol Shine Iberia and Movistar are teaming for a second season of social experiment The Bridge, created by Zeppelin TV.
