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Today’s Finales
ABC: Celebrity Family Feud at 8p, Press Your Luck at 9p, Match Game at 10p
Facebook Watch: Latin Music Queens at 9p

Craig Robinson (“The Office”) will host Fox’s “Masked Singer” spin-off, “The Masked Dancer.” Panelists Ken Jeong, Paula Abdul and Ashley Tisdale will help guess the identities of costumed celebrity dancers in the series, set to premiere in December.

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign will spend $51 million in TV and digital ads during this final week before the election, according to Advertising Analytics, with outside groups set to fork over another $36 million to try and get the Democratic candidate elected. President Trump’s campaign is projected to spend $11 million during the same period, with an additional $15 million in coordination with the Republican National Committee and $20 million from America First Action.

Biden already has one victory under his belt – he won Nickelodeon’s “Kids Pick the President: Kids’ Vote” with 53% of the 90,000 votes, versus 47% for Donald Trump. The online poll had been subject to corruption – over 130,000 bot-generated votes were detected and removed before a winner was declared. “Just as kids value honesty and fairness, so do we at Nickelodeon,” the network said. “Therefore, out of respect for kids everywhere and in the spirit of civic responsibility, we present the name of the winner based on votes cast fairly and within our stated guidelines of one vote counted per household device.”

Ready for an eye-opening conversation? Sign up for today’s “must-attend” webinar for anyone in the advertising orbit. At 1pm ET, “BLACK OWNED MEDIA MATTERS: Addressing the Issue of Systemic Racism in Advertising” will feature Byron Allen and Natasha Alford – and if part one of the discussion last summer was any indication, this will be an hour people will be buzzing about. Registration is free.

The CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter were in the (virtual) hot seat during a grilling by lawmakers on Wednesday, after the Trump administration asked Congress to change a provision of a 1996 law that gives social media companies immunity for content posted by users. “The time has come for that free pass to end,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, adding that the laws governing online speech must be updated because “the openness and freedom of the internet are under attack.” Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said Congress should “update the law to make sure it’s working as intended,” while Google’s Sundar Pichai and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey urged caution in making changes that could undermine free speech.

Telemundo Deportes has reached a broadcast agreement with Xtreme Fighting Championships to present Spanish-Language coverage of the Xtreme Fighting Championships live in the US. XFC events will be broadcast on Telemundo’s sister network, Universo, beginning with XFC 43 on Wednesday, November 11 at 9p.

Kathy Hilton is joining season 11 of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, as “a friend of the housewives.” It’s a family affair – Hilton’s half-sisters Kyle Richards and Kim Richards are regular cast members.

Nicole Kidman is attached to star in a series adaptation of the play “Things I Know to Be True,” written by Andrew Bovell, for Amazon. Kidman will also executive produce the family drama, via her Blossom Films. “I’ll never forget the experience I had watching Andrew’s play in Sydney, having one of those transcendent theater experiences,” said Kidman. “Andrew’s play is exquisite and his scripts for the series are just as good.”

Apple TV+ gave an early season three renewal to its #1 comedy, Ted Lasso, starring Jason Sudeikas. Season two starts production in January.

The CW is developing a series based on the classic sci-fi/adventure Tom Swift novels, from “Nancy Drew” co-creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage and their Fake Empire and CBS Studios. Only in this iteration, Swift will be a Black and gay billionaire inventor, thrust in the world of sci-fi conspiracy.

Drug trafficking drama Narcos was renewed for a third season by Netflix. Series star Diego Luna, whose character was sentenced to prison at the end of season two, will not be returning. Eric Newman is continuing as an executive producer but his showrunner duties will be taken over by series co-creator Carlo Bernard.

HBO Max and Cartoon Network announced three new projects with best-selling children’s book author, illustrator, and playwright Mo Willems. Getting green lights are animated series “Unlimited Squirrels!”; a CGI animated rock special, “Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Special”; and a pilot order for a live-action immersive series, “Cat the Cat’s Show the Show Show with YOU the YOU!”. “Mo’s creative vision and profound legacy is a remarkable force that has the power to shape the future of kids and family programming,” said Tom Ascheim, President of Global Kids, Young Adults and Classics at Warner Bros. Entertainment. “This collaboration is integral to reaching children and adults simultaneously in different and unique ways.”

HBO Max and Cartoon Network are on a roll – they also ordered a project from animator Genndy Tartakovsky, supernatural animated series “Unicorn: Warriors Eternal,” and gave a two-season order for Tiny Toons Looniversity, from Warner Bros. Animation, Amblin Television and exec producer Steven Spielberg.

With more than a dozen categories, these companies reign supreme in Cynopsis’ Adtech Awards: Adobe, Amobee, Bell Media, Concert, Cuebiq, Dell, Disney, Dotdash, Discovery Engage, Gamut Total, GroundTruth, IBM, Imagine Communication, Jaguar Land Rover, ListenFirst, MagicLinks, NewsON, Nielsen, New York Interconnect, Premion, Publica, Realeyes, Roku, Simpli.fi, Spectrum Reach, Tap Native, The AI Exchange, TVSquared, Giant, Viamedia, Vistar Media, WarnerMedia, and Xandr. Register for our virtual awards event on December 1st to see who wins!

NEW & RETURNING SERIES

Calling all foodies: OWN has programmed its first food programming block, with four new original cooking shows premiering on Saturday, November 14 featuring African American chefs. First up at 12p is “Lovely Bites” starring Chef Connie “Lovely” Jackson, followed by “Tregaye’s Way” at 12:30p, starring Chef Tregaye Fraser, “Food Fantasies” at 1p, featuring several celebrity chefs each episode, and “Tanya’s Kitchen Table” at 1:30p, starring Chef Tanya Holland.

James Monroe Iglehart (“Hamilton”) will host HGTV holiday series “Biggest Little Christmas Showdown.” Premiering Friday, November 27 at 9p, the four-part, tournament-style series will have miniaturists facing off to create mini holiday houses.

Four-part docu-series “Murder on Middle Beach,” directed by Madison Hamburg and focused on Hamburg’s unsettling journey to solve his mother’s murder, debuts Sunday, November 15 at 10p.

HBO Max has “Two Weeks to Live.” All episodes of the British dark comedy about a seemingly harmless prank gone wrong drop Thursday, November 5.

Season two of E!’s Dating #NoFilter returns Wednesday, November 18 at 10p, with comedians watching – and commenting – on singles trying to make a love connection.

STREAMING

Disney+ has added a sharing capability on mobile that lets subscribers tap a “share” button on a Disney+ title’s Details page, and select the medium and who they want to share with. Users can overwrite a pre-populated message with a personal message.

Spanish-language romance programming is looking UP. Cine Romántico has been launched by UP Entertainment in partnership with PixL Dos, targeting Spanish-speaking viewers and dual language households. The FAST channel focused on romance is available on Samsung TV Plus and XUMO with plans to expand to other platforms.

Samsung TV Plus is also gearing up for election day, by adding ABC News to its lineup of 145+ channels. It will be the 10th major news channel on the platform.

YouTube channel “Vlad & Niki” moved to the top of Tubefilter’s US YouTube rankings, thanks to 800.7 million weekly views the last week in October. The channel, starring two young Russian-American brothers, has surpassed 56 million subscribers.

COMING UP

AMC+ will debut new content for “The Walking Dead” superfans next month, including “The Walking Dead: Episode Diaries,” a rewatch of Season 10 featuring interviews with cast members and showrunner Angela Kang. The first three episodes drop November 22, and continue with new episodes each Sunday.

Terry Crews (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) will return as host for annual Veteran’s Day special “American Valor: We Stand Together.” “We have some truly unbelievable stories that deserve to be recognized and shared, from our incredible service men and women, to the heroes working on the front lines of today’s fight against COVID-19,” said Crews. The show will be syndicated to over 100 million households on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and CW stations on November 7.

CBS concert special “Play On: Celebrating the Power of Music to Make Change” will air Saturday, December 5 at 9p, to raise funds for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and WhyHunger, and amplify awareness for t racial, social and food justice. Signed on so far are Bon Jovi, Maren Morris, Snoop Dogg, Andra Day, Jon Batiste, Machine Gun Kelly, Sheryl Crow, Slick Rick, the Highwomen, Yola and Ziggy Marley.

NBC will air hourlong special “The Paley Center Presents Law & Order: Before They Were Stars” on Thursday, November 12 at 10p, following the season 22 premiere of “Law & Order: SVU” at 9p. The telecast will feature interviews with actors whose roles on “Law & Order” played a part in shaping their careers, including Ron Cephas Jones, Chris Sullivan and Susan Kelechi Watson (“This Is Us”), Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”), Michael Imperioli and Aida Turturro (“The Sopranos”), Ariel Winter (“Modern Family”), Abigail Breslin (“Zombieland”) and S. Epatha Merkerson (“Chicago Med”).

An election special will air on Spectrum Networks’ local news networks across the country. “Spectrum News Countdown to Election Day” reports on the state of the 2020 race tonight, October 29 at 8p.

TECH TALK

TVision introduced its new CTV Ad measurement platform at the virtual ARF OTTxScience conference. The platform enables advertisers to measure and optimize campaign effectiveness across streaming applications without tags, so they can measure their own campaigns and track competitors’ campaigns. “The market is increasingly interested in allocating budget to CTV advertising, but marketers are challenged with measuring the effectiveness of these ads,” said Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “New approaches to TV advertising require new approaches to measurement.”

Lotame announced the launch of Lotame Panorama ID, a global, people-based identity solution for a cookieless open web. Powered by Lotame’s graphing technology, its identity solution connects all types of device identifiers, associated individual behaviors, and privacy choices into a single view, without dependence on cookies. “Third-party targeting challenges and mounting privacy regulations have created an identity crisis in digital,” said Andy Monfried, CEO of Lotame. “Without privacy-friendly and people-based tools, brands and publishers can’t communicate and transact effectively in a cookieless world. With our Panorama ID, we’re giving the marketplace equal opportunity to compete.”

VIZIO has made changes to its organizational structure designed to accelerate the growth of its SmartCast operating system and advertising business, with data subsidiary Inscape folding all resources and operations into the VIZIO Platform business. Michael O’Donnell has been named the Chief Revenue Officer of the VIZIO platform business; he led the adoption of VIZIO Ads’ direct-to-device ads business since its launch in December of 2019.

CASTING

Belle Shouse (“Queen America”), Stephen Moyer (“True Blood”), and Antonio Cipriano (Broadway’s “Jagged Little Pill”) have been cast in Landmark Studio Group and Orwo Studio’s supernatural thriller series “Safehaven”…Joining the season two cast of Shudder anthology series “Creepshow” are Marilyn Manson (“Sons of Anarchy”), Ali Larter (“The Rookie”), Iman Benson (“BlackAF”), Ryan Kwanten (“True Blood”), Barbara Crampton (“Re-Animator”), C. Thomas Howell (“Criminal Minds”), Denise Crosby (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”), Breckin Meyer (“Robot Chicken”), Ted Raimi (“The Evil Dead”), Kevin Dillon (“Entourage”) and Eric Edelstein (“We Bare Bears”).

YaYa Gosselin has been elevated to series regular for season two of CBS’s FBI: Most Wanted…Jason Diaz (“The 100”) is onboard season three of CW’s “Charmed.” …David DeSantos (“All Rise”) will also appear on CW, recurring on the net’s “Roswell, New Mexico.”

GOING GLOBAL

New entertainment format “Slip Show,” developed by Kinetic Content, has been picked up by ProSiebenSat.1’s Seven.One Entertainment Group.

Bryon Rubin has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer of the CBS Entertainment Group. He will continue to serve as Chief Financial Officer of the Group.

Netflix exec Jeeun Kim and CBS Studios business affairs executive Allison Brightman have been appointed EVPs and co-head of Business Affairs for CBS, leading the newly combined Business Affairs Department for CBS Studios and CBS Entertainment. They step in as Deborah Barak, President of Business Operations, makes her planned exit at the end of the year.

Netflix Head of Global TV Bela Bajaria has streamlined US operations. The Young Adult/Family series will be folded into Drama and Comedy. Brian Wright, who headed the YA/Family group, will head a new Overall Deals department; Jinny Howe and Renate Radford will oversee drama; and Peter Friedlander, who led the Genre & Thrillers division of drama, will head a new Spectacle/Event department.

Marc Juris, who joined WE tv as its President and General Manager in 2013, is stepping down at the end of the year. “His keen eye for brands and for compelling content have been demonstrated here and elsewhere,” said Josh Sapan, President and CEO of AMC Networks. “He’s recognized as a leader in our industry and for good reason. We wish him nothing but the best as he departs to find his next opportunity.”

Gale Gordon is joining ABC News as SVP for Talent Strategy and Development, effective November 30. Gordon, the VP for the National Football League Media Group, is a former coordinating producer for ABC News sib ESPN.

Urban One named Michelle L. Rice as President of TV One and CLEO TV. Since February 2018, Rice has served as General Manager.

Innovid announced the hire of Dale Older as its first Chief Product Officer. Prior to joining Innovid, Older was Chief Product Officer at Integral Ad Science.

Connie Hodson will join Beyond Rights next week in the newly created position of Head of Partnerships and Business Development. Hodson previously held the role of VP of Global Content for Fox Networks Group Content Distribution.

VidCon has elevated Celine Sargent to Executive Producer of International and Brooke Berry to Senior Manager of Social Media.

Answer to Our Last Trivia Question
During the second season Halloween episode of New Girl (2011-2018), who was Schmidt dressed up as when he arrived at the haunted house? Abraham Lincoln. Kudos to: Gerry Bixenspan-TV Marketing Inc./NYC, Susan Nessanbaum-Goldberg-M and S Entertainment/LA, Synda Kollman-Charter Marketing Group/Boca Raton, FL, Lorrie Shilling/El Segundo, CA, Paul Blutter-Walk and Talk Production Rentals/Burbank, David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Credit Union/Burbank, Alee Petrucelli-BBC Studios Americas/NYC

Today’s Trivia Question
In season eight of Friends (1994-2004), what did Ross dress as for the Halloween party? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and time zone. Unofficial rules: a limit of four answers per time zone.)