Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE
Politicians continue to equate huge viewer tune-in as CBS’ 60 Minutes this past Sunday proves. The November 16 program, containing the first interview with President-elect Barack Obama and future First Lady Michelle Obama, attracted the news magazine’s biggest audience since January 1999. 60 Minutes aired from 730-830p due to NFL on CBS running over and during this hour delivered an 8.2/19 among A25-54, 6.4/16 with A18-49 and approximately 24.49 million viewers. These numbers are still tentative; final national ratings will be available later this week. (Cynopsis 11/18)
ESPN is expected to win the rights to televise college football’s Bowl Championship Series from 2011 to 2014, after the BCS announced it was “finalizing” a deal with the Walt Disney-owned company. ESPN is said to have bid about $500 million for the prestigious events, an offer that current rights holder Fox Sports said it would not match. ESPN is withholding comment until the deal is finalized. Los Angeles Times (free registration) (11/18) , The Wall Street Journal (11/18) , USA TODAY (11/17)
The season finale of HBO‘s True Blood is scheduled for this Sunday night. To date the show has averaged 6.8 million viewers per week. (Cynopsis 11/18)
“The Two Mr. Kissels,” Lifetime’s original movie starring John Stamos and Robin Tunney, pulled in 4.2 million viewers and earned a 3.3 household rating in its premiere last weekend. The movie appealed to Lifetime’s bread-and-butter demographic: more than 1.3 million women 18 to 49 tuned in. Multichannel News (11/17)
CBS Television Distribution sold two of CBS’ procedural crime dramas, Numb3rs and Criminal Minds into off-network weekend broadcast syndication starting fall 2010. Both shows were picked up by the CBS Television Stations group in addition to stations from Gannett Broadcasting Group, Belo Corp., Meredith Broadcasting Group, Cox Television and LIN Television as well as others. Both series have been cleared in all top 20 markets. Across the country, Numb3rs to date is sold in 90% of the U.S. and Criminal Minds is sold in 95% of the U.S. (Cynopsis 11/18)
Actor/writer Chris Moynihan is working on two projects for NBC with the first involving Criss Angel, star of the A&E Network series Criss Angel: Mindfreak, reports Variety. The half-hour project is one Angel himself created with producers Dave Baram, Jason Verona and Adam Shulman; Moynihan is writing the office comedy script set in the magic industry and Universal Media Studios produces. Moynihan’s second project for NBC is titled 100 Questions for Charlotte Payne, another comedy about a young woman living in New York who visits a dating service at the opening of each episode. (Cynopsis 11/18)
Joan Cusack also has a project in the pipeline for NBC, cites THR. She is developing a comedy about psychiatry based on her own idea in collaboration with the network and Universal Media Studios. John Markus will write and executive produce while Cusack produces with Julie Yen. (Cynopsis 11/18)
Recent carriage deals, the largest of which was with Comcast, have allowed the CBS College Sports network to increase distribution by 4 million homes, a 16% bump. The Comcast pact accounted for about 2 million new homes in Atlanta, Boston and Minneapolis, while a deal with Bright House moved CBS College Sports to the provider’s digital-basic tiers in the Tampa and central Florida markets. Mediaweek (11/17)
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