MSNBC to Make Cable Opinion Shows Available on Peacock

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorCBS News hasn’t put the same kind of spotlight on weather as many of its rivals, but that may all be about to change as quickly as a shift in the wind.The Paramount Global news unit is teaming with The Weather Channel to bring more reporting on weather and climate to CBS News programs including “CBS Mornings” and “The CBS Evening News,” as well as the division’s streaming efforts. Some of the most popular Weather Channel personalities — including Stephanie Abrams, Jim Cantore and Mike Bettes — are likely to turn up on CBS News programs in reports that originate from Weather Channel’s Atlanta headquarters.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorVeteran sportscaster Mike Tirico will join NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” next fall, pairing up with analyst Cris Collinsworth in the latest shake up among the announcers who call the plays of TV’s most-watched sport.Tirico fills a spot left vacant by the departure of Al Michaels, who is expected to join Amazon to call “Thursday Night Football.”“When Mike joined NBC Sports in 2016, it was our plan for him to become our primetime Olympics host and the play-by-play voice of Sunday Night Football,” said Pete Bevacqua, chairman of NBC Sports, in a statement. “We are excited to have Mike join Cris Collinsworth full-time in the booth this season.”NBC confirms speculation about the future of its “Sunday Night Football” booth with an NFL meeting slated to take place later this week.

Party in Music City! Carrie Underwood, Jason Aldean and more of country’s biggest stars will be honored at the 2022 CMT Music Awards.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorAdvertisers still want TV to deliver big audiences, but they are also increasingly demanding new abilities to find smaller ones.NBCUniversal on Tuesday used an annual technology conference to keep demonstrating new technologies that help Madison Avenue track all the discrete consumer niches that may be found within the broader audiences watching TV programs. One new effort, an artificial-intelligence engine known as a “harmonizer,” aims to help marketers “make sure we are finding consumers at the right moment based on specific behavior,” says Josh Feldman, global chief marketing officer of NBCUniversal’s ad-sales unit.Using NBCU’s data about how viewers watch programs on the company’s streaming site Peacock, he says, advertisers might be able to assign an ad specifically created to “welcome” a new subscriber to the service, or feed particular commercials to customers who often watch programming late at night — even if they are tuning in at other times of the day.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorKeith Olbermann must be The Worst Person in the World this week to anyone who works for MSNBC or NBC News.The longtime sports and news personality spent Thursday afternoon producing an epic 21-post Twitter rant telling of a convoluted effort to return to MSNBC, where he once served as the linchpin of its primetime lineup. Over the course of 11 years and emails and comments sent between an array of senior NBCUniversal executives that run the gamut — from former NBCU News Group chief Pat Fili-Krushel and former NBC News Chairman Andy Lack to current NBCU CEO Jeff Shell — Olbermann alleges he was kept on tenterhooks about a return to the cable network where he had once enjoyed one of his most successful career stints. “That’s 11 years of conversations about my returning to @msnbc,” he said on Twitter.

The fans are in charge! The first round of nominations for the 2022 CMT Music Awards have been announced — and the list is full of chart-topping artists.

2022 CMT Music Awards are almost here — and it's going to be a star-studded night!On Wednesday, CMT announced the nominees for country music's only entirely fan-voted awards show — which will be hosted live from Music City by Anthony Mackie and Kelsea Ballerini on Monday, April 11 -- and the list includes some of the biggest names in music. Kane Brown leads the pack this year with four nominations, while Ballerini, Mickey Guyton, and first-time nominees Breland and Cody Johnson earned three nods apieceThe first round of nominations for the coveted Video of the Year award includes 12 acts, spotlighting artists like Brandi Carlile, Kacey Musgraves, Luke Combs, Maren Morris, Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift feat.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorCraig Melvin will leave his 11 a.m. weekday morning slot at MSNBC at the end of March, marking the latest shift of personnel at the NBCUniversal-owned cable-news outlet.Melvin will focus more heavily on his duties at NBC News and NBC’s “Today” program, where he is as regular a presence as Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, according to a spokesperson for MSNBC.

Jon Burlingame editorComposer Germaine Franco’s Oscar nomination for “Encanto” is a landmark moment in film music:– She is the first Latina to be nominated in that category;– She is only the sixth woman ever to be nominated for an original score;– And she is the first woman to score a Disney film.But ask any of her colleagues in the profession and they’ll tell you something else: that it’s a triumph for a musically talented, genuinely kind person who has worked hard her entire life, dating back decades to her childhood in El Paso, Texas, just across the border from where her grandparents were born in Chihuahua and Durango, Mexico.Franco landed the “Encanto” assignment in part because she had firmly established the Mexican backdrop of Disney’s 2017 film “Coco” via her orchestrations and original songs. Says Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is also nominated as songwriter for “Encanto”: “I admired her work on ‘Coco’ and it was really important to me that we have a Latino music team.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorSymone D. Sanders will take over the 4 p.m. weekend slot on MSNBC as the NBCUniversal-owned network continues to bolster opinion programming over hours devoted to straight news reportage.The former media strategist, who has helped two prominent Democrats in presidential campaigns, will kick off her first show on Saturday, May 7, at 4 p.m.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorPeople who are interested in CNN Plus finally have a date when they can add it to their streaming repertoire. The WarnerMedia-owned cable-news outlet intends to launch the subscription broadband service on March 29.The detail — perhaps the last piece of information to be disclosed about the new media venue — comes ahead of a presentation CNN executives and anchors will make during the SXSW Festival this weekend.

MSNBC is planning to offer on-demand episodes of shows like Morning Joe and The ReidOut to new hub for Peacock’s premium subscribers.

Miss Universe 2020, Andrea Meza is as creative as they come. The Mexican beauty queen, turned Telemundo TV personality, showed her funny side as she recreated the viral and controversial look worn by Kim Kardashian at the Balenciaga Fall/Winter 22 collection show during this year’s Paris Fashion Week, in which she also shined exposing her fab silhouette and great sense of humor.The Mexican Telemundo host not only showed her look on her TV program En Casa Con Telemundo, she also took to Instagram to share a series of photos of the process she went through to achieve this style...using rolls of yellow vinyl tape with the word ‘Caution’.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorAndrew Ross Sorkin, the New York Times journalist and CNBC morning host, will take on a new assignment for NBC News: gaining an edge in the TV-news industry’s expanding streaming wars.Sorkin will host and produce a limited-run original series for NBC News Now, the NBC News streaming service that its parent has promoted aggressively in recent weeks as rival CNN prepares to launch a new streaming venture called CNN Plus. Sorkin’s streaming debut is expected to examine “the people, trends, institutions and forces shaping our world,” according to an NBC News statement.

Popular pizzeria Rudy’s Neapolitan Pizza has announced it will be opening a brand new restaurant in Chorlton this June.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Barcelona-based Scenic Rights, the leading literary rights broker for Spanish-language film and TV series, has officially opened its Mexico City office as it continues to expand its purview across key territories, including Madrid, Los Angeles and most recently, Prague.The Mexico City office opening, delayed twice by the pandemic, kicks off operations on Monday March 7. According to Scenic Rights CEO, Sydney Borjas, the company’s Mexican branch will oversee more than 30 book to film-TV project adaptations, mostly into series.Ana Karen Larios, previously a foreign rights manager at VF Literary Agency, has been tapped as Scenic Rights’ content manager in Mexico and will report to the agency’s Chief Operating Officer Ignacio Diaz.

NBCUniversal has ended its content deal with Hulu, re-routing Saturday Night Live and a number of other marquee titles to its own streaming service, Peacock.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorNBCUniversal is clawing back streaming rights for its current-season TV shows from Hulu — in order to keep them for its own Peacock service. The Comcast-owned programmer officially terminated its next-day TV streaming deal with Hulu, which is majority-owned by Disney.An NBCU rep confirmed that the Hulu agreement has been terminated. Reps for Disney did not respond to requests for comment.The change will not go into effect until the next broadcast TV season, starting in late September for next-day and library content.With the change, new episodes of NBCU shows such as “Saturday Night Live,” “The Voice” and “Law & Order: Organized Crime” — along with the rest of NBC’s broadcast and cable lineup for the 2022-23 season — will no longer be available on Hulu.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorABC News anchor David Muir will anchor a live primetime “20/20” special from the border between Ukraine and Poland on Friday night, as the nation’s news networks continue to scramble to cover Russia’s invasion into Ukraine, one of the biggest global stories to take place in recent memory.Muir will report on the refugee emergency taking place along that border as Ukrainians seek safety amid turmoil in their country. The program will air on Friday, March 4, at 8 p.m.