NBC’s ‘Sunday Night Football’ Kicks Off Season With Logo Change

The second week of Prime Video’s exclusive Thursday Night Football streams drew an average of 11.03 million viewers for a fairly low-wattage game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns.

The ratings are in for the first installment of Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football.”The streamer’s first live football game – the matchup between Kansas City and the Los Angeles Chargers — averaged 13 million viewers, per Nielsen. Based on Amazon’s own measurement metrics and Nielsen Media research, Prime Video reported that “Thursday Night Football” averaged 15.3 million viewers for the Sept.

Amazon’s Hail Mary play to bring the NFL to streaming looks like a touchdown in Week 1.

“The Masked Singer” is back, with wilder costumes, bolder performances, bigger stars and way more unmaskings than any season before!

is back, with wilder costumes, bolder performances, bigger stars and way more unmaskings than any season before!The hit Fox reality competition mystery series kicked off its eighth season on Tuesday, helmed by host Nick Cannon and overseen by stalwart panelists Robin Thicke, Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger.The show introduced fans to the first four performers of the season — including Harp, Hedgehog, Knight and Hummingbird — as well as the season's surprising new format! Instead of one star getting revealed and the rest moving on, only one would be getting a chance to sing another day, and the three others would all be taking it off after just one song.Harp was the first singer to take the stage and delivered an appropriately flawless rendition of «Perfect» by Pink that left the judges and the audience stunned.«What a way to open up the show on season eight! With a legend, obviously,» McCarthy marveled after the jaw-dropping vocal display. «That was out of the park.

ABC News’ This Week With George Stephanopoulos topped the key adults 25-54 demographic among the Sunday news programs the 2021-22 broadcast television season, while CBS News’ Face the Nation again was the most watched in total viewers.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Fox News Channel named veteran Trace Gallagher to anchor its “Fox News @ Night,” a late-night entry that aims to deliver end-of-the-day reports to the network’s West Coast audience. Gallagher will take over the nightly newscast on October 3, holding forth from Fox News’ Los Angeles bureau, and will continue to serve as the cable-news outlets chief correspondent for breaking news. He replaces Shannon Bream, who launched the wee-hours news entry in 2017, originally at 11 p.m. She has moved on to take the reins at the network’s “Fox News Sunday.” “When it comes to breaking news coverage, Trace Gallagher is one of the best in the business and having a seasoned journalist at the helm of this hour ensures our viewers unrivaled 24/7 news coverage,” said Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media, in a prepared statement.

It’s been a trying year-plus for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but there’s some good news for the group today: Its signature trophy show, the Golden Globes, will return to NBC in 2023 after a year away.

“While we’re still waiting for official Nielsen ratings, our measurement shows that the audience numbers exceeded all of our expectations for viewership,” Prime Video’s top sports exec Jay Marine said today in a note to staff on the “resounding success” of the streamer’s official Thursday Night Football kickoff on September 15.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Add Chris Redd to the list of veteran cast members walking away from “Saturday Night Live.” Redd has decided to exit NBC’s venerable late-night showcase after five seasons on the program, and is just the latest member of what has been one of the program’s largest casts in recent memory to leave ahead of its 48th season. Lorne Michaels, the show’s longtime executive producer, had anticipated a season of change earlier in the year, and recently suggested the current group of comics stayed together to help each other get through the pandemic. “Being a part of ‘SNL’ has been the experience of a lifetime. Five years ago, I walked into 30 Rock knowing that this was an amazing opportunity for growth,:” Redd said in a statement. “Now, with friends who have become family and memories I will cherish forever, I’m grateful to Lorne Michaels and to the entire ‘SNL’ organization. From the bottom of my heart, I can’t thank you all enough.”

Coming off a bruising season-opener loss to the Minnesota Vikings, the Green Bay Packers had something to prove on Sunday Night Football last night up against the Chicago Bears.

NFL ratings are booming in just about every timeslot this season, and Monday Night Football is no exception. It kicked off on September 12 and drew 19.8 million total viewers, its biggest audience since 2009.

Jon Burlingame editor Dick Ebersol is one of the seminal figures in the past 50 years of broadcast television. He helped create “Saturday Night Live”; he hired Brandon Tartikoff, genius programmer and innovator, to revive NBC’s primetime fortunes. As president of NBC Sports, he oversaw the network’s Olympic strategy for many years. “Sunday Night Football” was his idea. Ebersol recounts the high (and sometimes low) points of his career in television in a new autobiography, “From Saturday Night to Sunday Night: My Forty Years of Laughter, Tears and Touchdowns in TV,” published this week by Simon & Schuster. While all of the great moments in his career were at NBC, Ebersol, now 75, started as a researcher at ABC Sports in 1967. Legendary ABC Sports chief Roone Arledge, Ebersol tells Variety, “was the most important figure in my life,” and the executive who eventually took on Ebersol as a trusted associate.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor “Saturday Night Live” is trying to replenish its ranks after many of its best-known cast members have signaled they intend to leave the show. The venerable NBC late-night program has enlisted four new featured players for its 48th season, a move that will lend some ballast to the cast after mainstays like Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant decided to leave. In many years, “”Saturday Night Live”” taps two or three new players per season, so four is more than the show typically brings on board. The four new featured players include Marcello Hernandez, Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker. Hernandez, who bills himself as a writer, comedian and producer, is a Cuban-Dominican stand-up who has opened for Tim Dillon, Jim Breuer, Mark Viera, Gilbert Gottfried and others. Kearney is a Chicago-based comic. Longfellow, who hails from Arizona, has done stand up in Los Angeles. And Walker, who has made a few lists of up-and-coming comedians recently, hails from New York City.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor There’s a last-minute change brewing at “60 Minutes.” When the venerable CBS newsmagazine launches its 55th season this Sunday, viewers may notice a twist at the end of the hour. The show is debuting a new end segment, something that its top producer hopes will resonate with crowds as much as previous codas like “Point/Counterpoint” or the musings of Andy Rooney did in their respective eras. “We have tried different things to fill the space, and they felt a little unsatisfying,” executive producer Bill Owens tells Variety. “There wasn’t a consistency to it. I ended up giving that time back to the stories and the correspondents, so they would each have 20 to 30 seconds more. They were all very happy to have that time, but it felt like something was missing.”

will not be returning to “SNL.” Newcomer Aristotle Athiras, who debuted as a featured player last season, will also not be back.They are now among seven cast members who have announced exits from the long-running NBC series, joining Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson, Aidy Bryant and Kyle Mooney, all of whom won’t be back this year.“Saturday Night Live” Season 48 will premiere on Oct. 1.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor There will be lots of teams worth following this NFL season, be they the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the returning Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams. Even so, many people in the media business have their eyes on a very distinctive player: Amazon Prime Video. The streamer, which once shared “Thursday Night Football” games with Fox, now has exclusive rights to that action and must convince some pigskin Luddites to plug into broadband. Streaming “Thursday Night Football,” after all, will require a different kind of remote — and familiarity with a home screen, not a cable box. “It is going to be a behavioral shift for people,” acknowledges Jay Marine, VP of Prime Video and its global head of sports. “Our job is to make sure they are able to find ‘Thursday Night Football’ at its new home and make it as easy as possible to get into the Prime Video app and start streaming.”

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics remain many months away, but NBC Sports has an idea it hopes will get fans thinking about the athletic extravaganza right now. A new monthly series, “Chasing Gold: Paris 2024,” will debut this Sunday, September 18 on NBC at 2:30 p.m. eastern, and NBC Sports executives hope an early look at the athletes gearing up for the Games will build new storylines and anticipation. “We think we can help grow and cultivate interest in the Olympics year-round,” says Jack Felling, the series’ coordinating producer.

Up against former teammate Russell Wilson and his new Denver Broncos crew, the Seattle Seahawks desperately wanted a win last night at home.

Not retiring after all seems to suit Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady quite well.