Brian Steinberg-Senior Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor One of the newer arrivals in the world of online sports betting is making a wager of its own. Disney’s ESPN is no stranger to the world of gambling. The sports-media giant has aired a show devoted to sports odds and in the past struck partnerships with both Caesars Entertainment and DraftKings that helped it offer its subscribers links to betting.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The last of TV’s big five-original-nights-a-week late-night show is giving up 24 hours out of its schedule. NBC will move “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” to four nights a week, the latest in a series of moves across the late-night daypart aimed at shoring up the economics of the programs as audiences move away from watching TV in linear fashion. Like its late-night rivals, “Tonight” will air in repeats on Fridays.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor PepsiCo and Paramount Global will travel back in time in a big bid to prove the TV commercial still has a future. Starting Thursday, the soda giant will launch a massive video blitz, set in ancient Roman times, that touts not only some of its flagship beverages, but Paramount’s upcoming “Gladiator II”; the new NFL season; and even Megan Thee Stallion, who stars in the spot along with football greats Josh Allen, Derrick Henry, Justin Jefferson and Travis Kelce.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Morning-news viewers in various parts of the country will soon have more to watch on CBS. CBS News will on September 30 launch a live, third hour of its flagship “CBS Mornings” A.M. program, a move that will extend the show into the 9 a.m.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Don’t count on next week’s debut of a new season of ESPN‘s “Monday Night Football” to force a quick end to the current carriage dispute between DirecTV and Walt Disney Co. DirecTV CFO Ray Carpenter told investors Tuesday that the satellite distributor is prepared to stand firm against Disney’s current stance in a blackout that started over the weekend that will keep ESPN, Disney Channel and other Disney properties off the company’s service for the foreseeable future.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Two local-sports giants, the YES Network and MSG Networks, hope to do for New York sports what some bigger companies are still struggling to do nationwide. A digital joint venture formed between MSG Networks and YES Network earlier this year will launch a streaming sports hub called The Gotham Sports App this fall prior to the launch of the regular seasons of the NHL and NBA. The app will house each company’s mobile app on a single platform, making games from the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, Buffalo Sabres, Brooklyn Nets and New York Yankees available to stream.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor BRISTOL, Conn. — ESPN, best known for its comprehensive portfolio of national sports rights, sees a chance to get into the business of making games available to fans on a local basis.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery just want to get their new streaming sports venture on the field of play.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor This game may never start. The NBA moved Friday to shut down Warner Bros. Discovery’s ambitious legal effort to force the league to restore some portion of its media rights to the company.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Advertisers keep yanking dollars out of what was once Madison Avenue’s most treasured media vehicle: primetime TV. Ad commitments for the next cycle of primetime broadcast TV fell 3.5% in this year’s “upfront” market, to $9.34 billion, according to Media Dynamics Inc., while commitments for primetime on cable tumbled 4.8%, to $9.065 billion. The diminishing dollars spotlight how the media industry is changing as more people gravitate to streaming video and other means of accessing their favorite programs, movies, news and sports events.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Ana Navarro is known best these days as a co-host on ABC’s “The View,” but she isn’t likely to bring up the connection when she hosts an evening of the Democratic National Convention this week. Although “The View” operates under the aegis of ABC News, Navarro is not held to the same standards as its full-time journalists, because she is an opinion-focused contributor to the program, according to a person familiar with the matter, not a traditional journalist who is expected to avoid any potential appearance of bias.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Netflix, the streaming giant that is still relatively new to dealing with Madison Avenue, seems to be winning more advertisers over to its side. The streamer said it had concluded the bulk of its negotiations tied to the “upfront,” the annual industry market during which U.S. media companies try to sell a large part of their commercial inventory ahead of their next cycle of programming.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CNN is adding an array of humor specialists to its broad gallery of journalistic experts. Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black have been named to serve as captains on the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed outlet’s new Saturday-night series “Have I Got News For You.” The ten-episode run of the series, best known in its original incarnation on the BBC, launches Saturday, September 14, at 9 p.m.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Almin Karamehmedovic, who has overseen “World News Tonight” for a decade, has been named president of ABC News, a move that puts a veteran producer of hard-news coverage and overseas reporting at the top of the Disney unit, albeit one with a lack of experience in some key operations, including the critical “Good Morning America” daytime franchise. Staffers inside ABC News were taken aback by the announcement, according to two people familiar with the matter, which was made at the unit’s Monday news meeting.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor “CBS Mornings” may soon have more time in the sun. Executives at CBS’ news-and-stations unit are developing plans for a third hour of the A.M. news show, according to a memo issued to staffers Friday by Shawna Thomas, the executive producer of the weekday morning program.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CBS News‘ venerable “48 Hours” is getting another correspondent to help give its fans a regular helping of true-crime investigation. Anne-Marie Green, a longtime anchor of CBS News’ early-morning broadcast and, most recently, its live-streaming service, has been named a correspondent on the Saturday-night mainstay. She will join the show’s other correspondents, who include Peter Van Sant, Erin Moriarty and Natalie Morales.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor ‘Emily in Paris‘ fans who like the title character’s fashion sense will have an easier time of finding her wardrobe, thanks to a new partnership between Netflix and Google. Netflix subscribers can scan Emily’s styles in season four and find similar pieces by scanning her looks with Google Lens, the feature that helps users do image searches on the web.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor TelevisaUnivision will start running weekly programming devoted to Major League Baseball and get to air some postseason play in a deal that will put a World Series telecast on over-the-air Spanish-language broadcast TV for the first time. The pact, unveiled Thursday, includes a grant to TelevisaUnivision of the exclusive Spanish-language rights in the U.S. to the 2024 American League Division Series and American League Championship Series, which will air on UniMás and be simulcast on TUDN, with select games on Univision.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Fox Corp. is on the verge of scoring a massive touchdown for Super Bowl LIX, even though kickoff is a little less than half a year away. The company, which is slated to broadcast the 2025 Super Bowl from Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on February 9, has sold out all but a handful of slots of commercial inventory, according to three media buyers familiar with recent negotiations.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Kasie Hunt has long been known for her work on the political beat, but in days to come she hopes people will think of her for news about culture or sports, maybe the weather. When the news cycle delivers something weird or surprising, the CNN early-morning anchor says she is even “willing to make faces on the air.” Cable’s A.M. news shows have thrived in recent years by focusing relentlessly on politics, Now CNN and Hunt want to scramble viewers’ perceptions by widening the network’s aperture.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Before NBC went to Paris, NBC went to Paris. Paris Hilton isn’t the first person that comes to mind when it comes to lining up talent to promote a sports property like the 2024 Summer Olympics, held in Paris, France. The multi-hyphenate entrepreneur has been known, over a number of swirling cycles, for reality shows; an attempt at starting a music career; and launching sundry products.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Paramount Global said its looming merger with Skydance Media spurred a goodwill impairment charge of $5.98 billion in its second quarter, the latest warning sign for a media industry that is seeing audiences abandon cable in favor of streaming video in a manner that is upending the economics of the sector. The company, which owns CBS, the Paramount movie studio and cable networks such as Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV, said overall revenue in the period fell 11% thanks to declines tied to its film and traditional TV operations. Paramount’s streaming business, however, turned a profit for the first time, with ad sales at Pluto and Paramount+ rising 16%.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CNN is tapping Roy Wood Jr. to help it make Saturday nights a place for comedy tied to the headlines. The former “Daily Show” correspondent has been named to host “Have I Got News For You,” a U.S.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Oliver Darcy, the author of CNN‘s influential “Reliable Sources” newsletter, has left the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed outlet, leaving the direction of the company’s media-industry franchise in doubt.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Charles Barkley says he isn’t getting out of Warner Bros. Discovery‘s sports game. The roundball great, who is a mainstay of the long-running TNT studio show “Inside the NBA,” said Tuesday that he will put off previously articulated plans to retire and continue to work through what is believed to be a ten-year contract that kicked off in 2022.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The next president of CBS News will also run a group of major market local stations in New York and Boston. The next head of CBS’ local stations will also supervise digital properties tied to national programming.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Add NewsNation to the growing list of TV-news outlets hoping to telecast a presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Former President Donald Trump said he would no longer take part in a planned debate between presidential candidates that had been slated for Sept. 10 on ABC, and instead pitched the concept of a new stand-off hosted by Fox News Channel on Sept. 4.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Mickey Mouse still has some pull on Madison Ave. Walt Disney Co. said it was able to secure a higher level of ad commitments in the 2024 “upfront” ad sales market, noting its volume of ad deals was up 5%.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Fox News, known for the primetime hot talk backed by primetime regulars like Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters, is ready to enforce silence — for a good cause. The Fox Corp.-backed cable-news outlet is vying for a presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and U.S.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CBS wants to get back in the battle for evening-news viewers with a new take on the format that looks very little like the evening news viewers have come to know. The network plans to rebuild its long-running “CBS Evening News,” retooling anchors, format and segments in a bid to make the half-hour once led by Walter Cronkite more valuable for modern news viewers who don’t recognize the show as the cultural touchstone it was in the 1960s and 70s.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Streaming sports on a stand-alone basis won’t be cheap. Venu, the streaming joint venture backed by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Madison Avenue’s continued interest in sports and streaming video has lent a boost to Fox Corp. during a period when it has focused more intently on exactly those two things.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Bret Baier has in recent days been turning up in places where Fox News viewers might not expect to see him. Yes, that was Baier and co-anchor Martha MacCallum anchoring President Joe Biden’s Oval Office address last Wednesday night, offering some news analysis of his decision to step down after his current term before ceding the screen to regular 8 p.m. opinion host Jesse Watters.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Norah O’Donnell will cede the reins of the venerable “CBS Evening News” after the 2024 presidential election in favor of a new role as a senior correspondent who will seek out big interviews and opportunities for deeper reporting, the latest major change at CBS News after its business was merged with that of the local-TV operations of parent company Paramount Global. O’Donnell, who recently celebrated her fifth year in the anchor chair, sees an opportunity to pursue signature interviews with top newsmakers — something that proved appealing to her after logging stints as both a morning-show co-anchor and an evening-news presence and after her recent sit-down with Pope Francis earlier this year.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor NBCUniversal is setting a record of its own in the 2024 Paris Olympics. The Comcast-backed media conglomerate expects to win more than $1.25 billion in advertising tied to the big athletic extravaganza, a new high in terms of Madison Avenue backing. “The 2024 Paris Games have delivered a uniquely powerful halo for brands at an incredible scale with a highly engaged and passionate audience,” said Mark Marshall, NBCU’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships, in a statement.