Also: Person, Place, or Thing gets greenlight to fall series; Pat Robertson dies; Chris Licht out at CNN After forty-plus years as host of Wheel Of Fortune, Chicago native Pat Sajak announced on Monday he was stepping down effective at the end of next season. The 76-year old made his announcement Monday evening on Twitter: Well, the time has come. […]
Hee Haw Empire launched with high expectations but fell flat A day after its season finale aired, Fox announced it was cancelling Monarch after eleven episodes. Set in the world of country music, the drama featured Trace Adkins and Susan Sarandon and instantly drew comparisons to former Fox drama Empire, which ran from 2015 to 2020 and had a similar […]
After splitting a decade ago, he wants to reunite It appears Rupert Murdoch wants to bring back together the two companies he separated eight years ago. Late Friday, reports surfaced on Murdoch doing exactly that – Fox Corp.’s board of directors received a letter from him and the Murdoch Family Trust about reuniting Fox and News Corp. once again and […]
Channels return after weekend standoff After Dish and Sling customers woke up Saturday morning to find Disney channels missing, they returned late Sunday night as the parties came to a tentative agreement. The move to pull the channels came after the contract between the two parties expired on September 30 and neither negotiated an extension to keep the channels on […]
Surprise move came with no warning In a move that has Dish and Sling customers fuming, cable and broadcast channels owned by The Walt Disney Company were pulled off of their systems at 2 a.m. Central Time Saturday morning in a retransmission dispute. The decision to yank the channels surprised everyone as usually, customers are given a heads-up on if […]
Roe v. Wade dissolution will have impact from New York to Hollywood, and from Washington D.C. to Chicago. If you think Friday’s decision by the Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion won’t have an impact on media…you’d better think again. The landmark decision to appeal the woman’s right to choose will have a ripple […]
The Belcher family faces far more obstacles than the Simpsons did in order to achieve box-office success When The Simpsons hit the big screen in 2007, the movie was a rousing success, earning more than $536 million at the box office aided by a huge marketing tie-in campaign, which saw several 7-Elevens temporarily converted into Kwik-E-Marts and sold several […]
LGBTQ battle shifts to the tube It would be only a matter of time before politicians would set their sight on television in their war with Disney over LGBTQ rights. In a stunt no doubt timed to curry over favor with their constituents with an election around the corner, five Republican senators are demanding the TV Guidelines Ratings Board […]
Also: Televisa and Univision become one; Weigel launches another diginet ; The last tie to Marvel at Netflix severs Been away for awhile, so let’s catch up on some items of note making news: The non-profit merger between the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ officially closed on January 31, with $61 million in philanthropic backing, raised by WBEZ parent Chicago Public […]
Restores ESPN and ABC programming After off for more than a day, Disney programming has returned to Google’s YouTube TV. The deal was announced Sunday and comes in time for Monday Night Football between the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears, a game that carries playoff implications (for at least one team.) Returning to YouTube TV are ABC, ESPN and their […]
ABC 7, ESPN are off Google-owned platform Just like a thief striking in the middle of the night, Disney has taken all of their channels off the Google-owned YouTubeTV platform at 11 p.m. Friday Central Time in a carriage dispute, leaving four million subscribers of the virtual multichannel video programming distributor pissed. Vanishing are seventeen channels, including ESPN, ESPN 2, […]
ACC Network part of pact While retrans disputes are becoming more and more common, at least there are some companies who can come to a deal without any problem. The latest example came a few days ago when The Walt Disney Co. renewed their carriage pact with Comcast to continue carrying their channels uninterrupted on their Xfinity platform. “We’re very […]
Blockbuster pacts include new deals for streaming Just a week after the NHL announced a return to ESPN/ABC, the NFL announced Thursday it completed its television deals. While nothing really earth-shattering (Fox stunning the world in 1994 by grabbing the NFL from CBS or Monday Night Football moving to cable), the new deals does send a message – streamers have […]
Seven-year deal brings the league back to the Worldwide Leader In Sports In news certain to please hockey fans across the United States, the NHL officially announced its return to ESPN on Wednesday after seventeen years. This came as the league decided to split its television rights package with two different partners as opposed to one media outfit – in […]
Chicago’s news media under fire for coverage of African-American communities Even though a Tribune article published Friday fell short in describing the tense relationship between the local news media and the Black community, it did bring up valid points needing to be addressed. In a sub-headline titled “Black Chicagoans, white media at odds”, writer Christen Johnson reported on the frail […]
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