Dr. Phil Will Team With Trinity Broadcasting to Launch New TV Network

Todd Phillips is giving DC fans a Christmas present, dropping brand new photos of Joker: Folie à Deux featuring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi are taking their show to the NBA. The two WNBA stalwarts will host their first NBA game together on ESPN, bringing back a programming concept that has proven popular during the network’s coverage of the NCAA women’s final four tournament. “The Bird & Taurasi Show,” seen six times over the course of 2022 and 2023, has gained notice for the duo’s rapport and rogue energy.

Netflix has a new YA hit on its hands with My Life With The Walter Boys.

Selome Hailu Netflix has renewed “My Life With the Walter Boys” for a second season. The series is based on a WattPad novel of the same name by Ali Novak, which has since been published as a book. The coming of age story that follows fifteen-year-old Manhattanite Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez) after losing her family in a tragic accident.

Netflix has just renewed their new hit, My Life with the Walter Boys, for a second season!

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Kal Penn hopes the second time’s the charm. The actor last week completed his second turn behind the desk of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” which has been seeking a successor to host Trevor Noah for the better part of a year, a process that was delayed by the recent Hollywood labor strikes. Penn joins comedians Sarah Silverman and Leslie Jones as well as Charlamagne Tha God as hosts who were invited to take one more crack at the assignment after doing a previous one.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The quest for a new way to measure TV audiences has taken years of tests, dozens of efforts to sample upstart technologies and hours of debates among big media companies, Madison Avenue buying firms and blue-chip advertisers. At present, no one seems to have devised a perfect solution. So Byron Allen decided to try.

So the rumors from earlier this year are true: Noah Baumbach is returning to Netflix for his next film. But the rumor mill got the leads of the film wrong or at least one-half of them.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Stanley Tucci has found a new recipe for the popular docuseries exploring Italian cuisine he once whipped up for CNN. The actor has struck a production deal with Disney’s National Geographic that calls for a new ten-part docuseries, “Tucci – The Heart of Italy,” to appear on the Nat Geo cable network. Tucci will explore the cuisine and culture in ten different regions of Italy.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor MLB Network‘s “Prime 9” countdown show is returning to the schedule. The program, which has been off the programming list since 2015, is set to return on Monday, December 11, with noted sportscaster Bob Costas as the host. During the show, MLB Network offers the “nine best” in a wide array of different categories, including the nine best players at each on-field position in the sport.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The audience for NewsNation‘s Wednesday-night Republican primary debate was one of the smallest and the biggest. Nearly 1.6 million tuned in to the Nexstar-backed upstart cable-news outlet to watch two former Republican governors, one current one and one outlier tangle for attention and donors in a debate moderated by Elizabeth Vargas, Megyn Kelly and Eliana Johnson, with more than 2.5 million choosing to watch a simulcast on the CW broadcast network, a corporate sibling.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Disney wants to get into the Brittney Griner business. The inspirational WNBA All-Star, who was arrested and held in Russia in 2022 and sentenced to nine years in prison, will give Disney the exclusive rights to share her story via a documentary feature from ESPN Films, the development of a scripted series through ABC Signature and an exclusive interview with ABC News anchor Robin Roberts.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Starting next year, major marketers such as Geico or General Mills could find themselves running commercials alongside popular Amazon programs like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” or “Jack Ryan” that were previously untouched by advertising.

The Christian-based Trinity Broadcasting Network has been announced as a distribution partner for Dr. Phil McGraw‘s recently unveiled news and entertainment cable TV network Merit Street Media, putting the new brand in more than 65 million homes on DirecTV and Dish, among cable and satellite systems.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Desi Lydic, who has gained notice during her recent tenure as one of the correspondents at Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” has signed with Artists First, the talent-management firm known for its stable of comic actors. Lydic joined “The Daily Show” as a correspondent in September 2015, just as Trevor Noah started his tenure as host.

EXCLUSIVE: Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi (Entergalactic) will star in and produce the new animated feature Slime which will serve as animator Jeron Braxton‘s (Baby Demon) feature directorial debut. Brian Ash (The Boondocks) penned the script and will executive produce.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and the rest of the Republican field of presidential candidates aren’t the only ones who have something riding on the GOP’s next primary debate. The event will be telecast Wednesday between 8 and 10 p.m. eastern from the University of Alabama by the upstart cable-news outlet NewsNation, and has the potential to affect more than just votes and donations.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor ESPN is, for at least one week this season, really doubling down on “Monday Night Football.” The Walt Disney-backed sports-media outlet plans to simulcast two different Monday-night games on December 11, its latest gridiron maneuver that has already seen the football-TV mainstay air on both ESPN and ABC for the bulk of the regular season in a bid to fill schedules during the recent Hollywood labor strikes. A Monday-night game between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants will kick off December 11 at 8:15 p.m. eastern, anchored by Troy Aikman and Joe Buck, with Lisa Salters on the sidelines.

EXCLUSIVE: On the heels of her breakthrough performance in American Horror Story: Delicate, Kim Kardashian is getting her own scripted series. She is staying in business with AHS co-creator/executive producer Ryan Murphy for the project, described as a high-end, glossy and sexy adult procedural, Deadline has learned. It has landed at Hulu, home of hit reality series The Kardashians, with a big series commitment, I hear. This marks the first series for Murphy under his new deal at Disney, with 20th Television, part of Disney TV Studios, producing.

EXCLUSIVE: Plan B Entertainment has started a new micro budget film finance initiative to produce and finance lower cost films which will be led by newly hired Caddy Vanasirikul. The veteran film producer and acquisition and production executive will manage Plan B’s forthcoming slate in this sector.