How Peyton Manning, Joe Buck Teamed Up for a New Swing at Golf for ESPN

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorLuis Silberwasser is getting ready to till new terrain on a familiar piece of ground.The veteran TV executive, who has in recent years become a top content executive in Spanish-language media, has been named to head up the broader sports business for Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorA judge in New York State Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit against former ABC News producer Michael Corn, who was alleged to have sexually assaulted a subordinate and to have created a toxic work environment at ABC News.In August of last year, Kirstyn Crawford, a producer who worked with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, alleged that  Corn, the former top producer at “Good Morning America,” assaulted her and another staffer, Jill McClain, on different occasions over a span of multiple years. Both women reported to Corn, who also for a time supervised “World News Tonight.” Crawford also alleged she lost opportunities to advance at work after she began trying to avoid Corn.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor“Saturday Night Live” mainstay Kenan Thompson will return as host of the 2022 NHL Awards on Tuesday, June 21, the NHL announced Wednesday, as the league aims to make the event an in-person one again after a two-year hiatus spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.The televised celebration of the league’s best regular-season performances will broadcast live from  either New York City or Tampa on the second night of the 2022 Stanley Cup Final, and will appear on ESPN, Sportsnet and TVA Sports in the U.S. and Canada and 7 p.m.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorTV’s battle for new yardsticks isn’t over yet.The TV companies that own ad-tech firm OpenAP intend to make a pitch at Cannes to get advertisers to move their dollars to new kinds of measurement technologies — just as the networks are trying to roll out alternate audience-tabulation systems to Nielsen, which still sets the main currency upon which most ad deals are based.Open AP is owned by Fox, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery, which will push advertisers to “shift real dollars from panels to census,” says Brittany Slattery, chief marketing officer at OpenAP.Despite the networks’ best efforts, Nielsen remains an integral part of the audience-measurement mix. In April, the Fox-owned streaming outlet Tubi said it plans to expand its relationship with Nielsen to help advertisers measure viewing of Tubi programming across a wider array of venues.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor“Good Morning America” opened its broadcast Thursday with some of its top correspondents far from the show’s studio in New York’s Times Square. The ABC morning program is hoping to put similar distance between itself and one of its main competitors.As “GMA” launched, viewers were told the show was coming to them live “from Times Square, Kyiv, Ukraine, and London.” The references were to Robin Roberts, who had just completed an interview with Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s First Lady, and to Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes, the “GMA 3” co anchors who have been leading the show’s coverage of the Queen’s Jubilee in London.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorAt CNN, breaking news might be broken.In a memo sent to staffers Thursday, the news outlet’s new chief indicated he felt the use of “breaking news” graphics frequently on air had rendered the technique useless, and vowed CNN would scale back use of the phrase on screen. In doing so, CNN will tamp down use of a tactic that has become all but ubiquitous in the realm of cable news.“Something I have heard from both people inside and outside the organization is complaints we overuse the ‘Breaking News’ banner.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorCan the venerable Scripps National Spelling Bee take on the look of a Winter Olympics or “American Idol”? Its backers are about to find out.Organizers of the event, which has kept Americans trying to figure out how to connect the right letters for words ranging from “sanitarium” to “xanthosis” for nearly a century, want to add new elements to the mix that might make the contest look less like something for elementary-school students and more like “America’s Got Talent.”Actor LeVar Burton, known for his turn as the host of public television’s “Reading Rainbow,” is joining the proceedings. And producers hope to boost “the Bee” with backstage looks at contestants and a set of vignettes that give viewers a peek at how the spelling champions made their way from school competitions to the national stage.

Dua Lipa and Calvin Harris have teamed up once again for another song!

Sky Ferreira has returned with her first new single in over three years, ‘Don’t Forget’.This smoky and soulful cut of ’80s-channeling new-wave sees Ferreira tap into a darker side of her artistry. In the second verse, she sings: “Honey, you can see that it’s a rotten world? / I don’t need you to save me, another drama unsung / I’ll catch your disease, it’s such a raw deal world / I don’t need to deceive you, I’m the real bad girl.”Have a listen to ‘Don’t Forget’ below:Ferreira co-wrote ‘Don’t Forget’ with New Zealand dream-pop artist Tamaryn Brown. In a new interview with Vulture, Ferreira explained that the song “wasn’t supposed to be apocalyptic, but in some ways it is”, with fire being a central motif (“Tears of fire in the sky / Makes me feel good to be alive”).

070 Shake has teamed up with Christine And The Queens on new song, ‘Body’.‘Body’ is the latest release from the musician’s upcoming album, ‘You Can’t Kill Me’. The New Jersey rapper/singer released her first record, ‘Modus Vivendi’, in early 2020. Featuring the single ‘Guilty Conscience’, it went on to appear in NME‘s 20 best debut albums list of that year.It’s now been confirmed that the second full-length from 070 Shake – real name Danielle Balbuena – will arrive on June 3 via G.O.O.D.

Janelle James, one of the stars of ABC’s breakout comedy hit Abbott Elementary, is doubling down with the Disney-owned network.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorSurvive, from New York: “Saturday Night Live” will continue on without four prominent departing cast members, but most of them got a chance to offer up a few final laughs before the show completed its 47th season.Word that Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Kyle Mooney and Pete Davidson planned to leave the venerable late-night series after Saturday’s broadcast leaked out late in the week. That made appearances by the actors all the more emotional during NBC’s broadcast of SNL’s season finale. McKinnon made one more run as Ms.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorWhen CNN presents an exclusive interview Sunday evening between Jake Tapper and Trevor Reed, recently released from Russia after nearly three years of imprisonment, the network has the potential to spur a new strain of activism around U.S. citizens incarcerated abroad.Reed, who spoke with Tapper for several hours Thursday in Florida, was released “because the Biden administration engaged in a prison swap with Russia, and in the past, that has been seen as controversial,” says Tapper during a recent interview. “The family wants those days to disappear.”During the hour-long special, Reed talks about his experiences overseas, some of which, Tapper says sound like something out of a “horror movie franchise.” He also speaks about his interest in helping other American families who have relatives detained unlawfully overseas.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorTV used to be about shows. Now, based on many of the industry’s glitzy upfront presentations that took place this week, it’s all about algorithms.At show after show, NBCUniversal, Disney, Fox, Paramount, Univision and The CW spent time hawking new scripted comedies and dramas; unscripted series; lots of sports; and even movies. But in many cases, the availability of the categories seemed more important than the programing that filled them.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorChris Wallace left a Sunday show on Fox News Channel to jump into the world of streaming at CNN. But now he’s going back to a weekend format for which he is best known:Wallace will take the reins of a new Sunday program on CNN, the network announced Wednesday during an upfront presentation for its parent company, Warner Bros.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorJo Ann Ross has long recognized when to go for the hard- sell and when to soften things up.The Paramount Global U.S. ad sales chief is, like other executives in her position, is seizing this week to pitch big advertisers as part of the media industry’s annual “upfront,” when U.S.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorWhere do you take advertisers if you want them to make a big purchase? To a department store, of course.Paramount Global will take clients who attend its upfront Wednesday afternoon to an after-party in the structure on New York’s Madison Avenue that once housed the big Barney’s department store, one way to emphasize the shopping aspect of the event, in which big U.S. TV companies hope to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory for their next programming cycle.As part of the affair, Paramount has dressed up four windows of the former shopping plaza.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorDisney is throwing a pass at spring football.The entertainment giant said it struk a multi- year rights deal with the XFL, tte start-up football league led by actor Dwayne Johnson. The pact will put XFL games on ESPN, FX and ABC and gives Disney more footfall just as rivals Fox and NBC play up games from the USF, in which Fox is an investor.“We have entered into an exclusive multi year deal with our partners with Walt Disney to produce and distribute all of our games,’ Johnson told attendees at Disney’s upfront presentation Tuesday.

By now, you’ve heard us likely talk about Sony’s upcoming romantic Southern Gothic thriller “Where the Crawdads Sing.” The book was a huge sensation in the Oprah Bookclub world, Reese Witherspoon is a producer who is actively championing the movie and promoting it (see the new featurette below) and it stars up and coming actor Daisy Edgar-Jones (“Normal People”) and Harris Dickinson (“The King’s Man”).

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorMalika Andrews is capping off a quick journey that has taken her from the sidelines of NBA games to a central seat at many of its big events.The sportscaster is taking over the host duties of ESPN’s NBA Draft, succeeding Rece Davis, who led the broadcast for more than a decade. In doing so, Andrews cements her status as one of ESPN’s mainstay journalists, having been awarded hosting duties on “NBA Today” in 2021.The June 23 Draft broadcast, emanating from Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, will top off Andrews’ busy schedule in weeks ahead. She will also host the NBA Draft Lottery telecast this evening at 8 p.m.