The second season of Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown debuts Sunday on CNN (8e/7c) with the wanderlust-filled celebrity chef making his first trip to film in Israel, West Bank and Gaza. His other stops in the next eight episodes include Sicily, Detroit, Copenhagen, Spain and New Mexico. The Biz got him in one place long enough to provide a taste of what's coming up on his Emmy-nominated series...
Shepard Smith is giving up Fox Report, his nightly 7 p.m. newscast, to become chief anchor and managing editor for a division in charge of handling all breaking news coverage for Fox News. Instead of a doing a fixed hour of straight news amid the commentators that front most of the Fox News shows, Smith's reporting will be "weaved in," as he says, throughout the day when necessary...
Carson Daly seems a little taken aback at the idea that he could be Matt Lauer's heir apparent on NBC's Today. "Oh God I wouldn't go that far," he told TV Guide Magazine on Sept. 12, shortly after being named a full-time member of the morning team.
After 10 years as the lone conservative voice on ABC's The View, Elisabeth Hasselbeck heads to the curvy couch of Fox & Friends on Monday, Sept. 16 (6 a.m./5c, Fox News Channel). Ideologically, the 36-year-old cohost should be more at home with her new TV family of Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade. But will we again see the fiery passion that made for must-watch moments on Barbara Walters' coffee klatch? We asked Hasselbeck as she prepared for her new morning gig.
What did NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams do on his summer vacation? It wasn't fun. After 35 years of suffering from the effects of a devastating knee injury sustained playing high school football, he had replacement surgery on his right knee. Williams returned to the anchor desk on Sept. 3 after a four-week absence. He talked with The Biz about...
WINNERS Duck DynastyQuack attack! ­After three days' worth of DVR ­usage was included, the A&E hit's season premiere on Aug. 14 drew a whopping 16.3 million viewers. "This show reaches a big swath of America," says David McKillop, A&E's executive vice president of programming. "This is not a boutique or niche show."
There is a new king of late night, according to TV Guide Magazine's annual survey of star salaries. And he's a very rich king. The Daily Show host Jon Stewart is now earning between $25-30 million a year, according to several sources (his network, Comedy Central, did not comment). That puts Stewart ahead of the past perennial late night salary leaders Jay Leno and David Letterman. Leno took a significant pay cut last year, as NBC wanted to reduce costs at Tonight. He now earns around $20 million a year after being up near $30 million. Letterman is also said to be in the $20 million range as the license fee CBS pays to his production company, Worldwide Pants, for Late Show has been reduced in recent years. Stewart's ratings...
Chris Hansen, the veteran Dateline NBC correspondent whose "To Catch a Predator" investigations became a TV news sensation, is parting ways with the network.
"I never laughed as much as when I worked in the Nixon White House," says Dwight Chapin in the documentary Our Nixon, which premieres Thursday, Aug. 1 at 9/8c on CNN. Not the kind of reminiscence you expect from one of the disgraced president's men, especially since Chapin did jail time for his role in the Watergate scandal. But Chapin, along with H.R. "Bob" Halderman, Richard Nixon's crew-cut wearing right hand man, and domestic affairs advisor John Ehrlichman, believed they were part of something special when they went to work in the White House in...
Heeeeere's Johnny — on your iPhone, iPad or laptop. Starting Tuesday, fans of Aunt Blabby, Art Fern, Carnac the Magnificent, and Johnny Carson's biting monologues can download editions of his The Tonight Show from the '60s through ...
Meredith Vieira is coming back to daytime TV. The former co-anchor of Today and The View will have a daily talk show of her own starting in fall 2014. NBCUniversal will carry the show on its owned stations and distribute it to other markets. Vieira spoke to TV Guide Magazine first about her plans.
Stephen King's Under the Dome may provide the cure for broadcast TV's summer­time blues. CBS executives breathed a collective sigh of relief after 13.5 million viewers tuned in to the June 24 premiere of the disaster drama — the most for any summer drama series since 1992. The show picked up...
The recent birth of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's baby didn't make it onto CBS This Morning. "We were the only morning show that didn't mention it," coanchor Gayle King says proudly. And that's just fine with the increasing number of fans tuning in to the show that relaunched last year as a newsier, tabloid-free alternative to ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today...
These days, it's not easy being the lone liberal commentator on Fox News Channel's daily ensemble chat show The Five (5/4c). With the recent stream of Obama administration scandals, co-host Bob Beckel says he has "often felt like the only fireplug at the Westminster Dog Show."
Ever wondered what happened to Mad Men's Don Draper after the swinging '60s ended? John McNamee, a comic and writer, has created the Twitter account @80sDonDraper to give voice to the character's Reagan-era musings. We asked McNamee for some insights into Don's future.
Maybe Tyler Perry's next movie should be called Madea Saves Oprah's Network.Just a year ago, OWN's financial losses and struggle for ratings began to concern the Wall Street analysts who follow the venture that Oprah Winfrey co-owns with Discovery Communications. So writer-director-producer Perry, a longtime Winfrey pal, offered his services to create comedies and dramas for the network, which had been built on reality series and talk shows.Twelve months later, his scripted ...
When Robin Meade was a child growing up in the small town of New London, Ohio, neighbors would catch her singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in front of the flagpole on her lawn. Turns out it was excellent training for the anchor of HLN's Morning Express: She's opened many NASCAR events with the song. "There's less ...
TV executives must have been happy to put a fork in the 2012-13 season. Ratings dropped across the board for broadcast networks due to fading reality franchises and the failure to launch any major new scripted hits. Cable also slumped, with audience levels flat compared with the previous season. And with the number of viewers who time-shift growing, the path to success is more treacherous than ever. Here are the shows that navigated the bumps — and the ones that became ratings road kill. Winners The BibleLet us now praise...
If we've learned anything from the turmoil at NBC's Today, it's that morning show co-anchors better like each other if they're going to succeed. Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan, the duo that will lead CNN's New Day when it premieres on June 17, appear to have that aspect of the job down. They frequently have...
When Steve Harvey talks about stand up comedy, he can sound like a physicist. "My job is to draw an instant reaction and measure that reaction and that act upon that action again," he says after a recent taping of his daytime talk show at the NBC Tower in Chicago. "That's what stand up is. I have to make an observation that makes 85 percent of that room laugh every eight to 12 seconds for an hour an a half to be successful and make money at this. I figured that out."
Not so long ago, the annual arrival of American Idol on the primetime schedule sent executives at ABC, CBS and NBC running for cover. The ratings dominance of Fox's singing competition crushed all comers and earned it the TV-industry moniker "Death Star." This year, the execs have come out from under their desks. Idol is no longer the most watched primetime show — in recent weeks, thanks to NBC's The Voice, it hasn't even ranked as the most watched singing show. "The Death Star is now more like a water gun," says one former NBC executive.
NBC announced on April 3 that Jay Leno will once again hand over the reins of NBC's Tonight Show — which he began hosting in 1992 — this time to Late Night's Jimmy Fallon. Leno says that after he signs off in February 2014, you'll find him in his garage. But it's more likely the car enthusiast will be back in front of a camera than under the hood of a classic Chevy. One industry insider who knows Leno says two cable networks have already approached the comic about launching a new show after he leaves NBC. By that time, Leno will be 64 — considered over the hill for the 18- to 49-year-old viewers advertisers seek in late night. But in the wider TV landscape, where octogenarians such as Barbara Walters and Regis Philbin still hold jobs, he's practically a youngster.
