Television

ESPN viewers who thrill to mixed-marital arts fights are about to get something that offers a different view of the sport. Professional Fighters League, the MMA league that appears on ESPN under typical circumstances, has launched PFL Studios, a unit aimed at producing new kinds of content for TV as well as digital and mobile

Sheffield Doc/Fest, the U.K.’s leading documentary festival, has unveiled its 2020 selection, with a line-up of 115 films, including 31 world premieres. Among the world premieres of U.K. films are Melissa Herman’s “We’re Still Here,” Mark Isaacs’ “The Filmmaker’s House,” Ben Anthony’s “Keith Haring: Street Art Boy,” Michael Cumming’s “King Rocker,” and Lisa Rovner’s “Sisters

Veteran Studiocanal TV executive Rola Bauer is to join MGM as president of international television productions. Bauer will oversee development, production and co-productions for MGM’s International Television division, reporting in to MGM Television Group chairman Mark Burnett. Based in Munich, she will split her time between MGM’s European and US offices. Bauer announced she was

Prince Andrew may have more answering to do around his former friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. According to multiple reports, U.S. prosecutors have now made a formal request to speak with Prince Andrew as part of their investigation into Epstein. Prince Andrew stepped back from public duties last year following his alleged involvement

Netflix has secured the services of two of East Asia’s most in demand young stars Lee Seung-gi and Jasper Liu, for unscripted travel variety show “Twogether.” The show goes to air from June 26. The pair travel to destinations suggested by their fans and become friends despite their language differences. The six-part show sees the

It’s been six years since “Psych” aired its series finale on USA Network after an eight-season run, but the property is hardly out of cases for its central detective duo. “Even on the pilot, I was saying we’re going to do five seasons and a movie, and as we got past five seasons we had

Michelle Obama kicked off her “Dear Class of 2020” graduation speech with a list of uncomfortable questions and truths. “Over these past couple months our foundation has been shaken,” Mrs. Obama said. “Not just by a pandemic that stole too many of our loved ones, upended our daily lives and sent tens of millions into

Laurel Canyon is a very real place, but it comes off almost as a Brigadoon-style dream in the commemoration of the L.A. rock scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s that is director Alison Ellwood’s “Laurel Canyon.” The first half the two-part docuseries on Epix, which premiered May 31, threw a spotlight onto the

Ramy Youssef joined the “Variety After-Show” presented by National Geographic with Variety’s Will Thorne to discuss season two of “Ramy” and how renown actor Mahershala Ali joined the cast for the new season. When Ali called Youssef to tell him how much he appreciated his show, the stand-up comedian took the opportunity to ask the

After 24 “Bachelor” contestants and 15 “Bachelorettes,” the franchise’s sole Black lead, Rachel Lindsay, is ready to dissociate with ABC’s reality series entirely if they don’t immediately address their problem with diversity. “In 40 seasons [‘The Bachelor’] had one Black lead,” Lindsay said on the “AfterBuzz.” “We are on 45 presidents. And in 45 presidents

On Friday, Netflix released the fourth and final season of “13 Reasons Why,” bringing to a close the popular high school drama series. When it first premiered in 2017, “13 Reasons Why” drew controversy for its handling of sensitive content, following a high school community that’s rocked by the suicide of a fellow student. Despite

As the United States inches closer to a pivotal presidential election, protests concerning racial injustice are rampant across the country. While thousands are using their social media platforms and physical voices and selves to demand systemic change now, the work will have to continue in November, when ballots are cast for the next president of

“Sesame Street” and CNN aired a town hall Saturday morning to help kids and families understand the nationwide protests on racial injustice. Hosted by CNN’s Van Jones and Erica Hill, “Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism” employed Elmo, Big Bird, Abby Cadabby and other “Sesame Street” favorites to help explain racism in the U.S. and

That doctors have difficult jobs is among the points TV has made most forcefully throughout the medium’s existence. The genre has long since entered its baroque period, larding on helicopter crashes (“ER”), medical mysteries (“House”) and bombs inside patients (the still-running “Grey’s Anatomy”) to gin up increasingly unsatisfying excitement and over-prove the case that working

Fox News Channel on Saturday apologized after the display of an on-screen chart showing stock-market gains in the wake of infamous killings of Black men generated sharp criticism, acknowledging that the graphic should not have aired without more context. The illustration was used Friday on a broadcast of “Special Report with Bret Baier,” the cable-news

When author Michelle McNamara was investigating the East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker (soon to be know as the Golden State Killer) cases, she needed to rely on a network of other individuals including members of law enforcement and the survivors themselves to piece together enough of the story to write her 2018 book

Fans might be foaming at the mouth with anticipation for “The Mandalorian” Season 2 to come out, but in the mean time, showrunner Jon Favreau and the directors of the first season cast their minds back to shooting the wildly popular Disney Plus series’ freshman outing. During a pre-recorded panel for the ATX Television Festival,

In today’s TV news roundup, MTV has announced a new reality special, “True Life Presents: First-Time First Responders,” and Showtime has made two of their documentaries about racial injustice free to watch.  DATES MTV will premiere a new reality special, “True Life Presents: First-Time First Responders” on June 9 at 9 p.m. The self-shot show will

A&E has decided not to run new episodes of “Live PD” this Friday and Saturday, while Paramount Network has delayed the Season 33 launch of “Cops,” the long-running reality series that was scheduled to return on Monday. The decision to hold “Live PD” and “Cops” comes as protests over police brutality continue across the nation

Tim Davie is the right person at the right time to take over as director general of the BBC. That seems to be the U.K. industry’s general view on the day that former PepsiCo and Proctor & Gamble marketing executive and long-time BBC staffer Davie won what is considered the most prized job in British

TBS has greenlit a virtual comedy competition with Jason Sudeikis set to host. “Tournament of Laughs” has received a seven-episode order at the cabler and will premiere June 21 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. In the show, 32 comedians will face off in a bracket-style, single elimination tournament. Each episode will feature multiple matchups. Featured comics

Producers at Levity Live consider themselves lucky. The shows they were working on — like Food Network’s “Restaurant: Impossible,” Adult Swim’s “Black Jesus” and HGTV’s “House Hunters” — had all wrapped principal photography by March when the pandemic hit. There was only one problem: Post-production needed to be completed. But the company was also prepared.

“We’re Here” is here to stay. HBO has renewed the unscripted series which stars “RuPaul Drag’s Race” stars Shangela, Eureka O’Hara and Bob the Drag Queen  for a second season. In the show, the three queens travel to the Bible Belt and other conservative pockets of the country. Once there, they give drag makeovers to

This time last year, Jeremy Pope was getting ready to go to the Tonys. He was attending theater’s biggest night as a two-time nominee, one for his Broadway debut in “Choir Boy” and another for portraying Eddie Kendricks in “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations.” But he also had a big

After three seasons of feeling like “huge fish out of water” in rural Georgia, Kansas and Missouri, Season 5 of “Queer Eye” sees the Fab Five head to a big city for the first time: Philadelphia. With a new intro and new issues (such as gentrification) to address, this season “feels like it has a

With 1.4 million Instagram followers, Tommy Dorfman is one of the breakout stars of Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why.” But when Dorfman, who is gender-nonconforming and goes by the pronouns “they” and “them,” was shopping around for a new agent in 2017, the process was harder than it should have been. As Dorfman recalls, one representative

The final episode of Jimmy Kimmel’s special stint as host of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” finished with decent numbers on Thursday night. The finale topped the night with a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49 and drew 6.6 million total viewers, a season high for the quiz show. Rating-wise, the show’s biggest number was

In this week’s International TV Newswire the English Premier League TV schedules are announced – including a first-ever broadcast on the BBC, Secuoya teams with Tiki Group on the first fiction program to be shot on the Easter Islands in 22 years, Keshet’s “Singletown” gets a Danish remake, De Mensen launches a new format in Belgium

At a moment when many Americans’ rituals and routines have been upended, at least one is staying intact: Jimmy Kimmel’s annual pitch to advertisers. The coronavirus pandemic effectively scuttled the media industry’s annual week of “upfront” presentations, when TV networks make their pitch for their share of billions of dollars in advance advertising commitments. Kimmel

While some other TV companies are trying to get advertisers to spend on the programs they may or may not have in the fall, Walt Disney hopes to interest sponsors in what it can do for them no matter what happens in the near future. The company has in recent days been making presentations to