Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger Sign New Overall Deal at 20th Television

Two very different musicals are wrapped up into one bewildering package with the New Group’s “Black No More,” which opened Tuesday night off-Broadway.  Part of the show is an occasionally on-the-money satire about a fictitious device from the 1930s that can turn black people white. The poetic opening narration brings to mind “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Little Shop of Horrors.” But what follows is an unnecessarily bombastic melodrama that makes “Les Misérables” look like “Blue’s Clues.”2 hours, 30 minutes, with one intermission.

purrfect parody of “Titanic” has captured the hearts of cat lovers on Valentine’s Day. On Monday, viral video personality Owl Kitty released a pawsitively enchanting take on James Cameron’s romance epic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.Except this version saw the DiCaprio’s lovestruck Jack Dawson fall for a long-haired black tabby.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterNBCUniversal is about to begin broadcasting the second half of a rare Olympics doubleheader — and fatigue has set in.The Winter Games in Beijing begin Feb. 4, just six months after the close of the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games that were postponed from 2020 because of the pandemic.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterChad Matthews has been named president of ABC Owned Television Stations, effective immediately. He takes over the position vacated by Wendy McMahon, who exited the company last year.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterCBS is bringing the funny to a larger audience than its broadcast competition this season with eight of the top 10 most-watched comedies belonging to channel that’s home to “Young Sheldon.” And yes, “Young Sheldon” is by far the most-watched of that group.Out of the 34 comedy titles that have aired across ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the CW at this point during the 2021-2022 season, a tally that includes repeats of the broadcasters’ sitcoms, CBS has the six most-watched all to itself: “Young Sheldon,” “Ghosts,” “The Neighborhood,” “Bob Hearts Abishola,” “United States of Al” and “B Positive.”The rest of the top 10 list is made up of encores of “Young Sheldon” in seventh place, followed by ABC comedies “The Conners” and “Abbott Elementary” in the eighth and ninth slots, and reruns of “The Neighborhood” in 10th. At this time last year, there were 38 comedy series airing across the broadcast networks — again, including repeats — and CBS had six of the 10 most-watched.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterByrde family fans flocked to Netflix to watch “Ozark” Season 4, Part 1, drawing more viewers than any other TV series in its debut week on the streamer.The first half of the final season of the Jason Bateman-led drama landed at No. 1 on Netflix’s English-language TV Top 10 list for the week of Jan. 17-23, with 77 million hours viewed in just its first three days.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSony Pictures Television has promoted Jennifer Turner to head of its TriStar Television, effective immediately.As the new executive vice president of the banner, Turner aims to expand the creative universe for TriStar Television, canvassing both coasts for fresh perspectives and projects that align with the label’s mission to champion diverse, authentic characters and underrepresented voices, per Sony. She will report to Jason Clodfelter, co-president of Sony Pictures Television Studios, and work closely with TriStar Television senior vice president Christina Jokanovich and director Alex Villalta.Turner, who is filling the position left vacant by Kathryn Busby following her move to Starz, will be based in New York while also traveling regularly to Los Angeles.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterBruce Miller has renewed his multiyear overall deal with Disney, cutting MGM Television from the agreement this time around.“The Handmaid’s Tale” showrunner previously signed a joint overall pact with Hulu and MGM in 2018. Miller’s new deal is still with Hulu, but now adds in Disney’s ABC Signature to the mix, and no longer includes MGM, which produces “The Handmaid’s Tale.”Under the new overall deal, Miller will continue at the helm of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which is currently in pre-production on Season 5, per Disney, and develop projects for ABC Signature and Hulu, some of which he will create and write, and others he will supervise.“Bruce has created one of the most iconic series in all of television in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ His work has had worldwide influence and we’re thrilled and honored to be working with him at ABC Signature.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterJorja Fox is leaving CBS’ “CSI: Vegas” ahead of the show’s second season of the “CSI” spinoff series.“Hey all you #CSI fans! After much deliberating, I have decided not to ‘Sidle up’ for CSI Vegas. For me CSI has always been a love story.

EXCLUSIVE: Jenny Slate has signed with CAA for representation.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSunday’s Kansas City Chiefs-Buffalo Bills game on CBS was the most-watched NFL divisional playoff game on any network in five years, drawing an average of 43 million viewers, according to Nielsen’s final time-zone adjusted data.The Chiefs’ dramatic overtime win over the Bills, airing from 6:41-10:02 p.m. ET, drew the largest audience for an NFL divisional playoff game since the Green Bay-Dallas game on Jan.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterPeacock has canceled “Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol” after just one season of the drama.“We were so proud to bring this action-packed mystery thriller to our members and enjoyed watching this compelling series unfold with a satisfying, complete story,” Peacock said in a statement to Variety. “We’re grateful to Dan Dworkin, Jay Beattie, Dan Brown, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard along with CBS Studios, Imagine Television and UTV for bringing this international bestselling novel to life.”Based on Dan Brown’s international bestselling thriller “The Lost Symbol,” the series follows the early adventures of young Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who must solve a series of deadly puzzles to save his kidnapped mentor and thwart a chilling global conspiracy.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the finale of Netflix’s “Archive 81.”Melody Pendras (Dina Shihabi) spends the majority of the first season of Netflix’s “Archive 81” separated from the show’s other key characters, given that the camcorder-toting Visser resident’s story takes place in the ’90s and her work is being studied in the present day by archivist Dan Turner (Mamoudou Athie).But in the final moments of the “Archive 81” Season 1 finale, Melody becomes a literal blast from the past, as she is dragged through a portal from The Otherworld dimension she has been trapped in for decades by cult-leader Samuel (Evan Jonigkeit) and falls out in front of her long-lost mother, Julia Bennett/Bobbi (Jacqueline Antaramian), and Dan’s best friend, Mark (Matt McGorry). Samuel suspiciously doesn’t come through with her and Dan is nowhere to be seen, having accidentally exited god/demon Kaelego’s realm in the post-Visser-apartment fire ’90s, rather than the present-day entrance he went through in his attempt to rescue Melody.

Tying up loose ends. This Is Us has weaved a complicated story over the course of six seasons, but the show’s cast and creatives have promised that all lingering questions will be answered before the series concludes.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterDiscovery Plus is launching a “Black Voices” hub that will feature programming spotlighting the African American community, including two new originals: docuseries “Profiled: The Black Man,” featuring commentary from celebrities like Billy Porter and Tina Knowles-Lawson, and “Uprooted,” a true-crime doc about the hanging of Black teen Keith Warren in 1986.Per the Discovery, Inc.-owned streamer, “The hub will live on the platform year-round with curated series, documentaries and specials that will take viewers on an educational, entertaining and exploratory journey through stories of empowerment and entrepreneurship, love and relationships, real estate and design, history and investigation, food and lifestyle and more.” “Black voices should be celebrated 365 days a year,” Lisa Holme, group SVP of content and commercial strategy for Discovery, told Variety. “We are proud to bring universal and relatable stories to the platform that highlight and represent the Black community across genres that we know will resonate with viewers.”“Profiled: The Black Man” is a four-part docuseries that examines the origins of the widespread stereotypes that have permeated society and impacted the lives of Black men in America for centuries.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterCAA is moving its Los Angeles headquarters to a larger location in Century City in the wake of its pending acquisition of ICM Partners. The agency will leave its current spot on Constellation Boulevard and head across the street to the under-construction Century City Center tower in 2026.Per CAA, “JMB Realty’s 37-story, state-of the-art commercial tower, designed by Johnson Fain, will feature two acres of gardens and courtyards and close access to retail stores, restaurants, hotels, fitness centers and other amenities.

EXCLUSIVE: Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, whose 10-year career trajectory at 20th Television to date has taken them from novice writers to top showrunners with multiple shows on the air, have signed a big new three-year overall deal with the Disney television studio for their The Walk-Up Company.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterOn the heels of Cartoon Network’s “Craig of the Creek” Season 4 Part 2 premiere on Monday, WarnerMedia Kids & Family has already renewed the animated show for a fifth season and ordered prequel film “Craig of the Creek: The Movie” and preschool spinoff series “Jessica’s Little Big World” to expand the program into a franchise.All three Cartoon Network Studios-produced projects will be available on both cable channel Cartoon Network and streaming service HBO Max, with rollout plans for where the titles launch first to be announced at a later date.“Craig of the Creek” follows the precocious Craig and his best friends Kelsey and J.P. as they transform everyday afternoons into extraordinary adventures through imaginative play at the neighborhood creek.

Not ready to say goodbye. The series finale of This Is Us is rapidly approaching, but showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger aren’t yet saying goodbye.

Related: Somebody Somewhere review – Bridget Everett anchors endearing comedy This sequel, starring Hilary Duff as the central hopeless romantic, freshens up the cast’s diversity and the timeline – Duff’s Sophie is bumbling through 2022 – but barely warms over anything else, laugh track included. The pitched, jovial performances and homey sets recall the original (there are other, more overt connections, which Hulu has requested not to spoil), and so, unfortunately, do the anodyne punchlines, maybe two of which land an episode.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterWhile “The Boys” Season 3 is still a few months away, fans will get a hit of the show’s bloody universe soon with the debut of its animated anthology series, “The Boys Presents: Diabolical.”On Tuesday, Amazon’s Prime Video revealed a first look at the adult cartoon, which will launch all eight episodes of its first season on March 4.In the clip, we meet “Laser Baby,” a little girl who has similar powers to the infants hooked on Compound V and Becca (Shantel VanSanten) and Homelander’s (Antony Starr) supe son, Ryan, in “The Boys.” She makes a bloody mess of some Vought guards who are trying to get a handle on her, and then crawls off after a balloon.Per Prime Video, “Diabolical” will be made up of eight “fun-size episodes, running 12-14 minutes and each with its own animation style.” Set within “The Boys” universe, the “Diabolical” episodes hail from writers including Awkwafina, Garth Ennis (who wrote the original “The Boys” comic books), Eliot Glazer, Ilana Glazer, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (who executive produce “The Boys” for Amazon), Simon Racioppa, Justin Roiland, Ben Bayouth, Andy Samberg and Aisha Tyler.“The Boys” is based on The New York Times best-selling comic by Ennis and Darick Robertson and was developed by executive producer and showrunner Eric Kripke. The third season of the series will debut June 3.“Diabolical” is executive produced by Racioppa, Kripke, Rogen, Goldberg, James Weaver, Neal H.