Mike Greenberg Gears Up for ESPN Radio Return With New Show, ‘Greeny’

Betty White was branded a "f***ing c***" by her co-stars.The Hollywood legend Betty died from a stroke which she suffered almost a week before she passed away at the age of 99 on the last day of 2021.Casting director Joel Thurm has disclosed that her main co-stars Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan - who have both passed away - did not like Betty and called her profane names.He revealed: "Literally Bea Arthur, who I cast in something else later on, just said, "Oh, she's a f***ing c***," using that word."Joel appeared on The Originals podcast hosted by entertainment journalist Andrew Goldman where he announced Betty's tumultuous relationship with her Golden Girls co-stars.Andrew who was absolutely thrown back by the revelation, responded: "Bea Arthur called Betty White a C word?"Joel added: "Yeah, she called her the C word. I mean, I heard that with my own ears."The casting director then added that Betty was branded the curse word by her other co-star Rue who played the show's Blanche Devereaux.He added: "And by the way, so did Rue McClanahan."Rue McClanahan said it to me in Joe Allen's [restaurant]; Bea Arthur [when she was] on the set of Beggars And Choosers."Casting director Joel revealed he's sharing juicy behind-the-scenes details alongside a number of tell-all stories in his forthcoming book Sex, Drugs, & Pilot Season: Confessions Of A Casting Director.Nearly a decade ago in 2011, Betty addressed the on-set tensions with Bea in an interview with the The Village Voice.She said: "Bea had a reserve.

For those not going to the Super Bowl in Los Angeles this weekend, the second best place to watch the game might now be Las Vegas.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorJackie Levin, a veteran producer at NBC News’ “Today” who in recent years steered the show’s 9 a.m.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorDiscovery said second-quarter net income fell 71% after the coronavirus pandemic spurred a pullback in advertising at both its U.S. and international operations, even as its TLC cable network garnered new levels of viewership during the period.The New York owner of the Discovery, Food Network and HGTV cable networks, said it posted second quarter profit of $271 million or 40 cents per share, compared with $947 million, or $1.33 a share, in the year-earlier period.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorViacomCBS is joining the parade of media companies trying to simplify their increasingly dizzying array of video offerings to advertisers.The company, created from the merger of Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorAMC Networks said the coronavirus pandemic and a substantial impairment charge contributed to a significant decline in second quarter profit, the latest media company to show the signs of grappling with conditions that have scuttled TV production and slowed the flow of advertising.The New York owner of the AMC, IFC and Sundance cable networks said net income fell to $15 million, or 28 cents a share, compared with $128.7 million, or $2.25 a share, in the year-earlier quarter period.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorAn interview between Axios reporter Jonathan Swan and President Donald Trump that aired Monday on HBO has drawn the kind of social-media huzzahs accorded to a heartwarming meme or the drop of a Taylor Swift album.In a conversation taped Tuesday, July 28, Swan questions Trump’s use of statistics to describe how the nation is grappling with coronavirus, suggesting U.S. efforts are working better than those of other countries.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorMore people continue to watch TV or other forms of video in the midst of the pandemic, but Madison Avenue is spending fewer dollars to dazzle them.National TV advertising fell 9% in June to $3.2 billion, according to Standard Media Index, a continuation of negative trends that have been in place since the coronavirus pandemic struck in March. But the June figures show losses narrowing: the 9% figures come after a 19% dip in May and a 28% tumble in April.“In June, we saw that some advertising budgets are beginning to return to normal,” said James Fennesy, global CEO of Standard Media Index, a tracker of ad spending.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorIf it’s good wi-fi, it’s “Meet The Press.”Chuck Todd, who has moderated NBC News’ Sunday-morning public affairs program since the fall of 2014, and worked a weekday version of the show on MSNBC since 2015, will now expand the series to streaming video.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorBasketball fans can’t sit courtside these days, but they might just get the ultimate view of NBA action when ESPN opens its coverage of the league’s season this evening.Fans who use the ESPN App will be able to access full games with a “rail-cam” view, which lets the streaming audience see the action through a camera lens placed on a mobile table. As the action moves up and down the court, the camera can move with it (a concept not dissimilar from the “Boogermobile,” an elevated chair for former “Monday Night Football” analyst Booger McFarland that ESPN for a time placed on top of a cart that could move with the game up and down the sideline).

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorIf you missed the regular Opening Day from Major League Baseball due to the coronavirus pandemic, well, someone feels your pain.Comcast Corp. intends to refund the programming fees its subscribers paid for regional sports networks in the second quarter, the Philadelphia cable giant said Wednesday.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorWhen basketball fans tune in to an NBA doubleheader Thursday night on TNT or the start of ESPN’s coverage on Friday, they will have a courtside seat to a good chunk of the action. Both networks will avail themselves of a new “rail-cam” that puts viewers just feet from play – so long as the drive to the net remains on the side close to the camera.Indeed, the sidelines – devoid of fans who can’t attend the match-ups due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic – will offer new opportunities to the TV companies that pay millions each year to put basketball on their screens.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorMichael Collins has been at ESPN for nearly a decade, but he’s still surprised he works there.“I never went to college. I failed high-school English,” recounts the ESPN golf analyst.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorCNN has over the years run all kinds of content: hard-news hours, documentaries, even a quiz show. Now it’s going to try animation.The AT&T-owned cable-news outlet will on Tuesday launch a new promotional campaign for some of its biggest pieces of coverage of the 2020 election.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThe nation’s local news veterans are launching a bid to take on a few successful upstarts making a market in national sports.An alliance of local-media companies, the Local Media Consortium, will launch “The Matchup,“ a new online sports news effort that aims to give fans of specific teams more news about them from a wider range of outlets than just those covering it locally The group’s first effort will make more headlines about a team available to a reader, so that a Dallas Morning News subscriber who follows the Dallas Cowboys might be able to easily find and click on to other stories about the team in, for instance, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorFans won’t be able to watch NBA games court-side thanks to the coronavirus, but the league hopes to fill their absence with everything from the sounds of sneaker squeaks to the sight of fans beaming on the sidelines on big screens thanks to partnerships with Anheuser-Busch InBev and Microsoft.More than 300 fans will be invited to appear live on 17-foot video boards surrounding the court at NBA games taking place in Orlando at Walt Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex.  Their antics, sponsored by Anheuser’s Michelob and coordinated with technology from Microsoft, will no doubt turn up in some fashion on games televised by the NBA’s two main media partners, ESPN and WarnerMedia’s TNT.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorESPN is moving deeper into the increasingly popular game of talking about big topics in smaller chunks of content.The Walt Disney-owned sports-media giant will today start rolling out “ESPN Stories,” a new series of quick-hit content compilations that its executives believe represent a new way of talking about sports to a generation of fans that love seeing not only great plays and highlights, commentator hot takes, stats and player interviews but humorous moments captured by fans on the scene and other memes that have become part of the currency of conversation on social media.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorNBCUniversal wants to take comic book fans and sci-fi geeks on a shopping trip.Viewers who watch the special “Syfy Wire After Dark” on Saturday, August 1, will have a chance to buy some of the goods featured on screen – without having to visit a store. The show, hosted by Jackie Jennings and her talking cat sidekick, Mr.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThe NBA already has Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry. Now it’s ready to work with Issa Rae.The producer and actor isn’t picking up a ball to play against the Nets, the Jazz or the Golden State Warrrior, but she may have to execute a trickier maneuver: luring fans back to a new NBA cycle that is likely to be one of most scrutinized in the league’s history.Rae is the center of a new NBA campaign that aims to remind fans where basketball left off earlier this year and build new appetites for the restart of the season.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorBaseball advertising appears to have pivoted from a months-long slump to hitting above average.Fox Corp. has sold more than 90% of its ad inventory in its share of games in Major League Baseball’s pandemic-truncated 2020 season, according to Seth Winter, executive vice president of sports sales for the company, as well as all the ad berths in its planned broadcast of four games slated to air this Saturday on Fox Broadcasting and Fox Sports 1.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorIf NBC and Lorne Michaels have their way, NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” this fall could move from being produced from cast members’ homes to being made the old-fashioned way – “from New York.”Michaels and his team are making plans to bring the show back to NBC’s Manhattan studios for the venerable late-night program’s 46th season, according to two people familiar with the matter – the latest of TV’s wee-hours programs to try and navigate a new normal in the midst of a pandemic that makes the process of putting on a TV show anything but.NBC declined to comment on its plans for the next cycle of “SNL.” To be certain, any concepts for the fall would hinge on how the nation is grappling with the coronavirus