Benson back: Season 28(!) of Law & Order: SVU premieres this week.
Photo by Virginia Sherwood/NBC
I think I should start this newsletter with a bit of an apology. My goal with The Data Stream, in addition to these weekly calendars and the on-air and streaming ratings, to put out a deeper dive newsletter every couple of weeks. I’ve fallen out of that cadence recently, mostly due to other work and life stuff taking up some more time than they did in the spring and summer. I do have something cooking, though, and you’ll see it either this weekend or the next one.
With that out of the way: CBS and NBC fully join the network premiere party this week, with nearly all of CBS’ weeknight lineup coming online and NBC’s Dick Wolf shows all opening in the next several days. It’s probably the most packed week of the young season so far (plus there are baseball and WNBA postseason games and the usual complement of college football and NFL contests). Here’s a bit of in-case-you-missed-it news from late last week:
• The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger is set to close on Tuesday. There are still a lot of questions about who’s going to run what at the combined company, although it looks like HBO head Casey Bloys will run the streaming operation. And the company will be called … Skydance, the name of David Ellison’s production company before he, his dad’s money and something like $80 billion in debt swallowed Paramount and then WB in the past 16 months.
• I wrote a bit about the somewhat curious limbo The Shards seems to be in at FX. The show ended on a cliffhanger, and co-creator/executive producer Ryan Murphy has said he hopes it goes multiple seasons. It’s not out of the ordinary for FX to take its time making renewal decisions, but given how much Murphy produces for FX and Disney, the radio silence is sort of odd.
• Speaking of Murphy and long delays: Netflix announced season 2 of The Watcher is starting production soon, fully four years after the first season premiered.
• On the flip side, Netflix picked up a second season of A Different World just eight days after its premiere. Or perhaps “formally announced an already agreed-on second season” is more accurate; the show did reasonably well in its first week but didn’t post huge numbers.
The calendar for this week is below. All times are ET/PT unless noted. For the most part, I’m just listing dates and times for returning shows, and new ones will get a little more description.