Sunday night’s Emmy Awards rating sees 54% boost from last show
Eugene and Dan Levy may never have hosted an awards show together, but the Schitt’s Creek stars’ stint onstage on ABC Sunday night delivered numbers not seen since 2021.
The telecast broke a streak of all-time low ratings earned by the last two broadcasts, according to numbers confirmed by ABC Audio.
The Levys — but more importantly the coronation of two already-popular shows The Bear and Shōgun — boosted the viewership by more than 54% from the last one, which was held in January on Fox, to nearly 7 million people.
That January telecast, the strike-delayed 75th annual Emmys, drew just 4.3 million people.
ABC points out that the 2021 telecast, which was held on CBS, also benefitted from an NFL game lead-in, which Sunday night’s telecast didn’t have.
An ongoing dispute between ABC News’ parent company, Disney, and DirecTV had threatened to leave millions of customers in the dark for Tuesday night’s presidential debate on ABC.
However, Disney has announced it is allowing the viewers to watch the face-off between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Disney-owned networks, including ABC, Freeform and ESPN, have been dark for more than 11 million DirecTV customers since Sept. 1.
A rep for Disney stated, “Although we have yet to reach an agreement, we are providing a three-hour feed of ABC News coverage to all impacted DirecTV customers at no cost because we want all Americans to be able to view tonight’s debate at this important moment in our history.”
The company adds, “We remain at the table negotiating with DirecTV and the restoration of our programming to their subscribers is completely within their control.”
At issue is a dispute over the two companies’ so-called “carriage agreement” — the fee the satellite TV service pays Disney for access to its programming. Disney is seeking a higher fee, but DirecTV claims in a complaint to the FCC filed recently that Disney is negotiating in “bad faith.”
The presidential debate airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
Well, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have the reason a The Facts of Life reboot didn’t happen.
Mindy Cohn, who now appears on the Apple TV+ comedy Palm Royale, appeared on SiriusXM’s Jeff Lewis Live on Wednesday, revealing one of her three castmates from the ’80s sitcom was a “greedy b****” and ended up scuttling the in-development project.
She wouldn’t say who it was, though her social media shows she’s still chummy with Kim Fields, who played Tootie, and Nancy McKeon, who played Jo — but there are no recent photos with Lisa Whelchel, who played the spoiled Blair.
“We got into talks and we hired a writer,” Mindy said. “The four of us got together on a Zoom — this was during COVID — and we had meetings with Norman [Lear] about it.”
But to paraphrase the show’s theme song, suddenly they found out one of the actresses thought the Facts of Life was all about them.
“One of the girls went behind [their] backs to try to make a separate deal for a spin-off deal just for herself,” Cohn revealed, adding the others were “devastated.”
“I’m just saying, for a 40-year friendship and sisterhood, there was a tidal wave of emotion around it,” Cohn expressed.
Fellow guest Michael Hitchcock offered, “There’s always a greedy b****,” earning a high five from Cohn. “You know what … she was a greedy bitch,” Mindy agreed.
Cohn says a possible reboot picked up steam after the Facts of Life segment on ABC’s Live in Front of a Studio Audience special became a huge hit.
Now the reboot is “dead,” Cohn says, adding, “We were united for 40 years, and this kind of wrecked that. And … it’s really sad.”
Adam Driver is returning to the theater this fall with a turn in award-winning playwright Kenneth Lonergan‘s acclaimed play Hold on to Me Darling.
Directed by Tony winner Neil Pepe — as it was when the play was first staged in 2016 — Driver’s 13-week engagement will begin preview performances on Sept. 24, officially opening Oct. 16 at New York City’s historic Lucille Lortel Theatre.
The Ferrari star will be playing fictitious country music star Strings McCrane, who “finds himself in an existential tailspin” after his mother’s death.
“The only way out, he decides, is to abandon superstardom in favor of the simple life, so he moves back to his hometown in Tennessee,” producers continue.
“The simple life turns out to be anything but simple in this brilliantly observed tragicomedy, as the consequences of Strings’ success and mind-bending effects of his fame prove all but impossible to outrun.”
Additional casting will be announced at a later date.
Driver was last on Broadway in 2019’s Burn This, and has performed off-Broadway as well, including in the award-winning drama Angels in America.