The Business of Television

It’s been three months since Conan O’Brien hosted his last “Late Night.” While he’s been off the air, he’s hardly been out of the spotlight. Following the lead of predecessor Jay Leno, Mr. O’Brien spent a big chunk of his late-night interregnum touring...(read more)

I’m Chuck Ross, the editorial director and publisher of TelevisionWeek and TVWeek.com. If you’re reading this in our print edition, it’s the last column I’ll write, as today we publish the last regularly scheduled print edition of TelevisionWeek. If you...(read more)

As previously announced, this is the last regularly-scheduled print edition of TelevisionWeek . From now on the publication will exist exclusively on the Web at its Web site, TVWeek.com. The site has been given a complete redesign, with several new features...(read more)

Affiliates airing NBC Universal’s “The Office” are rolling out the show’s syndication advertising campaign, ahead of the customary July pushes. NBC, without a new first-run program to advertise this year, is focusing its promotional energy on “The Office...(read more)

The producer of “Hell’s Kitchen” is getting into the Cupcake business. A. Smith & Co. has signed a series development deal with Cupcake Brown, the crack addict turned lawyer, motivational speaker and best-selling author. The alternative-production...(read more)

When Fox’s “Prison Break” ran its series finale last month, fans of the show were left wondering if the lead character was really dead. Their response was to go online and post a whole lot of “WTF?s” in chat rooms, fan sites and Twitter, using the Internet...(read more)

Soap operas may be borrowing from one of their favorite plot lines—patient is in a coma, on life support, hanging on by a thread—but they aren’t dead yet, and networks and studios are working to find ways to keep the genre viable. Most recently, the cancellation...(read more)

Hulu last week rolled out a batch of new initiatives to make the Web-video site appealing to more users. One group of users that was left out: Spanish speakers. That oversight may not be surprising, given the television advertising industry’s ambivalent...(read more)

Over at CBS, offbeat is off the schedule. In the past few years, CBS used upfront week to unveil something a little off-kilter, experimental or quirky. It tested a singing Hugh Jackman in “Viva Laughlin,” a small town grappling with nuclear holocaust...(read more)

With seven seasons under its belt, NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” is still growing—particularly in developing alternative revenue streams beyond advertising. “Loser’s” consumer-product lines, which include items such as CDs, weight-loss plans, DVDs, workout...(read more)

TO: Our advertisers FROM: CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC and the CW RE: This year’s TV upfront You’ve been singing the same song for months: Money is tight. You want price rollbacks. You’ve got no reason to put down cash early when scatter looks so cheap and is so...(read more)

Often in this feature we have written about changes in media usage. As TelevisionWeek changes from a print publication into a Web-only existence, it seems fitting to wrap up this print column with a discussion of change, and how to maximize your TV advertising...(read more)

When the National Association of Hispanic Journalists meets June 24-27 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, its members will focus on one topic: staying afloat in a tempestuous industry. Navigating an increasingly tough journalism environment is a trend that has...(read more)

O. Ricardo Pimental, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, is editor of the editorial pages of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a position he has held since June 2004. Before joining the Sentinel, Mr. Pimental held editorial positions...(read more)

A weekend anchor of San Francisco’s “KRON 4 Weekend Morning News” since 1992, Ysabel Duron is an award-winning journalist whose career began in the graduate-level television program at Columbia University in New York in the summer of 1970. “It was a Ford...(read more)