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THE FRIDAY FIVE: Top 5 TV News Stories of the Week Ending 11/6/20

Here's a look at this week's Top 5 TV news stories!

#1 - ELECTION NIGHT RATINGS
It was a pretty quiet week for TV news with so much other news going on in the country. So the top story is the closest TV news can get to the election - the ratings! The Tuesday night election coverage was down 30% from 2016 election coverage across the broadcast and cable news networks. As usual, FOX News was on top as far as individual networks. This could be for a couple reasons. Perhaps people realized we weren't going to know on election night and turned it off (that was me, finally, at 12:30am). But the bigger reason is the main reason sports and everything else is down. People are just consuming TV differently. It affected scripted shows first but now even live events are being watched online. Maybe people were on YouTube getting news or any number of sites or apps. TV is being watched as much as it ever has been, if not more. But it's not being watched in the traditional way and that's only going to be more prominent as the years go on. It would be nice if there was a way to quantify things but it's hard with so many streamers refusing to release numbers in any sort of normalized way. 

#2 - ABC ORDERS GAME SHOW "THE CHASE"
ABC is making an attempt to be the home of the next big primetime game show as they have announced they will adapt the popular UK game show The Chase for American audiences. The show will be hosted by Sara Haines and centers on a team facing a "chaser" in trivia. The chasers will be Jeopardy's GOATs Ken Jennings, James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter. The Chase was first adapted for US audiences in 2013 on Game Show Network, but this is of course a much higher profile adaptation. 

#3 - CANCELLATION PARTY
It was a quiet week for TV news but a bad week for a lot of shows that hit the cancellation pile. A week ago on Friday afternoon, FOX cancelled Filthy Rich and Next. Both were shows that were likely to be late spring or summer burnoffs last season before the pandemic hit and FOX needed programming already in the can. They got upgraded to a prime fall slot but haven't done well at all. Also, NBC cancelled its pandemic comedy Connecting... The series will not get to finish out its run on its network like the FOX dramas, it will be relegated to Peacock and NBC.com. I can handle weaving the pandemic into some existing shows but could we stop with the pandemic themed series now? Also cancelled was Castle Rock on Hulu after two seasons and Interrogation on CBS All Access, which premiered in February.

#4 - WILLIAM JACKSON HARPER TO LEAD SEASON 2 OF "LOVE LIFE"
HBO Max's anthology-ish romantic comedy series Love Life has tapped The Good Place star William Jackson Harper to lead the second season of the series. The series, which starred Anna Kendrick in season one, was HBO Max's only high profile new series at their launch after COVID interruptions. Kendrick will recur for season two but the focus will be on Harper's new character. Love Life was not well liked by critics but I enjoyed the first season and will be interested in watching a second season with Harper.

#5 - WHAT TO WATCH
Since it's been such a quiet week, I thought I'd just give a few recommendations. Ted Lasso on Apple TV+ will make you feel good, I guarantee it. The Queen's Gambit on Netflix is a very beautiful story and just the right length. And the returning show handling the pandemic best is Superstore on NBC.

Check back next week for a new week of blog posts!
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