Montgomery County’s Joey Graziadei continued his journey as “The Bachelor” on Monday night, taking some of this season’s eligible bachelorettes on dates for the first time.
The second episode of Season 28 of the ABC dating show featured two large group dates, a one-on-one date and a drama-filled cocktail party. Graziadei, a 28-year-old tennis instructor from Collegeville, also parted ways with one of the contestants from Philadelphia.
The episode began with Graziadei giving a tennis lesson to host Jesse Palmer, who in turn gave Graziadei some advice on navigating the week ahead with the 22 remaining women.
“This is why you’re the Bachelor; being a good communicator,” Palmer told Graziadei. “Just be authentic and be yourself, and I know you’re gonna be that. If you navigate this as well as you teach tennis, you’re gonna find your person.”
Here are some highlights from this week’s episode:
(Spoilers ahead)
‘Here comes the brides…’
The first date of the season is a group date featuring nine of the contestants. The date card inviting the women reads, “Here comes the brides,” and the ladies chosen for the date are ushered into a dressing room where they pick out bridal dresses to wear for the day’s festivities.
It turns out Graziadei, who says he is “serious about finding my fiancé and future wife,” has invited the group to a faux-wedding reception where he is the groom and the nine women are his “brides.” The event features the usual wedding reception fare — like dancing, cake, champagne toasts and speeches — with each woman attempting to stand out to earn the coveted “first dance” with Graziadei.
A game of musical chairs — which would determined who got to sit next to Graziadei at the wedding’s “sweetheart table” —almost goes haywire when contestant Evalin Clark dives over the table to try to secure a seat, nearly knocking over Philadelphia’s Lauren Hollinger in the process.
John Fleenor/Disney
During a game of musical chairs on the group date, contestant Evalin Clark leaped over the table in hopes of scoring a seat next to ‘The Bachelor’ lead Joey Graziadei. She nearly knocked over fellow contestant, Philadelphia’s Lauren Hollinger (right).
Despite Clark’s feat of athleticism, Rachel Nance is the one chosen by Graziadei for the honor of the first dance. Special guest, Grammy-winning singer Michael Bolton, croons “When a Man Loves a Woman” as the pair dance and share a kiss.
Many of the contestants on the date take the goofy activities of the group date in stride, envisioning what it would actually be like to take Graziadei as their husband. But, one contestant isn’t feeling the celebratory vibes. Hollinger, a 28-year-old registered nurse who is on the show with her younger sister Allison, feels sorrowful emotions brought on by the date’s theme. That’s because the Hollinger sisters’ father passed away just months before “The Bachelor” began filming.
“That’s who walks you down the aisle,” Lauren Hollinger said of her father. “It’s like, what am I gonna do? Walk around alone? And then just being in a wedding dress and putting it on, and, like, him not being able to see me — I don’t know, it just brought up a lot of emotions and it just kind of put me in a weird vibe today.”
Later, once the ladies change out of their bridal wear, they have the chance to continue their conversations with Graziadei during an after-party. Some of the contestants who make impressions on Graziadei include Maria Georgas — who surprises Graziadei by changing into a risque, lacy black outfit — and Jess Edwards — who opens up about experiencing infidelity in a previous relationship and receives the group date rose from Graziadei.
One-on-one time with Daisy
For his first one-on-one date of the season, Graziadei chooses Daisy Kent, a 25-year-old nonprofit owner from Minnesota who captured his attention during night one. The pair take a scening helicopter ride to a musical festival, where they’re invited on-stage to dance (and smooch) along to the musician Bahamas’ set.
The day portion of the date is lighthearted for the pair, and Graziadei tells the cameras that there’s “something there that feels right” between them. But, Kent expresses apprehension about opening up to Graziadei about some more serious topics.
During the evening portion of the date, Kent tells Graziadei about some of her ongoing health struggles. She began having “stroke-like seizures” when she was about 11, and began losing her hearing when she was 17. She also felt sick all the time, she told Graziadei.
Kent was diagnosed with Lyme disease, and underwent a month-long treatment at a facility in Germany. She says she began feeling better, but her hearing continued to get worse. She then received a cochlear implant, which allows her to hear and communicate, and left her former job to focus on running a nonprofit that seeks to help people with hearing loss.
Graziadei gives Kent a rose at the end of the date, feeling more connected with her after learning more about her background.
“When Daisy started the conversation tonight, it took me by surprise initially,” Graziadei told the cameras. “But it takes a special type of person to be able to go through all these challenges in life and find a way to turn them into a positive. And she has done that in full force. … After this first date tonight, I could see Daisy being someone I end up with at the end of all of this.”
Protecting hearts
The final date of the episode is a group date hosted by former “Bachelor” contestants Jubilee Sharpe and Demi Burnett, during which the contestants are split up into teams for a paint battle. Specifically, they play a spin-off of “capture the flag,” in which they need to protect a giant heart from being stolen by members of the other team.
The pink team and blue teams are tied after the first two rounds, but the blue team pulls out the win in the final round. While the contestants initially think that the whole winning team will get the chance to have special time with Graziadei, he chooses only one member of the team, Edwina Dorbor, for a one-on-one hangout.
During their date, Dorbor, a 25-year-old entrepreneur from Atlanta, tells Graziadei about the pressures she felt growing up as the oldest girl in her Liberian immigrant family. Graziadei appreciates Dorbor getting vulnerable, and gives her a rose.
John Fleenor/Disney
On the second group date of the episode, the ladies have to protect their hearts, literally, during a unique game of ‘capture the flag’ involving paint.
Drama at the cocktail party
Leading up to the rose ceremony, the ladies don their finest dresses to make final impressions on Graziadei before the rose ceremony. During the party, drama brews between contestants after Sydney Gordon tells Madina Alam that Georgas was talking about her behind her back. The ladies squash the drama, for now, but teasers for next week reveal that the battle is far from over.
Along with the she-said-she-said drama, Lauren Hollinger is still feeling unsettled after her tough week. She says she’s planning a surprise (involving a cake) for Graziadei to make up for her bad mood during the wedding group date. But, as the cocktail party wears on and more time passes without getting a chance to talk to Graziadei, she reaches her wit’s end.
“So, I’m gonna go home,” she tells Graziadei when they finally get the chance to chat, becoming emotional as she cites her increasingly bad mood.
“I wish I could say or do something,” Graziadei replies. “But I can tell that you’ve gotten to a point where you’re over it, which is OK. And I’m sorry if I did anything … I’m sorry that a lot of this has been tough on you. That’s never my intention through this. But, yeah, maybe this setting wasn’t the best way for us to really get to know each other.”
The cake Hollinger ordered to share with Graziadei ironically arrives at that moment, adding to the awkwardness of the breakup. She tries a bite before lamenting that it’s not the red velvet flavor she wanted, and — in a move that has become increasingly common in the franchise — throws the cake onto the ground.
Lauren’s younger sister, Allison — who was on the second group date and connected with Graziadei during the cocktail party — expresses sadness at her sister’s exit. But, the 26-year-old realtor from Philly decides she wants to continue on the journey and focus on growing her relationship with Joey.
Who went home?
Along with Lauren’s self-elimination, three other women were sent home at the rose ceremony: Erika Cardenas, Marlena Haddad and Taylor Wiens. That leaves Graziadei with 18 eligible bachelorettes remaining heading into the third episode, with only one Philly contestant left standing.
“The Bachelor” airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC. According to a teaser for next week’s episode, Delco’s Susan Noles may be making an appearance alongside some of her pals/fellow contestants from “The Golden Bachelor.” Check out a trailer for the rest of the season below:
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, StyleCaster may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
If you’re a member of Bachelor Nation, you may want to know how to watch The Bachelor 2024 online for free to see who Joey Graziadei chooses as the winner of season 28 and whose heart he breaks.
The Bachelor premiered on ABC in March 2002 with businessman Alex Michel as the first Bachelor. The show—which has aired for 28 seasons and produced several spinoffs including The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, Bachelor Pad, The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart and The Bachelor Winter Games—is a reality TV dating competition that sees dozens of contestants compete for one single Bachelor. Each week, the Bachelor goes on dates with his contestants—either one-on-one or in groups—and decides which contestants give roses to (which allows them to move onto next week) and which to eliminate.
The Bachelor follows this format until the final Rose Ceremony with the final two contestants, where he chooses one contestant to give his Final Rose to and one to send home. The Final Rose Ceremony also often sees The Bachelor propose to his winner. A special titled “After the Final Rose” also airs during the finale, which sees the Bachelor recap his season and update viewers on his relationship with his winner.
Since its premiere in 2002, The Bachelor has seen dozens of Bachelors and contestants find love with each other. The season 27 Bachelor is Zach Shallcross, a 26-year-old tech executive from Anaheim Hills, California, and a contestant from The Bachelorette season 19 with Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia. Read on for how to watch The Bachelor 2024 online for free to see who wins Zach’s Bachelor season and who he almost chooses in the end.
When does The Bachelor 2024 start?
The Bachelor season 28 premieres on January 22, 2024, at 8 p.m. on ABC.
When does The Bachelor 2024 air?
The Bachelor season 28 airs on Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.
Best Overall Pick to Watch The Bachelor: DirecTV Stream’s Free Trial
Direct TV is our best overall pick to watch The Bachelor live for free for its free trial, price, and channel selection. DirecTV Stream offers a five-day free trial. DirecTV offers four plans: Entertainment, which costs $74.99 per month with the first three months at $64.99 per month; Choice, which costs $99.99 per month with the first three months at $89.99 per month; Ultimate, which costs $109.99 per month with the first three months at $99.99 per month; and Premiere, which costs $154.99 per month with the first three months at $144.99 per month.
As for other differences between the plans, Entertainment includes more than 75 channels, the ability to stream on unlimited devices in your home, unlimited cloud DVR storage, and a special offer on premium channels. Choice, which is the most popular plan, includes more than 105 channels, regional sports networks, and everything included in Entertainment. Ultimate includes more than 140 channels and everything included in Entertainment and Choice. Premiere includes more than 150 channels including premium channels like HBO and Starz and everything included in Entertainment, Choice, and Premiere. Read on for step-by-step instructions on how to watch The Bachelor with DirecTV Stream’s free trial.
As for the difference between the plans, Pro includes 180 channels, 1,000 hours of Cloud DVR, and the ability to watch on up to 10 screens at once. Elite includes everything in Pro, as well as a total of 256 channels and 4K resolution. Ultimate includes everything in Pro and Elite, as well as a total of 299 channels, Showtime, and Red Zone NFL Network. Read on for step-by-step instructions on how to watch The Bachelor with Fubo’s free trial.
Best Upgrade Pick to Watch The Bachelor: Hulu+ Live TV
Hulu+ With Live TV is our best upgrade pick to watch The Bachelor based on its channel selection and its free subscriptions to Hulu, Disney Plus, and ESPN Plus. Hulu+ With Live TV offers four plans: a $68.99 per month plan with access to only live TV; a $69.99 per month plan with free subscriptions to Hulu with ads, Disney Plus with ads, and ESPN Plus with ads; a $74.99 per month plan with free subscriptions to Hulu with ads, Disney Plus with no ads, and ESPN Plus with ads; and a $82.99 per month plan with free subscriptions to Hulu with no ads, Disney Plus with no ads, and ESPN Plus with ads. Read on for step-by-step instructions on how to watch The Bachelor with Hulu+ Live TV.
Who is the Bachelor for 2024, Joey Graziadei? Joey is a 28-year-old professional tennis player from Koloa, Hawaii, and the runner-up on The Bachelorette Season 20 with Charity Lawson, was announced as the Season 28 Bachelor at The Bachelorette Season 20 “After the Final Rose” special in August 2023. “It’s sinking in very slowly but I’m trying my best just to stay present, enjoy it, but this is crazy. I mean, I’ll be the first person to say this is wild. I never expected this at all, didn’t know this is what my life is turning at this moment. So yeah, crazy stuff, but I’m excited,” Joey said.
Joey, who called the experience “surreal,” told host Jesse Palmer that he felt ready to look for love again after Charity sent him home at the Final Rose Ceremony over her winner, Dotun Olubeko. “I’m more ready than I was in that moment,” Joey said. “For me, it was just, you have to take some time to get a little bit more closure. Watching Dotun and Charity’s connection was enough for me.”
Joey, who claimed that the breakup “opened up a part of me that wanted something so bad,” also told Palmer what he was looking for in a future partner. “Someone that’s just themselves that I can truthfully be a partner with. I want someone that challenges me. I want someone that I can challenge. I just want someone to do life with. I just want someone that’s going to be my person,” he said.
During The Bachelorette Season 20 “After the Final Rose” special, Joey also met his first contestant, Leia, who was in the audience for the live taping. “I think we have a lot in common, so I’m excited to kind of explore that,” Leia told Joey during the episode. In an Instagram video after the “After the Final Rose” special, Joey confirmed that was the Bachelor for the right reasons. “I’m definitely the hopeless romantic,” he said. “I want to be married. I want to have a love that lasts a lifetime. So I’m really ready to go on this journey.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in August 2023, Charity commended Joey for a conversation they had about interracial relationships during her Bachelorette season. “It’s huge to have had the opportunity to have that conversation, and then for it to be aired on national television — we don’t see it a lot, especially in this franchise. It was something that I was a little nervous about because I just did not know how it was going to go,” she said. “But my whole plan of being a Black woman in this lead role is having these important conversations. Also, there were conversations that I had with several other men that did not make air, and that’s OK. But it was one of my priorities to have conversations about something that’s extremely important to me and that would essentially become a very important part of their lives, too, if they ended up with me.”
In a blog post in July 2023, Reality Steve named Joey as The Bachelorette Season 20 contestant most likely to become the next Bachelor for Season 28. “I know Joey fans won’t be happy, but it is what it is,” Reality Steve wrote about Joey not receiving Charity’s Final Rose. “I’m sure he’s got a great shot for Bachelor, so I guess just hope for that. He seems to have the biggest following of Charity’s men and will be the sentimental favorite once Charity breaks up with him at final rose ceremony. So you’d think he’s got a good shot at it, but who knows.”
“’Love’ may mean nothing in tennis, but to Joey, it’s everything! After graduation, this tennis pro quickly realized the corporate world wasn’t for him and moved to Hawaii to live his passion of teaching his favorite sport. Spending his days on the court and evenings on the beach watching the sunset with friends, Joey’s life is truly paradise. The only thing missing is someone with whom to share it. Outgoing, friendly and loyal, Joey is looking for a partner who can share in his love for adventure. Will he find a doubles partner in Charity? Here’s to hoping it’s “game, set, match” for Joey!
Fun Facts:
• Joey is a die-hard Green Bay Packers fan.
• Joey is an avid star gazer.
• Joey’s recent obsessions are golf and country music.”
Who’s in The Bachelor 2024 cast? See below for a full list of contestants on The Bachelor season 28.
Allison Hollinger, 26; Dover, Delaware – Realtor
Autumn Waggoner, 26; De Soto, Missouri – Acount Executive
Chandler Dewgard, 24; Brooklyn, New York – Graphic Designer
Chrissa Perez, 26; Abbotsford, British Columbia – Marketing Director
Starr Skyler, 25; Delray Beach, Florida – Mental Health Counselor
Sydney Gordon, 28; Newport, Rhode Island – Vintage Store Owner
Talyah Jackson, 23; Huntington Beach, California – Esthetician
Taylor Wiens, 23; Olathe, Kansas – Recruiter
Zoe Antona, 24; Roswell, Georgia – Artist
Image: ABC/John Fleenor.Courtesy of ABC.
Who is The Bachelor 2024 host? The Bachelor season 28 host is Jesse Palmer, who was the season 5 Bachelor in 2004 and was the youngest Bachelor in Bachelor Nation history at 24 years old. Jesse hosted his first Bachelor franchise show in 2022 with The Bachelor season 26 with Clayton Echard. During The Bachelor season 5 finale, Jesse gave his Final Rose to Jessica Bowlin, but didn’t propose to her. Jesse and Jessica continued to date, but ended their relationship a few weeks after the finale of their Bachelor season aired. In June 2020, Jesse and his girlfriend, Emely Fardo, married in an intimate wedding in New York City. Jesse told Us Weekly in November 2021 that he and Emely planned to marry in Provence, France, before the current health crisis cancelled their wedding date. “We had originally planned a wedding in Provence, France, for summer 2020, which was postponed until summer of 2021 due to the pandemic, but we didn’t want to wait any longer,” he said at the time. “So, we had a small, private and intimate ceremony with close friends who lived in New York City.”
Jesse graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where he played football for the Florida Gators, in 2001 with a bachelor’s of arts degree in political science and a bachelor’s of science degree in marketing. After graduation, Jesse was drafted by the National Football League to play for the New York Giants. He played with the team for four seasons from 2001 to 2005 as a quarterback. After the New York Giants, Jesse was drafted by the Canadian Football League to play for the Montreal Alouettes. He played with the team until 2005 when he was signed by the San Francisco 49ers. He then resigned with the Montreal Alouettes in 2006 before he retired from football in 2007 to pursue a broadcasting career. Since his broadcasting career started, Jesse has worked with networks like Fox, NFL Network, ESPN, ABC and SEC Network. He’s also guest starred on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and made guest appearances on shows like Recipe to Riches and Good Morning America, and hosted the Food Network’s Spring Baking Championship and Holiday Baking Championship.
Jesse was announced as The Bachelor season 26 host in September 2021. “For more than 20 years, The Bachelor has brought the world dozens of unforgettable love stories, including at one time, my own,” he said at the time. “Falling in love is one of life’s greatest gifts, and I am humbled by the opportunity to return to the show as host this season to offer the newest Bachelor advice gained from firsthand experience and I am grateful to play a small part in his journey.” The announcement came after Chris Harrison, the former host of Bachelor Nation, confirmed in June 2021 that he had retired as the franchise’s host after 19 years. “I’ve had a truly incredible run as host of The Bachelor franchise and now I’m excited to start a new chapter,” he wrote in an Instagram post at the time. “I’m so grateful to Bachelor Nation for all of the memories we’ve made together. While my two-decade journey is wrapping up, the friendships I’ve made will last a lifetime.”
Deadline reported at the time that Chris received a mid-range, eight-figure settlement as part of exit plan with ABC, the network that airs the Bachelor franchise, and Warner Bros. Television, the company that produces the Bachelor shows. The magazine also reported that Harrison’s settlement included a nondisclosure agreement. Chris’ decision to retire as Bachelor Nation’s host came after he was slammed for his response to season 25 Bachelor contestant Rachael Kirkconnell’s racism scandal in February 2021. Rachael, the winner of Matt James’ season, faced backlash at the time when photos resurfaced of her at an Old South Antebellum-themed party at Georgia College in 2018. Before the pictures went viral, Rachael was already under controversy after her former high school classmate accused her on TikTok of bullying her and other students for dating Black men. Other TikTok users then exposed Rachael for liking social media photos of her friends in culturally insensitive costumes and with Confederate flags.
Chris came under controversy after he was interviewed about the scandal by season 13 Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay on Extra. During the interview, Chris asked fans to give Rachael “grace” and explained that he didn’t find the Antebellum party photos offensive because they just looked like pictures a college student takes at a party. Harrison also questioned whether the photos would be considered racially insensitive in 2018 when they were taken. After the interview, many fans slammed Harrison and accused him of excusing Rachael’s behavior.
ABC confirmed in March 2021 that Chris wouldn’t host season 17 of The Bachelorette and would be replaced by Tayshia and Kaitlyn. “Chris Harrison will not be hosting the next season of The Bachelorette,” ABC said in a statement at the time. “We support Chris in the work that he is committed to doing. In his absence, former Bachelorettes Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe will support the new Bachelorette through next season. As we continue the dialogue around achieving greater equity and inclusion within The Bachelor franchise, we are dedicated to improving the BIPOC representation of our crew, including among the executive producer ranks. These are important steps in effecting fundamental change so that our franchise is a celebration of love that is reflective of our world.” He officially retired as the Bachelor Nation’s host in June 2021.
The Bachelor airs on Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC and is available to stream on Hulu. Here’s how to watch it for free.
Image: Courtesy of Penguin Books.
To get more of an inside scoop, check out Los Angeles Times writer Amy Kaufman’s book, Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure, for a deep dive into the Bachelor franchise. The book uncovers the secrets of Bachelor Nation, from how much the Bachelor and the Bachelorette are paid to the rules contestants have to follow, that producers don’t want fans to know. It’s a must-read for any Bachelor Nation member.
Our mission at STYLECASTER is to bring style to the people, and we only feature products we think you’ll love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission of the sale.
Check out “Loki,” the thrilling Marvel Studios’ series, at a screening and conversation with the stars!
Monday, January 29, 2024 5:59PM
ABC7 wants to send you to the the nation’s premiere TV festival, Paleyfest LA!
Six lucky winners will receive a pair of VIP tickets to see Marvel Studios’ “Loki” at the Dolby Theatre on Saturday, April 13 at 7 p.m.
The event features an episode screening, conversation with the stars and Q&A with the audience.
Presale tickets for PaleyFest LA go on sale to Paley members Tuesday, January 30, 2024, at 9 a.m. PDT at paleycenter.org. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, February 2, 2024, at 9 a.m. PDT
Ticket giveaway open to residents of the KABC-TV DMA who are at least 18 years of age. See Official Rules here.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, StyleCaster may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Whether you’re part of Bachelor Nation or can’t go a Monday without football, you’re likely wondering how to watch ABC to follow all of your favorite shows and sports. Tonight at 8:15 p.m. ET, a primetime doubleheader takes place with the Tennessee Titans versus the Miami Dolphins and the Green Bay Packers versus the New York Giants.
Founded in May 1943 by Edward J. Noble and Louis Blanche, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network currently owned by The Walt Disney Company. It launched into radio in 1943 and television in 1948. ABC also has eight owned-and-operated stations and over 230 affiliated television stations in the United States and its territories.
In terms of the ABC television network, you’ll find 89 hours of regularly scheduled network programming each week, plus 22 hours of primetime programming to affiliated stations. Big names on ABC include The Bachelor, Dancing with the Stars, Abbott Elementary, and Shark Tank, among others.
ABC additionally features daytime programming with talk shows like The View and GMA3: What You Need to Know, alongside soap opera General Hospital. As for ABC News programming, catch Good Morning America, nightly editions of ABC World News Tonight, This Week, and more. For all of the night owls out there, tune into Jimmy Kimmel Live! late at night during the week.
Calling all sports fans, ABC has got you covered for this type of programming too. Disney has scheduled most of its sports right on ESPN networks until 2020. Since 2020, ESPN has aired sports telecasts and some simulcasts, along with exclusive games of ESPN Monday Night Football broadcasts, on ABC. You’ll find NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLB games.
On top of all that, ABC broadcasts specials such as the Academy Awards, Primetime Emmy Awards, American Music Awards, and the Country Music Association Awards.
So how can viewers get started with this wide range of offerings? Keep reading for how to watch ABC live for free to see your favorite shows and games.
Craig Sjodin/ABC via Getty Images.Craig Sjodin/ABC via Getty Images.
Direct TV is our best overall pick to watchABC live for free for its free trial, price (including its current deal), and channel selection. DirecTV Stream offers a five-day free trial and has a current deal where new subscribers can receive $10 off their first three months. DirecTV offers four plans: Entertainment, which costs $74.99 per month with the first three months at $64.99 per month; Choice, which costs $99.99 per month with the first three months at $89.99 per month; Ultimate, which costs $109.99 per month with the first three months at $99.99 per month; and Premiere, which costs $154.99 per month with the first three months at $144.99 per month.
As for other differences between the plans, Entertainment includes more than 75 channels, the ability to stream on unlimited devices in your home, unlimited cloud DVR storage, and a special offer on premium channels. Choice, which is the most popular plan, includes more than 105 channels, regional sports networks, and everything included in Entertainment. Ultimate includes more than 140 channels and everything included in Entertainment and Choice. Premiere includes more than 150 channels including premium channels like HBO and Starz and everything included in Entertainment, Choice, and Premiere. Read on for step-by-step instructions on how to watch ABCwith DirecTV Stream’s free trial.
As for the difference between the plans, Pro includes 180 channels, 1,000 hours of Cloud DVR, and the ability to watch on up to 10 screens at once. Elite includes everything in Pro, as well as a total of 256 channels and 4K resolution. Ultimate includes everything in Pro and Elite, as well as a total of 299 channels, Showtime, and Red Zone NFL Network. Read on for step-by-step instructions on how to watch ABC with Fubo’s free trial.
Hulu+ With Live TV is our best upgrade pick to watch ABC based on its channel selection and its free subscriptions to Hulu, Disney Plus, and ESPN Plus. Hulu+ With Live TV offers four plans: a $68.99 per month plan with access to only live TV; a $69.99 per month plan with free subscriptions to Hulu with ads, Disney Plus with ads, and ESPN Plus with ads; a $74.99 per month plan with free subscriptions to Hulu with ads, Disney Plus with no ads, and ESPN Plus with ads; and a $82.99 per month plan with free subscriptions to Hulu with no ads, Disney Plus with no ads, and ESPN Plus with ads. Read on for step-by-step instructions on how to watch ABCwith Hulu+ Live TV.
Jimmy Kimmel will return to the Oscar stage once again.
The ABC late night host has signed on to host the 96th Academy Awards, marking his fourth time in the role. The appointment is hardly surprising, of course, as Kimmel has decades of live TV experience and a longstanding relationship with Disney.
His announcement follows the mid-October news that the Academy set a producing team, a returning director and a first-time showrunner in Raj Kapoor, a live TV and go-to Las Vegas residency producer, who’s worked on the Academy Awards telecast for the last seven years. Kimmel’s wife and Jimmy Kimmel Live co-head writer Molly McNearney is also back as an executive producer for the telecast.
Though there were rumblings about a potential Oscar date move during the darker days of Hollywood’s dual strikes, such a thing is no longer necessary and the town’s top talent is already back in full campaign mode. Many have been scrambling to make up for lost time. In fact, Kimmel’s ABC show is poised to benefit from the parade of A-listers hungry to promote this year’s Oscar hopefuls.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! was off the air for the duration of the writers strike, though Kimmel himself maintained a presence through his popular “Strike Force Five” podcast with his fellow late night hosts. Proceeds from the latter went to the shows’ out-of-work staffs. Kimmel revealed on one of the episodes that he had been “very intent on retiring” prior to the strike, but he formally re-upped with Disney last year and his ABC show will continue through season 23.
The 96th Oscars will air live on ABC, Sunday, March 10, 2024, from the Dolby Theatre.
Wondering where to watch Grey’s Anatomy Season 15 online? We have all the streaming details right here. The 15th season of the American medical drama television series continues the stories of the staff members at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.
Here’s how you can watch and stream Grey’s Anatomy Season 15 via streaming services such as Netflix.
Is Grey’s Anatomy Season 15 available to watch via streaming?
Yes, Grey’s Anatomy Season 15 is available to watch via streaming on Netflix.
With its 15th season, Grey’s Anatomy became the longest-running American primetime medical drama series after the finale of ER on April 2, 2009. This season also features the shortest ensemble main cast seen since the 9th installment of the ABC series.
Season 14’s main cast includes Ellen Pompeo, Chandra Wilson, James Pickens Jr., Justin Chambers, Jesse Williams, Caterina Scorsone, and Amelia Shepherd.
Watch Grey’s Anatomy Season 15 streaming via Netflix
Grey’s Anatomy Season 15 is available to watch on Netflix. Netflix is a subscription-based streaming service that offers a wide variety of TV shows, movies, documentaries, and original content across different genres.
You can watch the series via Netflix by following these steps:
Enter your email address and password to create an account
Enter your chosen payment method
The cheapest Netflix Standard with Ads Plan provides all but a few of its movies and TV shows. However, it will show ads before or during most of its content. You can watch in Full HD and on two supported devices at a time.
Its Standard Plan provides the same but is completely ad-free while also allowing users to download content on two supported devices with an additional option to add one extra member who doesn’t live in the same household.
The Premium Plan provides the same as above, though for four supported devices at a time, with content displaying in Ultra HD. Users get to download content on up to six supported devices at a time and have the option to add up to two extra members who don’t live in the same household. Netflix spatial audio is also supported.
The synopsis for Grey’s Anatomy is as follows:
“Follows the personal and professional lives of a group of doctors at Seattle’s Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.“
NOTE: The streaming services listed above are subject to change. The information provided was correct at the time of writing.
Universal Pictures‘ Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt-led action comedy The Fall Guy has a new release date. Per Variety, Universal…
After the massive success of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, acclaimed director Peter Jackson had to…
The first Pokémon Concierge trailer has been released by Netflix, previewing the stop-motion animated series. The show is set to…
Warner Bros. Discovery‘s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow film has officially found its writer, as The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that…
CBS was the big winner for Week 10 of , claiming three of the five most-watched matchups.
The Alabama Crimson Tide’s win over the LSU Tigers was No. 1, boasting 8.82M viewers with a 7:45 p.m. start. Earlier in the afternoon, Missouri-Georgia brought in 7M.
The 12 p.m. ET game, Ohio State-Rutgers, managed fourth place with 3.96M viewers.
In third place was ABC with the Washington-USC game, which tallied 4.45M viewers. ABC also laid claim to fifth place with the Oklahoma State’s defeat over Oklahoma.
This marks a nice change of pace from the week prior, when not a single game cracked an audience of 7M for the first time since Week 0, when there were only five games the entire weekend.
It was still a rough week for Colorado, as their loss to Oregon State drew only 2.77M viewers, which is their least-watched game of the season. However, with the matchup on ESPN, it did mark the weekend’s top college football audience on cable.
As always, several networks are not Nielsen-rated, meaning their audiences aren’t reported week-over-week. Those include the SEC Network, ACC Network, CBS Sports Network, and the Pac-12 Network. ESPN+ and Peacock are also not Nielsen-rated for live programming.
Spoilers for night one of The Golden Bachelor ahead.
The same song—2022’s “Golden Hour” by indie pop artist JVKE—plays in both promos for The Golden Bachelor and during the final moments of And Just Like That…’s second season. Beyond their shared soundtrack, these shows face a similar challenge when it comes to depicting love after a certain age: How do you retain the freewheeling spirit of Sex and the City or The Bachelor while accurately reflecting the realities of dating as an older person?
During Thursday’s cozy premiere of The Golden Bachelor, which is getting a major marketing push from ABC via retirement-home screenings and senior-inspired discounts, it became clear that this series may have transformed more smoothly than its scripted counterpart. This starts with the slam dunk casting of 72-year-old widower Gerry Turner as the first Golden Bachelor. He’s a retired restaurateur, father, and grandfather who spends his days at a lake house in Indiana that was meant to be shared with his late wife, Toni. Gerry and Toni were high school sweethearts, married for 43 years before she became ill and died suddenly in 2017.
Tears arrive early as Cat Stevens’s “The Wind” plays over photos of Gerry and Toni’s life together. He gazes at a framed photo of his wife while dressing for the evening, putting on his hearing aid before adjusting his tuxedo jacket. Later in the evening, Nancy, a 60-year-old interior designer, will show off her own hearing aids: “I, too, wear a little ear candy.” The start of Gerry’s journey to find love is sentimental, but for the first time in a long time for this franchise, that feeling is earned—a result of our lead’s actual life experiences rather than a cloying device.
A woman shuffles out of the limo and across the driveway using a walker. “Do you need help?” Gerry asks. That’s when Leslie, a 64-year-old fitness instructor, tosses her prop and tears away her muumuu to reveal a strapless minidress. “Do I look like I need help?” quips the woman who in her intro package says she dated Prince and inspired his 1979 hit “Sexy Dancer.”
And so begins a lively series of limo entrances. Sandra, a 75-year-old retired executive assistant, introduces Gerry to her “Zen practice,” which involves repeated chanting of curse words. Faith, a 60-year-old high school teacher, arrives on a motorcycle. “I’m proof you can live fast and not die young,” she says. “If you leave here with me, it will be the ride of your life.” Susan, a 66-year-old wedding officiant, makes note of her stilettos before delivering this dirty disclaimer: “I’m very comfortable with six inches.”
The show can’t resist trotting out a few of its tried-and-true entrance methods. April, a 65-year-old therapist, aligns herself with an animal, doing the chicken dance upon arrival because her “eggs are still fresh.” “Chippy,” Jimmy Kimmel’s 84-year-old aunt, shows up for a celebrity cameo, which results in a stale gimmick about sleeping through the rose ceremony (“Can I at least get a petal?” she asks host Jesse Palmer). And Theresa, who is celebrating her 70th birthday, makes the scantily clad limo exit that usually includes a bikini or lingerie. This time, she opens her silk robe to reveal her “birthday suit,” which turns out to be merely a nude-colored slip. Theresa couldn’t have actually gone naked, she explains, on the account of her six grandsons watching at home.
But grandmothers or not, Gerry’s 22 contestants, who range from age 60 to 75, aren’t afraid to get spicy. Natascha, a 60-year-old pro-aging coach who sits cross-legged from Gerry on a yoga mat in the mansion, observes: “Gerry is in good shape. I’m not going to have to resuscitate him if we have an intimate moment.” Later in the evening, Gerry presents Theresa with a birthday cupcake before offering one of the smoother opening lines uttered by a Bachelor in recent memory: “If I were to take a bite of that and then were to have a whole bunch of icing [on my face], would you help clean it up?” Theresa accepts her birthday present, later earnestly admitting in a confessional, “It’s been forever since I kissed a guy, and it was incredible.”
Ryan’s enthusiasm for the show has been crucial to getting it off the ground too. She joined Disney when it acquired most of 21st Century Fox in 2019 and has been championing the idea of a senior Bachelor since the minute she walked in the door. “There were a lot of great things that came over as part of the Fox acquisition, but one of the best was the people, and at the top of my list is Shannon,” Mills says.
Ryan watched Turner’s casting video early in the process and was completely won over, calling him “so relatable and rootable and charming.” Her team, she says, worked closely with Mills as production got off the ground because “we wanted to be very thoughtful in the marketing of the show to make sure it reflected the tone of what they were making.”
That thoughtfulness comes through in ABC’s early promotional spots. In the clip introducing the grandfather from Indiana to the world, a tongue-in-cheek voice-over celebrates his age: “He posts his thirst traps in a leather-bound album. His DMs have postage. He gets the early bird special anytime he wants. If you call him, he’ll answer the phone. He doesn’t have gray hair, he has ‘wisdom highlights.’ Florida wants to retire and move to him. He’s Gerry.” To introduce the women who will vie for his love, the network released a nearly three-minute video set to Cher’s “Believe.”
The online response to the spots—which have outperformed the marketing for every previous Bachelor installment—suggests that ABC’s calculated risk could pay off. And it’s giving executives hope that even though their marketing is leaning into the golden part of TheGolden Bachelor, the show will still have broad appeal. “There’s something very timeless about this love story,” Mills says. “If you were ever going to let your kids watch an installment of The Bachelor, I think this would be the one.”
Ryan is also hoping that fans will gather to watch the show together. “Communitizing is a word that we’re using,” she says. “There’s no better example of that than what we saw this summer with Barbie and Taylor Swift, where people really rallied to come together for a shared experience. While Golden Bachelor is definitely different from those, it does feel like there could be a sort of multigenerational appeal.” That’s why ABC will host viewing parties for retirees in 25 markets, and why it will tap into the phenomenon of pickleball—a sport particularly popular among seniors, including many of the Golden Bachelor contestants—with promotions at official tournaments like the Indoor National Championships in Atlantic City.
Though the marketing budget for TheGolden Bachelor isn’t as big as it might be for, say, a new Thursday night drama, Ryan says it fits with her larger strategy of creating individualized campaigns for each show. “The goal is always to try to get people to tune in and watch, but it’s also really to create that emotional connection with our audience,” she says. For a young-leaning, female-led, digital-first show like Hulu’s The Kardashians, that meant hosting an influencer event in Malibu. For Abbott Elementary, ABC focused on highlighting the work of schoolteachers.
ABC won’t know whether the marketing push has paid off until the September 28 premiere of TheGolden Bachelor. But Ryan says she already knows it’s working with one key focus group: her mother and mother-in-law, who are both in their 70s. “I showed them both the first promo that revealed Gerry, and my mother-in-law—who’s single and from Indiana—said, ‘Is it too late to try out for this show?’”
In addition to solving its scheduling woes, The Golden Bachelormay be just the refresh the creatively flailing franchise needs. The new series follows the departure of longtime creator Mike Fleiss and is already showing promise, according to Disney’s top unscripted-TV executive, Rob Mills. “It’s such a different way of doing The Bachelor because these people are just at a totally different place in their lives,” he previously told Variety. “There is an interesting thing about people who have hit the other end of the spectrum, who’ve lived their lives, they’ve raised their kids; some have been widowed or divorced, and maybe some have never been in love. We thought that would be an interesting dynamic through the Bachelor prism.”
Who are the contestants on The Golden Bachelor?
At the end of August ABC unveiled the cast photos and bios for all 22 contestants on The Golden Bachelor. They range from age 60 to 75 and share a diverse range of pasts, perspectives, and, apparently, pickleball habits, as showcased in a trailer set to Cher’s “Believe.” And these women boast traits that have never been seen on a Bachelor bio. Take Christina, whose first concert was the Beatles in 1964; Marina, who has three master’s degrees; or Kathy, whose grandchildren call her “Kiki.” There’s even a familiar face in the bunch—Patty, the mother of Matt James, Bachelor Nation’s first Black lead who is still dating his final pick, Rachael Kirkconnell.
The full list of contestants is below: Anna, 61, a retired nutritionist from Summit, N.J. April, 65, a therapist from Port St. Lucie, Fla. Christina, 73, a retired purchasing manager from Sierra Madre, Calif. Edith, 60, a retired realtor from Downey, Calif. Ellen, 71, a retired teacher from Delray Beach Fla. Faith, 60, a high school teacher from Benton City, Wash. Jeanie, 65, a retired project manager from Estill Springs, Tenn. Joan, 60, a private school administrator from Rockland, Md. Kathy, 70, a retired educational consultant from Austin, Texas Leslie, 64, a fitness instructor from Minneapolis, Minn. Maria, 60, a health and wellness director from Teaneck, N.J. Marina, 60, an educator from Los Angeles, Calif. Nancy, 60, a retired interior designer from Alexandria, Va. Natascha, 60, a pro-aging coach and midlife speaker from New York City, N.Y. Pamela, 75, a retired salon owner from Aurora, Ill. Patty, 70, a retired real estate professional from Durham, N.C. Peggy, 69, a dental hygienist from East Haven, Conn. Renee, 67, a former Chicago Honey Bear Cheerleader from Middleton, Wis. Sandra, 75, a retired executive assistant from Doraville, Ga. Susan, 66, a wedding officiant from Aston, Penn. Sylvia, 64, a public affairs consultant from Los Angeles, Calif. Theresa, 69, a financial services professional from Shrewsbury, N.J.
The first-ever “Golden Bachelor” star has been announced.
Gerry Turner, 71, is starring on the latest “Bachelor” spinoff show, proving that you can find love again at any age.
A press release described Turner as “a retired restaurateur and doting father and grandfather” who “lives in his dream house on a beautiful lake in Indiana.”
The description continues, “He’s often busy hosting barbecues, playing pickleball, cheering on his favourite Chicago sports teams, four-wheeling and spending time with friends and family at restaurants and local haunts.
“Always a romantic, Turner married his high school sweetheart, Toni, in 1974. Together, they lived a full and happy life with their two daughters, Angie and Jenny, and later two granddaughters, Charlee and Payton. Sadly, after 43 years together, Toni suddenly fell ill and passed away in 2017.
“Six years after Toni’s passing and with the support of his family, Turner is ready to put himself out there and find a love that will stand the test of time in his golden years.”
“THE GOLDEN BACHELOR”: Jenny Young, Angie Warner, Payton Young, Gerry Turner, and Charlie Young. (ABC/Brian Bowen Smith)
Turner said of his late wife during an interview on “Good Morning America” on Monday: “She got robbed. Every day that goes by, that’s the thought that I have.
“I have her picture on a dresser in my closet. Every morning I give her the nod, ‘So what do you think about this?’ For a while it was like, I was having a hard time figuring out if she would be okay. But we always told each other when one of us goes, we want the other one to be happy. She’s up there rooting [for me]. She’s saying, ‘Yeah, Gerry. Do this.’”
“The Golden Bachelor” star Gerry Turner. Credit: ABC/Brian Bowen Smith
American reality comedy series The Prank Panel made its debut on July 9, 2023, and the new unscripted show has intrigued the audience with its unique concept and chaotic content. Keep reading to know more information about The Prank Panel including what the show is about, when the new episodes are released, as well as where and how to watch it.
The Prank Panel: Where to watch and concept
The Prank Panel premiered on July 9, 2023, with a special preview airing on May 24, 2023. A brand-new episode of the prank show will air every Sunday on ABC. In case you want to watch the reality series online, it is available to stream on Hulu. Other options where it can be streamed include Fubo TV and Direct TV Stream. The concept of the series, as the name suggests, revolves around pranking people after certain others pitch the prank.
The individuals can target their family members, friends, and co-workers. If the judges like the pitch, they can accept it and plan, execute, as well record the whole prank. The judging panel consists of pranxperts namely actor Johnny Knoxville, comedian Eric André, and actress Gabourey Sidibe. The judges take the viewers behind the scenes of the show and showcase the whole process of how the prank plans are put together and executed.
More about The Prank Panel
Knoxville explained, “Jimmy Kimmel [producer of the show] called me a couple years ago and said ‘Hey, we’re thinking about doing this show.’ We take people of the street, they’ll tell us an idea they have for a prank, and we just help them pull off their prank.” Sidibe added that they choose to do a prank based on how good it is and how wacky the person might be. André called his co-judges his brother and sister and said the three of them share “instant chemistry” that can’t be denied. The show promises chaos, fun, and hilarious reactions.
The introduction video also featured a joke by Sidibe, “Is this an escape room? Because I wanna leave” hearing which her co-judges laughed out loud. While André told TV Insider that a good prankster should have a “distinct point of view,” Sidibe felt “commitment” is very important, and Knoxville added that “a good reaction” is key to the whole concept. André concluded that the pranks shouldn’t feel mean and should be done with love.
Whoopi Goldberg says “American Idol” contributed to the “beginning of the downfall of society” in remarks that led to an awkward moment between her and “The View” executive producer Brian Teta. (You can check out a clip of her remarks below)
“The View” co-host weighed in on Wednesday on the show’s influence just days after 18-year-old Hawaii-born singer Iam Tongi won season 21.
“We, as a society, love to watch stuff to judge folks. You know, I’ve always thought that the beginning of the downfall of society was with… what’s the name of that show? I always tell you that,” said Goldberg as she looked over to Teta.
“ABC’s American Idol,” replied Teta before the audience let out a laugh.
Goldberg, who pointed out that the show began on Fox, went on to explain her take on the competition.
“Because once we gave people the ability to judge other people, I think we ran amuck with it and it’s gone out of control,” said Goldberg.
“Remember ‘The Gong Show’?” said co-host Joy Behar in reference to a show that allowed judges to hit a gong to signal their distaste for a performance.
Goldberg clarified that she doesn’t remember an instance where “so many people” judged a person’s talent before Teta, and co-host Sunny Hostin, added that Goldberg likes the show now that it’s on ABC – the same network that airs “The View.”
“American Idol” – which debuted nearly 21 years ago on Fox – has notably relied on public participation since its inception, whether through call, text or online vote.
On a recent visit to Uvalde, Shimon Prokupecz could feel the Texas community before he’d even fully arrived. “As we’re driving in, I could tell, you know. You’re on that long road into Uvalde and…I could start to feel it. I could start to feel the sadness,” the CNN correspondent said. “It’s normal life,” he says. A new normal, where “you can’t go a block without seeing a kid’s face” or “a cross” or “something that reminds you of what happened.” The school is now closed but remains standing, as do the memorials erected for the victims. “The murals of all of the kids, different kids [who] died that day, are just everywhere.”
It’s been a year since a shooter killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in one of the deadliest school shootings in US history. The tragedy is not only in the lives lost but those that could have been saved had police acted sooner. We now know that members of law enforcement—376 total, from multiple agencies, arrived at the scene of the shooting—could have potentially stopped the shooter within three minutes and were equipped to do so; instead, amid a breakdown in communications and leadership, and despite 911 calls from children inside of the classroom, they waited 77 minutes to act.
We know this, and many other things about what went wrong in Uvalde, thanks to the unrelenting work of journalists like Prokupecz. Texas officials tried from the start to contain the disastrous revelations, seemingly releasing what little information they did when conflicting timelines or leaks left them no other choice. Given the lack of transparency, media outlets took on an outsized role, trying to get answers for the community and holding law enforcement accountable over their botched response. “Throughout this last year doing this story, it just has seemed that it was me and my team and CNN going to these families and saying: Here’s the information we’ve uncovered. We want to share it with you. We’re about to do these stories, but we want to tell you first,” Prokupecz said.
At times that has meant CNN, rather than the authorities, being the first ones to show families footage they didn’t even know existed, like of their children on a bus to the hospital, covered in their classmates’ blood; or of body camera footage from the moment they were rescued from a classroom full of bodies. It’s a “rare and unique position that we are in, that we can give these families some of the answers that they were seeking,” he said. It’s also a “painful” one, he added, in which he’s had to ask himself, “Is this right? Is it appropriate?” (The Uvalde shooting also kicked off a debate in the journalism community about what the public should see in the aftermath of a mass shooting, and whether coverage needs to be more graphic to better reflect the horrors of gun violence.)
Throughout the past year, local news outlets, such as the Texas Tribune, San Antonio Express-News, and Austin American-Statesmanhave stayed on the story, as well as major networks like CNN and ABC, the latter of which kept a team in Uvalde for a year. But given the spate of mass shootings in America, the national media tends to swoop in for a few days before turning to the next tragedy, with grim milestones, like a one-year anniversary, providing an opportunity for news outlets to take stock. CNN is spotlighting Prokupecz’s work in a special Uvalde-themed episode of The Whole Story With Anderson Cooper, airing Sunday; ABC is airing its own two-hour documentary two days earlier, It Happened Here: A Year in Uvalde.
“I’m one of these people at CNN who parachutes in,” Prokupecz told me. “I cover the law enforcement response—here’s what happened—and I do live shots, and I kind of leave once the story’s over.” Days before the shooting in Texas, he’d been in Buffalo, New York, covering the supermarket shooting that left 10 dead. But in Uvalde, “because the authorities here just played games from the beginning and didn’t want to release all the information,” he decided to stay, and to start covering the victims. As he told his bosses at CNN at the time, “This is the only way we’re going to be able to figure out exactly what happened here.”
Courtesy of CNN.
A few days after the May 24 shooting in Uvalde, as Memorial Day Weekend approached, network news crews started packing up to leave. “Everybody was on the way out. We left too,” said Prokupecz. He remembers, once back, having conversations with his bosses and discussing his return. “He knew immediately something was off about the emergency response and we knew we had to stay in Uvalde. We used our resources to remain on the story,” said CNN CEO Chris Licht, whose first day was only a few weeks before the shooting. “Us leaving is exactly what the authorities there wanted,” Prokupecz said. “Sadly I have found, this is how Texas operates. They know the media has an expiration date.”
When Prokupecz returned a week later with his producer, Matthew Friedman, they were stonewalled: The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) was running the investigation but “wasn’t returning any of our calls,” and the DA “wouldn’t answer any of our questions.” But “things started to change,” said Prokupecz, with a confrontation between CNN and then police chief Pete Arredondo, the incident commander who has since been fired for the response he oversaw that day, in which he dodged questions about the shooting. (Arredondo has claimed he didn’t consider himself the person in charge and assumed someone else had taken control of the police response.) “We’re like, we need to keep going,” Prokupecz recalled.
The story really started to crack open during a trip to Uvalde later in the summer. Prokupecz and Friedman, his producer, had heard that families were going to meet with them. This time they decided not to bring a camera. “It was just going to be us two as people, as humans who want to know more about the community and want to know more about these families,” he said. It was on this trip when he met and heard stories from the families of the deceased and the survivors, including teacher Arnulfo Reyes, and when Uvalde mayor Don McLaughlinaccused DPS of “a cover-up” during an interview with CNN. “That started to unravel things,” said Prokupecz, noting how unlikely the sit-down was to begin with. “This is a guy who’s very Republican, gun rights, was a Trump supporter at the time, would never speak to CNN.” But because of the work CNN was doing, “the mayor and I connected,” said Prokupecz. McLaughlin went on to give CNN first access to body camera footage bringing police inaction into sharper view, and with help from other sources who approached CNN with information, “we wound up getting pretty much the entire case file.”
TV and movie writers went on strike Tuesday for the first time in 15 years after negotiations with film studios failed to reach a new contract.
History suggests the walkout could last weeks or even months, meaning a hiatus in production for everything from favorite late-night shows to hit streaming series. Here’s how we got here and what could happen next.
Who is involved?
Some 11,500 film and TV writers belonging to the Writers Guild of America are negotiating with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents eight major studios: Amazon, Apple, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBC Universal, Netflix, Paramount and Sony. (CBS News and Paramount+ are owned by Paramount Global.)
WGA members work in film, TV, animation and fiction podcasts, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Which shows are affected by the writers’ strike?
Late-night shows, which are written daily, are expected to stop production immediately. “The Late Show” on CBS, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC, “The Tonight Show” on NBC, “Late Night” on NBC and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” are expected to turn to reruns starting Tuesday.
Less clear is how daytime talk shows, which tend to rely more on chit-chat by hosts and celebrity interviews, could be affected. Production on ABC’s “The View” continued uninterrupted during the last strike in the 2007-08 season, for example.
Meanwhile, streaming networks aren’t likely to see an immediate impact given that they work on longer timelines than late-night shows.
Some TV show hosts have voiced support for the striking writers. On “The Late Show” Monday night, host Stephen Colbert expressed support for the union.
“Everybody, including myself, hopes both sides reach a deal,” he said. “But I also think that the writers’ demands are not unreasonable. I’m a member of the guild. I support collective bargaining. This nation owes so much to unions.”
Speaking on “Late Night” on Friday, host Seth Meyers, a WGA member, also expressed support for striking writers, while saying a strike “would really be a miserable thing for people to have to go through.”
Writers “are entitled to make a living,” he said. “I think it’s a very reasonable demand that’s being set out by the guild. And I support those demands.”
Why are writers striking?
At the core of the dispute is the explosion in streaming services and its effects, including the erosion of writers’ pay and job security, according to the WGA.
Even as budgets for series have grown, writers are making a smaller share of the money, the guild said. Streaming services use smaller writing staffs, which the industry calls “mini rooms,” and also tend to have shorter seasons than broadcast shows. That leaves some writers scrambling to put together several sources of income in a single season.
On average, showrunners for streaming series make less than half of what showrunners for broadcast series do, the WGA said. And because writers on streaming shows don’t get the back-end payments that have allowed broadcast and screenwriters to make a living, such as syndication and international licensing, the WGA is seeking to secure more pay on the front end for its members.
Since 2018, inflation-adjusted pay for screenwriters has fallen 14%, according to the guild. For writer-producers, pay has sunk 23%.
What are the writers asking for?
The Writers Guild wants total pay increases for members amounting to about $429 million per year, according to the WGA, while the AMPTP’s counter would run $86 million per year.
The number of writers working at guild minimum pay has risen from about a third to about half in the past decade. Meanwhile, writers for comedy-variety shows for streaming services have no minimum pay protections and tend to get paid less than their counterparts in broadcast.
The minimum pay for WGA members varies based on a writer’s title and the length of the individual’s employment contract, but the minimum for the lowest-paid writer is $4,546 per week, according to Variety.
The studios “have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession,” WGA leadership said Monday in a statement. That has created a “gig economy inside a union workforce,” it added.
Studios counter that they are thinking about the long-term health of the industry. The AMPTP said Monday that the primary sticking points to a deal revolved around the guild’s request for a minimum number of scribes per writer room. The group added that its offer “included generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals.”
A key industry dynamic behind the labor dispute: Hollywood is under increased pressure from Wall Street to turn a profit. After years of lavish spending to expand streaming services, many studios and production companies are slashing spending. For example, the Walt Disney Co. is cutting 7,000 jobs, Warner Bros. Discovery is slashing costs to lessen its debt and Netflix has pumped the brakes on spending growth.
“The current streaming services are largely not profitable. Only Netflix is turning a profit right now,” Alex Weprin, media and business writer at the Hollywood Reporter, told CBS News. “These large entertainment companies, they don’t really have a good sense of how profitable these services are going to be and how much they can afford to pay the writers.”
What does AI have to do with it?
Artificial intelligence is another point of contention in the labor talks, with guild writers asking for strict limits on AI use in scripts. They don’t want to rewrite material generated by AI, nor for AI to rewrite human-created scripts, and they want union-covered material to be excluded from training AI models.
The studios have so far rejected these demands, a position one writer described as “insulting.”
“We are fighting for nothing less than the survival of writing as a viable career,” writer and comic Adam Conover tweeted.
We proposed that AI not be used to undermine our work; they rejected our proposal, and offered an “annual meeting to discuss advances in technology.” Wow, a MEETING?!? Thank you ever so much!!
An insulting counter, just dripping with contempt.
Staff writers, the lowest-paid roles, typically work an average of 29 weeks on a network show for $131,834 annually, or an average of 20 weeks on a streaming show for $90,920. For a writer-producer, the figure is $6,967 per week, according to the trade magazine Variety. For a writer-producer, the figure is $6,967 per week.
Advocates for the studios and producers say that pay is far from the poor-house picture writers present publicly. AMPTP leaders say their priority is “the long-term health and stability of the industry” and that they are dedicated to reaching “a fair and reasonable agreement,” according to the Associated Press.
What are writers allowed to do during the strike?
According to the WGA’s strike rules, writers cannot do any writing or rewriting during the strike. They are barred from attending meetings or negotiating with the studios, pitching new projects, entering agreements to option their work or even attending promotional events for existing projects.
By contrast, they are allowed to accept payment for any writing that’s already been completed. Writer-producers, writer-actors and writer-directors are allowed to do the non-writing part of their job during the strike, but they’re banned from doing any writing no matter how minor, such as revising dialogue or tweaking stage directions.
When was the last writers’ strike?
The last time the film and TV writers put down their keyboards was in 2007-08 in a strike that lasted 100 days.
During that labor action many shows, such as “30 Rock,” “CSI,” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” shortened their seasons while studios pumped out more unscripted reality shows. “Big Brother” and “The Amazing Race” both increased their output. “The Apprentice,” hosted by Donald Trump, got new life when a celebrity version of the shelved show was created to help fill the scripted void.
Among the main concessions the writers won that time were requirements for fledgling streaming shows to hire unionized writers if their budgets were big enough. It was an early harbinger of nearly every entertainment labor fight in the years that followed.
How often have writers gone on strike?
Writers have gone on strike more than any group in Hollywood, according to the AP, with six strikes since 1960. The first strike, in 1960, lasted nearly five months; strikes followed in 1973, 1981 and 1985.
The longest work stoppage, lasting 153 days, came in 1988.
Spoilers for the season 2 finale of *__Abbott Elementary __*ahead.
Nearly all of the action in Abbott Elementary’s season 2 finale, “Franklin Institute,” takes place beyond the familiar hallways of Abbott Elementary. In fact, much of the Emmy-winning comedy’s 22-episode second season has been an excursion, offering viewers their first glance at their beloved teachers’ extracurricular activities.
“We definitely had an agenda in the first season—this is just going to be a workplace thing, about what’s said within the walls of Abbott,” co-showrunner and executive producer Patrick Schumacker tells Vanity Fair over Zoom. “Season two we wanted to start to get to know a bit about their personal lives. We’re going to meet siblings, we’re going to meet romantic partners.” Enter characters like Janine’s (Quinta Brunson) responsibility-averse sister (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri); their emotionally coaxing, Versace-clad mother (Taraji P. Henson); and Jacob’s (Chris Perfetti) sneakerhead boyfriend Zach (Larry Owens).
But would the crew that’s ostensibly filming Abbott’s students and staff for a documentary about public school funding actually follow their subjects to, say, a hookah lounge, as they did in the show’s holiday episode? “It brings up one of my favorite Onion headlines of all time, which is, ‘The Office documentary crew feels like they have enough footage,’” jokes co-showrunner and EP Justin Halpern.
While expanding Abbott’s orbit presented logistical challenges—how to shoot a confrontation between Janine and her sister that she wants to shield from cameras, for instance—it also allows for tonal harmony. That aforementioned “Holiday Hookah” episode, where will they/won’t they co-workers Janine and Gregory (Tyler James Williams) edge ever closer to their eventual first kiss, has the characters seeing each other in a fresh, after-hours light just as the audience does.
Below, the showrunning duo talks about the closure Janine and Gregory find in the season 2 finale and the “tension” that awaits them in season 3, as well as the role awards season played in making everyone involved not want to “fuck this up.”
Vanity Fair: The 22-episode network season is a bit of a lost art. Walk me through how you went about tackling it.
Justin Halpern: The fun thing about 22 is that you have some episodes where you can drill down on one part of a character. You can take some swings you wouldn’t normally, like the episode where Barbara [Sheryl Lee Ralph] starts a fire. That episode is solely about how Barbara deals with mental health and stress, things that affect her at work that she wishes wouldn’t. If you’re doing 13, you probably can’t do that episode because you’ve got to keep things moving.
Was there a period in the season that you felt the stretch and challenge of 22 the most?
Patrick Schumacker: I believe we did seven episodes straight. Episode five happened to coincide with the Emmys. There was pressure for people to make all of these commitments to promote the show and get the word out during award season. And you could just tell that everybody was exhausted. We’re like, “We can’t do more than five moving forward, ideally four.” That was the pressure of award season, but then also of knowing that after episode five, we still had 17 more to do. So yeah, man, that was where it really, really hit us.
The “Educator of the Year” episode felt like acknowledgement of the incredible awards success *__Abbott __*achieved in its first season. How did that attention impact the second season?
Halpern: I don’t think we ever felt the pressure of, “Oh, man, everybody loves it. How are we going to fuck this up?” We felt like, “Hey, let’s just keep making the same show we made in the first season because that’s the show that we all love.” You can get caught up in a lot of shit in this business. For Quinta, and for us it was like, “Are we making episodes that we would want to watch? All right, let’s keep doing that.” So, we try to keep the noise out of it.
Jeremy Renner is opening up about the New Year’s Day snowplow accident that left him in critical condition. Sitting in his wheelchair in an exclusive interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer released on Thursday, the “Avengers” star recalls the horrifying moment, saying it was “my mistake,” and “I paid for it.”
The day of the incident, Renner was plowing the snow ahead of a day of skiing with his family in Reno, Nevada. He had used the more than 14,000-pound snowcat several times before, and on this day, his nephew Alex was out there helping him. At one point while driving the plow, it kept slipping and Renner couldn’t see where his nephew was, so Renner opened the door and stuck one foot out to try and find him.
He told Sawyer that all he remembers next is that he lost his footing and fell off the side. He was alright at first, but worried that the machine was going to sandwich his nephew in between it and the nearby truck, he tried to immediately jump back in.
But when he jumped up on the snowplow’s tracks, they immediately threw him off — right into the vehicle’s path.
“It is what it was and it’s my mistake,” he said, “and I paid for it.”
ABC played the 911 call that was made the morning of Renner’s Jan. 1 accident. In that audio clip, Renner’s neighbor, Rich Kovach, who was helping the actor, can be heard saying, “he’s been crushed,” and begging for immediate assistance.
“Listen to me, I need — you might wanna get life flight out here immediately,” the man says as Renner can be heard moaning in the background. “…He’s in rough shape.”
Kovac told ABC that Renner was covered in blood and that it seemed as though his skull was “cracked wide open.”
“His eye looked like it had been pushed out,” he said.
In the interview, Renner said he remembers “all of” the pain. At one point, he said, “I could see my eye with my other eye… I just remember seeing stars.”
“I was awake through every moment. It’s exactly like imagine it would feel like,” he said. “…I was on asphalt and ice. It was like someone took the wind out of you.”
The snowcat ended up pushing the truck Alex was in up against a snowbank, but he was safe and able to get out. He saw Renner in a pool of blood and immediately ran to Kovac’s house for help.
It took 20 minutes for emergency responders to get there through the snow, wind and ice. They got him into the ambulance in just minutes, but by the time he got to the hospital, he was in a “maximum level of trauma,” doctors said.
“His entire right side of his chest was fractured,” a surgeon told ABC. Doctors said he had more than 30 broken bones in various parts of his body.
When his family got there, Renner couldn’t speak, but he was able to use sign language to convey a single message: “I’m sorry.”
“I am sorry. I did that to them,” he said. “It’s my responsibility. I feel bad that my actions caused so much pain.”
At one point, Renner asked for a phone and typed out a note of his “last words to my family.”
“Don’t let me live on tubes on a machine and if my existence is going to be on drugs and painkillers, just let me go now,” he recalls asking of them.
But Renner, who doctors described as young and healthy with a good support system, prevailed and is making progress in his recovery. In the interview, he was seen using a walker and a wheelchair to get around. He only got onto his feet one day earlier.
“If I was there on my own, it would have been a horrible way to die,” he said. “And surely it would have.”
Months after the incident, Renner said he doesn’t want the story to be about him being a victim, but about the strength that came from it.
“I refuse to have that be a trauma and be a negative experience. … I wouldn’t let that happen to my nephew, so I shift the narrative of being victimized or making a mistake or anything else,” he said. “I refuse to be f—ing haunted by that memory that way.”
He survived the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting in Texas. Now, Trey Louis is going to Hollywood to compete to be the next “American Idol.”
The 21-year-old singer and mattress salesman went viral after his audition aired on “American Idol” on Sunday. During the audition, Louis, who calls himself “Trey from the Fe,” sang the song “Stone” by Whiskey Myers. His performance earned a standing ovation from the show’s three judges, Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan.
Bryan immediately told Louis, “You’ve got the perfect voice,” and asked him why he wanted to compete for the “American Idol” title. That’s when Louis revealed his story.
“‘American Idol,’ No. 1, is kind of where people that I enjoy make it. No. 2 – as I said before, I’m from Santa Fe, Texas. In May 2018, a gunman walked into my school,” he said, growing visibly emotional. “I was in art room one, he shot up art room two before he made his way to art room one.”
Trey Louis appears on “American Idol.”
Eric McCandless/ABC via Getty Images
Ten people were killed in the the shooting, including two substitute teachers. Another 10 people were injured in the incident, which took place during the school’s first-period art class. Police identified the gunman was a 17-year-old student at the school.
“I lost a lot of friends. Eight students were killed. Two teachers were killed,” Louis told the judges. “It’s just really been negative man, Santa Fe’s had a bad rap since 2018.”
His story prompted an emotional and outraged reaction from the judges, all of them tearing up as he recalled the shooting. Bryan told him after that Louis sings from “the perfect spot.”
“You let it come out of your heart and that’s what we love around here,” Bryan said.
That’s when Perry seemingly broke down, sobbing into her hands.
“Our country has f***ing failed us,” she said. “This is not OK. You should be singing here because you love music, not because you had to go through that… You don’t have to lose eight friends.”
“I hope that you remind people that we have to change,” she added, “because I’m scared too.”
Louis’ talent earned him a resounding “Yes” from all three judges, allowing him to move on in the competition and go to Hollywood.
“Thank you America and Thank you Santa Fe,” the singer wrote on his Facebook following the episode, along with photos of him holding onto the show’s desired golden ticket. “I Love You.”
Thank you America and Thank you Santa Fe.
I Love You
T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach will not return to their positions as co-hosts of the third hour of “Good Morning America,” an ABC News spokesperson confirmed to CBS News Friday.
“After several productive conversations with Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes about different options, we all agreed it’s best for everyone that they move on from ABC News,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We recognize their talent and commitment over the years and are thankful for their contributions.”
Last month, the co-anchors were taken off the air following reports of a possible romantic relationship. At the time, ABC News said the relationship between the two did not violate company policy and planned to work through “what is best for the organization.”
Although ABC News correspondents Gio Benitez and Stephanie Ramos have filled in for Holmes and Robach in the past, the company has not announced who will replace them.
Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes at the New York City Marathon on Nov. 6, 2022.
Bryan Bedder/New York Road Runners via Getty Images
John Fleenor/Disney
