E.W. Scripps is emphasizing ladies’s sports activities on broadcast community ION and extra focused programming on Court docket TV and Bounce in its upfront presentation to advertisers.
Forward of its Wednesday night occasion on the Barclays Heart in Brooklyn, residence of the WNBA‘s reigning champion New York Liberty, the corporate made a set of programming bulletins.
Two new sports activities ventures are becoming a member of the ION lineup. One is the Elevance Well being Ladies’s Fort Myers Tip-Off, an early season faculty basketball event held over Thanksgiving weekend. Scripps Sports activities has locked up rights for 5 years from the company Intersport, which manages the event.
Since launching in 2022, the Fort Myers Tip-Off has been a draw for distinguished groups, amongst them South Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, Purdue and others.
Scripps can be teaming with media outlet Sports activities Illustrated on the SI Ladies’s Video games, a biennial all-star competitors that includes elite athletes in six sports activities. The debut version is about for Oceanside, CA from October 28 to November 2.
Dwell ladies’s sports activities is a key pillar within the firm’s general technique, notably the WNBA and the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League. Scores for a spread of girls’s sports activities properties have been rising dramatically in recent times, with advert consumers additionally interested in the enthusiastic viewership. Moderately than devoting assets to originals, ION’s programming finances is generally focused to sports activities, together with the acquired collection it packages in prime time.
ION is within the closing 12 months of its deal to broadcast Friday night time WNBA video games. Whereas WNBA rights are a part of a broader rights package deal with NBA video games, that are altering companions for the 2025-26 season (with Amazon and NBCUniversal getting into the image with Disney-ESPN), the Friday night time slot stays out there. ION execs say they’re remaining in discussions with the league about persevering with as a media companion.
Past ION, Scripps additionally mentioned it had renewed two of its hottest collection: Court docket TV’s Interview with a Killer and Bounce TV’s Thoughts Your Enterprise.
Interview, a true-crime collection hosted by David Scott, turned Court docket TV’s most-watched authentic when it debuted final fall. The brand new season will kick off April 13 with a 2-hour episode about Gary Michael Hilton, who calls himself the oldest serial killer in America.
Thoughts Your Enterprise, which acquired an NAACP Picture Award nomination, is returning for a second season on June 7.
The collection focuses on the Williams household, which operates an occasion and social gathering house in Chicago. Ensemble solid members embrace Columbus Brief (Scandal, Stomp the Yard), Drew Sidora (The Actual Housewives of Atlanta, That’s So Raven) and Rolonda Watts (Rolonda).
