‘Shark Week’ is back with over 20 hours of programming
ANetflix original comes to an end, Batman’s butler gets a backstory and “Shark Week” returns.
Dispatches: Weekly TV news
• “Sesame Street” will be one of the recipients of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that the iconic children’s television show, which launched in 1969, will join fellow honorees Sally Field, Linda Ronstadt, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and band Earth, Wind & Fire. Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, the co-founders of the show, will accept the award on behalf of the program and the nonprofit organization, Sesame Workshop.
• Failed contract negotiations between AT&T’s DirecTV and CBS have left over 6 million DirecTV subscribers without the network.
The blackout impacts CBS and CW affiliated stations in 14 major markets. CBS Sports and Smithsonian Channel are also off the air. CBS issued a statement saying that the loss of programming “could last a long time.”
• The season four premiere of “Riverdale” will pay special tribute to Luke Perry, who played the character Fred Andrews on the show. The episode will feature Perry’s friend and former costar Shannen Doherty.
• Katee Sackhoff (“Battlestar Galactica”) returns to space in “Another Life” (Netflix). Sackhoff plays an astronaut who is part of a team investigating the source of an alien artifact.
• In a twist on the superhero genre, “The Boys” (July 26, Amazon) focuses on a group of everyday people trying to expose an elite collective of superheroes who are abusing their powers instead of using them for good.
• The seventh and final season of “Orange Is the New Black” drops on Netflix on July 26. The show was one of the first original series to debut on the streaming service, in 2013.
• “Shark Week 2019” (July 28-Aug. 4, Discovery, starting at 8 p.m. ET) features more than 20 hours of shark stories. Highlights of the annual programming event include the search for “Deep Blue,” believed to be the largest great white shark in the world and the full-length movie “Capsized: Blood in the Water,” which is based on the true story of an October 1982 shark encounter in the Atlantic.
• Man’s best friend is the focus of “Amazing Dogs” (July 28, Smithsonian Channel, 8 p.m. ET). Biologist Patrick Aryee travels the globe to study all 34 canine species, discovering how dogs helped changed the course of human history.
• Set in the early 1960s, “Pennyworth” (July 28, Epix, 9 p.m. ET) follows the adventures of Bruce Wayne’s future butler, Alfred, who starts a security company with Bruce’s father.
Report Card: Ratings winners and losers
Winners:
AMC renewed “Fear the Walking Dead” for season six.
Losers: “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” will end with season seven on ABC.