TNT and TBS president Kevin Reilly will look to put his official stamp on the two Turner networks with several new brand and content development initiatives.

Reilly, who was tapped to head the two networks last November, said during Turner’s upfront presentation Wednesday morning that the two networks will receive a “makeover” that will sharpen TBS’s comedy focus and TNT’s action/drama programming format through the development of new original programming.

Among the new pilots for TNT are Will, a series about a young William Shakespeare, and Animal Kingdom, a family crime drama set in a gritty surf community.

TBS will add 15 new scripted and unscripted series over the next two years as part of its brand and programming “reposition” set to begin by end of year, Reilly said.

The network announced two new pilot series -- Wrecked, a newly greenlit ensemble comedy from writers Justin Shipley and Jordan Shipley and executive producer Jesse Hara, and The Group, about alien abductees from Conan O’Brien and Greg Daniels (The Office) – that will join already announced series Angie Tribeca and The Detour. The network will also launch this fall Separation Anxiety, a relationship-based game show with a unique twist.

Also previously announced was Turner's move into music with the Live Nation Music Awards, airing Oct. 1 on both TBS and TNT. 

"The new TBS will have a huge slate of awesomely in-your-face and effortlessly diverse programming, while TNT will continue to deliver great drama and live event specials, but our presentation and portfolio will look dramatically different," Reilly said.

Adult Swim will look to bolster its already strong appeal to young adults with more than 30 new and returning shows, the network announced in advance of its upfront presentation Wednesday evening (May 13).

"Adult Swim has always been known as a place for taking risks and for great talent to try interesting and unique things," said Christina Miller, president and general manager, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Boomerang in a statement. "Mike [Lazzo] and his team continue to raise the bar in knowing what the Adult Swim fan wants, and this new slate of original programming adds to our growing line-up of primetime comedies."

Among the new shows on the docket are a new comedy pilot starring Jason Alexander, as well as Brad Neeley-helmed animated series TV Sucks, a new miniseries from Jon Glaser, and live-action comedy specials from Brett Gelman and Jon Daly, network officials said.

Upfront announcements by NBCUniversal Hispanic Group at a Lincoln Center gathering include a new sports unit, NBC Deportes, that will ramp up production ahead of the arrival of FIFA World Cup Spanish-language coverage on Telemundo and sister network NBC Universo.

Ad-sales executives, including executive vice president Mike Rosen, pitched buyers and other attendees on the networks' reach to Hispanic Americans, under the theme  of "All Together. Latino." Rosen said NBCU will target Hispanic viewers across Spanish- and English-language networks, using an approach called CultureFirst that incorporates cultural traits (Latino "human truths") other than language that influence buying decisions.

Telemundo touted ratings gains, such as a 20% increase in weekday primetime viewing among 18- to 49-year-olds, aided by shorter, action-oriented drama "super series" including the hit El Señor de Los Cielos (The Lord of the Skies), starring Rafael Amaya as a Mexican drug lord. (It is returning for a fourth season in a format designed for multiple seasons). The broadcast network also is introducing Gran Hermano, a new U.S. Spanish-language version of the reality show Big Brother, and loading up on musical specials with the Latin American Music Awards, which is a new show modeled on the AMAs, and The 2015 iHeartRadio Fiesta Latina, a spinoff of the iHeartRadio Music Festival. Earlier, Telemundo said it would launch a new Saturday-night variety show, La Sorpresa de Tu Vida (The Surprise of Your Life), hosted by Angelica Vale and Raul Gonzalez, who on stage use the term "gigante" to describe the plans for the new show. Last month, U.S. Hispanic-content leader Univision said its Saturday-night variety show, Sábado Gigante, would end its 53-year run in September upon host Don Francisco's retirement. 

Sports formed much of the news, though, including the new NBC Deportes unit announced by Joe Uva, the chairman of Hispanic Enterprises and Content at NBCU, and NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus. It will gear up to provide 1,000 hours of sports content across network and digital platforms for such properties as soccer's FIFA World Cup (NBCU has Spanish-language rights to the next three Cup rounds), the Olympics and the National Football League. NBC Universo (the former mun2) is adding a new highlights show, Escena Deportiva, and obtaining home games on Saturday nights for Leon and Pachuca in the Mexican LIGA MX. 

On the digital front, attendees at Rose Hall in Jazz at Lincoln Center enjoyed seeing a demo of a new second-screen app, Double Acción, that streams content that complements what's being shown on TV during scripted series, even down to having one of the characters in the show call the person on the mobile phone that's running the app. The singer Daddy Yankee, a judge on Telemundo's La Voz Kids, performed at the end. 

Pictured, left to right: Rafael Amaya (El Señor de Los Cielos), Maria Celeste Arraras (Al Rojo Vivo) and Mike Rosen, EVP, Advertising Sales, News and Hispanic Groups, NBCUniversal.

Update: This story was corrected on May 18 to state that La Voz Kids is on Telemundo, not NBC Universo.

Emphasizing its dedication to the arts, Ovation rolled out a slate of new docu-series and specials that it hopes will appeal to its target upscale viewers.

The network, which posted year to year ratings gains in 2014, will look to build on its viewership numbers with the launch of several new series across several genres including art, music and fine dining, according to Scott Woodward, executive vice president of programming and production for the network.

“We want to produce compelling artistic content for the network and program the very best in music and dance, fashion film and storytelling,” Woodward said. “We will continue our commitment to produce original content with our returning series as well as new content coming up.”

Among the new series slated to debut on the 54 million subscriber network in 2015 include the Aug. 2 debut of On the Record with Mick Rock, which follows the legendary photographer as he interviews such musical artists as Josh Groban, Kings of Leon and Flaming Lips; the June 14 premiere of SouthernUncovered with the Lee Bros., which follow culinary experts Matt and Ted Lee as they explore and uncover unique cuisine and culture; June 7 debut of The Da Vinci List, which chronicles game-changing figures in within an artistic genre; and the October launch of Art Breakers, which focuses on Powerhouse art dealers Miller Gaffney and Carol Lee Brosseau as they work through the high-stakes and higher price-tag world of art collecting.

On the specials front, the network on May 17 will air a documentary special that takes a behind the scenes look at Isabella Rossellini’s one woman show Green Porn Live!,  while in November the network will air a Young Marvels special that will check in on eight exceptionally gifted children profiled in the freshman series of the same name.

Series in development for 2016 include Street Art Revival, The Gavel, Art Therapy and One Man’s Trash, said network officials.

Black Entertainment Television will roll out its most ambitious original programming slate ever featuring new scripted and reality shows, the network announced Thursday (April 23) in advance of its upfront presentation.

The network, which delivers more African American viewers on a weekly basis than any other cable network, will build on its scripted lineup with a new sitcom, Zoe Moon, starring Brandy Norwood as a single mom seeking a new life as a fledgling cosmetics mogul, according to network officials.

The series will join returning scripted shows Being Mary Jane, Real Husbands of Hollywood and the final season of The Game.

On the non-scripted front, the network will team with Destiny Child singer Kelly Rowland to develop Chasing Destiny, which aims to find the next big female superstar group. Other docu-series on the docket include About the Business, following a tight knit group of friends in Hollywood; Criminals at Work, exploring crimes committed around the workplace; and The Label, which chronicles the rise and fall of classic record labels over the past 25 years, the network said.

BET will also delve into sports with the June 20 debut of RocNation Sports Live Boxing, its first ever multi-fight boxing series. On the sports-themed reality side, the network will produce DeSean Jackson: Home Team, which follows the personal and professional life of the talented Washington Redskins’ wide receiver.

The network will also produce several news specials in 2015, including Katrina—10 Years Later; OJ Simpson – 20 Years Later and Justice & Race.

Returning series include Nellyville, It’s a Mann’s World and Bobby Jones Gospel.

“Black consumers experience BET Networks differently than any other network because of our 35 years of history, tremendous experience and insights,” Debra Lee, BET Networks chair and CEO, said in a statement. “We continue to give our viewers what they want – high quality content that respects, reflects and elevates them.With more hours of original programming than ever before, our new shows coupled with our returning hits like Being Mary Jane and Nellyville make our original slate stronger than ever.”

As millennials grow older, ABC Family is shifting its focus to a younger-skewing ‘becomers’ with a lineup of unscripted and scripted series that will allow the network to offer year-long original programming, the network said prior to its upfront presentation Tuesday in New York.

ABC Family president Tom Ascheim told Multichannel News that the network’s millennial target audience it began targeting a decade ago is now growing older – in five years millennials will be less than half of the network’s core 12-34 demo – so the network will focus on what it defines as ‘becomers’ who are just beginning to enter key stages of their lives.

“That keeps us tightly focused on the audience and the journey of that audience – it informs our programming and our marketing,” Ascheim said.

He added that the network’s “family” brand is targeted to young adult audience. “The focus is on viewers in our sweet spot, with a median age in the 20’s,” he said.  

The network is more than doubling its original content, which includes unscripted programming as well as scripted dramas and comedies, according to Karey Burke, ABC Family executive vice president of programming and development.

“We’re making more programming that has a becomer lens on it,” she said.

Among the new series set to launch this summer are Job or No Job, which follows one young adult to his/her first journey to land a job and Becoming Us, which centers on a teenager who is learning to live with his dad becoming a woman. The shows will join previously announced new summer shows Monica the Medium, Startup U,Next Step Realty: NYC, Kevin From Work and Stitchers.

Show in development for ABC Family include Hearts and Clubs, from executive producer Christina Aguilera about young performers working in Las Vegas; Famous In Love, starring Bella Thorne and based on the novel by Rebecca Serle; Sold Out, about a young band hitting the road for their first-ever tour;  I Am Maker, a docu-series that follows up and coming Youtube sensations living together and mentored by celebrity talent, Shadowhunters, a supernatural drama which follows an 18-year old who discovers she comes from a family of human-angel hybrids who hunt down demons and You Got To Work It, from actress Eva Longora that follows eight unemployed girls vying for seven job opportunities in seven industries.

Earlier this month the network said it will develop pilots for scripted series Gorgeous Morons and Beyond.

On the specials front, the network will develop We Heart Disney, a music spectacular featuring today’s biggest pop stars and classic Disney songs.

Looking to build greater appeal with viewers, TV One will increase its original programming outlay by 10% over the next year with a mix of scripted comedies, original movies and celebrity-driven reality content, network executives said during TV One’s upfront presentation Tuesday afternoon.

Overall the African-American targeted network is planning to deliver more than 460 hours of original programming over the next year, according to network president Brad Siegel. As part of the increase, the network plans to develop some 16 original movies as it looks to create a monthly Saturday night movie block targeting adult 25-54 year old viewers, added D’Angela Proctor, TV One senior vice president of original programming and production.

Among the new scripted content set to roll out in 2015-16 is Mitch N' Max, a scripted comedy that follows a down and out Wall Street broker who is forced to move in with his estranged hip hop artist friend; and Born Again Virgin, which follows the relationships of three female best friends. The network is also developing as pilots The Family Plot, a comedy about a former beauty queen who unexpectedly inherits a funeral home from her deceased husband; and Brooklyn Faith, about a small community that encounters moral conflict in its attempt to balance professional ambition with its personal lives. 

On the unscripted side, the network will launch later this year real crime shows For My Man, which features the shocking stories of women who have been arrested for crimes they committed in the name of love, and Unstoppable, which profiles heroic men and women who stopped at nothing to find justice for a murdered loved one. Other new shows include The Next 15 which follows a group of male and female former reality stars that crave another 15 minutes of fame; and The Weekly Show, a one hour-parody of a fledgling local news program.

Unscripted pilots include Debutantes, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at young ladies preparing for womanhood and their society debut; Biker Girlz, which follows a female biker club; It’s Good To Be Me, which profiles the lives of Black America’s most famous celebrities and well-known public figures and Strippers, a documentary series that chronicles women who live regular lives by day and make a living as strippers by night.   

On the specials front, TV One will team with PBS to present The Gospel Tradition: In Performance at the White House, and with Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network for The Triumph Awards, according to Siegel

The new series and specials will join returning series Hollywood Divas,Fatal Attraction, Unsung,Unsung Hollywood, News One Now and Verses and Flow, said Proctor.

New York – In a bid to compete with Netflix, Amazon and Hulu in the streaming world, Crackle has ordered its first hour-long scripted drama.

The ad-supported streaming network has given a 10-episode order for The Art of More, with Dennis Quaid attached to star. The drama focuses on the underbelly and surprisingly cutthroat world of premium auction houses. Kate Bosworth will also star.

Crackle’s second new series is a stop-motion animated series SuperMansion from Seth Green his Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, which produced Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken. The animated comedy stars Bryan Cranston as an aging superhero who leads a group of has-been heroes struggling to stay relevant.

Read more at Broadcastingcable.com.

Hallmark Channel heads into the 2015-16 upfront season on a ratings roll. The network’s family-friendly lineup of original scripted series, movies and acquired fare is up 17% in the primetime ratings in first-quarter 2015 compared to a year ago. Bill Abbott, president and CEO of Crown Media Family Networks, recently spoke to Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about the upfront market and the network’s plans for the year. An edited transcript follows.

MCN:How will Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies and Mysteries follow up last year’s ratings performance with this year’s original programming lineup?

Bill Abbott: With Hallmark Channel, we’ll be back with 40-plus movies and four original primetime series, and all of our special events like Kitten Bowl. What I think is really beginning to differentiate us from everyone is our strategy around franchises and events. You’ve seen how well we’ve done with Christmas and the whole “Countdown to Christmas” campaign, but our brand is so conducive to other times of the year like Valentine’s Day, back-to-school and Mother’s Day — places where the Hallmark [Cards] brand has lived for 100 years. Our strategy is to lean into that as much as possible to develop those events and franchises that we take ownership of. It’s different that anything anybody else has on TV.

Then Hallmark Movies & Mysteries will have 20 plus original movies in 2015-16. These will be different from Hallmark Channel — where Hallmark Channel is more on the lighter side of entertainment, the mysteries will be more of the character-driven “mystery wheel” type of movies that are more in the vein of Columbo and Matlock then they are more-salacious storylines.

MCN:Will you look to add more scripted content to your lineup over the next year?

BA: We have our fourth scripted series in development launching in 2016 called Chesapeake Shores, which is based on a series of books [of the same name]. When Calls The Heart launches within weeks [April 25] and has been significantly enhanced. That show is under the radar and I think that it will be very successful. We’re currently airing The Good Witch, which is the highest-rated original series for us to date, and we’re thinking about bringing it back for a second year. Cedar Cove returns for season three this year and, given its track record, we anticipate that it will be back for 2016 as well.

MCN:Given the often-salacious nature of original shows on other networks, do advertisers remain receptive to Hallmark’s more family-friendly content?

BA: That’s always been an advantage for us. We can assure a buyer on the client side that, 24/7, you never have to screen our content or worry about getting a letter from an angry viewer — it’s always quality, family-friendly fare. I think moving forward, the fact that so much of our programming is original, differentiated and branded with Hallmark, like “Countdown To Christmas,” that our content is significantly more valuable.

MCN:What is your prediction going into the upfronts?

BA: I think the writing is on the wall to a degree that the upfront will be probably similar to last year in terms of volume. I’m not sure about price yet, but in our case, just like we’ve gone against the ratings trend, we’re pretty sure we’ll do well. We feel confident that both channels will be up double digits on the volume side and pricing will be a little bit above the marketplace, given the fact that we are so undervalued.

We offer such a great efficiency that on its own is a reason to move money to us, but then look at the great content that we have. We provide remarkable value to an advertiser. The marketplace will be what it is, but we’ll be in a different spot.

(UPDATED) Discovery Channel will air a documentary film exposing the hidden world of endangered species and a new scripted series on the history of Harley-Davidson as part of its 2015-16 programming slate, the network announced Tuesday morning during Discovery Communications’ upfront presentation.

The documentary, Race Extinction, follows a team of artists and activists as they seek to chronicle endangered species and the race to protect them against mass extinction. The film will serve as the launch of a larger, ongoing campaign to reduce carbon emissions and the prevention of species extinction, said network executives.

Discovery will develop its second scripted series, Harley-Davidson, based on the lives of William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson and their creation of the motorcycle brand that has shaped the cultural landscape, said the network.

 Other new unscripted series and specials include Naked And Afraid XL, a spinoff special of the network’s popular competition series; Treasure Quest, a series that follows several explorers searching for Icon gold know and the Treasure Of the Trinity stolen in 1524; Pacific Warriors, which chronicles Hawaiian men and women who fish using only a kayak and a paddle; Lunar XPrize, a space exploration/competition series pitting teams looking to land a robot on the moon; Killing Fields, which uses the most up to date science advancements and technologies to uncover crimes that have gone undetected due to their geography; and Cuban Chrome, which follows Cuban car enthusiasts who restore classic American cars.

New York-- Nickelodeon is taking former linear service Noggin mobile.

The kid's kingpin announced at its upfront presentaiton to advertisers that it was reviving the educational service -- the forbear of Nick. Jr. --  as a stand-alone mobile, subscription product, targeting preschoolers and their care-givers.

Bowing March 5 via the app store for iPhone, iPad and iTouch, Noggin will retail for $5.99 a month. The programmer said it is also tallking to distributors about offering the service as a premium complement to authenticated subscribers.

At launch, content will include such educational fare as Blue's Clues, Little Bear and Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, plus music videos. Moose and Zee will reprise their roles hosting videos that can help youngsters learn letters, shapes and matching skills, as they prep for kindergarten.

Nickelodeon signaled in January that it would offer a new mobile video service.

Noggin and its former channel mate The N became Nick Jr. and Teen Nick in September 2009, as the programmer sought to solidify the Nick name and brand across its portfolio.

In other Nick upfront developments:

--The network has greenlit three new live-action shows, including Make It Pop, a music-infused strip series about three girls who star in their own K-Pop-inspired band; Talia’s Kitchen, which follows a teenage girl who gains magical powers working in her grandmother’s Miami restaurant; and The W.I.T. Academy, a spinoff for series Every Witch Way.

Nickelodeon also touted a new Dan Schneider-produced series, Game Makers, which follows two 12-year old girls who start a multi-million-dollar gaming company.  As part of a multi-platform experience for viewers, the games seen in the episodes will be released through apps and online.

In addition, the network has greenlit Every Witch Way for a fourth season and Max & Shred for a sophomore campaign.

The programmer also formalized  its array of consumer insighs, multimedia services and partnership marketing plays under the “Inside Out Solutions” banner.  The unit will provide advertising partners with in-depth collaboration across the Nickelodeon portfolio of digital and linear channels. Partners can access the network’s proprietary insights, full-service marketing and creative resources and multi-platform media destinations to create branded experiences that are authentic to Nickelodeon’s kids and family audience, according to network officials.