Two of CBS’ big-swing freshmen series, the sitcom The Neighborhood and the spiritual drama God Friended Me, recently received well-deserved early second season renewals.  Although the shows are very different, they have successfully broached such subjects as gentrification and religion through the lens of diversity and inclusion, garnering significant viewership in the process.  The Neighborhood averages 8 million viewers weekly, while God Friended Me averages 10 million.

Just in time for the weekend’s holidays, Lifetime on Saturday shifts the focus of its original movies from stories about murderous moms, dastardly dads and torturous teens to something more inspirational with the premiere of My Mom's Letter from Heaven, based on true-life events.  In the film, Barry Watson stars as Connor Ash, a father left to raise his four-year-old daughter Zoe (Jordyn Ashley Olson) after his wife Libby (Cindy Busby) dies from cancer.  Before her passing, Libby writes a heartfelt letter to Zoe that Conner promises to deliver when Zoe is old enough to appreciate it.

Direct-to-consumer brands are growing at an astonishing rate and show no sign of slowing down.  But DTC is also evolving and now means more than when the original digital disruptors that coined the phrase.

It’s about time that the world caught up with the strong women Barbara Hall has been creating for more than three decades.  On Judging Amy, Hall gave us two generations of fearless women, Tyne Daly’s crusading social worker and her daughter Amy Brenneman’s family court judge.  Hall’s current show, CBS’ Madam Secretary, which concludes its fifth season Sunday, April 21, stars Téa Leoni as Elizabeth McCord.  A former CIA analyst and academic, McCord throughout the series' five-year run has been serving as Secretary of State, but this season resigned to run for President.  Both parties are courting the independent McCord.  A wise woman, impervious to political winds and who, as a mother and wife also balances a family, McCord may well be what this country needs, a brilliant, compassionate diplomat averse to jingoism.

On-air promotional campaigns often morph into comprehensive initiatives for television stations or the networks running them.  In the case of WGN America’s six-month-old “We Play Favorites” promotion, it has become the channel’s multimedia mission statement, demonstrating a value proposition for viewers and advertisers alike.

Like social media itself, the Social Media Week conference has evolved to worldwide adoption; from scores of people gathered in ad hoc New York locations -- conference rooms at Nielsen or the old Razorfish -- to multi-day meetings at the Sheraton in New York, the Broad Stage in Santa Monica and even the Movenpick Hotel in Nairobi.  Toby Daniels, the Founder and Executive Director of Social Media Week, has grown as well -- from work in web development to developing this hub of knowledge and connections.  For Episode 32 of Insider InSites, I spoke with Daniels on the 10th anniversary of the conference.  We started by first looking back at the industry of social media in 2009 ... "when Facebook already had hundreds of millions but not its current billions of users, the energy was optimistic and people were also aiming to use it to create a positive impact on the world."  We fast forward to how now, as Daniels describes it, "we're obviously in a really interesting place -- at an inflection point where people's relationship to social media has shifted."