ESPN hits top spot with college championship
ESPN hits top spot with college championship
NEW YORK
Here are prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Jan. 8-14. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. College Football Championship: Alabama vs. Georgia, ESPN, 27.7 million.
2. NFL Playoff: Tennessee at New England, CBS, 26.69 million.
3. “NFL Playoff Post-Game,” Fox, 23.44 million.
4. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 15.93 million.
5. “College Football Championship Pre-Game,” ESPN, 15.66 million.
6. “NCIS,” CBS, 14.24 million.
7. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 14.17 million.
8. “College Football Championship Post-Game,” ESPN, 13.59 million.
9. “Bull,” CBS, 10.5 million.
10. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 10.17 million.
Prosecutors want to call 19 other accusers at Cosby retrial
PHILADELPHIA
Prosecutors preparing for Bill Cosby’s retrial on sexual assault charges told a judge Thursday that they want to call 19 other accusers to try to show a pattern of “prior bad acts” over five decades.
The comedian’s first trial ended with a hung jury in June. In that proceeding, prosecutors asked to call 13 other accusers, but the judge allowed only one to testify, a woman who said she was attacked by Cosby at a Los Angeles hotel in 1996.
In Thursday’s filing, prosecutors asked the court to reconsider its earlier order, saying the 19 women’s accusations show that Cosby’s prior bad acts are sufficiently “distinctive and so nearly identical as to become the signature of the same perpetrator.”
Kathleen Bliss, one of Cosby’s lawyers, said she couldn’t comment on the filing.
Pennsylvania law allows testimony about “prior bad acts” if they fit a nearly identical crime pattern.
Prosecutors say that’s the case for the TV star once dubbed “America’s Dad” for his role as Cliff Huxtable on “The Cosby Show.” They say Cosby routinely used his fame and power to befriend impressionable young women, knocked them out with drugs or alcohol and then sexually assaulted them.
Rudd named Hasty Pudding Man of Year
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
Paul Rudd, the versatile and forever young actor and screenwriter who stars in “Ant-Man” was named 2018 Man of the Year by Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals on Thursday. Rudd, 48, will get his pudding pot during a roast at Harvard on Feb. 2.
Mila Kunis was named 2018 Woman of the Year last week.
Hasty Pudding gives out the awards annually to people “who have made lasting and impressive contributions to the world of entertainment.”
UK media: Police probe 3rd Spacey sex-assault allegation
LONDON
Britain’s media say police in London are investigating a third allegation of sexual assault against two-time Academy Award winning actor Kevin Spacey.
The Metropolitan Police force said Thursday it had received an allegation “that the man sexually assaulted a man [Victim 3] in 2005 in Westminster.”
The force didn’t identify Spacey as the alleged perpetrator, as authorities in Britain don’t name suspects until they are charged. But it said the same man was accused of an assault in 2005 and one in 2008, both in the south London borough of Lambeth. The suspect in those cases has been widely named in British media as Spacey.
Associated Press