What's news: How WarnerMedia is building a new streaming service amid a pandemic, a flurry of renewals and cancelations at ABC, John Krasinski sells his YouTube show to ViacomCBS, Universal Orlando sets June 5 opening, the Avatar sequels prepare to resume production in New Zealand, CBS News' Margaret Brennan on covering the coronavirus and Trump. Plus: John Malone is a buyer, and Lionsgate takes a $50M pandemic hit. --Alex Weprin

 How WarnerMedia Is Building HBO Max Amid a Pandemic

►"A benefit and a curse": How HBO Max's tech team is building on HBO Now. WarnerMedia has been working through the pandemic to ready the streaming service for its May 27 launch, Natalie Jarvey reports. The company’s VPN had to be scaled up to accommodate more remote workers, full-sized monitors needed to be shipped to developers so they could continue coding from home, and security measures had to be put in place for those employees who still needed access to on-site servers and testing labs.

--“Those first two weeks, I was extremely concerned,” says WarnerMedia chief technology officer Jeremy Legg. “I didn’t know how it was going to impact productivity. If someone’s choosing between taking care of their kids or writing code, well, it’s pretty obvious which one’s going to win.” The story.

►ABC renews 8 scripted series and cancels 4 others for its 2020-2021 programming slate. Returning for additional seasons are scripted comedies American Housewife, Black-ish and prequel Mixed-ish, The Conners and The Goldbergs, plus dramas A Million Little Things, The Rookie and freshman Stumptown. Sophomore comedies Bless This Mess, Single Parents and The Goldbergs spinoff Schooled as well as first-year drama Emergence have all been canceled.

--The network also confirmed its series order for David E. Kelley's The Big Sky, the PI drama starring Kylie Bunbury and Katheryn Winnick which had a series penalty attached. Joining the 20th TV and A+E Studios drama on the Karey Burke-led network's slate is Kari Lizer's rookie multicamera comedy Call Your Mother , which stars Kyra Sedgwick as an empty nester mom. The remainder of ABC's drama and comedy pilots remain in contention. Here's the slate.

+And here's Nat Geo's slate: Among the new programming for the Disney-owned cabler are a docuseries marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a travel/adventure show starring American Idol mentor Bobby Bones and a revamp of its long-running Explorer series, with an assist from corporate sibling ABC News. Nat Geo is also targeting fall premiere dates for Genius: Aretha, the third season of its scripted anthology — which was initially set for a May debut but was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic — and competition series Race to the Center of the Earth. The full slate.

+Prodigal Son renewed for season 2 on Fox. The network has renewed the serial killer drama for a second season, closing the books on its scripted offerings from 2019-20. Its pickup follows renewals for The Resident and Last Man Standing earlier in the week, while first-year comedy Outmatched was canceled. More.

Editor's note: Today In Entertainment will be taking tomorrow off, but we will be back with a special edition on Monday about what it will take to get Hollywood back to work. Our regular editions will resume on Tuesday.

 ViacomCBS Snags John Krasinski's YouTube Show

►John Krasinski's Some Good News sells to ViacomCBS following massive bidding war. CBS All Access, which will be rebranded this summer and bolstered with more originals from across the ViacomCBS portfolio, will have the first window for the new episodes before they move to a number of the company's linear networks. While Krasinski will continue to be involved as an executive producer, he will not host the new episodes. A new host will be named at a later date, though Krasinski will have some sort of on-air presence. Lesley Goldberg has the story.

+Tom Brady docuseries to follow The Last Dance at ESPN. The nine-episode series, produced by Gotham Chopra's Religion of Sports and Brady's recently formed 199 Productions, is called Man in the Arena and will offer the quarterback's first-hand accounts of pivotal moments in his career, including all nine of his Super Bowl appearances with the New England Patriots. It's set to air in 2021. The story.

+Chelsea Handler is returning to stand-up. The comedian and author will front her first stand-up special in six years at HBO Max. The untitled special comes on the heels of her best-selling memoir, Life Will Be the Death of Me. More.

+Apple has set a premiere date and offered up a first look at its drama series Little Voice, from executive producer J.J. Abrams, singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles and writer-director Jessie Nelson. The dramedy, described as an intensely romantic story and a love letter to the diverse musicality of New York City, is set to premiere July 10 on Apple's TV+ streaming platform. Episodes will debut weekly. More.

+David Tennant, Michael Sheen to star in BBC lockdown comedy Staged. The six-episode 15-minute show features "the cast of a play – the cream of the crop of British acting talent – who are furloughed when their upcoming West End production is suddenly brought to a halt." More.



^Major theme parks could open in the next few weeks. Universal Orlando has targeted June 5 as its date to reopen after being shuttered for months due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. John Sprouts, an official with the Florida studio destination, submitted the park's proposal Thursday to the Orange County Economic Recovery Task Force. The task force unanimously voted to approve Universal Orlando's plan to reopen. Universal Orlando, along with Universal Studios Hollywood, has been shuttered since mid-March amid the pandemic. The story.

►A major Disney film appears set to resume production too. Production on James Cameron's long-in-the-making Avatar sequels is set to restart in New Zealand as soon as "next week" according to producer Jon Landau. Work on the Avatar sequels came to a halt in mid-March after the New Zealand government instituted a lockdown to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus in the country. The story.

►How I'm Living Now: Franklin Leonard, Black List founder. "The one thing people can — and seem to want to — do right now is read great scripts and develop material," says the Black List founder, who is hunkered down in L.A. with his fiancee and their dog, "and finding great scripts and writers for people is quite literally what we do." In an email exchange with THR, Leonard offers his thoughts on how the pandemic will be processed via art, how the industry will look different when everyone is back to work, and the welcome return of soccer. The interview.

 'Face The Nation' Anchor Talks Pandemic, Trump

►CBS anchor Margaret Brennan on working amid a pandemic: "It's a constant adjustment." Brennan's Sunday morning news show Face the Nation is on a two-week winning streak and has seen a major boost in viewers amid coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

--On President Trump's attacks on the media: "I've been on the receiving end of it. The president has called us Deface the Nation, and done that more than once. Look, I think it's a distraction. ... I made a conscious choice of viewing it as a distraction and viewing it as a deflection, and not engaging, because it's not about me. ... It has the consequence, intended or otherwise, I think, of elevating the work that they are doing. ... I think it's about the work. It's not something worth responding to." The interview.

►AT&T sets $12.5 billion bond sale to refinance debt. The WarnerMedia owner has been boosting its liquidity amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, including earlier this week, when it said it was issuing €3 billion ($3.27 billion) in new debt. It previously also unveiled a $5.5 billion term loan to boost its financial flexibility amid the pandemic. The story.

+Lionsgate discloses $50 million pandemic hit. Lionsgate on Thursday shrunk its fiscal fourth-quarter loss as the Hollywood studio in the streaming space saw its global OTT subscriber base grow to 10.6 million, with the domestic OTT paid subscriber base standing at 6.8 million. The COVID writedowns include $46 million in direct operating expenses for movie and TV series impairments and development charges “associated with changes in performance expectations or the feasibility of completing the project,” expenses from delaying productions, including cast and crew costs and charges around bad debt reserves. The story.

+John Malone is bullish, and a buyer. The Liberty Media chairman told investors that the company is a believer in its live events business, such as Formula 1, and that it is open to an acquisition in this tumultuous environment. "If this depression in valuation is excessive, it presents opportunity for those of us who believe in the longer-term thesis that this is a good place to be." The story.

Daytime Emmy Award nominations: ABC's General Hospital leads the nominees for the 47th annual Daytime Emmy Awards, which will be presented in a two-hour special airing June 26 on CBS. Other shows scoring multiple noms included Netflix's Eastsiders, Apple TV+'s Ghostwriter, HBO's Sesame Street, Amazon Prime Video's Studio City and ABC's The View with eight apiece. The complete list of nominees.

 In a nearly 200-page report issued Thursday, the U.S. Copyright Office describes how the safe-harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act now favors tech companies over rights-holders. After studying the issue for several years and receiving more than 92,000 comments, the Copyright Office reports that "Congress may wish to fine-tune" the statute. The story.

+Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif) is no Johnny Depp. On Friday, the Congressman suffered a setback in his defamation lawsuit against CNN when a federal judge in Virginia decided to stand up to forum shopping by transferring his case out. A judge concludes that the lawmaker's $435 million libel suit has hardly anything at all to do with the state. The case is transferred to New York, a more convenient forum for CNN. The story.

+Bauer Media can't SLAPP its way out of Richard Simmons' tracking device lawsuit. In Touch Weekly says it hired a PI to photograph Simmons leaving the hospital, but a California appeals court finds that purported newsgathering doesn't give the outlet First Amendment protection for a suit over a tracking device that was installed on his caretaker's vehicle. More.

 Co-founder Bill Swan is retiring from Big Table Media as part of a management buyout that sees Wendi Fontes and Geoff Davis taking majority control of the reality TV producer best known for HGTV series like Rock The Block and Windy City Rehab... Killer Films, the acclaimed banner from producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, has inked first-look development deals with MGM for both film and scripted television...

►TV review: Inkoo Kang reviews the FX documentary AKA Jane Roe, writing that the project "is both a must-see film, as well as a deeply frustrating one." The review.

TV ratings: The finale of The Masked Singer scored its best ratings in seven weeks, closing the spring cycle with better numbers than its fall finale. It also provided a solid launchpad for summer series Ultimate Tag. The numbers.

Revolving door/casting roundup: Nicholas Hoult has dropped out of Mission: Impossible 7 due to scheduling conflicts, and will be replaced by Esai Morales... Wolfgang Hammer has been hired as head of film and executive vp, while Munika Lay has been hired as vp of film, Miramax said Thursday... Rita Ferro, Disney's president of ad sales, and Justin Connolly, president of media distribution, will now report to Disney media networks co-chairs Peter Rice and Jimmy Pitaro in a corporate shuffling... Julie Fontaine, vice president of film publicity at Netflix is exiting the company...

►Awards Chatter podcast: Kerry Washington reflects on her complicated relationship with acting, the burden and rewards of Scandal and championing projects that matter through her production company in the latest episode. Listen.

►TV's Top 5 podcast: During this week's podcast, hosts Daniel Fienberg and Lesley Goldberg abreak down how ABC and CBS are plotting for the 2020-21 broadcast season, and speak to Homecoming ep Sam Esmail. Listen.

►Billboard and THR's second annual Pride Summit goes virtual, adds prom celebration. The June 13 event will feature appearances by Billy Porter, Carson Kressley, Lena Waithe, Todrick Hall, Wilson Cruz, the cast of The L Word: Generation Q and many more. The details.

In other news...

--Tenet is back with a new trailer, which made its world debut Thursday on Fortnite.

--BWR — one of Hollywood's long-standing and high-profile public relations, marketing and events firms, once home to dozens of A-list actors and top talent publicists — is no longer. Parent company Burson Cohn & Wolfe on Thursday said that it is combining the BWR Brand into BCW Entertainment.

--Sex Education star Emma Mackey has nabbed the titular lead role in Emily, Frances O’Connor’s directorial debut about the early years of Wuthering Heights author Emily Bronte.

--There are a few hundred thousand people who are paying for Netflix but not using the service to stream movies or TV shows. Netflix is offering to help them cancel their subscriptions.

--The Frontieres International Co-Production Market on Wednesday unveiled its first selection of genre titles to be pitched at a Montreal-based virtual film market, set to run July 23 to 26.

What else we're reading...

--"Steve Carell charts a return to TV  comedy with Space Force" [NY Times]

--"Gawker is undead once more: As a potential Apple TV+ series" [Vanity Fair]

--"How 60 Minutes survived CBS upheaval to become 'the Tony Fauci of newsmagazines'" [Washington Post]

--"ByteDance's big ambitions" [The Information]

--"Facebook to shift permanently toward more remote work after coronavirus" [WSJ]

Today's birthdays: Naomi Campbell, 50, Lisa Murkowski, 63, Morrissey, 61, Novak Djokovic, 33, Maggie Q, 41.