TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read - 18 September 2020.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read and that you should read too:  

■ Do you speak Fox News (StarSat 261)?
How Donald Trump's favourite TV channel became a language.

■ Pedro Pascal allegedly went cray-cray during filming of season 2 of Disney+'s Star Wars The Mandalorian and suddenly demanded to film scenes without his helmet on so that he can be seen.

- Has "difficult" Pedro Pascal quit Star Wars The Mandalorian?

- "Big change" coming halfway through season 2 as season "shifts away from Mando".

■ Netflix's Cheer star Jerry Harris arrested by FBI, charged with producing child porn.

■ Reality TV space series wants to send contestants to space in 2023.

■ The darkness of American daytime TV: It's awful at Ellen and other Telepictures produced shows:

Staffers who worked for Ellen DeGeneres detail how they had to sign contracts from which they couldn't quit, had to work until 11pm and weekends, were "blacklisted and fired" if they complained, extra freebies for top execs.

■ Damaged WarnerMedia is still playing catch-up with the Ellen scandal as Warner Bros executives on Thursday continued to be "concerned and disappointed" by ongoing reports of abusive workplace behaviour.

■ Poverty in South Africa - and the fear of jailing TV owners - is why the SABC struggles to collect SABC TV licence fees.

■ Celebreality was already on the decline. The cancellation of Keeping Up with the Kardashians on E! (DStv 124) just put it out if its misery.

- Nene Leakes is done with The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Again.

■ Is Netflix losing subscribers over the shocking Cuties scandal?

■ More and more Disney content is disappearing from MultiChoice's Showmax streaming service. Is it because Disney plans to eventually launch Disney+ in South Africa?

■ Research: Producers of high-end TV series face delays of up to 12 months because of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Reality TV used as filler on TV channel's schedules.

■ Netflix CEO Reed Hastings rejects demands for streaming content quotas in Australia.

- Netflix hikes subscription fees in Australia.

■ Trash-TV returns: Nigeria's shocking sham, TStv is once again attempting to launch as a pay-TV service despite countless lies and content theft in the past, setting 1 October 2020 as its latest launch date.

■ Prince William is livid over Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Netflix deal.

■ MultiChoice's temperamental and constantly broken DStv Now streaming service has some unexplained "temporary service outage" problem again.

■ Netflix can show gay content in Saudi Arabia. Just not anything that criticises Mohammad Bin Salman.

■ Fox News (StarSat 261) fires staff in restructuring, but not because of Covid-19.

No more hair and make-up for guests.

■ Bloomberg plans a video streaming relaunch.

Says Bloomberg TV (DStv 411 / StarSat 264) still has value but that business viewers have moved away from linear pay-TV.

■ Netflix tells Britain's parliament it doesn't want to destroy the BBC.

■ Everyone thought appointment television was dead but in 2020 with a global pandemic it's thriving as a weekly collective viewing of a show helps bring structure to people's lives.

■ The Game of Thrones sex scene that was ruined by a "visible excited" horse.

■ Samsung South Africa keeps churning out press releases about TV but PRs can't bother to actually send it out to media.

■ Uganda loses 110 000 pay-TV subscribers because of Covid-19.