The pilot orders send a distinct message that Kahl, CBS' longtime scheduling exec who replaced Glenn Geller as entertainment president last May, is looking to change the narrative surrounding the network. In making his first appearance before the press at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour in August, Kahl and his exec vp programming Thom Sherman were grilled over CBS' lack of inclusion and female-fronted shows. Last pilot season, all of the network's drama and comedy series pickups were fronted by men.

CNN has significantly fewer women serving in visible on-air roles than either Fox News or MSNBC, according to an analysis of weekday programming by TheWrap. In fact, the Time Warner-owned network has half as many female solo anchors on weekdays as its cable news competitors — three compared to six each for Fox News and MSNBC — and none during the highly visible primetime hours from 8 p.m to 11 p.m.

The theme hadn't even occurred to executive producer Annabel Jones, who has worked alongside Brooker for the entire series, when she spoke to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of launch. "Charlie and I don’t tend to think about the stories that way. Sometimes, it just comes out," Jones tells THR. "But it's great — great! — that they’re all strong female protagonists. I think what’s lovely about the show is that it's not a strident statement. It’s more: Why not? We don’t even think about it from a gender perspective and I hope that’s progress. It’s more that we explore the best story and the best way to tell it."

“What’s amazing about our station and fantastic about Seattle in general is we have three awesome women who are very strong within our station itself, and some of them are in positions of power. But if you look at Seattle, it has one of the highest percentages in the nation of women in firefighting, so that was a really important aspect to me in thinking about setting the spinoff.”

"This is the defining moment of my life I feel old enough for it. And I feel like I understand how important it is, and I'm so excited that the role models for young children, boys or girls... or teenagers, or adults, come in different forms. There's nothing unattainable about me. I don't look like I've been carved out of rock. I don't sound like I've had the extraordinary glamour." The actress then explained: "For me, knowing what I thought were my limitations as a person and an actor, because this industry is about, 'You sound like this, you look like this'... but I'm normal."

Putting a new spin on the classic crime series, Hulu Japan and HBO Asia have launched Miss Sherlock, which sees a woman play the lead detective. ADVERTISING inRead invented by Teads The eight-part drama will pay homage to the classic novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but will be set in modern-day Tokyo with both lead characters played by Japanese women – Yuko Takeuchi as Sherlock and Shihori Kanjiya as Watson (or Dr Wato Tachibana).

It’s hard to imagine the Today show would have broken with its gendered tradition if Lauer had gone out under different circumstances. For the past 55 years, the show has featured a male-female anchor duo, with men replacing men and women replacing women. Lauer replaced Bryant Gumbel as Katie Couric’s co-host in 1997, before she was replaced by Meredith Vieira, and so on. While Kotb is a fantastic host, it’s likely the decision to give the role to a talented, charismatic woman instead of a talented, charismatic man has as much to do with Lauer’s sexual misconduct as it does with Kotb’s capabilities.

The Today Show has named Hoda Kotb as the official cohost with Savannah Guthrie, replacing longtime host Matt Lauer, who was fired for sexual misconduct in November. The shift marks the first time the show will be cohosted by two women.

The main character of “Doctor Who” is a member of an alien race called the Time Lords whose members must periodically take on a new form. This process, called regeneration in the show, results in a change in appearance and personality. Ms. Whittaker is the first woman to play the Doctor since the series began in 1963.

The accusations range from having pregnancies negatively impact their careers to being sent unsolicited semi-nude photos by prominent male anchors. At the heart of the story is a complaint filed in August with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities by former ESPN on-air talent Adrienne Lawrence. Other current and former employees are also quoted as saying ESPN can be a hostile work environment for women.

Female characters make up just 43% of series regulars on broadcast this season, a decrease of 1%. Of those, 155 are women of color (down 2% from last year), while the numbers of bisexual and transgender women also dropped by 4% and 3%, respectively.

"To stay silent has a real cost," Bourdain said. "You will be called to account for that. You will be asked what you did when you saw this. Whether you have a good heart or not, I think the reality of the situation in this rapidly changing field is that people will be forced to do the right thing."