PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
Apple ordered limited series Lisey’s Story from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions and Warner Bros. Television. Thriller stars Julianne Moore as a widow dealing with repressed memories about her late husband.
Discovery Channel greenlit River of No Return (wt), following a community of homesteaders living in remote Idaho wilderness. Docu-sereis is produced by Spoke Studios in association with ITV America and Inspired Entertainment.
Discovery also ordered Rob Riggle: Global Investigator (w/t), following the actor, comedian and retired Marine criss-crossing the globe in hopes of solving some of the world’s greatest mysteries. Series is produced for by Will Packer, Will Packer Media, Anomaly Entertainment, and Haunted Steel Mill in association with Hazmat Productions.
ID gave the green light to The Whole Truth with Sunny Hostin (wt), following Senior Legal Correspondent for ABC News and former federal prosecutor Hostin as she explores the stories behind controversial homicides. “She is the ultimate triple threat: a great journalist, top prosecutor and a woman whose personal background gives her special insight and compassion into these tragic stories,” said Henry Schleiff, Group President of ID, Travel Channel, Destination America and AHC. “This unique constellation of skills, experience and character along with her advocacy for those who are most vulnerable, is at the heart of this series.” Show launches on ID in 4Q19.
Season two of Showtime animated comedy series Our Cartoon President arrives Sunday, May 12 at 8p, with an animated appearance from Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness.
Director Jason Winer, EP on ABC’s Single Parents and CBS’s Life in Pieces, inked a new overall deal with 20th Century Fox Television. Winer and his Small Dog Picture Company will develop, executive produce and direct projects.
Brother and sister Celine and Fabien Cousteau carry on their family’s legacy of underwater adventure in four-episode Legends of the Deep, debuting Sunday, June 9 at 9p on Science Channel.
Canada’s Breakthrough Entertainment finalized a new strategic partnership with Lane Shefter Bishop’s LA- based Vast Entertainment. The venture calls for Vast to produce and direct romantic holiday films and female-led thrillers, with Breakthrough serving as international distributor.
Litton Entertainment, Hannah Storm’s Brainstormin’ Productions and Octagon are co-developing an original series, Go Girl with Hannah Storm, inspired by Storm’s book, Go Girl!: Raising Healthy, Confident and Successful Girls through Sports. Series is slated to premiere in fall 2019.
Survive this year’s Upfronts / NewFronts with our easy-to-use online navigator! It’ll keep you in the know, prepared and ready to tackle the events.
NEW & RETURNING SERIES
FX’s Pose returns with the first of ten new episodes on Sunday, June 9 at 9p. Season two flashes forward in time to 1990, as the AIDS crisis worsens and the reaction from a group of activists reaches a fever pitch.
In more FX news, New York Times docu-series The Weekly makes its debut Sunday, June 2 at 10p, with next day premieres on Hulu. Series follows Times journalists investigating pressing issues of the day.
TLC is adding to its 90 Day Fiance franchise with The Family Chantel, premiering Monday nights in July. Fan faves Pedro and Chantel, hot off their upcoming appearance on 90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After?, will anchor the real-life drama.
OWN’s The Haves and the Have Nots is back for season six on Tuesday, May 7 at 9p. Prepare for more scandal, destruction and tragedy.
Season six of Younger arrives on TV Land Wednesday, June 12 at 10p. The Darren Star show has been the #1 series on ad-supported cable for two consecutive years among W18-49 and W25-54.
In new Discovery and Science Channel series Uncharted (wt), urban explorer Justin Fornal will use detailed historical maps along with high tech imaging to investigate mysteries that have remained elusive to others. Series is set to premiere in 4Q19.
High Fidelity, a drama inspired by the 1995 novel and 2000 film, is moving from upcoming streaming service Disney+ to Hulu. “As the series’ creative evolved, our Disney+ team, collectively with ABC Signature, recognized that the show would be better suited for another platform,” said Agnes Ghu, SVP, Content, Disney+. Disney’s recent acquisition of Fox assets gave it a controlling stake in Hulu.
COMING UP
As it celebrates 25 years on the air, TCM will showcase popular programing from the TCM vault including six TCM originally produced special, among them Robert Osborne’s Best of Private Screenings and Live From The TCM Classic Film Festival: Norman Lloyd, as well as double features of The Best of The Essentials. The net will also air a two-week special primetime tribute with 25 of TCM’s biggest fans joining TCM host Ben Mankiewicz as guest programmers.
REVOLT and AT&T announced the launch of multi-city cultural event REVOLT Hip Hop Summit, a multi-city cultural event inspired by the former REVOLT Music Conference. The re-imagined summit will serve as an immersive experiential opportunity, offering young people real-life networking experience. AT&T joins REVOLT as a co-creator and exclusive presenting sponsor to help expand reach. “Now more than ever we need to own our culture,” said REVOLT Chairman Sean “Diddy” Combs. “At the REVOLT Hip Hop Summit we will empower young people with sessions on the issues they care about.”
DIGITAL DATA
Yahoo agreed to pay up to $117.5 million to cover claims related to data breaches. The money, if approved by the court, would create a fund for 200 million users who had data hacked between 2012 and 2016. A previous deal, for $85 million, did not win approval.
In its effort to thwart the bad guys, Twitter cut the number of accounts users can follow per day from 1000 to 400. “To prevent spam and manipulation of follow relationships and to ensure site reliability, there are technical limits regarding how many Twitter accounts you are able to follow,” said the company, which is also putting into place follow ratios.
Streaming service Shudder acquired zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead. The Japanese box office hit, telling the story of a film crew shooting a zombie movie that stumbles on an actual zombie outbreak, will debut later this year.
In celebration of Game of Thrones, the number one series on Xfinity On Demand, Comcast has launched an immersive destination on Xfinity X1 in partnership with HBO that includes every episode, character recaps, season wrap-ups, behind-the-scenes interviews, extra web content, and more.
According to a study by Omnicom Media Group, half of viewers under the age of 35 don’t watch linear TV at all. Don’t get left out of the OTT and advanced advertising equation. Join executives from Dentsu Aegis, Hulu, NBCUniversal, a4 and Omnicom
Pluto TV reports it has over 15 million monthly users, an increase of over 3 million since the end of 2018. The streaming service was acquired by Viacom for $340 million earlier this year. Pluto TV also announced the launch of three new channels: Hoarding: Buried Alive, Pluto TV Her Dramas and Pluto TV Cult Films.
TECH TALK
Video technology provider Kaltura has formed a strategic partnership with Dativa, the TV data consulting company, to develop the industry’s first data lake dedicated to Cloud TV services. The TV data lake imports data from multiple data sources, which are unified and normalized and turned into relevant insights for marketers and are used to create Targeted TV AI-based user segmentation models. The data lake that Dativa will build for Kaltura will feature multiple pre-integrated TV centric 3rd party data sources, expediting time to market for cloud TV providers looking to transform data into insights. Dativa will also work with Kaltura to develop machine learning models that can help cloud TV service providers optimize user acquisition and retention, increase of content consumption and monetization.
If the price of a more personalized experience is sharing personal data with voice assistant technology, a significant number of consumers are willing to pay it, according to a study by Google and the National Research Group. Forty-six percent of respondents said they were willing to share their media consumption history, 29% said they’d share their location history and 28% were okay with sharing purchase history. “In a world of peak content and overwhelming choice, voice can be a media butler that cuts through the clutter with accuracy, contextual relevance and curation,” said the report. “In fact, the ability to find and play content easily and quickly and make relevant content recommendations drives overall user satisfaction with devices.”
Goldenvoice and Bose have teamed to bring audio AR experiences with Bose Frames to Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. As the exclusive wearable technology provider of the festival, Bose enhanced the official Coachella smartphone app with an integration to unlock special audio content for festival-goers who use the app while wearing Bose Frames. By pairing their Bose Frames with the Coachella app, users will be able to access and hear exclusive, real-time audio notifications and updates about the festival.
Google has partnered with open-source open-source data management and analytics companies including Confluent, DataStax, Elastic, InfluxData, MongoDB, Neo4j and Redis Labs to integrate their products into its Google Cloud Platform. The goal is to provide users with a seamless experience, and ability to leverage the open-source technologies. “There has been a lot of debate in the industry about the best way of delivering these open-source technologies as services in the cloud,” Manvinder Singh, the head of infrastructure partnerships at Google Cloud, told joiurnalists. “Given Google’s DNA and the belief that we have in the open-source model…we believe the right way to solve this it to work closely together with companies that have invested their resources in developing these open-source technologies.”
A spy app was discovered by security company Lookout that was originally designed for Android devices, and can now steal data from iPhone owners. The surveillance app, which can also listen in on people’s conversations, was served from fake sites claiming to be cell carriers in Italy and Turkmenstein, said Lookout.
ADVERTISING
A group of ad industry associations including the IAB, the ANA, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and Network Advertising Initiative have launched Privacy for America, an organization pushing for clear, enforceable privacy rules. “This framework would create new national protections for consumers backed by enforcement and strict penalties for those who do not comply,” said the group. “The legislation would shift the burden from consumers by allowing them to depend on these strong national standards without having to rely on reading hundreds of lengthy privacy policies in order to protect themselves.”
Hearst Television and Comcast-owned FreeWheel, are partnering to offer a scalable, premium OTT video solution to advertisers. Hearst Anyscreen, Hearst Television’s OTT advertising product, will use FreeWheel’s Monetization and Revenue Management platform to enhance and expand access to premium OTT video inventory, and to augment OTT advertising campaigns with additional inventory sources within the FreeWheel marketplace. “Keeping pace with the expectations of the marketplace, we are constantly evolving and improving Hearst Anyscreen to the highest standards of inventory quality and reporting transparency,” said Adam Noble, Hearst Television’s Director of Ad Products. “Our integration with FreeWheel enables an improved connection to premium inventory from natural partners such as A+E Networks, and opens up additional supply from preferred partners while maintaining the same high standard of quality and compliance that we have always offered our clients.”
FreeWheel also announced that its FreeWheel Advertisers division has launched enhancements to its Strata platform that will bring additional automation to the local TV advertising process. The new automated capabilities will be made available to the 1,200 agencies that already use the Strata platform and all U.S. TV stations. “When you consider that these new automation enhancements are available within the same system that local TV buyers and sellers currently use, the solution is clearly unique in the industry,” said Joy Baer, General Manager, FreeWheel Advertisers. “The word that our clients are using is ‘game- changing.’”
CASTING
Billy Crystal and John Goodman will be back as Mike and Sulley for Disney+ animated series Monsters at Work…Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), Sally Field and Eve Lindley (Mr. Robot) will star opposite Jason Segal in AMC anthology series Dispatches From Elsewhere… Donald Trump ex Marla Maples will appear in upcoming HBO comedy The Righteous Gemstones.
GOING GLOBAL
Banijay Rights announced that Canada’s CBC picked up two of its series, The Operatives and Saving Lives at Sea, for documentary Channel… UK based distributor DCD Rights’ new conspiracy factual series Secret Nazi Bases has been picked up by Australian public broadcaster SBS Australia… UK’s Magnify Media reports options for its Naked Beach format have been acquired bv Tresor Produktions in Germany, Vincent TV Producties for Holland and Flemish speaking Belgium and Pernel Media… London-based Scorpion TV struck a representation agreement with The Intellectual Property Corporation. Under the deal, Scorpion will launch two new 10-part series at MIPTV, Fortune Fights and Notorious, which premiered this month Reelz…Discovery Kids Media will present a catalogue with titles including Mini Beat Power Rockers and Big Top Academy, among others, at MIPTV. DKM also has over 15 projects in development…Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS, =the new chapter in the p anime franchise, landed at 9Go! in Australia, K2 in Italy, and Teletoon in Canada, as production officially begins on Season two.
Cadence13 announced The GM Shuffle, a new weekly podcast hosted by Super Bowl winner and author Michael Lombardi and sportscaster Adnan Virk, launching today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Radio.com and more. “Football is chess on grass, and I understand how it’s played,” said Michael Lombardi. “I can’t wait to share my unvarnished opinions and insider perspective.”
