PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
HBO greenlit Storm Over Brooklyn, the winning project of the inaugural Feature Documentary Initiative created in 2017 by Lightbox and the American Black Film Festival as part of their joint initiative to foster diversity in the feature documentary arena. Storm Over Brooklyn tells the story of Yusuf Hawkins, the black teenager who was shot and murdered after being trapped by a group of white youths in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in 1989.
Global Road Entertainment is joining the Miss America Organization and Tall Pony Productions for the Miss America Competition, airing on ABC Sunday, September 9. Phil Gurin (Shark Tank), the company’s president of unscripted & alternative television, will join the show as an EP. It’s one in a series of changes for the reimagined show, which has eliminated the swimsuit competition and rebranded from pageant to competition.
Netflix ordered Spanish-language heroin drama Hache. Eight-part thriller from Weekend Studio stars Adriana Ugarte (Palmeras En La Nieve) and Javier Rey (Farina).
Hulu gave a pilot order to Reprisal, a revenge drama project from Warren Littlefield’s (The Handmaid’s Tale) Littlefield Company and A+E Studios.
Showtime ordered its first weekly half-hour late-night series, slated to launch in 2019. The talker will feature TV and podcast personalities Desus Nice and The Kid Mero, speaking “highly off the cuff” and chatting with guests at the intersection of pop culture, sports, music, politics and more. “We have waited a long time to enter the talk-show space, and we were only going to do it if we felt like we had the next big thing,” said David Nevins, president and CEO of Showtime Networks. “Desus and Mero feel like exactly that.”
NEW & RETURNING SERIES
A&E’s Born This Way is back for season four Wednesday, August 15 at 8p, airing two episodes back to back each week for four weeks. Special Deaf Out Loud, exec produced by Marlee Matlin, will follow the season finale on September 5 at 10p.
Pop TV comedy Swedish Dicks returns with back-to-back episodes Thursday, July 26 at 10p, with Axel discovering he’s an illegal alien.
Digital entertainment program Build Series has expanded its daily live programming with new morning talk show Build Brunch at 11a.
COMING UP
WOW factor: AXS TV will provide the television production and cable, satellite and telco distribution for all-female WOW wrestling events, as part of a deal with LA Lakers owner Jeannie Buss, MGM Television and David McLane (GLOW). AXS TV will start recording WOW events in LA later this year for broadcast beginning in early 2019.
The Weather Channel is playing wedding crasher on Saturday, June 23, when a couple is surprised with an outdoor wedding locale on Weekend Recharge. Maria LaRosa and Paul Goodloe will have to wait until the big day to find out whether their “I do’s” will take place at a beach, mountain or farm. Or if it’s going to rain.
Steven Universe returns Monday, July 2 at 7:30p with a new five-episode arc airing all week, through Friday, July 6 on Cartoon Network.
ADVERTISING
Discovery debuted a new cross-network, cross-platform sales opportunity for advertisers in the 2018-19 Upfront selling season. Called “Discovery Premiere,” the package allows clients to advertise exclusively in a curated mix of premiere episodes from series across Discovery’s portfolio. Following its acquisition of Scripps Networks Interactive, “Discovery produces more than 8,000 hours of real life entertainment a year and our research shows that premiere episodes of our hit shows deliver ratings 90% higher on average than the prime averages on their channels,” said Jon Steinlauf, Chief U.S. Advertising Sales Officer. “Discovery Premiere gives our clients an advantage they’ve never had before – the chance to leverage premieres from the greatest collection of brands in media and reach the highest quality, most engaged audience anywhere in primetime cable.”
Fox Networks Group is in the final stages of its upfront negotiations, with CPM pricing for broadcast prime time up in the high single digits, according to MediaPost sources. Stronger results versus last year are due in part due to FNG’s new Thursday Night Football package. Fox’s JAZ (“just A and Z”) pods were sold out for the 2018-19 season.
CBS wrapped up upfront deals with double digit CPM across dayparts, according to Adweek, with volume also up over last year. Buyers were particularly excited about the Magnum, P.I. and Murphy Brown comebacks, Dick Wolf procedural FBI and NFL games. C7 deals increased, with retail, CPG, pharma and financial leading the pack.
Unilever is taking a tough stance with influencers who buy followers – at Cannes Lions, the company announced that in the interest of greater transparency, it will no longer work with them. “The key to the situation is threefold,” said CMO Keith Weed. “Cleaning up the influencer ecosystem by removing misleading engagement; making brands and influencers more aware of the use of dishonest practices; and improving transparency from social platforms to help brands measure impact.”
You’ll find more news from Cannes Lions in this week’s evening editions of Cynopsis, bringing our readers festival coverage through Friday.
Fewer women would consider canceling TV than men (24% vs. 32%), less pay to avoid ads (36% vs. 47%), and less use ad blocking software (41% vs. 52%), according to Kantar Consulting’s 2017 U.S. Monitor study. But advertisers need to be more intentional with their content to reach women: messages should avoid inappropriate and offensive tones and eliminate the “helpless woman” attitude. Women are also more likely to think companies should take a stand on important issues (75% vs. 71%) and more likely to support companies that work toward diversity and inclusion (83% vs. 77%).
Viacom Velocity, Viacom’s in-house branded content studio, has teamed with McDonald’s and The Content Collective to launch McD’s new hot and juicy Quarter Pounder through a multi-network campaign. Among the elements are co-branded promos on MTV’s Wild ‘N Out game segment, “Wild Style,” a co-branded promo starring and written by Comedy Central’s Daily Show correspondent Ronny Chieng, and a co-branded promo leading up to the BET Awards. Campaign runs through July 11.
TV ad revenue will increase by .2%, reaching $43.5 billion in 2018, forecasts Magna. That’s an improvement from the .2% dip from Magna’s previous forecast. Concern about brand safety and ROI accountability in digital environments has prompted many brands to pause the long-term diversification of their media mix towards digital formats “and have instead remained loyal to traditional linear television in the last 18 months,” said Magna.
Simulmedia launched Transparent TV, a first-of-its-kind program aimed at giving agencies and advertisers the power to run advanced TV campaigns against strategic audiences and get transparency on media outputs, marketing outcomes, competitive insights and pricing. Transparent TV includes a self-service option to enable fast execution of advanced TV plans, and Simulmedia guarantees these plans for impression delivery against an age and gender demo or a strategic target based on Nielsen data, as well as MRI or NBI audiences.
BrightLine is adding voice activation to its enhanced OTT ad platform, InCast, with the goal of opening the door for commerce, attribution and deeper engagement. “We’ve seen a 150% increase in demand for enhanced ad formats in OTT, as marketers in all categories are comfortable with the changing paradigm in TV delivery,” said Jacqueline Corbelli, CEO of BrightLine. “Marketers have shown they’re ready to up the ante and take advantage of all the bells and whistles that these new viewing experiences allow to improve the ad experience, and drive value.”
In more BrightLine news, AMC Networks and the advanced TV company announced a partnership which brings BrightLine’s enhanced OTT ad platform, InCast, to the entire AMC Networks connected TV portfolio reaching streaming devices Roku and Apple TV. AMC is showcasing the new capability with tune-in ads for new series Dietland, which allow viewers to scroll with their remote controls to meet key characters from the show via an in-stream engageable overlay.
Cybersecurity company CHEQ announced the closing of $5M in Series A funding, for its Autonomous Brand Safety solution using military-grade AI and Natural Language Processing to analyze content and users so brands can prevent in real time having their ads served to bots or alongside negative content. “Our goal is to provide digital advertisers with a comprehensive, ‘one-stop-shop’ solution for digital ad control that does everything automatically for ad buyers, in real time, instead of forcing them to act upon endless reporting suites after the fact,” said Guy Tytunovich, CHEQ’s CEO.
DIGITAL DATA
AT&T’s skinny bundle, Watch, is launching this week. On CNBC’s Squawk Box, CEO Randall Stephenson said the service will be free to AT&T wireless subscribers and $15/month for others. Entertainment-centered content, including Turner channels, will be included.
Viacom struck a mobile distribution deal for Paramount+, making the video streaming app available to Telenor subscribers in Sweden. It’s the first deal Viacom has signed to make Paramount+ available to mobile subscribers, following its successful launch in the last quarter of 2017 as a set-top box and TV Everywhere application available to higher tier subscribers of a number of pay TV operators across Scandinavia.
Two years from now, mobile ad spend will be more than double the spend on desktop advertising, reaching $187 billion, and within striking distance of the $192 spent on TV advertising, according to Zenith. But advertiser be aware: the study notes potential customers are 53% as likely to recall TV ads as existing customers, versus 41% for mobile ads.
Video service YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red) launched in twelve new international territories: Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain and Sweden, in addition to Canada and the UK, for $11.99/month after a three-month freebie. Also going global is the YouTube Music Service.
News net Cheddar has launched on sports-first streaming service fuboTV. Content includes Cheddar’s live channel and on-demand offerings as well as Cheddar Originals. Why mix news and sports? “While our subscribers depend on fubo for our deep sports programming, including the World Cup, they love to experience our full complement of programming that appeals to the entire family,” said Katie Curley, director of content strategy and acquisition, fuboTV. “Cheddar brings an independent news voice that bolsters our growing news offering.”
CASTING
Australian actor Xavier Samuel landed a series regular role in TNT thriller Tell Me Your Secrets….Madeline Wise (Cute Activist) will recur on season three of HBO’s Crashing….Jon Bernthal’s character was killed off of The Walking Dead, but the actor will make an appearance on the AMC hit’s ninth season….Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Glenn Morshower have been promoted to season regulars on season two of Fox drama The Resident.
GOING GLOBAL
UK production company Nevision landed an order for season three for animated show Floogals, from co-production partner Universal Kids, for Channel 5’s Milkshake!.
Toronto-based Wattpad inked a development deal to give Germany’s Bavaria Fiction access to over a million German-language stories on its platform, which combines crowdsourced content and original IP.
