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PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
Showtime is developing a new untitled limited series based on the bestseller Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, written by Mike Isaac. Brian Koppelman and David Levien (Billions) will executive produce and write the series, as part of their overall deal with Showtime. Isaac will co-executive produce the project.
Disney Channel ordered season four of Raven’s Home, executive produced by Raven-Symone. Allison Taylor (Just Jordan) joins as an exec producer; production commences later this year.
Nickelodeon picked up 13 more episodes of its All That revival, for a first season total of 26. Original aired on Nick from 1994-2005.
Netflix will adapt Jeff Smith’s comic book series Bone as an animated series – and Smith thinks he’s found the perfect home. “Fans of the books know that the story develops chapter by chapter and book by book,” said Smith. “An animated series is exactly the way to do this! The team at Netflix understands Bone and is committed to doing something special.”
NEW & RETURNING SERIES
90 Day Fiance is back for season seven on Sunday, November 3 at 8p. Reality show follows couples who must tie the knot within 90 days or one will have to return to their home country.
HGTV has raised the stakes for its female-led home reno competition series Rock the Block: The grand prize winner still gets bragging rights and a street named after her, but now each weekly challenge winner will score a showcase episode of her own HGTV series immediately following the airing of Rock the Block. Series premieres Monday, October 21, at 9p.
A family with nine kids raised in rural Georgia who have never watched TV or had a soda is the focus of TLC’s Welcome to Plathville, launching Tuesday, November 5 at 10p. “We were immediately sucked in by the Plath family and their commitment to maintaining this fairytale-like bubble amidst our fast-paced, always-connected culture,” said TLC President and General Manager Howard Lee. “With TLC’s family series, we love giving viewers the chance to dip into a world so different from their own, but at the same time, offer those relatable, recognizable elements, in this case, the universal joys and challenges of raising a family.”
Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer debuts on Amazon Prime Video in 2020, in over 200 countries and territories. Five-part doc explores the murderer’s long-term relationship with girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall.
Food Network is set to make spirits bright with Christmas Cookie Challenge, arriving Monday, November 4 at 11p; The Great Food Truck Race: Holiday Hustle, premiering Wednesday, November 27 at 10p; Santa’s Baking Blizzard, debuting Thursday, November 28 at 9p; and Holiday Wars, launching Sunday, December 1 at 9p.
Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, a new series for Discovery Family, makes its debut Saturday, November.
Animated series Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, based on children’s book Ordinary People Change the World, premieres on PBS Kids Monday, November 11.
HBO Max picked up docu-series Equal, capturing the stories of the unsung heroes of the LGBTQ+ movement. “We are extremely proud to partner with these groundbreaking producers on a subject this important, at a time this critical,” said Mike Darnell, President, Unscripted & Alternative Television at Warner Bros. “What a perfect project to launch Warner Horizon Unscripted Television’s new documentary series unit.”
COMING UP
The annual Urban One Honors Awards show is set for Thursday, December 5. Two-hour telecast will air on TV One, a division of Urban One, on January 20, the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. ‘
Deck the halls with…Bradys! The Brady sibs converge at the Brady Bunch house to celebrate the merriest time of year in HGTV’s A Very Brady Renovation: Holiday Edition, premiering Monday, December 16, at 10p. Special features Ree Drummond, (The Pioneer Woman) and Jasmine Roth (Hidden Potential), as they help whip up 70’s-inspired treats including fondue-style potatoes, a gelatin fruit salad and “santapes.” Hungry for more? Episode also airs on Food Network on Sunday, December 22 at 1p.
Two-part Amazing Dinoworld is available on CuriosityStream starting today, October 17. In co-production with NHK, series takes viewers on a journey through the past decade of scientific discoveries, recreating creatures with NHK’s CGI.
The Paley Center for Media is previewing ID doc In Memoriam, exploring the emotional impact on the survivors of three recent mass shootings. Program will take place at the Paley Center’s New York location on Tuesday, November 5; following the screening there will be a discussion and Q&A moderated by former prosecutor, victim’s rights advocate, and The View Co-Host, Sunny Hostin.
ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer will interview Long Way Home author Cameron Douglas in The Douglas Dynasty: Fame, Addiction and Finding Home, airing Tuesday, October 11 at 10p. One-hour special profiles Douglas’ life growing up in a Hollywood dynasty and the addiction that pulled him down a path to drug seizures, serial rehabs, and eventually seven years in federal prison.
STREAMING
TiVo’s ad-supported streaming platform, TiVo+, has launched, featuring free, ad-supported channels and integrating live TV, DVR recordings and third-party streaming apps. “With TiVo+, we’ve made it easy for users to watch on their own terms, bringing live streaming channels, like Hell’s Kitchen, Unsolved Mysteries and other favorites, thousands of movies, and TV shows into an app-free environment,” said TiVo CEO Dave Shull.
Netflix reported earnings of $1.47 a share, handily beating analysts’ expectations of $1.04/share. Global subscriber base increased 6.8 million, to 158.33 million and in the US, 500,000 new subs were added, less than had been estimated. “Since our U.S. price increase earlier this year, retention has not yet fully returned on a sustained basis to pre-price-change levels, which has led to slower U.S. membership growth,” the company said in a letter to shareholders. “On a member base of more than 60 million, very small movements in churn can have a meaningful impact on paid net adds.”
Sony Pictures Television will be taking Community to the SVOD marketplace, reports Deadline. Exclusive rights to the Dan Harmon comedy, which aired on NBC and later Yahoo! Screen from 2009-2015, are available from May 2021.
Comedy Central is holding a 24-hour live stream event on its Stand-Up channel on YouTube that will include specials curated from the past two decades. First of 60 half-hour stand-up specials begins today, October 17 at 11p online and Friday, October 18 at 11:00p and 11:30p on Comedy Central.
TECH TALK
Google may be tops in the search ad market now, but Amazon’s on the rise, according to an eMarketer forecast. The US search ad market will grow 18% to $55.17 billion in 2019, said eMarketer, with Google gobbling a 73.1% share and Amazon taking 12.9%. By 2021, Google’s share is expected to drop to 70.5%, while Amazon’s jumps to 15.9%.
Health and wellness network Havas Health & You has teamed with creative technology platform VidMob for a custom creative tech platform that will enable its clients to leverage machine learning and computer vision technology to better understand the creative drivers of marketing success in digital. The new platform analyzes clients’ entire ad catalogue, tags all possible creative attributes on a frame-by-frame basis, and then compares that attribute data to performance data in order to surface deep insights on the performance of advertising creative. While VidMob already partners with most major digital advertising platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Google, this marks its first large-scale agency partnership.
Verizon Media launched a first-of-its-kind technology making it possible for advertisers who use their DSP to bid directly into a publisher’s header. For advertisers, this means a direct path to audiences; publishers get direct access to Verizon Media’s top advertisers. The new offering launched with publisher CafeMedia.
Augmented Reality is poised for a significant consumer breakthrough, according to an online survey by eyecandylab, Dynata and XR scholars that revealed substantial interest in video-triggered AR. The technology uses video signals like TV broadcasts to launch relevant AR content and enable interactivity through a mobile device synchronized with the TV program. (For example, sports fans could point their phone at a game to get additional statistics, while shoppers could point their phone at a product featured in a program to get more info or make a purchase.) “To this point, AR has been primarily embraced by the enterprise market for applications like field training and remote assistance,” said Prof. Dr. Philipp A. Rauschnabel from Bundeswehr University Munich in Germany. “By contrast, consumer applications have largely failed to reach critical mass. However, this study reveals an enthusiastic consumer response to video-triggered AR for applications like sports and shopping, which suggest that the next wave of AR success may come sooner than expected.”
Video software provider Synamedia and Triveni Digital, provider of program guide and metadata management, data broadcasting and service quality assurance solutions, are partnering to help customers to transition to ATSC 3.0. Triveni Digital’s Digital Broadcast Chain, which includes GuideBuilder XM and Broadcast Gateway, provides architectural support on a unified platform for a coherent workflow across both services, while Synamedia’s compression technology allows broadcasters to repack existing ATSC 1.0 and free up the required bandwidth to launch new ATSC 3.0 services.
Fox Corporation and ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv announced a deal that will give the Fox Network access to a variety of granular performance metrics for advertising across linear and OTT inventories, employing iSpot’s conversion methodology to capture sales funnel activity resulting from TV ad exposures across its networks and the broader TV landscape. In analyzing incremental demand and sales lift using iSpot’s methods, Fox’s portfolio of channels were shown to be particularly strong drivers of ROI for client brands across a number of industries, delivering an average incremental lift of +28.1% above the mean lift across the 17 advertiser categories iSpot measures.
PODCAST POSTS
Shonda Rhimes is adding podcasting to her domain. The Scandal creator is teaming with iHeartMedia for Shondaland Audio, and will exec produce a new slate of iHeartRadio Originals. “With iHeartMedia we aim to share stories that are engaging, insightful, and reflect a robust world-view while staying true to the authentic storytelling voice that has become synonymous with Shondaland,” said Rhimes.
WarnerMedia Podcast Network and Rooster Teeth’s podcast network The Roost shared information about their new content, audience insights and ad solutions at the 2019 IAB Podcast Upfront. Among the shows WarnerMedia has on tap are true crime podcast HLN’s Down the Hill: The Delphi Murders; NBA TV Podcast; and TCM’s The Plot Thickens, hosted by TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz.
Premiere Networks and Dr. Dave Creative Entertainment announced the launch of “The Spirited Actor” podcast, available now on iHeartRadio and elsewhere. Hosted by casting director and celebrity acting coach Tracey Moore, podcast targets aspiring and working actors from all walks of life.
Showtime Sports has launched a new video podcast, All the Smoke with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, featuring the NBA champions. The weekly series will deliver perspective on the most polarizing topics in and around the game of basketball, including culture, social justice, politics, music and more. Smoke premieres Monday, October 21, with new episodes released every Thursday in video and audio formats on the new Showtime Basketball YouTube channel and on major podcast platforms.
GOING GLOBAL
Banijay Rights confirmed a co-development agreement with Canadian indie Arcadia Content. The deal will see both parties co-develop new factual projects, seeking financing based on pre-sales.
NBCUniversal International Formats inked a deal with Rabbit Films (SNL, Game Night, Who Wants to be a Millionaire) for the first international version of NBC series Making It in Finland, to air on Discovery Finland’s channel TV5 and streaming service Dplay.
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