PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
Writers rooms under AMC’s scripts-to-series development model have opened for potential rehab workplace drama Rainy Day People, from Chris Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers and exec producers Melissa Bernstein and Mark Johnson via Gran Via, and Kevin Can F*** Himself (wt), from creator Valerie Armstrong and executive producers Rashida Jones and Will McCormack through Le Train Train. “We like writers’ rooms,” said David Madden, president of programming for AMC, Sundance TV and AMC Studios. “We like the opportunity to write multiple scripts, to explore the dynamics of how a season will work, to really figure out who the characters are and how their behavior guides story,”
CBS is developing Be Here Now, about a young widower who moves with his kids to LA to be near his late wife’s family, reports Deadline. Comedy comes from Tommy Johnagin, Fulwell 73 and CBS TV Studios.
Hulu gave a ten-episode order for comedy Dollface, from ABC Signature Studios. Kat Dennings (2 Broke Girls) will star, and exec produce alongside creator and writer Jordan Weiss (Harley Quinn) and showrunner Ira Ungerleider. Additional executive producers include Margot Robbie, Brett Hedblom and Tom Ackerley for LuckyChap Entertainment; Bryan Unkeless and Scott Morgan for Clubhouse Pictures; and Nicole King and Stephanie Laing(Vice Principals).
Top 10 Weekend Domestic Box Office Estimates: November 2-4, 2018
Bohemian Rhapsody (Fox) $50.0 million, opening weekend
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (Buena Vista) $20.0 million, opening weekend
Nobody’s Fool (Paramount) $14.0 million, opening weekend
A Star Is Born (Warner Bros.) $11.1 million (week 5), cume revenue $165.6 million
Halloween (Universal) $11.0 million (week 3), cume revenue $150.4 million
Venom (Sony) $7.9 million (week 5), cume revenue $198.7 million
Smallfoot (Warner Bros.) $3.8 million (week 6), cume revenue $77.5 million
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (Sony) $3.7 million (week 4), cume revenue $48.8 million
Hunter Killer (Lionsgate) $3.5 million (week 2), cume revenue$13.0 million
The Hate U Give (Fox) $3.4 million (week 5), cume revenue $23.5 million
Source: comScore
RETURNING SERIES
New episodes of TLC’s Who Do You Think You Are? premiere starting Monday, December 3 at 10p. This round of celebs tracing their family history includes Mandy Moore (This Is Us), Josh Duhamel (Transformers), Matthew Morrison (Glee) and Regina King (American Crime).
Do you think “fake news” will affect the results of the midterm elections? Let us know in the Cynopsis poll: www.cynopsis.com/poll/. (In our last poll, 50% of respondents said they were glad to see Megyn Kelly leave NBC News because she wasn’t a good fit. Among the remaining voters, half said they were glad to see her go because of her “blackface” comments, while the other said outrage over her remarks was overblown.)
COMING UP
Smithsonian Channel is airing holiday stunt “Santa’s Flight Around the World” from Christmas Eve through Christmas Day, beginning with North Pole Conspiracy at 12a on December 24.
Something special: Disney/ABC Television’s The Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration returns Thursday, November 29 at 9p on ABC, while Disney Parks Presents a 25 Days of Christmas Holiday Party debuts on the DisneyNOW app ahead of its Saturday, December 1 premiere on Disney Channel. Disney Parks Magical Christmas Day Parade airs Tuesday, December, 25 at 10a.
Marc Anthony, Bad Bunny, Will Smith will perform their new song “Esta Rico” live for the first time at the 19th Annual Latin Grammy Awards, airing on Univision November 15 at 8p.
DIGITAL DATA
Facebook’s new political ad tool designed to fight foreign interference in elections allows users to intentionally misidentify who placed the ads, charge Senate Democrats Amy Klobucher and Mark Warner in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “It is clear that there are significant loopholes with regard to how Facebook sells ads and the process by which disclaimers are applied to political ads,” said the letter, after Vice reported it was easily able to buy fake ads in the names of all 100 U.S. Senators.
Showtime is offering documentary short film The Family Business: Trump and Taxes for free online and across multiple platforms. The film follows a team of NYTImes reporters as they uncover the information that led to an expose based on documents pertaining to President Trump’s finances.
Streaming TV saw a 63% rise in viewing hours year over year, according to the 3Q18 “State of Streaming TV Industry” report from Conviva. Among Conviva’s customer base, Roku maintained a lead in market share with 34% of all plays and 40% of all viewing hours measured in the quarter. Amazon Fire TV gained significant share of the market since Q3 2017 among Conviva’s customer base, increasing its share of plays from 4% to 19% and its share of viewing hours from 3% to 18% over a 12-month period.
MOBILE MATTERS
What is the biggest challenge when it comes to monetizing mobile content?
I think the challenge is two-fold and inter-connected.
The first aspect is technology fragmentation – while it brings a lot of consumer options in the form of device types, operating systems and platforms, it also generates complexity and technical challenges for publishers who constantly have to adapt their entire eco-systems to support these rapidly changing platforms and their versions. Publishers spend a lot of time and energy remaining relevant and current taking away their focus from building amazing content and acquiring and retaining their user base. This has a direct impact on monetization.
And the second aspect is given this fragmentation, measurement is extremely challenging, and we all know how important it is to prove the ROI/ROAS in the advertising world. As an industry we are making strides and creating innovation solutions to measure the effectiveness of mobile content.
What advice do you have for companies confused about how to maximize mobile engagement?
This might seem obvious, but with attention spans becoming so short within this digitally native world, I think it is critical top keep your content very high quality and very concise and to the point. Being able to engage immediately with the audience and grab their attention in the first few seconds is extremely important.
ADVERTISING
Simulmedia is launching a direct-to-consumer marketplace, D2Cx.com, it says will match buyers to sellers of over 200 billion weekly national ad impressions, offering marketers a single point of access, with transparency on outcomes and costs. “For years, we’ve talked to digitally-born, D2C marketers who were frustrated with the archaic ways that national TV is bought, the huge minimum spends, little control over spots, and slow reporting,” said Dave Morgan, Simulmedia founder and CEO. “D2Cx.com is purpose-built to solve those problems and bring a true marketplace with bidding to national TV advertising.”
What’s the upshot of GroupM’s State of Video 2018 research? “The big takeaway for advertisers and agencies is what we have said for years: platform-specific creativity informed by data and delivered to meaningful consumer cohorts should govern every decision,” said Rob Norman, former chief digital officer/senior advisor, GroupM. Shorter ads could help alleviate the problem of ad-block time, which GroupM believes could be reaching a breaking point. In the U.S., 61% of ads were 30 seconds in 2014, but that numberndipped to 49% by the first half of 2017.
Democrats outspent Republican candidates in local broadcast TV, $133 million versus $123.1 million, overall in ten key states through October 25, reports Matrix Solutions. In eight of the ten states Democratic candidates spent more, with Republicans ponying up more in two states. Republican governor Rick Scott spent more than any other candidate, at $21.7 million, while Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill led Democratic dollars with $20.3 million.
MARKETING
To promote its new real estate show, Buying it Blind, Bravo is is working with ad agency 360i to completely cover a series of existing houses in mysterious packaging posing the question, “Would you buy this house sight unseen?” The hidden homes aim to generate buzz for a show following coupls who can’t agree on what kind of home to buy, so they hand over the decision to a team of experts to buy and renovate their dream home sight unseen. To target home buyers currently browsing the market, the wrapped homes are also being featured as “listings” in native advertising on Zillow.com & Trulia.com.
GOING GLOBAL
Sky ordered seasons two and three of freshman hit A Discovery of Witches. Supernatural drama is produced by Bad Wolf.
CASTING
Freeform has rounded up the cast for upcoming pilot Breckman Rodeo (wt), an ensemble drama centered on young rodeo riders. Onboard are Jess Gabor (Shameless), Noah Le Gros (The Get Down), Diego Josef (Goliath), Kayla Wallace (The Good Doctor), Vinnie Bennett (Human Traces) and James Tarpey (After Hours)….Lamorne Morris (New Girl) landed the lead in Hulu pilot Woke, inspired by the life of cartoonist Keith Knight….Luis Guzman (Narcos) will be a series regular and Kurtwood Smith (Patriots) will recur in Epix’s noir drama, Our Lady, LTD.
MEASUREMENT & DATA
The pressure is on for marketers to prove ROI, but with so much “noisy” data, how does a seller optimize a campaign’s results? And how can buyers gauge that campaign for their client? Mindshare’s Ikechi Okoronkwo and IRi’s Harvey Goldhersz talk through how a campaign’s goals will determine which metrics matter most, how to meaningfully compare click-through rates, social shares, impressions, and completed views, and how to weigh sound-on, sound-off, and viewability when it comes to evaluating ROI, in one session of this week’s Measurement & Data Boot Camp.
In another session, “The Digital Vs. Linear War Is Over: Convergence Is Here,” Beth Rockwood, SVP of ad sales research at Turner, who oversees marketplace intelligence for Turner’s portfolio of linear and digital brands, and Britta Cleveland, SVP of Meredith’s Research Solutions Group, offer a deep dive into how total audience reports and digital ad ratings are working together, best practices around guarantees, and how to analyze unmeasured platforms. To register for the hands-on training event, go here.
