Thursday January 11, 2024

IN THE NEWS

Amazon started notifying hundreds of employees at Prime Video and MGM Studios that they were being laid off. Impacted employees in the Americas were informed yesterday. “Our industry continues to evolve quickly and it’s important that we prioritize our investments for the long-term success of our business,” said an email to staff from Mike Hopkins, SVP of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. “We’ve identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact.”

Amazon Studios Head Jennifer Salke also addressed staffers, sharing strategic changes that includes consolidating the Amazon Studios and MGM theatrical distribution teams, and integrating the MGM Unscripted Television team alongside MGM+ and MGM Unscripted. Organizational changes have also led to the loss of some roles across the Studio Marketing, Business Operations (Production, Post & Business Affairs) and Amazon MGM Studios Distribution teams.

Amazon-owned Twitch is also undergoing layoffs. The livestreaming site is cutting 35% of its employees, or about 500 people. “This decision, while incredibly difficult and painful, is necessary to ensure that we can continue to serve our streamers sustainably without impacting their ability to support their careers on Twitch,” said Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said in a blog post. Twitch underwent two rounds of layoffs, eliminating over 400 jobs, last year.

Is Skydance Media considering making a bid for Paramount Global parent National Amusements? The Wall Street Journal reports that Skydance CEO David Ellison is discussing an all-cash bid, with an assist from Skydance investors. Skydance and Paramount aren’t strangers – the companies have co-produced blockbuster films as well as TV series “Reacher” and “Jack Ryan.”

The library of Tyler Perry’s BET/BET+ shows – nearly 600 hours of content from series including “Sistas,” “The Oval,” “House of Pain” and more – will be made available for licensing and third-party platforms for the first time. “To date, the Tyler Perry portfolio of content is among the highest-rated programming among Black Americans on television,” said Scott Mills, President & CEO, BET Media Group. “Our offering of Tyler Perry’s expansive library of hit series will offer third-party platforms a unique opportunity that will increase retention and super-serve viewers like never before.”

The first report to come out of FreeWheel’s Viewer Experience Lab identified three factors that make up viewer experience: quality, quantity, and relevance. According to the study:
· Ad breaks of two minutes or less can improve brand impact and ad experience.
· Grouping consistent ad lengths within individual pods can improve ad sentiment and make breaks feel shorter.
· Capping the frequency of each ad at two to three per program can positively impact ad recognition and brand purchase intent.

“Nothing’s off the table,” said IATSE President Matthew Loeb, when asked at CES whether the union’s behind-the-scenes entertainment industry employees were prepared to strike if they can’t cut a satisfactory deal with the AMPTP. “People are ready to fight and the studios would be ill advised to think that they’ve weakened us to the point that we can’t.”

Nominees for the 30th Annual Screen Actors Guild were announced on Wednesday. As it did for the most recent Emmy Awards, “Succession” had three actors in the category for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series – but not the same three. Emmy nominees Brian Cox and Kieran Culkin (Culkin won the Emmy) made the cut, along with Matthew Macfadyen; Jeremy Strong, a nominee last year, did not. Billy Crudup (“The Morning Show”) and Pedro Pascal (“The Last of Us”) round out the group. Peacock landed its first SAG Award nomination, with Tony Shaloub in contention for “Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie.” The ceremony streams live on Netflix on Saturday, February 24 at 8p. For a complete list of nominees, go here.

EchoStar has hired advisors to help evaluate strategic alternatives following its merger with Dish Network, completed on December 31. The company also announced “a series of strategic transactions to further unlock incremental strategic, financial and operating flexibility,” including the transfer of several wireless spectrum licenses to a wholly owned subsidiary, EchoStar Wireless Holding, following the merger. “This asset allocation enables EchoStar to more optimally position the necessary resources for the execution of its strategic goal of becoming the premier provider of terrestrial mobile, satellite connectivity, and content services” said CEO Hamid Akhavan. Shares jumped as much as 41% following the news.

Outspoken New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers won’t be making any more appearances on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” this season – and McAfee, for one, is relieved. “Some of his thoughts and opinions do piss off a lot of people and I am pumped that that is no longer going to be every single Wednesday of my life, which it has been for the last few weeks,” said McAfee on his show. Rodgers, who had been making weekly guest appearances since 2020, drew fire for his suggestion that Jimmy Kimmel was on the list of associates of Jeffrey Epstein.

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Filming is now underway on the six-part BBC One detective series “Ludwig,” starring David Mitchell as a man who takes over his brother’s identity in a quest to discover his whereabouts. Joining Mitchell is Anna Maxwell Martin (“Motherland”).

Production is also underway on the third season Paramount+’s “Mayor or Kingstown.” The Taylor Sheridan drama starring Jeremy Renner is currently filming in Pittsburgh.

Paramount+ in Canada, the Pacific Screenwriting Program and the Indigenous Screen Office have partnered for the new Indigenous Screenwriters Lab, which will support the careers of six mid-level Indigenous writers from across Canada with a genre focus of futurism and science fiction.

Ball Media (“Bar Rescue”) has formed a joint venture with Jeff Goldman’s Octopean Media calling for 3MBG to provide the Octopean team access to its infrastructure. “There’s been a huge shift in the media and content industry, and everyone is focused on business models that can thrive in a ‘new normal,’” said Goldman. “Octopean was built to explore and leverage ancillary revenue streams for rights holders – strategically, aggressively and with a brand-first approach – which is critical for companies looking to monetize the full scope of their IP.”

Carrie Coon (“The Gilded Age”) has joined the season three cast of HBO’s “The White Lotus.” The season is slated to start filming next month in Thailand. Also headed for HBO is Young Mazino (“Beef”), who has boarded season two of “The Last of Us.”

Telemundo has lined up more celebrity contestants for reality show “La Casa do los Famosos,” premiering Tuesday, January 23 at 7p.The newest additions include radio host, Silvia ‘La Bronca’ Del Valle, influencer Daniela ‘La Bebeshita’ Alexis; fitness trainer Carlos Gómez, and Mariana González, who has been referred to as the “Mexican Kim Kardashian.”

Captain Lee Rosbach, a mainstay on Bravo’s “Below Deck” before he stepped down due to health concerns, is hosting a new true crime series for “Oxygen,” reports Deadline. “Deadly Water,” from Renowned Films (“Elvis’ Women”) and Critical Content (“Ginny & Georgia”) follows murders that take place in open waters.

NEW & RETURNING SERIES

In more Telemundo reality show news, dance competition “En Hoy Día Bailamos” is set to debut on the morning show “Hoy Día” on Monday, January 29 at 7a. The show will air weekdays, hosted by morning show personalities Penélope Menchaca and Daniel Arenas.

“Yes, this is a real show,” says the trailer for “Flip a Coin,” an unscripted show premiering Wednesday, January 17 at 9:30p on Maximum Effort Channel. Each of the 12 half-hour episodes features Swedish actor/filmmaker Dolph Lundgren (“Expend4bles”) flipping a coin. “I am in this show. I don’t quite understand why, but they tell me it will be huge in Sweden,” said Lundgren. “This is a dream come true. I’ve loved flipping coins since I was a little kid.” Malin Ackerman (“Billions”) narrates the, um, action. Maximum Effort Channel is a partnership between Fubo and Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort.

WWE on A&E steps back into the ring beginning Sunday, February 25 with a new season of “WWE Rivals” at 8p followed by a new season of “Biography: WWE Legends” at 9p.

All ten episodes of South Korean thriller series “A Bloody Lucky Day” premiere Thursday, February 1 on Paramount+. The show focuses on a taxi driver who finds himself playing mind games to save his life when he picks up a passenger who’s a serial killer.

But wait, there’s more! A three-episode series hosted by Dennis Miller (“SNL”), “The Infomercials That Sold Us,” dropped Wednesday on Fox Nation. The show looks back at the early years of the infomercial phenomenon, with a trailer that has Miller playing pitchman for Fox Nation.

STREAMING

Amazon Prime Video subscribers are now able to add Paramount+ Essential, AMC+ with Ads, and Max with Ads to their service, for $9.99, $4.99 and $5.99, respectively, per month. Previously, Prime Video subscribers could only opt for ad-free versions of the channels.

Prime Video competitor Walmart+ has enlisted Bravo’s Andy Cohen for a “Save Your Resolutions” campaign. Ads created by Deutsch LA are running on broadcast, Meta, TikTok and Pandora, encouraging viewers to sign up for Walmart+.

Dutch football club Feyenoord Rotterdam has partnered with Endeavor Streaming to launch its fan-focused OTT platform, Feyenoord ONE. The platform offers Feyenoord Original documentaries and series, highlights, player interviews and full match replays, as well as live Academy Matches and live press conferences.

TECH TALK

GroupM announced a collaboration between GroupM Nexus, the performance marketing organization, and Amazon Ads, to co-develop and launch the Amazon Marketing Cloud Maturity Framework. The offering for GroupM clients will assess marketers’ maturity level with Amazon Marketing Cloud to align their business needs with the most suitable Amazon Marketing Cloud solutions. “Amazon Ads robust product suite can return the best benefit for brands when there is a clear path forward that can be easily navigated,” said Amy Armstrong, Director of Global Customer Development at Amazon Ads. “Working with GroupM Nexus to unlock the power of Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) will give brands an in-depth understanding of where they’re at in their AMC maturity, and that’s the first step in building tailored programs that work.”

Disney has expanded its roster of cloud services powering Clean Room interoperability to include Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. The additional services will allow brands and advertisers that natively host their data with AWS Clean Rooms or BigQuery to seamlessly activate within Disney’s Clean Room in a privacy-focused way. “No other Clean Room can activate against a decade’s worth of proprietary first-party data like Disney’s,” said Dana McGraw, SVP of Audience Modeling and Data Science. “Through these intentional expansions and partnerships, we’re bridging the gap even further between consumers and advertisers, while delivering actionable results.” Additionally, Disney and Habu have introduced a dedicated portal that simplifies the way clients stand up a Clean Room, creating a template for the process with an easily reproduced workflow required to activate using first- and third-party data.

Startup Telly previewed its new voice assistant powered by ChatGPT, along with new advertising capabilities and data on usage. After exiting a two-year stealth period in May of 2023, Telly delivered its free 55” dual screen TVs to thousands of homes across more than forty states in the second half of the year. At CES, the company shared new insights into consumer usage and advertiser engagement, including the fact that Telly usage is more than twice the national hourly average. “Consumers love Telly. Usage rates are far outpacing our expectations and are more than twice the national average for household living room TV viewing time,” said Ilya Pozin, Telly CEO and Founder. “It’s clear Telly is used as the primary TV in the home and that it is used for a lot more than just watching TV. Just as the iPhone’s use cases go beyond the ‘phone’ on the go, Telly consumers use the device beyond TV in the home.”

Walmart took to the CES stage to showcase how technology is changing their shoppers’ experience. Walmart unveiled:
· A new GenAI-powered search experience now available to iOS customers. The enhanced search experience allows customers to search by specific use cases and generates relevant, cross-category results.
· Walmart InHome Replenishment, which uses AI and Walmart’s replenishment expertise to ensure customers’ online shopping carts are filled with the right items at the right time and delivered into a refrigerator in a kitchen or garage.
· A beta social commerce platform called Shop with Friends that enables customers to share the virtual outfits they create with friends and get feedback on their finds.“

While omnichannel retail has been around for decades, this new type of retail – adaptive retail – takes it a step further,” said Suresh Kumar, Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer, Walmart Inc. “It’s retail that is not only eCommerce or in-store, but a single, unified retail experience that seamlessly blends the best aspects of all channels.”

SPORTS ROUNDUP

FOX Sports unveiled the full schedule for its coverage of the 2024 MLB regular season, starting Saturday, March 30 in Philadelphia with the Atlanta Braves playing the Phillies at 4p on FS1 and FOX Deportes. The New York Yankees head to Minute Maid Field for a battle with the Houston Astros (also available on FOX Deportes) and the San Francisco Giants travel south to face the San Diego Padres both at 7p on FOX. “Baseball Night in America” kicks off Saturday, May 4.

With the blessing of the NBA and Bally Sports, the Oklahoma City Thunder and Oklahoma-owned Griffin Media have partnered for Thunder Friday Nights, televising the remaining eight Friday regular-season games for free, over the air with the use of an HD antenna, as well as on cable and satellite providers. Th Thunder has also arranged to carry the games on outlets owned by Gray Television and Morgan Murphy Media.

Martial arts organization ONE Championship announced that the promotion will return to the US with live events at Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado for ONE Fight Night 26 on September 6 and State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia for ONE Fight Night 28 on November 8. Monthly ONE Fight Night events continue to air live on Prime Video in the US and Canada.

Soccer league Bundesliga returns today with ESPN+ streaming all Matchday 17 games beginning with FC Bayern vs. Hoffenheim, live from Munich’s Allianz Arena at 2:30p. “Goal Arena” returns to ESPN+ for the second half of the 2023-24 Bundesliga season starting on Saturday at 9:20a.

CBS confirmed it will offer the 2024 Super Bowl on February 11 in 4K HDR, as Fox did in 2020 and 2023. It’s the first time CBS will offer an NFL game in 4K.

Chili Bowl Nationals winner Kyle Larson is revving up to race in the 2024 Chili Bowl Nationals today, with the action live on FloRacing. Larson is the 2021 NASCAR champion and 2020-21 Golden Driller and will be racing in the preliminary in Tulsa, OK.

GOING GLOBAL

Abacus Media Rights has pre-sold multiple true crime documentaries to Prime Video in the UK, including “Murder in a Tea Cup”; “Murder at First Swipe”; “Scissor Sisters”; “Breaking Dad: The Richard Lubbock Story” (w/t) and “Lucie Blackman: Missing in Tokyo.”

Woodcut International has struck deals for multiple unscripted titles covering factual, history and true crime content. Broadcasters include BBC Select; MagellanTV; Blue Ant Media’s FAST channel; SVT in Sweden; Viasat World in Poland; La7 in Italy, and more.

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The season 16 premiere of MTV’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race” on January 5 was up 4% from the season prior in Live+3 Nielsens, earning the best TV share for any season premiere ever for the franchise. The series launched on Logo, ran on VH1 for seasons 9-14, and is in its second season on MTV.

Telemundo’s “Exatlón All-Stars” sports reality competition kicked off the year as the #1 program in Spanish-language television for the week of January 1. In its final weeks, the show delivered an average of 350,000 A18-49, and had its highest rated episodes of the season, averaging 373,000 A18-49 on January 2 followed by a record 382,000 A18-49 on January 4.

EXECUTIVE MOVES

Great American Media laid off about a dozen senior-level executives this week, including CMO Loren Schwartz and CFO Max Pinigin. In a statement, the company said, “Technology is critical to our success, so the decision was made to align the technology intersection with content marketing to enhance the viewer and consumer experience across platforms, meet our viewers where they are with the content they want. With an experienced CTO, we consolidated key marketing functions into our technology team to align our marketing and technology platforms to ensure we maximize synergies between our estimated 70 million linear/cable viewers and our leading faith, family and streaming offering, Great American Pure Flix.”

Omnicom Media Group has named Joanna O’Connell to the newly created role of Chief Intelligence Officer, North America. O’Connell was most recently R3’s EVP of Innovation.

Jack Sussman, EVP, Specials, Music, Live Events and Alternative Programming at CBS, is stepping down after 25 years at the company. He will stay connected to the network as executive producer of “The Tony Awards” and “The Kennedy Center Honors,” and will develop and produce projects for various platforms. “There’s a reason many folks stay here a long time,” said Sussman in a memo to colleagues. “The people here are extraordinary. I’ll never forget the many teammates, past and present, who were with me in the fox holes on our climb to the top.” Stepping in for Sussman are Mitch Graham, EVP, Alternative, who will oversee unscripted, and Mackenzie Mitchell, VP, Specials, who will lead the specials team.

Sheila Johnson has been elected to the PBS Foundation Board of Directors. Johnson is the founder and CEO of the Salamander Collection and a co-founder of BET.

Sinclair announced promotions across the company, too many to list here (31, to be exact). “We are excited to announce the well-deserved promotions of our talented executives, who have consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership and innovation,” said Chris Ripley, President and CEO. “As we recognize their outstanding contributions, we also reinforce our commitment to cultivating and promoting top-tier talent within Sinclair as we continue to evolve and transform our organization.”

DISQO has promoted David Karp to Chief Customer Officer. Karp joined DISQO as VP of Customer Success in September 2021.

B.R. Koehnemann is re-joining KemperSports as Director of Corporate Communications for KemperSports and KemperSportsLIVE. Koehnemann spent 13 years (2006-2019) at the company serving in multiple capacities.

Quorum has named Diane Wiley as Programmatic Account Manager. Prior to joining Quorum, Wiley was Manager, Partner Relations at Simulmedia.

Answer to Our Last Trivia Question
Which sitcom character gave himself the nickname “Big Tasty”? Barry Goldberg on “The Goldbergs” (2013-2023). Kudos to: C.J. Bottitta-Big Picture Productions/Apex, NC; David Kohlberg/NYC; Lou Vazquez-OMD/NYC; Gary Arlen-Arlen Communications/Bethesda, MD; Jean Edhlund-Cooperative Network Services/Manhattan Beach, MN; Maggie Takei-Moore Media/Paducah, KY; Eric Litt-Nexstar/Chicago; Kerri Huyck/Kennewick, WA; David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Credit Union/Burbank; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA; David Garber-Loyola Marymount University/Playa Vista, CA

Today’s Trivia Question
What job did Synclaire land at the end of “Living Single” (1993-98)? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and time zone. Unofficial rules: a limit of four answers per time zone.)

Cynopsis Team