Friday January 26, 2024

Saturday’s Premieres
Netflix: Dr. Slump
OWN: Love & Marriage D.C. at 8p

Sunday’s Premieres
CNN: The Many Lives of Martha Stewart at 9p
Fox: Next Level Chef at 10p

IN THE NEWS

Amid reports that Paramount Global could be up for sale, CEO Bob Bakish urged employees to hunker down and focus on execution. “We’re a storied public company in a closely followed industry,” Bakish said in a memo to staff. “But I have always believed the best thing we can do is concentrate on what we can control — execution. Leaning into what’s working while continually adjusting to current realities.” But layoffs are in store. “These decisions are never easy, but are essential on our path to earnings growth,“ he said. “We will continue to be as thoughtful as we can be, communicate when there is information to share and support our teams throughout.”

Ninety-five percent of American households hold at least one streaming subscription, indicating near total market saturation in the country, according to Kantar’s Entertainment on Demand study. The data shows that customers point to “value for money” as the most important factor for subscribing to a new streaming service, marking the first time the eagerness to watch a specific title is not the most important factor to acquire new viewers. Key takeaways include:
· Over half of US households now use a FAST service. FAST continues to be the fastest growing streaming type.
· Growth of both FAST and AVoD slowed in 4Q23 – despite Cyber Monday deals.
· Apple TV+, ESPN+, and Prime Video saw the greatest absolute growth in subscriber share among paid VoD competitors – aided by promotions, trials, and holiday spending.
· “Yellowstone” on Peacock was the most-watched SVoD title in 4Q23, followed by Netflix’s “Virgin River” and “Loki “on Disney+.
· Netflix continues to be the #1 go-to streaming service for content discovery, but Hulu and Max gained market share, rising to #3 and #4, respectively.

Comcast beat analysts’ forecasts with 4Q23 net income of $3.3 billion and revenue of $31 billion. The company lost 34,000 broadband customers in the quarter, less than the loss of 61,000 customers that had been forecast “We capped off 2023 and the fourth quarter with excellent operational and financial performance,” said CEO Brian Roberts. “For the third consecutive year, we generated the highest Revenue, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EPS in our company’s history. At the same time, we invested in future growth, returned $16 billion to shareholders and maintained a healthy balance sheet.”

Prime Video has picked up “The Baxters,” starring Roma Downey (“Touched by an Angel”) and Ted McGinley (“Married…With Children”). The family drama is produced by Downey and Mark Burnett-founded LightWorkers Media, which is owned by Amazon MGM Studios.

What makes an ad effective? EDO, the TV outcomes company, analyzed national TV creatives to identify the trends driving behavioral outcomes, such as search activity, website visits, or app downloads. Among the top spots were for GMC’s Hummer EV, restaurant Panda Express, and Mint Mobile. “The top creatives of 2023 were authentic and often entertaining – whether they authentically integrated a celebrity spokesperson like LeBron James with GMC, or landed a perfect comedic moment like Credit Karma,” said Laura Grover, SVP and Head of Client Solutions at EDO. “The best ads motivate consumers’ real-world behavior, and the best creative measurement enables modern marketers to connect these behaviors to tangible business outcomes.”

The Directors Guild of America managed to secure additional gains in its agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which was ratified back in June. Changes include a bonus for directors whose shows contribute significant viewing for streamers, and access to the same viewing data that the WGA negotiated.

Merit Street Media, the cable network from Dr. Phil McGraw launching next month, will kick off with two live news shows. “Morning on Merit Street” will air weekdays at 8a, while “The News on Merit Street” is scheduled for 7p. Previously announced “Dr. Phil Primetime” is set for weeknights at 8p.

TV series up for ACE Eddie Awards, honoring editors, include episodes of “Ashoka,” “The Last of Us,” “Slow Horses,” “Succession,” “Frasier,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “The Upshaws,” “Barry,” “The Bear,” “Only Murders in the Building,” and “Ted Lasso.”

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Prime Video greenlit “The Money Game,” following the 2023-24 athletic season inside LSU Athletics. The docuseries follows, in real time, a turning point in the NCAA upon policy changes on name, image, and likeness rights. The show comes from Campfire Studios, Axios Entertainment, and Shaquille O’Neal’s Jersey Legends, a division of Authentic Studios.

Quintus Studios has greenlit a Quintus Original factual co-production project. “Enter At Your Own Risk” (w/t) will take viewers to some of the world’s most exotic but dangerous locations.

NEW & RETURNING SERIES

ABC’s hidden camera series “What Would You Do?” returns for season 16 on Sunday, February 18 at 10p. In the premiere, bystanders grapple with a schoolteacher’s side hustle on an adult-content site, objections to immigrants applying for work at a local coffee shop, and a deli staffer dealing with a rude customer.

“Vegas: The Story of Sin City” premieres Sunday, February 25 at 10p on CNN. The series follows 70 years of America’s cultural maturation through the lens of Las Vegas, featuring the entertainment acts, entrepreneurs, and mafia figures that put it on the map.

Season four of INSP western drama “Into the Wild Frontier” kicks off Sunday, March 24 at 6p. The season is comprised of seven episodes.

The sophomore run of Adult Swim animated comedy “Royal Crackers” starts Thursday, February 29 at midnight. The debut season was the most-watched Adult Swim original series of 2023.

FOX News contributor, and former professional wrestler, Tyrus, will host OutKick series, “Maintaining with Tyrus.” The first episode launches Thursday, February 1, with guests Piers Morgan, Wolf of Wall Street inspiration Jordan Belfort and “How America Works” host Mike Rowe.

STREAMING

Sinclair has sole STIRR, the ad-supported streaming service it launched in 2019, to Thinking Media. STIRR has gone from offering 100 free live channels to just four, and no longer offers live news programs. Thinking Media describes itself as a “pioneers of cloud solutions for streaming services.

Fourth quarter revenue for Peacock jumped 57%, topping $1 billion for the first time. The streamer wrapped the year with 31 million paying subscribers, for a gain of 3 million in 4Q23, and narrowed its loss from $978 million in 2022 to $825 million.

FuboTV has launched Instant Headlines, a beta feature that generates contextual news topics as they are reported live on air. Instant Headlines surfaces current programming topics and highlights them in 10 words or less in the home page news carousel. The page constantly refreshes each channel tile in the carousel, updating the user on the current topic being discussed on that channel. From there, the user can click on the channel tile to watch the live segment. Instant Headlines, available to Fubo users on FireTV and Android TV, is currently integrated with select 24 hour news channels. “It’s Fubo’s premium user experience, coupled with our aggregated sports-first content offering, that provides meaningful differentiation in a crowded streaming landscape,” said David Gandler, co-founder and CEO, Fubo. “We believe tech advancements will continue to demarcate Fubo from other live TV streaming services – appealing to both consumers and advertisers alike – and will contribute strongly to our profitability goals.”

TECH

Publicis Groupe has already shifted from a holding company to a platform company. Now, it is transitioning to an “intelligent system company” with a proprietary “CoreAI” backbone integrated throughout all operations. “Thanks to the shift to an Intelligent System company, everyone within Publicis will become a data analyst, an engineer, an intelligence partner, with all the information they need at their fingertips to supercharge client growth,” said the company in a presentation. Publicis plans to invest three hundred million euros over the next three years for upskilling, training and recruiting employees, and technology. “Putting CoreAI at the heart of our organization and truly becoming an Intelligent System company will make our people more efficient and more productive,” said Arthur Sadoun, CEO & Chairman of Publicis Groupe. “But way more importantly, it will allow everyone to do things tomorrow that no one can do today, guided by the highest ethical standards, and at the service of our clients’ growth.”

Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees out of the 22,000 in its gaming workforce this week. Most of the roles affected are at Activision Blizzard, but some employees at Xbox and ZeniMax will also be hit. As the layoffs proceed, Blizzard President Mike Ybarra, is stepping down. “Mike previously spent more than 20 years at Microsoft. Now that he has seen the acquisition through as Blizzard’s president, he has decided to leave the company,” said Microsoft’s Game Content and Studios President, Matt Booty, in an internal memo.

datafuelX is partnering with MRI-Simmons to enable the scoring of device-level viewing data sets with age/sex propensities and other MRI-Simmons attributes for targeted advertising sales, and pre- and post-campaign reporting. The solution will be offered to ACR and STB providers in the US. “The industry has long had the ability to profile device-level TV viewing data using household attributes like ‘Presence of a Male 18 to 24.’ We will be able to identify the TVs that are actually being viewed by this demo, based on the MRI-Simmons modeling attributes and actual viewership of that TV,” said Howard Shimmel, Head of Strategy at datafuelX. “profileX can help the industry more broadly by being able to fill in important attributes that various states are restricting.”

COMING UP

Max documentary “They Called Him Mostly Harmless,” from corporate sib Investigation Discovery, debuts Thursday, February 8 on the streamer. The film follows the search for the identity of a hiker found dead in the Florida wilderness.

UK factual indie Blink Films is producing a doc for PBS’s NOVA strand, based on new revelations about the giant stone heads of Easter Island. “Easter Island Origins” will premiere Wednesday, February 7 at 9pon PBS.

The Super Bowl’s not the only game in town on Sunday, February 11. Antenna TV is running a day-long “Designing Women Super Belle Sunday II,” starting at 5 a. Antenna’s also got plans for February 14, Valentine’s Day, with an “I Dream of Jeannie” marathon kicking off at 1p.

MeTV’s Valentine’s Day programming includes romantic episodes from classic shows like “The Andy Griffith Show” and “The Brady Bunch,” airing from noon-6:30p.

SPORTS ROUNDUP

NBC Sports Next’s SportsEngine and Pixellot announced the next phase of their partnership, which will offer enhanced livestreaming opportunities for sporting venues across North America at no cost. The new collaboration between SportsEngine, focused on youth and amateur sports technology, and Pixellot, offering AI-automated sports video and data solutions, aims to transform the sports streaming experience via Pixellot’s AI-automated sports cameras and the newly launched SportsEngine Play, a subscription streaming service for capturing and viewing live and on-demand video of youth and amateur sporting events.

Prime Video’s inaugural season of NWSL includes 27 total matches throughout the course of the 2024 season, including streaming 25 regular-season games, one quarterfinal playoff game in November, and the 2024 NWSL Challenge Cup. The newly reformatted Challenge Cup, streaming on Friday, March 15 at 8p, will officially welcome viewers to Prime Video’s coverage.

ABC and ESPN will combine to showcase a total of 20 matches during the NWSL season. ABC will air four games, including the season opener on March 16 and three playoff matches. ESPN will televise seven matches, ESPN2 will air nine, and ESPN Deportes will broadcast 13 games in Spanish. All 20 games in the ESPN package will stream live in both English and Spanish on ESPN+.

Max and TNT Sports announced that a roster of live cycling across Road, Mountain Bike, Track, BMX and Cyclocross will be available on the B/R Sports Add-On on Max for subscribers starting Thursday, February 8.

Minute Media, a technology and sports content company, has acquired STN Video. The acquisition will bring additional technology capabilities, distribution and sports highlight content rights to Minute Media’s ecosystem of owned sports content brands, distribution partners and advertisers.

Major League Fishing has renewed its sponsorship with Toyota Motor North America with a 5-year extension. Toyota will continue to serve as the Exclusive Vehicle and Mobility Sponsor of the tournament-fishing organization.

GOING GLOBAL

Amsterdam-based Static Waves and streaming technology platform VIDAA have partnered in to launch VIDAA CHANNELS, a FAST platform for all Hisense SmartTV, across Benelux and Poland, starting March 1.

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Peacock scored an estimated 2.8 million new subscribers with its exclusive coverage of the AFC Wild Card Game, according to Antenna. The Chiefs-Dolphins match-up was the single biggest subscriber event measured. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts deemed the game “a very proud moment in internet history.”

Primetime coverage of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary averaged 6 million viewers. FOX News’ coverage made FNC second in overall primetime television, behind only CBS, with an average 3.26 million viewers, versus 1.94 million for MSNBC and 994,000 for CNN.

EXECUTIVE MOVES

Advertising resource management company MINT has appointed Lorenzo Larini as Global CEO. Larini joins MINT following his tenure as CEO at Ipsos North America.

John Matts has been promoted to the role of Chief Operating Officer at Hallmark Media. Matts joined the company in 2022 as CFO.

Stretch PR has named Daniel Lobring as SVP. Previously, Loring was VP, Marketing at rEvolution.

Friday Fun Fact
A cumulus cloud weighs an estimated 1.1 million pounds.

Answer to Our Last Trivia Question
Which two NBC series were inspired by the same non-fiction book? “Against the Grain” (1993), and “Friday Night Lights” (2006-11). Kudos to: JT Ward-Tubi/Chicago.

Today’s Trivia Question
Who played Fiona’s (Lisa Kudrow) mother on “Web Therapy” (2011-15)? (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