| A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM SCREENVISION
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This past weekend proved it: Toy Story 5 took the box office to infinity and beyond,with a Taylor Swift original on the soundtrack and ~14M impressions fueling the opening.That momentum carries into July, shaping up to be cinema’s biggest month since 2019,with 115M+ projected impressions (+15% YoY) and 66M Gen Z impressions.
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Good morning and welcome to Cynopsis — the media industry’s essential morning read. Today:
· TV Sitcom Titan James Burrows Dies at 85
· Paramount-WBD Merger Could Eliminate 2,500 L.A. Jobs
· Tyra Banks Returns to “Project Runway” Amid Netflix Lawsuit |
 IN THE NEWS |
The pending $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery could cost Los Angeles County 2,495 jobs, according to an interim analysis from L.A.’s Department of Economic Opportunity.
· Paramount projects the merger will generate over $6 billion in cost savings by eliminating duplicate functions, streamlining tech and cloud systems, and consolidating real estate and procurement.
· At-risk roles span corporate, tech, real estate, and other shared functions where the two companies overlap. (The analysis stresses this is not a layoff forecast, but rather an estimate of roles “most immediately exposed to consolidation.”)
· Because many of these functions are concentrated in L.A. County, local workers are described as “particularly exposed to corporate consolidation.”
· The Takeaway: The Paramount-WBD merger promises major cost efficiencies, but those savings come with a human cost — thousands of workers, especially in Los Angeles, face uncertainty as the companies look to eliminate redundancies across their overlapping operations.
FOX Creator Studios is expanding its creator-led slate with seven new partners —bringing over 65 million combined followers into the fold.
· New creators include Josh Richards, Emelia Hartford, Speeed Co, Sorted Food, MyHealthyDish, Mad Realities, and Christina Richardson. They join names like celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and comedian Tom Segura.
· The new deals span long-form entertainment and short-form scripted and unscripted series, with projects already in active production and development.
· FCS will help creators develop premium intellectual property, expand into new formats, and build enduring entertainment brands by leveraging FOX’s ad sales, brand partnership, global distribution, and production infrastructure.
· The Mission: Find creators who’ve already built real audiences and real businesses — then help them go bigger.
James Burrows passed away on June 19 at age 85. The acclaimed TV sitcom director co-created “Cheers” and helmed more than 1,000 episodes across beloved series like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Friends,” “Will & Grace,” and “The Big Bang Theory.” Tributes have poured in from actors he worked with, including:
· Ted Danson (“Cheers”): “For 11 years his laughter taught me what was funny and what was not. Nothing made me happier than to make him laugh.”
· David Schwimmer (“Friends”): “Jimmy Burrows brought out the best in every actor he ever worked with, and elevated every show he directed, making it funnier and more moving than anyone expected. His warmth, humility and generosity made us feel safe.”
· Jennifer Aniston (“Friends”): “He called us his ‘kids’ — ‘Where are the kids?’ ’Let’s see if the kids can make the joke work.’ No pressure…. Most of all, he taught us — the kids — how important it is to love and respect one another. To take care of each other. To have each other’s backs and support each other, no matter what. And we did just that.”
· Eric McCormack (“Will & Grace”): “The 800 lb gorilla of television comedy for five years, he was beloved by everyone, and has left not a mark but a footprint. An incredible legacy.” |
 Animated series “Kevin,” centered on a cat who bonds with misfits at an animal shelter, was canceled after one season on Prime Video — and co-creator Aubrey Plaza had a few things to say about that. “Very disappointing since we were just getting going,” she wrote on Instagram. “I remember in the early days of ‘Parks & Rec’ when we all thought we would be cancelled because our ratings weren’t great…. But we had some special humans over at NBC that believed in the show. I was hoping for this for ‘Kevin,’ but sadly we are living in a different time in our industry. I hope the machines won’t ruin everything. Maybe Kevin will find a new owner someday.” |
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| NEW & RETURNING SERIES |
| Food Network superstar Ina Garten — aka the Barefoot Contessa — fielded offers from numerous suitors for a new video podcast, reports the New York Times. The winner, Vox Media, will release “Happy Hour With Ina Garten” in September.
Apple TV+ comedy “Brothers,” starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as fictionalized versions of themselves, drops Wednesday, September 23 with two episodes. The twist: their real-life friendship gets rocked when they discover they might be brothers.
Tyra Banks hasn’t turned her back on reality TV. The supermodel may be suing Netflix over her depiction in its docuseries about “America’s Next Top Model,” the competition she created and hosted, but she has returned to “Project Runway” for her second turn as a recurring judge. Season 22 of the show premieres Thursday, July 9 on Hulu.
Leslie Jones is coming for your ugly Airbnb. In HGTV’s new show “Roast My Rental,” premiering July 24 at 10 p.m., the “SNL” alum tears apart short-term rental properties that have no business charging $300 a night.
The first two episodes of NBC‘s new, celebrity-free version of “The Traitors” are set to debut Thursday, September 17 in a special two-hour extended premiere. New episodes of “The Traitors: New Blood” will continue to air Thursdays at 8 p.m.
David Morrissey (“The Walking Dead”) stars in “Gone,” a mystery premiering Thursday, July 23 on BritBox.
“Eons: Life and Death on Pangea” kicks off Wednesday, July 29 on PBS (check local listings). The six-parter explores the “Great Dying,” the catastrophic mass extinction that saw 80 percent of Earth’s species vanish.
The fourth annual “Jeopardy! Masters” tournament kicks off Tuesday, August 25 at 8 p.m. on ABC. Ken Jennings hosts.
Niecy Nash (“Reno 911!”) teams with her daughter, actress/singer-songwriter Dia Nash, to host a new true crime video series. The upcoming video podcast was created for PAVE Studios’ true-crime brand, Crime House.
Meanwhile, Radial Entertainment and UK indie Woodcut Media are expanding the “Most Evil” true crime franchise with “World’s Most Evil Women” — turning the lens on the women behind some of history’s most heinous crimes.
MLS star DeAndre Yedlin is going beyond the pitch. DAZN’s Team Whistle has teamed up with Yedlin and his family for “Home Grown: Investing in Family,” a reality series that pulls back the curtain on his soccer career and his home life. Robinhood is along for the ride as presenting sponsor. |
Today’s Premiere
Acorn TV: Harry Wild
Nat Geo: Titanic Sinks Tonight
Netflix: Rhythm + Flow Italy |
| AGENTS AT WORK |
| Cannes Lions 2026 marks a turning point. A new era of agentic systems is emerging — ones that don’t just support the creative process but drive it from brief to launch. Here’s what companies announced ahead of the festival.
Yahoo DSP introduced the Agent Network, an open framework designed to give advertisers direct access to AI-powered agents from third-party technology partners.
· The platform moves away from a native-only model, instead linking advertisers to specialized solutions built by leading industry partners.
· The framework is designed to offer greater flexibility in how campaigns are planned and executed across Yahoo DSP.
· A key feature of the Agent Network is transparency — advertisers can see exactly what each agent does, how it integrates with existing tools, and whether it fits their current technology stack.
WPP Media is building an AI-powered buyer agent for video inside WPP Open, part of a new Agentic Standards Initiative that has a roster of partners including Comcast/FreeWheel, Disney Advertising, Fox Advertising, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, IAB Tech Lab, and Prebid.org.
· The initiative aims to establish shared standards for agentic media buying across linear TV, CTV, and premium video.
· On the advertiser side, the pitch centers on faster access to premium inventory, reduced fragmentation across the buy, and tighter governance — with human approval required on high-stakes financial decisions.
· The agent will be informed by Open Intelligence, WPP’s proprietary data layer.
· Alpha and beta testing are underway, with WPP Media targeting large-scale TV and video investment capability within six to nine months.
Warner Bros. Discovery is overhauling how it plans, activates, and monetizes premium inventory — and it’s doing it with AWS. The two companies are developing next-generation ad experiences built on agentic AI, replacing WBD’s traditional internal workflows with automated, data-driven processes on a single platform. The result: a unified buying experience across previously siloed linear and digital business units, with ongoing automated campaign optimization baked in.
PubMatic launched Creator Marketplace, billed as the first programmatic CTV auction connecting independent creator media companies’ premium inventory with programmatic and agentic demand. The marketplace was developed in partnership with Holmes Media, whose Boost product helps creator-led companies scale CTV inventory and monetize across direct and programmatic channels. FreeWheel comes on as inaugural ad server partner, and outdoor lifestyle brand MeatEater joins as the marketplace’s first launch partner.
Perion is debuting its Perion One platform and Ask Perion Mobile App, taking aim at the fragmented dashboards and manual workflows that slow digital advertising down.
· At the core of Perion One is Ask Perion, an AI-native tool combining two agents: an Insights Agent that answers campaign performance questions in plain language across spend, delivery, pacing, creatives, and channels; and a Planning Agent that transforms marketing briefs into structured, client-ready cross-channel media plans.
· The Ask Perion Mobile App extends both capabilities to mobile, letting marketers plan and act on campaign intelligence from anywhere.
· Perion says the self-serve model reduces cost-to-serve and accelerates campaign turnaround.
Spectrum Intelligence Ventures is launching Latis, an AI-powered household intelligence platform built on first-party data from approximately 30 million U.S. households and 500 million connected devices. The platform translates real-world consumer activity into intent signals, contextual cues, and demand patterns at national scale — purpose-built for AI agent workflows and real-time decisioning. |
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| COMING UP |
| “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will keep the lights on this summer with a rotating lineup of guest hosts while Kimmel takes his annual hiatus. Tiffany Haddish kicks things off the week of July 6, with Anthony Anderson, Ike Barinholtz, Colman Domingo, and Jelly Roll each taking the helm in the weeks that follow.
“A Prince in Paradise: A Royal Wedding Date” will start streaming on Great American Pure Flix on Thursday, July 30, and on Great American Family and GFAM+ on Saturday, August 1 at 8 p.m.
“The Great American Journey,” a Hearst Media Production Group (HMPG) series celebrating the country’s 250 years of independence, premieres Saturday, August 22 on NBC’s “The More You Know” educational/informational (E/I) programming block. Kelsey Grammer (“Frasier”) hosts. |
| PRODUCTION |
| “Warrior Cats” is headed to Disney+ and Disney Channel. The children’s fantasy book series is being adapted into an animated TV series following a deal between Coolabi Group and Disney Kids & Family, with production underway and a 2028 premiere on the horizon.
The end of the world is coming to TV. Peacock handed a straight-to-series order to “Dungeon Crawler Carl,” and it’s as unhinged as it sounds. Based on Matt Dinniman’s cult-favorite LitRPG sci-fi novels, the live-action romp from Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door and Universal Global Television follows survivors of an alien invasion fighting for their lives on a sadistic intergalactic game show.
Production has commenced on Great American Media’s “A Christmas Prayer 2,” the follow-up to the original movie from its film label The Golden Thread. The sequel is set to bow as part of the company’s Great American Christmas programming event this October.
Crayola Studios, the content division of Crayola, has entered into a development deal with Kickstart Entertainment for “Create the Impossible,” a STEAM series for kids co-created by astronaut and science TV host Emily Calandrelli and Maria Pepin.
Production of the eight-episode second season of “The Audacity” is underway in Vancouver, Canada, with its return to AMC and AMC+ slated for 2027. Miriam Shor (“Pluribus”) is joining the satirical drama in a heavily recurring role as an FBI agent. |
| SPORTS REPORT |
| ESPN re-signed Super Bowl champ and NFL analyst Jason McCourty to a new multi-year agreement. Entering his third season with the network, McCourty will continue contributing across the company’s NFL portfolio, regularly appearing on shows including “NFL Live,” “Get Up,” “First Take,” and “SportsCenter.”
DICE Sports has secured distribution deals with five broadcast partners to air the inaugural 3ICE World Cup, set for July 4–5 at SSE Arena in Belfast. The international sports rights agency, serving as exclusive media rights rep for 3ICE, has lined up Pluto TV, WeDoTV, HelloYouTV, Viaplay and Tapmad to carry the tournament across 40-plus countries.
Polymarket is taking its prediction market platform into sports gaming territory via a new partnership with Splash Sports. Splash users will get access to prediction markets for the first time, while Polymarket will sponsor Splash’s pro football survivor contest — the world’s largest — featuring a record $21 million in guaranteed prizes. |
| TECH |
Amazon Ads and FreeWheel are teaming up to deliver commerce-driven targeting to streaming TV publishers via Outcome Optimizer, a new capability within Amazon Publisher Cloud.
· The integration pairs Amazon’s AI and its trove of streaming, browsing, and shopping signals with FreeWheel’s video ad tech, giving publishers a fresh tool to optimize guaranteed deals activated through Amazon DSP.
· Powered by AWS Clean Rooms, Outcome Optimizer works by analyzing publisher content alongside Amazon’s consumer signals to identify which programming is most likely to drive specific advertiser outcomes.
· Predictive AI models then shape campaign delivery accordingly, with automated refreshes that continuously prioritize content best positioned to hit a given goal.
· Warner Bros. Discovery and A+E Global Media are among the first publishers in the mix, with wider availability slated for future phases.
· The Takeaway: Amazon is monetizing its vast consumer data advantage by opening it up to premium streaming publishers, creating a smarter pipeline from audience signal to advertiser outcome — and tightening its grip on the connected TV ad ecosystem in the process.
Integral Ad Science aims to pull back the curtain between buyers and sellers with the launch of Quality Connect, a new transparency and optimization solution. Quality Connect gives publishers near-real-time visibility into the media quality settings advertisers are actually running — brand safety, suitability, fraud prevention — so they can align with those preferences.
AdImpact and Polaris I/O announced a strategic partnership that layers verified advertiser intelligence into AdImpact’s cross-TV platform. The integration brings Polaris I/O’s verified contacts, agency-of-record data, and commercial signals into AdImpact’s real-time view of linear, CTV, and streaming activity across all 210 U.S. markets.
EDO is bringing its TV outcomes measurement methodology to gaming advertising, launching initially on Roblox. Brands running campaigns on the platform can now benchmark branded virtual events, in-game integrations, and standard ad units against the same engagement metrics EDO uses across linear and streaming television — giving advertisers a unified performance view across screens. Early measurement across beauty, entertainment, streaming, and gaming verticals has shown strong results from the immersive format campaigns. |
| DISTRIBUTION |
 Banijay Kids & Family (“Totally Spies!”) has secured distribution rights to Pyjama Films’ mockumentary-style adult animation “Belzebubs,” co-produced by Movimenti Production and Mago Production. Currently in production, the black-and-white animated series is based on the webcomic. |
 CAKE and TV Asahi have joined forces in an international television distribution deal for the anime franchise “Doraemon,” with CAKE taking the lead on distributing the series’ animation catalogue worldwide. The partnership will also see the two companies collaborate on a new English-language adaptation, aimed at bringing the time-travelling robotic cat to fresh audiences around the globe. |
| RATINGS |
| “Love Island USA” stormed to the top of the streaming charts during its first two weeks of season 8, racking up a combined 2.3 billion minutes of viewing, a 50% jump from where last season stood at the same point, per Nielsen preliminary data. According to Peacock’s own numbers, 26% of engagement is happening on phones and tablets.
Telemundo clocked 13.3 million preliminary Total Audience Delivery (TAD) viewers for the Mexico vs. Korea Republic match, on track to become the most-watched FIFA World Cup match in Spanish-language TV history.
Paramount reports last week’s UFC Freedom 250 event on the White House lawn averaged 8.2 million viewers across the U.S. and Latin America on Paramount+.
Tuesday’s episode of Fox News’ “Gutfeld!,” featuring Vice President Vance, delivered 3.2 million viewers and 359,000 in the 25-54 demo, an 8% increase with viewers and a 9% increase in the 25-54 demo compared to its year-to-date average, according to Nielsen preliminary panel data.
HGTV’s “Home Town” drew over 19.7 million cross-platform viewers and averaged a .47 Live + 3 rating among P25-54, up 34% from last season, while the season finale of “Home Town: Inn This Together” delivered a season-high .65 Live + 3 rating among P25-54.
Netflix dominated the week of May 18 on Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming programs, claiming four of the top six spots. Prime Video placed two shows in the top ten, while Disney+, Hulu/Netflix, HBO Max, and Paramount+ each contributed one entry. The gap between first (“Nemesis” at 1.31 billion minutes) and last (“Dutton Ranch” at 736 million) is surprisingly modest — less than a 2× difference across the full top 10. |
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| EXECUTIVE MOVES |
| Mark Garner, Executive Vice President and Head of Global FAST Channels at AMC Global Media, is stepping down from his full-time role after 25 years with the company. He will continue in an advisory capacity, consulting on select strategic and special projects, while also pursuing independent ventures. |
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Today’s Trivia Question
A TV movie from which drama aired between the sixth and seventh seasons of the show? (Email answers to trivia@cynopsis.com and include your name, company and city. Answers limited to four per time zone.)
Answer to Our Last Trivia Question
Tricia Helfer’s Cylon character on “Battlestar Galactica” is named Number Six as a tribute to what groundbreaking television series? UK’s “The Prisoner.”
Congrats to: Bill Graff-TeleGraff Media/Plantation, FL; Alex Mebane-Emmeboo Inc./Brooklyn, NY; Ted Linhart/NYC; Luke Watson-Gripe and Subscribe/NYC; Tom Boyd-WGN/Chicago; Dan Whitford-WTTW/Chicago; John Kukla-KDFW Fox 4/Dallas; John Burshtan-Water Planet Productions/Denver; Shelby Michelin/Santa Monica, CA; Andre Bormanis-Sky by Night Productions/LA; David Garber-Loyola Marymount University/Playa Vista, CA; Justin Pierce-JP Consulting Group/LA; Kevin Moran-Blarney Productions/Pasadena, CA |
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