☀️NBCU Searches for New TV Biz Plan with Spin-Offs & Partnerships

Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on THURSDAY, October 31, 2024.

Where . . . boo! Which both applies to the day 👻 and the likely sentiment of YANKEES fans this morning.

We’ll see where the ratings come in, but game 4 got 16.7M viewers on Tuesday night — the most watched World Series game since game 7 in 2019 (the game also didn’t have any real sports competition elsewhere, unlike games 2 and 3).

THEN: The Grammys are moving to ABC / HULU / DIS+ in 2027 after a 50+ year run on CBS. Huh. A 10-year deal at about $50M a year . . . although CBS is also due to pay the Recording Academy $50M for it in its final year on the network in 2026, all according to the WSJ.

• ABC also has the Super Bowl in 2027, and of course The Oscars, making for quite a Q1. Or likely a 4-week, February-ish period with 3 huge Sunday events . . . and one very sad Sunday in between.

  • Note: Said ABC Oscars deal ends after the 2028 edition, at over 2x the cost of The Grammys (ABC’s Oscars check is about $110M a year).

• ABC also has the College Football Playoffs / Championship on its January books.

ALSO: Bill Burr will be your post-election SNL host next Saturday, with Mk.gee as musical guest. Charli XCX will host and perform on Nov. 16.

PLUS: Note for Richard — The Traitors will return to PEACOCK on Jan. 9.

AND: NETFLIX announced the Starting 5 cast for season 2 of the NBA docuseries: Jaylen Brown, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Tyrese Haliburton, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

• Season 1 has not made any NETFLIX Top 10 chart in its first 3 weeks (globally or the U.S. chart).

WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL

SONY has Here this weekend, the Tom Hanks-Robin Wright-Robert Zemeckis reunion, although just U.S. distro (MIRAMAX backed the pic) and is looking at about $7M on a quiet, pre-election weekend.

THANKS!: To the folks at HBO for the invite to check out the new Dune: Prophecy series last night in NYC (and for seats with tall guy legroom 👏) — such intrigue, well done! As someone who’s only seen Dune 2, I (almost) totally followed along. It’s also great (and reassuring) to see HBO is still best in class for visual world-building 💰.

COMCAST nods to potential new cable TV biz & streaming plans, while things are flat ex. Olympics

Okay, so two main topline items to start with here, both mentioned very briefly in Mike Cavanagh’s opening remarks . . . but with very pointed language that says a lot — let’s dive into reading the tea leaves.