☀️ AMAZON Ad Tier in motion at PRIME VIDEO
Actual Studio PVOD $$ numbers! / NBA Finals movie Ad buys / AMAZON's NFL Fall Ad challenges
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 June 8, 2023.
Where I gotta say - there’s nothing quite like the excitement of walking out of a lunch on 6th Avenue… and right into the set of Dune 3! Which I had no idea was shooting in midtown Manhattan 🤔.
2pm yesterday - 30 Rock in the distance was… 6 blocks away. I mean, I can’t even make out APPLE TV’s poster for Extrapolations! (yeah really wish that show had done better so that was a more obvious joke).
AND: PARAMOUNT’s CFO Naveen Chopra is speaking at the GABELLI FUNDS Symposium today at 11a, link to listen is here.
NBA FINALS AD SPEND 💰 WATCH LAST NIGHT:
SONY’s big Gran Turismo NBA promotion is still dominating, plus they had a No Hard Feelings spot, and 15 sec Spider-Man critics spot (they have the money).
DISNEY stepped up their ABC business for this game… although more on the TV projects front:
MOVIES:
Elemental, Indiana Jones (15 sec spot), and Haunted House (err at halftime)
TV:
FX Justified: Primeval City and The Bear
DIS+ Ahsoka and Secret Invasion spots
HULU had a 15 sec spot for Only Murders in the Building
WB had a Flash critics spot
UNI did a Strays spot, and a 15 sec Oppenheimer “Buy IMAX tix now” spot (both in the 4th Quarter when the game became a blowout)
PAR did a 15 second Transformers buy
LIONSGATE also went the 15 second route with The Blackening
THO: NBA Finals presenting sponsor YOUTUBE TV led the way by far (including a few plugs for NFL Sunday Ticket).
MESSI DOES MIAMI: Lionel Messi, arguably the world’s top soccer football player, is coming to play in the US! He’ll join the MLS team INTER MIAMI… the current thinking is likely around mid-July (the season goes into October),
MIAMI counts David Beckham among its ownership.
MIAMI is also currently in last place in their conference at 5-11, so… yeah.
But if they hit their Mid-Late July timeframe, they will have no competition in owning the mid-Summer Sports-world narrative 👏. I mean not exactly Licht-level madness, but significant.
As I mentioned yesterday, The Athletic reports that Messi may also be getting a cut of APPLE TV+ MLS Season Pass subscription money as part of his deal, which is still being finalized.
ALSO: If you’re planing on celebrating the end of the WGA Strike in November by going to the F1 race in Vegas - the final round of tix goes on sale tomorrow:
Main 4-day Grandstand tickets are $2500
But hey, ya know… free food! Gotta buy your own beers tho 🫤.
Skybox 4-day ‘hospitality packages’ are $10,000
This one at least has an open bar to go with the food.
OR: You can pay $500 and stand for 3 days.
‘Private Suites’ for a minimum of 106 guests are available “upon request.” Richard we’re good for an Ankler suite right? I mean you wouldn’t want to disappoint Elaine.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is opening in 66 global markets, incl CHINA, and in about 3700 theaters here in the States, including 400 IMAX locations and 700 PLF / 3D screens.
It’s tracking from $50 Million to $60 Million… although obviously Spidey week 2 is a huge wildcard here, as it’ll likely also hit around $50 Million itself.
So, in honor of the NBA Finals, let’s just call this one an even split:
IN TODAY’S EDITION:
We finally get some actual PVOD revenue numbers! A breakdown of the math on arguably the most positive Movie Biz development to come out of Covid.
BUZZFEED reportedly in dealmaking mode.
AMAZON’s navigates NFL Ad lessons learned last year.
SHO cancels its last remaining series from the previous regime and more.
AND: A shout out to this New York / Intelligencer piece, which does a great job laying out a lot of ulterior motives that have existed in the Zaz-Licht-Zucker vortex for the past year… from not just the Licht firing and Trump debacle, but the overall news cycle during Licht’s tenure.
It also finally reminded me of why this firing felt vaguely familiar in my brain (#JamieTarses1997).
AGAIN:
As I mentioned on Monday morning - CNN has much bigger issues to concern itself with about its future than on which Central Park walking path Licht was fired.
The company needs to figure out a business model for 2030 and beyond (just as ESPN does - something ‘the media’ actually has written, and continues to write a lot about).
Even if Licht had succeeded in making CNN ‘less partisan’… that wouldn’t have really solved anything here about still being reliant on a business model that’s melting at -7% a year in distribution.
And clearly CNN+ was not the way to do it (at least in that spending incarnation).
It’s almost as if CNN needs a business head (David Leavy?) and an editorial head, and should stop trying putting both of those things in one role.
As much as James Gunn gets the ink at DC - often not continually mentioned is that Peter Safran is also there leading it alongside James.
There are very few people who have run major media businesses AND exec produced a newscast: Zucker was a rarity given the heights to which he rose at NBC, and as much as Licht was a news wunderkind - having exeperience running a daily morning or late night TV show is not the same as running an entire network, or even news division overall.
Granted - morale is in the toilet and that is job 1, especially given the timing of just being in the midst of the natural lull for Cable News that happens between every-other-year political seasons. A renewed Presidential election cycle will lo and behold (!) miraculously do wonders starting in Q3 no matter what.
So yes, Leavy and the longtime CNN lieutenants who are now in interim control will have their hands full to rebuild a positive sentiment in the newsroom this Summer.
But beyond that… just as the NY Times had to do about a decade ago - anyone remember all of the vaguely similar morale stories upon Jill Abramson’s departure… as they just got out of the Carlos Slim era by the tips of their fingernails… and bet their pivot off of a secular decline print base (and shaky online advertising reliance) to… people paying for news online 😱?? - CNN needs to move past this regrettable chapter, set a new leadership plan with the task of laying out an actual business plan for its decade ahead.
📺 THE TV SET
DISNEY+ seems to be falling into a “one series a quarter” cadence with their MARVEL, STAR WARS franchises….
