☀️AMAZON Top Exec Shakeup, Fall Dude TV Lines Up
NEON’s active TIFF market / Ryan Kavanaugh backs Liman crypto pic / YT TV, FOX end standoff
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LINKEDIN here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on Friday, August 29, 2025.
Where you shoulda seen the excitement in the Slacks I got from Janice and Richard last night over the real start of the college football season this weekend!
A season that’s gonna be brought to you by . . . well, a lotta logos.
Yes, as colleges now pay (top) players — welcome to corporate logopalooza further infiltrating your beloved, pristine college sports traditions! You didn’t think that college “student”/athlete money was coming from coaches and administrators salaries, did you?
The NCAA previously only allowed logos at basically bowl games or sponsored neutral sites — but that regulation went out the window this year, so keep an eye out for your favorite corporate logos on the field across the SEC this weekend . . . and as you watch PENN STATE now play in BEAVER STADIUM WEST SHORE HOME FIELD (at BEAVER STADIUM).
For the record, WEST SHORE is a home remodeling company in PA that’s paying $3.3M a year for that name on the front of the stadium, which is getting a $700M renovation.
I figure by 2032, the QB at a school having trouble making its numbers work will be doing this before every home game. But hey — a great lesson for marketing majors!
UH: Ya know how PARAMOUNT management has said they’ll announce their big workforce changes all at once? Yeah, SNL is doing the exact opposite — add veteran Heidi Gardner, who’s leaving after 8 seasons, and Michael Longfellow (3 seasons) to the growing list of folks not returning this season, making for 4 cast exits this week with 5 weeks left til the season premiere.
LO & BEHOLD: YOUTUBE TV and FOX set a carriage deal, and of course no details were released . . . as “Cable Standoff” continues to hold a slot in the Top 3 Most Boring Media News Categories To Cover list (well, DISNEY vs. CHARTER 2023 🥊 excepted — that was 🔥).
But — notable that FOX ONE was not mentioned in any regard. It currently does not appear to be offered as part of YT’s Channels offerings (alongside PAR+, HBO MAX etc), so I suppose it will remain that way.
PLUS: Here are your Telluride movies this weekend, including DISNEYFOX’s Springsteen pic (The Boss will be in attendance), NETFLIX’s Edward Berger / Colin Farrell pic, FOCUS’ Chloé Zhao pic Hamnet and PBS’ latest from Ken Burns, The American Revolution.
WTF 🤬: MSG & SPHERE ENTERTAINMENT head James Dolan and WBD head David Zaslav have their faces on “two very short, two-second characters” in The Wizard of Oz at Sphere. Well, at least The Studio has an episode plot point for season 2.
THEN: Just a little snapshot for ya on the news publisher business from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which is ceasing its print publication at the end of the year:
Print subs peak: 600k around 2005
2025 paid digital subs: 115k
2025 print subs (a subsection of digital sub count): 40k
Population of the greater Atlanta metropolitan area: About 6.3M folks
The city itself has about 520k folks, with 323k over 18, or about 2/3.
Put that % split on the 6.3M metro area number, and that’s 4.1M over 18.
SO: Back of the napkin here, that’s about 3% of adults in the greater Atlanta metro area that the AJC serves who pay for local news.
IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Been a little while since I did a bit of a roundup of signs and data outside of Hollywood — so, for your consideration.
FIRST: Sorry, FOLGERS drinkers — parent company JM SMUCKER confirmed that tariff-induced #pricehikes are on the way later this Winter. Uh, that’s on top of the 2 they already did this year. Eh, I’m sure Americans won’t notice something like that — you know how coffee snobs are.
KEURIG DR. PEPPER also indicated that coffee #pricehikes will be coming on their products later this year, too.
ALSO: This was a pretty good overview of what retailers were telling us about the American consumer in their Q2 numbers — yes, they’re still shopping . . . but mostly bargain shopping across the board. Or trading down — DOLLAR GENERAL beat revenue expectations, and raised its revenue guidance for 2025. Its shares are +47% this year so far.
So, keep bundling up, streaming folk! May be a cold winter once the fall football subscriber bumps work their way thru.
This all of course as the Trump admin ends the “de minimis” tariff exemption today 🥳 (cheap imported goods — i.e., probably most of the crap we buy), which sounds like it’s going about as smoothly and well-planned as you’d think.
Gonna be a fun Christmas.
OH: Your electric bill is going to keep going up in 2026, too #ThanksAI! The average residential national energy bill is already +7% YoY, and +32% over the past 5 years.
ALTHOUGH: If you’re in New Jersey, your average cents per kilowatt hour was +25% in one year, according to the Department of Energy.
BTW: My apologies — the Rhode Island wind project that the Trump admin killed this month that I mentioned yesterday was going to power 350k homes, not 600k.
It was the Maryland green energy project that Trump’s Interior department is planning to pull already approved permits for that would power over 600k homes — actually the plan was for 718k homes.
BUT: Nice to see good ‘ol American trickle-down economics in full force! In case you had any questions about where the tens of billions we see in quarterly profits are going in 2025 . . . the year is on a record pace for corporate stock buybacks. Don’t worry, working-class employees — I’m sure upper management will totally grant you some shares too.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
I’m betting along with the majority of you on the Austin Butler fan convention to pull out the win this weekend.
NEW POD
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
