☀️CBS Keeps ‘Blue Bloods’ Alive, HULU Back in Kaling Biz
#3 U.S. movie theater chain sees Q4 rebound / SONY sets new publicity chief / MAX axes 'Bookie'
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 WEDNESDAY, February 19, 2025.
Where step aside movies shot in L.A. — apparently we can’t make fire trucks 🚒 in this country anymore either. Although sadly the trucks don’t seem to be being made anywhere else. 😳
Huh. Oh look — according to the NYT, a PE company entered the market, consolidated heavily as the industry dwindled to just 3 companies controlling about 75% of the market . . . then enacted “efficiencies” at its retitled REV GROUP (🤌 on that name) and drove the truck prices up to “increase margins.”
So, now it takes some firehouses 10 months to get a new part for a truck that used to take 2 days. Plus the industry has a new firetruck order backlog list as long as the biannual NETFLIX data dump.
But don’t worry — REV GROUP is on it! It should be through the backlog in 2 years— so let’s hold off on more fires until then, mmkay? Capitalism at its finest. So glad that the multi-billions of dollars sloshing around out there are all being put into AI and robots.
BTW: Turns out we’re not making crucial icebreaker ships for the U.S. Coast Guard anymore either — 0 in 25 years, and an overall ship supply situation whose most recent effort was described as “5 years behind schedule and wildly over budget” in a new FT piece on the Coast Guard.
ALSO: Here is the next round of SNL hosts starting next weekend:
THAT TRACKS: That big U.S. vs. CANADA NHL 4 Nations hockey game on Saturday night got more viewers in Canada than here — 5.7M vs. 4.4M, making for a total of 10.1M folks in North America watching that game. 🤯
See you tomorrow night for the final on ESPN (well, I won’t because I don’t have cable, but I’m sure a lotta folks will).
AND: KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN is no longer based in Kentucky, which sounds like a Weekend Update joke setup in the making. TEXAS FRIED CHICKEN, anyone?
OH: Be sure to get your AMERICAN RIVIERA ORCHARD merch while you can! For some reason that name apparently wasn’t working for the Meghan Markle biz, so now we give you . . . AS EVER. No more pesky fruit in sight (although for the record I voted for IT’S MY JAM! in the team meeting).
THEN: The Trump administration is keeping the Biden administration’s guidelines for evaluating corporate mergers, in a statement from the DOJ and FTC.
PLUS: First Biden, and now CAA also reps Kamala.
YEAH: Anyone for a . . . slushie donut? 🤢 The folks at KRISPY KREME and HULU certainly hope so, as they introduce 4 new donuts inspired by the “cinema snack bar” (why a streaming service is doing cinema-inspired snacks is . . . I’ll just say a grey area). Either way — each one sounds like it has about half of your daily allotment of recommended calories.
WELL: Perhaps wash it down with a new COKE prebiotic soda, as yes good ol’ COKE and PEPSI are showing that just as with #BigTech — true business leadership resides in just trying to rip off upstarts (POPPI and OLIPOP in this case) . . . so get ready for COKE’s Simply Pop later this month. PEPSI apparently still needs some more time to work on the “creative” for its ripoff line.
ALTHOUGH: AMAZON is shutting down its commerce-based TIKTOK ripoff, INSPIRE after 3 years . . . adding yet more carnage onto the stockpile of unsuccessful U.S. attempts to re-invent the HOME SHOPPING NETWORK in the digital video space.
YUP: Elon is wasting no time in making back that $250M+ he spent to get Trump elected . . . now putting forth a $44B valuation on the X business on a new fundraising round — yes, the very same one he put on it when he bought it in 2022. Well, no one said ever said buying high was illegal, so again — let’s forget fire trucks and throw some of that slosh money over here too, fellas.
Yes, this is the very same X business that he described last month as: “Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive and we’re barely breaking even.”
THANKS: To the folks at NETFLIX for the invite to check out the new Zero Day series in NYC last night — always fun to watch a cyber-terror attack go down in NYC . . . while in NYC.
📺 THE TV SET
