☀️ MTV Looks For Help, STX Gets New Life
Sports RSN collapse advances / Carr chastises broadcasters, again / Exec moves a plenty
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, January 9, 2026.
Where OLE MISS’ lost last night means that college football’s most popular conference, the SEC, will now have 3 straight years of not placing a team in the CFP Championship game. That only happened once in the preceding 17 years (2006 to 2022), according to Yahoo Sports.
It also means MIAMI will get a $20M payday to go with its win last night — just think of the academic scholarships that’ll fund!
SEC teams also went 1-8 against Power 4 conferences in bowl games this season.
PLUS: Here are your DGA Award film nominations, your ASC Award nominations for cinematographers, your CSA Artois Awards nominees for casting and your BAFTA noms longlists.
AND: VERSANT finally leveled off yesterday and was +1% to $33.69, and is +2% this morning far to about $34.50. Wall Street had given it about a 26% haircut previously this week. Its market cap stands at $5B (plus a limited amount of debt).
THEN: Still no CECOT/El Salvadorian deportees prison story again on 60 Minutes this weekend, according to Status, which also reports that Bari Weiss has not spoken to correspondent Sharon Alfonsi about the matter, nor spoken to the show’s staff since the debacle. #leadership
CBS NEWS also fired the #2 exec at the CBS Evening News, Javier Guzman, because he
didn’t clap loud enough at the end of the Dallas broadcastfor accusations of undermining EP Kim Harvey.The division also set Adriana Diaz and Kelly O’Grady as the new co-hosts of CBS Saturday Morning.
SO: I’ve still yet to see anyone talking about this, but AMC THEATRES stock hit yet another new low yesterday at $1.44. The stock is -50% in 3 months, or essentially ever since the WBD sale process became real.
YAH: Looking at 50k jobs added to the economy in December per the new government numbers released this morning. The national unemployment rate ticked down to 4.4%, and we had the weakest year of job growth since 2020. Great year, everybody.
THANKS!: To the folks at my alma mater HBO for the invite to check out the premiere of the new Industry season in NYC last night.
A show I highly recommend to all, especially any fans of Succession. The new season launches Sunday night and doesn’t disappoint.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
I’m gonna go with January horror / “crazy ape movie” winning out here, with the greater potential for meme-dom / word-of-mouth on social possibly helping out.
NEW POD
FINALLY: For all of those folks thinking about leaving L.A. for the ‘financially reasonable lifestyle’ back here in the NYC area . . . the East Coast’s Montclair, NJ, media cabal and the rest of its residents are facing a vote on March 10 (postponed from Dec. 9) on a new controversial new proposal to do what Jersey does best and raise taxes to cover an unexpected $18M school funding shortfall.
The average annual tax bill in Montclair is already $21,631 before the vote, which would bump it up another 7%.
Nice to see that living in the ’burbs also comes with unexpected increases in common charges — always nice to still have a flavor of that NYC life you all left.
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
