☀️NBCU Searches for New TV Biz Plan with Spin-Offs & Partnerships
☀️NBCU Searches for New TV Biz Plan with Spin-Offs & Partnerships
ROKU shows FAST biz 💰 challenges / APPLE, AMAZON add to franchises / UNI movie biz's big quarter
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.