☀️NETFLIX ’25: The SONY, WB 🎥 and Sports Shows That Worked
AMAZON, VOX layoffs hitting / ‘Landman’ gets big S2 audience bump / ESPN’s big college 🏈 win
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 23, 2026.
Where let’s have our Friday morning coffee ☕️ made with the #LarryEllisonGuarantee — or at least made at one of his former homes.
Yes, Pa Ellison recently sold a home in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco for a cool $45M in a private deal. He bought it back in the ’90s for $3.9M, so may his PARAMOUNT investment also go up equally over time.
PLUS: NETFLIX’s Ted Sarandos and WBD Chief Strategy Officer Bruce Campbell will both testify next month at a U.S. Senate committee hearing on Capitol Hill about their pending deal.
WBD has asserted that 93% of its shareholders have rejected PSKY’s current $30-a-share bid.
HUH: With F1 and Marty Supreme both getting Best Picture noms, that’s the first time 2 sports movies have been nominated in the same year, according to a Yahoo Sports analysis. Granted — for most of the Oscars history, the number of nominees each year was far smaller than it is now, but still.
GOOD NEWS: New Yorkers, you can now join your New Jersey friends in complaining about your energy bill hikes! NY state just approved CON ED’s 9% for electric and about 6% for gas #pricehike requests over the next 3 years.
ALTHOUGH: That’s actually a bit lower than the previous approved 3-year rate hikes of +12% in 2023, and +13% in 2020 for electricity, plus a +20% hike for gas in 2023. 😳
OH: AMAZON is planning to layoff thousands more folks next week, according to a report in Reuters, including folks in the PRIME VIDEO division — but no real specifics at this time.
This is part of the company’s quest to cut 30k corporate roles that it undertook in the fall, when an initial 14k folks were let go in October.
THEN: VOX MEDIA is also undergoing a staff trim, including Matt Zoller Seitz and The Cut’s Caroline Thompson, as well as across other VOX brands outlined by Breaker.
BUT: Good news for PSKY NYC employees! You’ll now have a 2nd day of the year to avoid your office in Times Square . . . as the city has set its first 🪩 drop outside of New Year’s Eve ever for July 3, as part of the 250th birthday of America. No word on a UFC fight to go with — but give PSKY some time.
HA: Ah, ya gotta love OPENAI’s CFO saying the company expects to take a cut of the IP 🫰 that its enterprise / larger business users create using its AI products — this cut will be agreed upon / negotiated at the outset of a large contract with an organization, and it does not affect everyday CHATGPT customers (despite the very broad tease headline on this piece at The Information)
But still, ya gotta love products created by largely not paying the creators of the IP/content used to create them . . . taking a cut of IP generated by those products. Well played, OPENAI. ⛳️👏
SO: We now have the final week of December (Dec. 22-28) NIELSEN TV streaming data . . . and HBO MAX’s Heated Rivalry is still nowhere to be found. ESG also looked at far more charts than that, and . . . is also having a tough time finding that it really pops anywhere outside of GOOGLE Trends in December.
GRANTED: The show is only 6 episodes, and NIELSEN ranks by minutes watched, which . . . favors shows that simply are longer (yes, they still need to also be popular).
Plus, the NIELSEN chart doesn’t capture viewing on phones/tablets, which may skew larger with a younger audience.
But as ESG points out — even beyond that caveating, a show like PEACOCK’s All Her Fault had a far bigger audience. Still more to come with the January charts, but the ESG numbers are pretty interesting.
AND: The Hudson Williams and Connor Storie parade continues — the fellas will be official torchbearers for the Winter Olympics in Milan next month.
AND: NBCU set an expanded partnership with POKEMON to offer bigger, more “immersive” experiences at its theme parks, starting in Japan — but it’s expected to come to other NBCU parks.
The companies first set a deal in 2021 for parades and shows at UNI STUDIOS JAPAN.
PJ NEWS🛩️: The boys at FOX CORP are getting Lachlan the company a new plane, upgrading from the GULFSTREAM 650 to the roomier G800 (wait til you experience the wifi speeds . . .), according to Rampart.
AH: If Bob Iger owes you money (I told him the NINERS wouldn’t cover the spread), now’s the time to shoot him a text as he made $46M in FY25, or a 12% raise . . . unlike the raise in value that DISNEY stockholders saw in calendar year 2025, as DIS stock was essentially flat.
CEO Bob Iger: $46.5M ($1M salary, $21M stock, $14M stock options, $7.2M bonus, $2.5M other/security, etc.).
CFO Hugh Johnston: $20.2M ($2M salary, $9.2M stock, $3.1M options, $5.8M bonus,
EVP Legal/Global Affairs Officer Horacio Gutierrez: $16.3M ($1.5M salary, $7.6M stock, $2.5M options, $4.5M bonus)
EVP/Chief People Officer Sonia Coleman: $7.4M ($950k salary, $2.8M stock, $936k options, $2.5M bonus)
EVP/Chief Comms Officer Kristina Schake: $6.2M ($823k, $2.6M stock, $862k options, $1.8M bonus)
TOTAL COMP for the top 5 DISNEY execs alone in FY25:
priceless$96.6M
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Here’s how much Mercy you folks have. My head says the weather is definitely gonna put this movie with the 52% crowd . . . but I’m going with my heart that hopes this gets over $10M.
NEW POD
OR: Watch here on YOUTUBE.
NETFLIX 2025 VIEWING INTEL, PART 1
Now that we have both H1 and H2 ’25 NETFLIX data dumps, it’s time for some math! 🤓 Here’s my first batch of analysis, looking at:
STUDIO PAY1 DEALS
NETFLIX is about to write a big $1B+ annual check to SONY for the increasingly global Pay1 window for its movies — how did SONY’s existing pics that have a limited, primarily U.S. distro (with no ad tier availability) compare to NETFLIX’s original films in 2025?
Here is my previous breakdown of the most popular NETFLIX Films & Docs in 2025.
What is arguably the most valuable unmined film IP in the back of the SONY vault according to NETFLIX viewership data? It’s a thinker.
WB’s movies were already on NETFLIX in a Pay1B window in the U.S. for its 2024 releases in 2025 — how did they stack up?
SPORTS
Everyone loves to talk about sports ancillary content — is anyone watching it? See what the numbers say about the 2025 programming, including:
Which sports are the biggest draws.
How the docuseries stack up.
If older sports programming has any legs, and more.
COMEDY SPECIALS
Who do NETFLIX audiences laugh at most?
Which comedic talent from the NETFLIX comedy special library still get decent engagement after their initial debut window?
BUT FIRST: The most important number of all . . . 👇.
BECKHAM VS. BECKHAM
Uh, no . . . not the kids vs. the parents. Rather David vs. Victoria.