☀️NETFLIX's Hard Sell: Gross Tonnage + Ad Tech
WB + Taylor Sheridan / NEON’s big hire + first-look deal / NBC's Clarkson primetime project
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, May 15, 2025.
Where did everyone else stock up on their MAX merch yesterday to sell to Brooklyn hipsters in 2045? Oh, just me?
BUT: A kudos to the MAX HBO MAX social team for embracing the day for what it was — this video montage was pretty great (although looks like you’re gonna have to change that X handle again 👀).
ALSO: The NFL schedule is out. (The GIANTS as always have just 2 afternoon home games until mid-November, and none in September. Thanks NFL.) But at least NETFLIX got 2 pretty good ones for Christmas:
LIONS vs. VIKINGS
COWBOYS vs. COMMANDERS
PLUS: AMAZON will kick off TNF on Sept. 11 with a COMMANDERS vs. PACKERS game. Look at Washington getting popular this season . . .
BIGGER PICTURE: ABC is at least seemingly fully adding MNF back this season, so that’s gonna help that -2% NFL ‘24 season ratings number off the bat (just as ABC not airing all MNF games in addition to ESPN last year hurt that number).
HOWEVER: If teams in some key markets (New York, Dallas, Boston, etc.) still, as the French say, suck . . . well, there’s only so much you can do.
SO: WBD is saying farewell to a couple of eras this week — first MAX goes down the tubes, now XANDER is being shut down by MICROSOFT, 3 years after buying it from AT&T.
Y’all of course remember the ad-tech platform XANDER . . . which was cited as one of the key rationales for the WARNER-AT&T deal in the mid-2010s, with the great promise of pairing customer data with ad sales tech to drive the streaming future. Now, we’re just back to HBO MAX.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
WB / NLC’s Final Destination: Bloodlines is looking at $35M to $40M, possibly even $45M.
NETFLIX brings Ad Tech & Gross Tonnage combo to round out Upfronts
The barrage of gross tonnage . . . you just kind of expect at this point from NETFLIX (the list of new programming announcements are further down below / all in one place for convenience sake — and thanks to NETFLIX for sending it to me in one list, also for convenience sake 🤝).
But what really stood out most at NETFLIX vs. the other participants this week was the strong attention to ad tech detail. (Disclosure: I was not invited to WBD or FOX Upfronts but was at the rest.)
Ah, pardon me . . . I meant the NETFLIX Ad Suite, as they’re calling it. Sorry “tech stack” — go hang at the bar with SPINCO and MAX.
While admittedly I didn’t clock the Ad Exec talk time at other Upfront presentations (and Mark Marshall’s Wicked bubble time would not have counted at NBCU) — the 13+ minutes straight that NETFLIX devoted to the ads business in the a 75-minute (or so) presentation certainly made an impression.
There was even more after that (details below) — although the show did open with some A-list talent . . . this is still the entertainment business, after all.