Shares of ViacomCBS are down more than 20% in early trading as Wall Street digests the company’s streaming strategy, outlook and financials announced after the market closed Tuesday, and clearly has some issues. MoffettNathanson said: “Despite the big announcement of ViacomCBS changing its name … we are left with a similar question as we had last year: will the company be able to grow EBITDA and FCF again to match prior levels? In short, unfortunately, we still did not learn anything to help us believe the answer will be yes, at least for the foreseeable future.”
PBS North Carolina announces the departure of Chief Executive Officer Lindsay Bierman. After two and a half years leading the statewide public television network, Bierman will be joining the Exploratorium […]
AMC Networks Tops 4Q Estimates, Passes 9M Streaming Subs
AMC Networks beat Wall Street estimates for the fourth quarter and reported 9 million streaming subscribers as of the end of 2021, in line with company projections. Earnings came in at 54 cents a share on an adjusted, diluted basis, down 80% from the same quarter a year ago but comfortably ahead of forecasts. Revenue inched up 3% to $803.7 million.
In their last outings as leaders of ViacomCBS, the executive team led by Shari Redstone and Bob Bakish finally started to sound like they have a solid plan to compete in streaming. On the day ViacomCBS unveiled its corporate rebrand to Paramount, starting today, the company put on a nearly three-hour virtual presentation for investors that demonstrated how much its operations have been turned inside out to focus on streaming growth opportunities. (Thomas Woo photo)
Exclusives
South Park, which will continue to air new episodes on Comedy Central, will see its vast library make the move from HBO Max to Paramount+ in 2025. Internationally, the long-running animated comedy will be available on Paramount+ next year. New episodes will launch on the streamer in the U.S. and globally starting with season 27 in 2024. Beavis and Butt-Head, meanwhile, will return with new episodes this year and forgo its debut on Comedy Central in favor of Paramount+.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The hit series “Yellowstone” is becoming a mothership with yet another prequel. The Paramount+ streaming service said it has ordered the series “1932,” about the roots […]
Asked Tuesday about when he might retire, the 59-year-old Barkley said that after the two years left on his contract “that’s probably going to be it for me. I don’t want to die on TV. I don’t want to be sitting inside over [by] fat-ass Shaq [waiting] to drop dead,” he said, referring to his tenure on TNT’s Emmy-winning Inside the NBA.
The biggest news of Tuesday’s call with analysts was a renaming of the company built by the late Sumner Redstone — eliminating his long-used Viacom, while CBS remains for the TV network. But beginning Wednesday, Feb. 16, the parent company will called Paramount. President-CEO Bob Bakish did hail the top shows on CBS as examples of how the company is leading on all platforms. But the focus of the presentation was clearly streaming — primarily Paramount+,
The network avoids mentions of diplomatic boycotts, human-rights abuses and questions about the host nation as it seeks to build an audience.
In a vote of confidence, the streamer has ordered a whopping 20 episodes — an unusually high episode count for a streaming series — which is double the size of Season 1’s 10-episode order.
ABC is pulling Promised Land off the schedule after four low-rated airings. The freshman drama will have one last outing in the Monday 10 p.m. time slot next week. Promised Land then will be available exclusively on Hulu starting with episode 106, which will be available on the platform March 1. The Monday 10 p.m. slot’s regular dweller, medical drama The Good Doctor, which was previously supposed to return in the spring, following the end of Promised Land‘s run, will be back sooner, Feb. 28.
Turner Sports is embracing the multicast for its coverage of the NBA All-Star Game. Sunday’s game will feature two separate feeds — the traditional telecast on TNT, and an alternate one on TBS that Turner is calling Inside the All-Star Game, anchored by its Inside the NBA crew of Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal. Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green, who signed a unique deal with Turner Sports in January, will also contribute to the TBS telecast.
Berkeley Breathed’s iconic cartoon strip is being developed into an animated series that will comment on current culture with the reclusive creator’s involvement.
Olympics Competition Ices Some Syndies
Only two of the 15 talk shows were able to break into positive ratings territory in the week ending Feb. 6: Rachael Ray, which rose 13% to a season-best 0.9 household rating, and Tamron Hall, which garnered a 14% spike to a new season high 0.8.
The 2022 Super Bowl scored more than 100.2 million viewers according to Nielsen data from NBC and Telemundo. Cracking that 100 million ceiling, the burly Super Bowl LVI viewership is very nice bounce from the total audience of 96.4 million viewers on CBS and a plethora of platforms and outlets that the Tampa Bay-hosted Super Bowl LV had in early February last year.
In the before time, hosts of television entertainment were just supposed to guide us from commercial break to commercial break. Now, we want them to help us make sense of the world.
The three comic forces appear to be the only emcees in the mix for the March awards show, despite several scenarios that telecast creatives have been weighing. Producer Will Packer has been in meetings for weeks trying to find the right recipe for Hollywood’s biggest night.
Executive producer, writer and director Kay Oyegun is behind an untitled drama about a group of therapists who work together at a practice in Philadelphia. Co-exec producers and writers David Windsor and Casey Johnson, meanwhile, are penning a comedy titled Not Dead Yet, about a woman who gets a new lease on life after finding a job writing obituaries. Both shows come from Disney’s 20th Television, which produces This Is Us.
The Gilded Age will be back for a second go-round. HBO has renewed the praised period drama from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes for a second season. The series’ Jan. 24 premiere was HBO’s best Monday night debut since Chernobyl.
The moderator said she and her colleagues on the ABC show would “keep having tough conversations” as she added that she listened to those who reached out to her.
The new OTA network will feature factual and historical programming. It debuts on Hearst, Marquee, Maranatha and Weigel subchannels nationwide on March 28.
BBC Studios today promoted Rebecca Glashow to the newly created role of chief executive officer, global distribution. She will take up the position on March 1 and becomes a member […]
Fifty-five years ago, fans across the United States had the choice of two networks to watch the first Super Bowl. A giant exception was in the host city of Los Angeles, where fans didn’t even have one network to tune into. Back then, the National Football League blacked out every game in the local market, convinced that televising the game locally would cause fans to watch on TV rather than pay for tickets. Above: Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr throws a pass during the first quarter of Super Bowl I in Los Angeles. The Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10. (AP photo)
