That’s all I have, folks. The television industry’s return to in-person presentations across Manhattan concluded Thursday with the delightful sound of Stevie Wonder rocking “Superstitution” at The CW’s New York City Center Event.
Among those who filed this week, during what have traditionally been considered broadcast networks as time to shine in front of advertisers, were NBCUniversal, Fox Corp, Telemundo, TelevisaUnivision, Disney, YouTube and Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and The CW. It was clear that NBC, ABC, Fox, and CBS were no longer the only stars on the show here, and the Big Four took their place among the broadcast and cable channels promoted by their parent companies throughout the week.
Now that all is said, rolled up and ridiculed, diverseThe team’s TV reporters and editors took a step back to assess the highs, lows, and trends of the week of presentations.
What’s new appears?
Back when she was a broadcast intro, shows often lasted up to three hours, with networks occasionally taking long looks at each pilot. When a network was getting really upbeat, like the year ABC premiered “Modern Family,” they pitched the entire show in front of a crowd of media buyers. Then there was the detailed analysis that each network would provide in their schedule, and why this year’s lineup was boosted by the “best trial season ever” of course. Cut back to 2022 and the return of introductions – but not the return of pilot cuts.
Throughout the week, there were very few promotional trailers or promotions for new offerings, as conglomerates opted to offer more comprehensive offerings around the entire corporate offering. ABC, NBC, and Fox didn’t mention fall schedules at all—in fact, at first, Fox didn’t even have a schedule ready to share. at Paramount, which soon traveled via CBS; In the fall, the leaders of various current “Star Trek” TV franchises are hired to tell audiences to go home and watch trailers on a website in advance instead.
Click here to follow Variety’s coverage of Upfronts 2022
great moment
What Does Comic-Con Have The Introduction Doesn’t? Perhaps not so much after Kevin Feige appeared at Disney on Tuesday for part of the company’s presentation that could have impresses Hall H. Feige for teasing upcoming Marvel shows from Disney+ “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” “Secret Invasion,” and “Echo” and season two of “Loki,” which directed Samuel L. Jackson aka Nick Fury and “She-Hulk” star Tatiana Maslany to help out. He also revealed the date of the promotion and premiere of the movie “She-Hulk” and announced the start of upcoming production on the second season of “Loki”, which was declared the most watched of Disney +’s Marvel series.
P-Power
The front end doesn’t usually play blue, but when you have Amy Schumer on stage (at Disney!) and Lizzo talking her truth about her juices at Warner Bros Discovery, anything is possible. The unexpected pronunciation of the term came right after Lizzo when JB Perrette of WBD repeated Lizzo’s reference to “p juice.” (And no, he didn’t say “y”)
“SNL” star Pete Davidson made a different kind of “p” joke, but just as blunt, during NBCUniversal advance Monday when he called Peacock “the” cock while teasing his new show “Bupkis.” “We’ll be on Peacock, the streaming device responsible for many great shows like ‘MacGruber’ and the ‘Office’ re-show. So look out for our new show, streaming on ‘Cock! Prepare to be full of long, thick stories!'”
The CW’s “Super Powers”
The CW placed three new orders last week, with each of those projects featuring a different “Supernatural” star: prequel “Walker, Independence,” produced by “Walker” star Jared Padalecki; prequel series “Supernatural” “The Winchesters”, produced by Jensen Ackles and his wife, Danielle Ackles; DC Comics’ Gotham Knights, starring Misha Collins. Playing with its history, its audience – and by that, its advertisers – The CW brought this trio on stage at the end of its presentation in advance on Thursday, after the plugs for each of their new series, for a slightly “supernatural” meeting alongside CW head Mark Bedowitz. .
Multiple covers
After two years of seeing virtual shows on their screens, media buyers are back in in-person events… to see what’s on their screens. Fox started things off with 90% of his presentation on huge screens, but others also relied heavily on screens to display their messages, including Paramount’s collection of pre-recorded “60 Minutes” packages. Some of the biggest stars remotely have appeared, like WBD’s Oprah Winfrey and Jimmy Kimmel, who was forced to submit his annual video roast after testing positive for COVID.
in character
Just when you thought the old-fashioned way of doing presentations was gone, a strange staple in old-school intros is back this year: actors from shows appearing on stage — but in character. The two new comedies that were shown in the broadcast were represented on their respective fronts. Either way — Disney with ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” and Paramount with “Ghosts” on CBS — decided to cast the stars of those shows as characters they play on TV — not like them.
Devil “SLY”
Hollywood legend Sylvester Stallone let out a roar of applause at Paramount Global’s inaugural show on Wednesday. The “Rocky,” “Rambo” and “Expendables” star was the talk of Carnegie Hall when he showed up to promote “Tulsa King,” the upcoming Paramount+ series from “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan. Sly had to do something other than stand on stage to get many of his fans out of the dense crowd on Madison Avenue into the wild, though he still offered some sweet words about real-life cowboy Sheridan, Paramount’s golden boy and his prolific way with the words. “I couldn’t believe it. We were on the phone on Monday. From Wednesday to Thursday we had a full text. I stuck with it like that,” he said, flicking his fingers.
UPFRONTACHELLA
In addition to Stevie Wonder, this year’s music shows have included Kelly Clarkson (NBCU), Miley Cyrus (NBCU), Trace Adkins (Fox), Mickey Gayton, Lianne Rhimes (Paramount), Jennifer Hudson (WBD), Lizzo and John Batiste (YouTube).
Meet the new boss
David Zaslav has given his opening pitch to advertisers since the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger closed. Zaslav promoted the power of newly merged companies through scripting, non-scripting and math. Warner Bros. Discovery is directed by all-stars such as Hudson, Chip, Joanna Gaines, Property Brother (Jonathan Scot), John Cena, Shaquille O’Neal and Lizzo.
What they didn’t do was represent the “WB” side with their executives on stage, cementing the strength of the current discovery team of Zaslav who took the reins of the combined entity. Kathleen Finch, chief lifestyle brand officer for WBD, and Perrette, as well as new CNN president Chris Licht. Absent from the stage were a handful of surviving WarnerMedia officials, notably the head of content for HBO and HBO Max Casey Blows, who is now in charge of the Gaineses-backed Magnolia Network.
UPFRONTS MVP
Nicole Bayer reaps the win. The host of Wipeout on TBS and Nailed It on Netflix has played on stage for NBCU, Warner Bros Discovery, and Paramount Global. It’s in so many shows on so many platforms that Byer would also have been the frontrunner for Netflix up front, had there been one.
Sports to win
Live sports are a staple of linear television due to their low scripting rates. To that end, the old media companies rolled out their sports offerings heavily over the preceding week. NBA legend O’Neal was a particularly salient point during Warner Brothers’ upfront finding when he repeatedly mocked “Inside the NBA” co-host Charles Barkley, including asking David Zaslav if he could punch Barkley in the face “once.” Just”.
And while the NFL has been a major component of many high-profile sports reels, there were also a number of NFL alternatives that featured prominently during the week. Fox delivered pre-recorded brief notes from expensive rookie to broadcast booth star quarterback Tom Brady and touted his partnership with the recently relaunched USFL, while Disney announced it had reached an agreement with the XFL led by Dwayne Johnson and Danny Garcia to broadcast Games on ESPN, ABC and FX.
On top of that, Disney has highlighted top sports broadcasting real estate, Peyton Manning and Eli Manning, whose alternative television broadcasts “Monday Night Football” (or ESPN’s argot “Megacast”) were an instant hit this winter. “We’re going to be producing more mega-channels,” Peyton assured the audience.
AVOD Revolution will be broadcasted
Streaming customers have always been used to not seeing any commercials while they’re watching, but those days may be numbered soon. Almost every intro featured long segments on AVOD streaming services under legacy media umbrellas, including Peacock, Paramount+, Hulu, Tubi, and more. And with Netflix’s move to add an ad-supported option, don’t expect streaming to be ad-free forever.
YOUTUBE CONDUCTS CHOCOLATE, NOT THE ORIGINAL PRODUCTS
YouTube, in the video giant’s first foray into the internet the week before, didn’t have much to talk about in its original programming method, having largely scrapped its written and unwritten division earlier this year. Instead, it touted its massive reach and flew to popular content creators like Mark Robert and MrBeast (also known as Jimmy Donaldson) to entertain ad buyers – the latter offering hundreds of MrBeast-branded chocolate bars to attendees to sweeten the playing field.
Head of University Advertising Sales in Salsa
Univision had a fun segment where Head of Advertising Sales Donna Speciale learned salsa dance moves from two professional hoof celebs.. Long ago there were segments in the lead where the Head of Advertising Sales did a pre-recorded stunt – Former ABC Advertising Director Jerry Wang Gone Once Through the steps of the ‘Wipeout’ – but this had a disturbing twist as it showed a CEO from a non-Hispanic background working to learn more about the culture of the viewers Univision serves. Speciale was horrible at first for the challenge, but in the end, he was able to dance and even wore the right clients.
The joke was on Netflix
More than one presentation up front included jokes made at the expense of Netflix, which after years of insisting it would never allow commercials to cross the big red is considering doing so in the near future.
While Jimmy Kimmel stood for 10 minutes on Tuesday’s Disney show in advance, which was livestreamed due to a late-night host’s latest positive COVID test: “After watching these smug bastards choke lives out of us for years, it feels really good to see them go down to sell ads. Yours….Oh, everyone loves Bridgeton, right? How do you think they’ll love him when Xyrtec’s ad interrupts him every four minutes.”
Bravo to Bravo
NBCUniversal gave a show centered around Bravo while performing at Radio City Music Hall on Monday. A taped clip of a bravo “fan” couple fighting over a chance to win an Andy Cohen gift ticket for Bravocon’s upcoming comeback has led to a stellar onstage show. The video screen pulls out to reveal these same actors on stage at the BravoCon mini, running and impressing Cohen, “Bravolebs” from “Top Chef,” “Vanderpump Rules,” “Project Runway,” and more. It all ended in a scrapbooking shower, which kept scattering on the shiny floor of Radio City through the rest of the horrific parts of the NBCU up front.
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