Industry News Item
The Hollywood Reporter collated a handy list of some top questions on the mind of many in Tinseltown, mainly around the following:
What will happen with Paramount? And what other mergers are on the horizon?
How does Disney right the ship? And is the ship called Steamboat Willie?*
What kind of ad market are we looking at?
NBA rights, who gottem?
Where does AI fit in?
While several of these incorporate currently buzzy terms (AI! M&A!) the truth is no one really knows what the answers are to these questions. But this wouldn’t be much of an entry of Set Your VCR if yours truly didn’t put on his soothsayer hat (do they wear hats?) and provide my brief (ha) list of questions I have for the industry in 2024:
What DOES happen with Paramount? Admittedly my primary concern is about the future of the Star Trek franchise, followed by my desire not to see what would be likely massive layoffs if they were to merge with WBD or another studio, but Paramount needs to do something if they want to compete with the much larger studios of Disney/Fox, NBCUniversal, and Warner Bros Discovery. They could pull a Sony and go the route of cinematic ‘arms dealer’, mainly existing to produce content to sell to other distributors, but they still have to sort out what to do about their linear channels where profits are still large but continue to shrink as each year passes by.
What does the 2024 film slate look like in practice, and how will theaters deal? The studios moved several films out of late 2023 to plug holes in 2024 left by the strikes, and several more films out of 2024 entirely. For the first time since 2016 there won’t be a DC movie, the only Disney/Fox Marvel movie is Deadpool 3, and it’ll be Sony with three Spider-Man spinoffs none of which will actually feature Spider-Man. As for the theatrical experience, I almost exclusively see films at my local Alamo Drafthouse or for older film screenings, the Aero and recently reopened Egpytian. When I saw The Abyss at a nearby AMC (in their nicest theater), I was instantly reminded why I don’t go to traditional major chains. Missing seat numbers. People on their phones and talking. What felt like 45 minutes of commercials prior to the film. It’s clear that the AMCs and Regals of the world aren’t willing to invest in improving the customer experience, which drives away people who would be willing to pay for that experience in lieu of people who have either forgot how to behave in a theater or never learned properly in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle that will continue to degrade traditional chains unless those companies do something to make things better, because as of now 2024 looks like it’ll take in $1B less at the box office due to a combination of these factors. Maybe a summer without (big name) superheroes is needed to combat against perceived superhero movie fatigue which leads me to ask…
What can Disney do to get its creative and box office mojo back? 2023 was not a good year for the MCU - they had the lowest box office performer in The Marvels, the Disney+ Secret Invasion was widely panned, and the actor they centered their next slate of Avengers films around was convicted of assault and harassment. As a comic book fan, I didn’t even finish Secret Invasion, and the only MCU film I saw in theaters was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. There’s the bigger problem I think Disney has with Marvel and to a related extent Star Wars. If they can’t get lifelong comic book fans to watch their latest slate of films and shows, how will they keep the general public interested, especially since Disney trained them during the pandemic to simply wait a few months and they can watch the films on Disney+. Disney’s non-MCU films didn’t exactly catch fire either.
Frankly I think Disney creative leadership is out of sync with what the public is wanting right now because I don’t think the public actually knows what they want right now. 2023 gave us the year where a film based on a doll and a film based on the creation of the atomic bomb were paired together very successfully, not one but two Japanese language films took over the number one and three slots at the box office (and as of this writing are still in the top ten), and well-known franchises such as Mission: Impossible and Indiana Jones really underperformed and failed to resonate with the general public. Figure it out, Mouseketeers.What about ads? Ugh, ads. For an industry that is supposedly slowing, there are seemingly more ads shoved in our faces as ever. Prime Video is adding them starting late January 2024 unless you pony up an extra $2.99/month. FAST streaming apps continue to gain subs because, hey, they’re free, it’s in the name. Linear television is full of pharmaceutical and injury law firm ads. As the 2024 election season kicks into high gear there’s predicted to be over $15B spent just in political adverts alone.
One thing streaming services watch closely is churn, the number of people who choose to stop paying for the service and leave. They’re constantly predicting likely future periods of higher churn and actively program against it with new films and shows, sometimes live events, to keep people interested enough in what is new to keep paying for that month. The streamers know that the more often people use their service, the more likely they are to continue paying to use the service, so they do nearly everything they can think of to keep people from cancelling, which includes offering a slightly cheaper tier that subsidizes the lower subscriber revenue with payments from advertisers. One thing I’ve been looking for the last 5-6 years or so in streaming is what Streaming 2.0 will look like.
In my opinion Netflix perfected what I call Streaming 1.0 - a library of on-demand content across multiple genres presented in a UI that gets people watching content relatively quickly and with an absolute minimum of disruptions like buffering. Credit where credit is due, they nailed it. But what does Streaming 2.0 look like? Generations of humans for almost 100 years now have been used to content distributed in a linear format and some things like news and sports people prefer to consume linearly and immediately. Netflix isn’t good at serving that audience, and the other streamers have been figuring out how to cross that gap for consumers with live sports and news offerings, carrying local linear channels (both Peacock** and Paramount+ do this), and the popularity of Tubi and Pluto TV showcase the desire to just jump into the middle of a program to avoid the paralysis of choice that Streaming 1.0 can provide. I think 2024 will see streamers continuing to innovate towards their respective visions of Streaming 2.0, and whoever can crack that first stands to eat Netflix’s lunch in the long term.
Auld Lang Syne, or, the Song Nobody Knows The Words To But Attempts To Sing Anyway
In just a couple of days from this publication date, we will bid farewell to 2023 and enter the new year of 2024. When you think of New Year’s Eve on television, you likely think of the crowds in Times Square, the countdown to the ball drop, Anderson and Andy having too much to drink on live television. Some readers may associate the event with Ryan Seacrest, while older readers may remember when Dick Clark was synonymous with the new year, and many might think he’s where it started. In actuality the national broadcasting of an event marking the birth of the new year dates back all the back to before television, to radio and 1929.
Before Anderson Cooper and Dick Clark became associated with New Year’s Eve, it was first associated with big band leader Guy Lombardo. It was in 1929 that he and his band the Royal Canadians held the first nationwide NYE broadcast from the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. For listeners on the East Coast, they could hear the special live on the CBS Radio Network, and after midnight it would be rebroadcast for other timezones on the NBC Radio Network. Each broadcast would conclude with the playing of Auld Lang Syne, the Scots-language song that nobody in the US actually knows the lyrics to but loudly (and sometimes drunkenly) sing along to “Should old acquaintance be forgot” and whenever the title of the song appears. Lombardo’s yearly broadcasts would be very popular, and transition from radio to television starting in 1956 where the first nationally broadcast NYE special aired on CBS and would include live views at Times Square. Let me not understate or undersell just how popular Lombardo was with Americans, in no small part due to his yearly specials. Sales of his band’s records would top over 100 million copies, he had received official recognition from the United States Congress***, and his band had played every presidential inaugural ball from FDR to Eisenhower. The special would live on an additional two years after Lombardo’s death in 1977, an impressive 50 year run on the airwaves. It was replaced on CBS with Happy New Year, America from 1979 to 1995.
Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve began in 1972 as a NYE special aimed at a younger demographic than the Lombardo specials. Though you may be familiar with the show airing on ABC, for 1972 and 1973 it actually aired on NBC. Prior to 1972 NBC actually had coverage of NYE in Times Square since the 1940s, and during Johnny Carson’s run on The Tonight Show they would have a special episode devoted to the event, which would continue through Carson’s run. The 1972 Rockin’ Eve was hosted and starred rock band Three Dog Night****, and the 1973 edition was hosted by George Carlin(!), which must have been a trip to see (unfortunately I couldn’t find any footage of this) Carlin try to balance his humor with the constraints of live television. From 1974 onwards ABC has been the home of DCNYRE, or since the addition of current host Ryan Seacrest to the title, DCNYREWRC. Really just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
After the death of Lombardo and the end of his series of specials, Rockin’ Eve took its spot as the most-watched NYE special. Much like Clark’s other long-running musical performance series, American Bandstand (1952-89), Rockin’ Eve would feature numerous popular musical acts of the year, from acts as diverse as Blondie, Chicago, Naughty by Nature, and Weird Al, just to name a few. Clark suffered a stroke in early December 2004 which prevented him from hosting, and Regis Philbin stepped in that year. The following year Ryan Seacrest was added first as co-host, then becoming the permanent host from 2006 onwards. Ironically Seacrest had previously hosted a competing NYE special on Fox, home of the other series he hosted, American Idol (2002-present), and in 2005 as Seacrest moved to ABC, Philbin moved to host NYE on Fox. The early aughts were a crazy time.
Other networks, both broadcast and cable, have made attempts to wrest away the NYE special crown from Rockin’ Eve, to varying degrees of success. As alluded to earlier, CNN in 2016 started their coverage starring Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen as co-hosts, which has led to some meme-able moments over the last 7 years. NBC has tried a number of specials, from more news focused to more direct competitors like New Year’s Eve with Carson Daily (2004-20), however during the years (like this year) New Year’s Eve falls on a Sunday NBC has chosen not to have dedicated NYE programming due to its commitments to NFL’s Sunday Night Football. Fox tried a lot of things, in the last decade Pitbull and then Steve Harvey took the hosting reigns for a few years each to no lasting success. Linear television viewership continues to slowly decline, however New Year’s Eve continues to be one of those immediate experiences that viewers want to experience in the moment, so I suspect that live coverage, whether transmitted via broadcast, cable, or streaming, will continue for many more new years to come.
Go Watch This!
Saltburn (2023) - Probably the most divisive film of the year, this isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea but I thought it was great. It’s one of those films that’s best going in knowing nothing (or maybe only watching the trailer), but I especially want to call out Barry Keoghan, Rosamund Pike, and Richard E. Grant’s performances, fantastic. Excited what project writer/director Emerald Fennell will create next. Currently in theaters and streaming on Prime Video
The Doctor Who Holiday Specials (2023) - Thanks to a deal with Disney to co-finance future seasons of this venerable and long-running sci-fi show, the four specials are both a closing of one chapter of Who history and a great jumping off point for the next. My personal favorite of the four specials is the second one, Wild Blue Yonder, because I believe Doctor Who is at its best when it combines horror with a ‘base under siege’ story, and this one really landed both. Although don’t sleep on Ncuti Gatwa in the third and fourth specials, he’s going to be great as the Fifteenth Doctor. Available on Disney+
Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!
*Steamboat Willie (1928), the first appearance of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, will finally enter the public domain on January 1 2024, after 96 long years, along with a number of other historical works. So for all of you people out there who always wanted to create your own adaptation of Lady Chatterly’s Lover starring a gloveless black & white Mickey Mouse, now’s your chance. Copyright laws in the US are ridiculous.
**Disclaimer - I currently work at Peacock
***This is the one thing Guy Lombardo and I have in common, as I also have an official commendation from the United States Congress. A friend and former roommate once worked in a congressperson’s office and the representative gave me one in recognition of my birthday. See, Congress DOES work!
****I didn’t learn this fact until my mid-20’s when I was watching TV with my dad and a music video of Three Dog Night appeared and he nonchalantly states that’s where my name came from. One of the lead singer’s first name is Cory. That’s the power of television, kids.