Putting the 'News' in 'Newsletter'
Yep, it's another one of these again
Industry News Items
Hey everyone! As you might have guessed the run-up to the holidays has taken up more of my time than I had expected, hence the lack of regular posting. My goal is to get back to a regular schedule in the new year. But in the meantime lots of news has happened since I last wrote, so let’s dive into it!
Actor Andre Braugher has died at the age of 61. A great actor with an irresistible on screen presence and velvety voice, Braugher is known to more recent audiences as Captain Holt on the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013-21), but it was his portrayal of another cop, Frank Pembleton, on the drama Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-99), that cemented his legacy as one of the finest actors to ever appear on our televisions. 61 is way too young, my heart goes out to his family and friends.
Netflix has released a slew of data on the performance of its entire catalog covering the first six months of 2023, and promises to produce such a report twice yearly. Publications and analysts are pouring over the data and giving their takes on it, so why shouldn’t I? While the (somewhat sudden) transparency is welcome, especially since streaming metrics were one of the contentious points of the strikes this past summer, centering the metrics around ‘hours viewed’ doesn’t provide a very full picture. Shows with shorter runtimes such as comedies, shows with shorter episode counts like most Netflix Originals, feature films and comedy specials won’t have as large of numbers as drama series or series with a multitude of seasons and episodes. Also, ‘hours viewed’ isn’t even the same metric Netflix uses to calculate their Top Ten lists on their service; that would be ‘views’, which is hours viewed divided by runtime which adjusts for differences in title length. It’s my guess that this report is meant to simultaneously push other streamers to self-report similar metrics (in order to make Netflix look better in comparison) while still obscuring the data that is actually used by Netflix to determine if they believe a show is successful or not, and therefore should be renewed or cancelled. Uncle Ted is playing a bit of ‘having our cake and eating it too’, so we’ll see how well that works out for the ‘Flix.
File under DO NOT WANT - Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount are reportedly in early discussions about a possible merger. This would be bad. Like, really bad. It’s clear that Paramount’s size is much smaller compared to the other major studios and streaming players, and in order to survive long term a merger or selloff is more likely than not. But in the humble opinion of yours truly, having WBD be the one to scoop up Paramount increases the likelihood that neither entity survives long term. WBD financed its last merger with massive amounts of debt, debt that has only gotten much more expensive in this current era of higher interest rates. Likewise, WBD CEO David Zaslav has proven (to me, at least) to be bad at his job. Like, really bad. His cost-cutting measures are penny wise/pound foolish, his industry relationships are in tatters because he keeps shelving films for relatively minuscule tax write-offs (not to mention allowing Nolan to fly off to Universal where Oppenheimer took in a billion at the box office; just imagine Warner’s 2023 box office if they had both Oppenheimer and Barbie), and while he may understand the cable business he clearly doesn’t understand the studio business. This merger, if it were to happen, would lead to less jobs, less content getting made, and increases the chances of WBD/Paramount not being able to get out from under their combined giant pile of debt, forcing yet another sale or merger in the next few years, further reducing the number of studios. Also, selfishly, I don’t want Zaslav anywhere near my beloved Star Trek.
Go Watch This!
Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-99) - An all-time television great, I still can’t believe this David Simon-created masterpiece aired on broadcast television in the 1990s. Any fan of The Wire (or fan of excellent television, period) should track this show down and start watching it immediately. Excellent performances, cracking dialogue, and owning up to the unfortunate real fact that some murders are never solved and at the end of the day cops aren’t mythical archetypes but people with bad marriages, bills to pay, and just want to clock out at the end of each day just like the rest of us. The S1E5 episode “Three Men and Adena” is a masterclass on acting from Braugher. Sadly not available digitally*, so go track down the series on DVD, you won’t regret it
The Lady from Shanghai (1947) - Watched this for the first time this week, a slice of film noir produced, written, and directed by Orson Welles (after kinda sorta stealing the director’s chair from gimmick master William Castle), it stars Welles and Rita Hayworth in the title role (Welles’ ex-wife, they divorced the same year the film was made). It’s a pretty good film with Wellesian style, even though the studio meddling by Columbia is pretty apparent. Lots of, shall we say, ‘interesting’ choices were made in this film, from Welles’ unique Irish accent, Hayworth trading in her trademark long red hair for a short platinum blonde cut, to an almost farcical courtroom scene to set off the third act. It’s a shame that the climactic amusement park sequence was so heavily edited, the sets and camerawork make it a highlight of American noir. Available to buy/rent from digital storefronts and on physical media
Thanks for reading, and Happy Holidays!
*Maybe there is hope after all - since it was shot on film an HD remaster with a combined Blu-ray and streaming release would be amazing