Too Much TV: Happy News Dump Day

Tuesday somehow managed to cram a week's worth of announcements into a 10-hour day

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, April 29th 2025:

A SXSW UPDATE
I wrote yesterday about the recent changes in top management at South by Southwest and today Nicole Sperling at the NY Times followed up with a story that includes some enlightening comments from Nick Barbaro, a co-founder of the festival and a board member:

Penske set ambitious goals for the 2025 South by Southwest events. But the most recent festival, held at the beginning of March, didn’t reach those benchmarks, Mr. Barbaro said. A similar situation happened in 2024, and the festival laid of 23 employees then.

“The 2025 event marked the highest ever sponsorship revenue in the history of the company,” Penske said in a statement.

Mr. Barbaro said one of the key reasons the festival chose to accept an investment from Penske and MRC in 2021 was that Jay Penske, Penske’s chief executive, said he didn’t intend to meddle with the organization.

“Jay specifically said: ‘This is a partnership. We are working with you. We don’t intend to change anything,’” Mr. Barbaro said in an interview. “He pointed to his publications, which he allows to run pretty independently. He doesn’t agree with everything Rolling Stone or The Hollywood Reporter writes, but they have their management and they do what they want.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, only one of Penske’s publications, Billboard, had reported on the shake-up at the festival.

But the most memorable new fact for me was this passage, which really illustrates PMC's attitude towards its employees:

Penske recently revamped the company’s severance policy, according to two people with knowledge of the change. Employees who had been with the company for over a year used to be offered two weeks of pay for every year employed. But two weeks ago, that policy changed to offer employees only one week’s pay for every year employed.

This change likely cost 4-6 months worth of severance to some of the people who were let go this week.

CONGRATS TO CNN ON ITS CONTINUING EFFORT TO BE 'NON-PARTISAN'

PRESIDENT TRUMP SEEKS TO FIRE THREE MEMBERS OF THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING
NPR's David Folkenflik reported on Tuesday that the Corporation For Public Broadcasting filed a lawsuit against President Trump, after he announced on Monday that he was removing three of the five board members:

At a court hearing Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss ordered both sides to file arguments on CPB's motion for a temporary restraining order that would prevent Trump's decree from taking effect until the case was fully heard.

Under the law that created CPB more than five decades ago, the president has the authority to appoint members of its board, in consultation with Senate leaders of both parties.

The law does not, however, establish any authority for a president to remove them. As the CPB lawsuit notes, that law does not include the clause common to U.S. government agencies that its board members "serve at the pleasure of the President".

Indeed, the law specifically states that the CPB "will not be an agency or establishment of the United States Government" and sets up a series of measures intended to "afford the maximum protection from extraneous interference and control."

This move seems to be driven by the fact that while the White House wants to strip all of the federal funding from the CPB, that is not a popular move, even in some Republican circles. But removing three board members would allow the administration to do an end run around the funding issue. Because removing three board members would leave just two people on the board, preventing a quorum. And that would prevent the board from making any decisions on funding or expenditures.

SOMETIMES YOU CAN OVERTHINK THE PROMOTION OF A SHOW
AMC Networks CEO Kristin Dolan spoke Tuesday at a Media Council luncheon at the Paley Center for Media in New York and she shared a fascinating explanation of one of her big takeaways from the recent licensing deal AMC made with Netflix:

“One of our big learnings from Dark Winds,” she said, was the way Netflix promoted the drama series. With its third season recently concluded and a fourth in production, the mystery has wowed critics and boasts a rich literary heritage and eye-catching locations on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. Yet Netflix staffers offered very pragmatic advice to AMC Networks, which Dolan recalled as, “It’s a cop show. People don’t care that it’s the ’70s, they don’t care that there’s a beautiful woman who’s a police officer. It’s a cop show. Show the uniform.” When the tile art was adjusted to reflect that guidance, Dolan said, “you could see in the algorithm that it drove more viewership because people were looking for cop shows.”

That A-B testing of tiles is one of the things Netflix is doing constantly, and it's funny sometimes to see the tile change in a way that highlights some peripheral character or plotline of a show. But when done correctly, it can definitely drive viewership.

TWEET OF THE DAY

WHY 'SINNERS' IS THE ARGUMENT FOR THE DEI HOLLYWOOD NEEDS
While the piece is technically about the movie Sinners, this Eric Deggans take on Hollywood's problematic relationship with non-white talent is pretty applicable to the television business as well:

Too much of the press which reports on Hollywood proceeds from the perspective of the people who run and own everything. One of the underappreciated consequences of the hollowing out of modern news outlets is that reporting on Hollywood has become much more specialized. So trade publications and hyper-focused news outlets like The Wrap, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and Puck are leading coverage of Hollywood issues. And too many of these outlets, chasing a wealthy and monetizable audience of Hollywood players, create coverage which reflects their assumptions and biases back to them. I remember seeing this many years ago, when Deadline ran an ill-considered piece asking if the push for ethnic diversity in casting TV shows was “About Time or Too Much of a Good Thing?”

ODDS AND SODS
* The Jensen Ackles, Eric Dane and Jessica Camacho action thriller Countdown will premiere Wednesday, June 25th on Prime Video. The season finale will premiere Wednesday, September 3rd.

* Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, co-hosts of the Las Culturistas podcast, are taking their Las Culturistas Culture Awards to Bravo for its first televised broadcast. Las Culturistas Culture Awards celebrates culture’s most iconic and consequential moments of the year.

* Netflix has renewed North Of North for a second season.

* The new series Virgins is "a wild, warm, and wonderfully awkward ride with four adults who have yet to experience sexual intercourse, as they navigate love, intimacy, and self-discovery in their 30s and 40s. After years of missed connections and dating horror stories, these late bloomers are done playing it safe. They’re stepping outside their comfort zones and taking big swings to finally go all the way, emotionally and physically. From navigating awkward first dates to exploring a bondage class and working with an intimacy partner they’re putting it all on the line in hopes of finally sealing the deal." The series premieres Monday, June 9th on TLC.

* PBS CEO Paula Kerger will appear at the Axios News Shapers event on Wednesday morning, where she'll talk about the Trump administration's efforts to defund public media.

* CBS has pushed the series premiere of Einstein back a year, into the 2026-2027 season.

* ABC is bringing back Match Game once again, this time with Martin Short as the host. That most recent version of the show was hosted by Alec Baldwin, and it ran for five seasons, from 2016 through 2021.

* Season two of Nine Perfect Strangers will premiere Wednesday, May 21st on Hulu.

* Star Wars: Tales From The Underground will debut Friday, May 2nd on Fortnite, two days ahead of its debut on Disney+.

* Season six of Ugliest House In America premieres Monday, June 2nd on HGTV.

* The two-part docuseries Call Her Alex will premiere Tuesday, June 10th on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ globally.

* On Sunday June 1st, a collection of classic Hitchcock films will be available to stream in the US on Netflix featuring some of his most iconic works including Vertigo, Rear Window, Frenzy, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Family Plot, The Birds and more. The collection will also include films inspired by his lasting influence, such as Us and Barbarian, as well as a narrative feature, Hitchcock, directed by Sacha Gervasi.

WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW

TUESDAY, APRIL 29TH:
Castle Impossible Series Premiere (HGTV)
Pati Jinich Explores Panamericana Series Premiere (PBS)
Polyfamily Series Premiere (TLC)
Red Bull Soapbox Race Series Premiere (Discovery)
Wear Whatever The F You Want Series Premiere (Prime Video)

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30TH, 2025:
Asterix & Obelix: The Big Fight (Netflix)
Careme Series Premiere (Apple TV+)
Celebrity Wheel Of Fortune Season Premiere (ABC)
Cheat: Unfinished Business Series Premiere (Netflix)
Exterritorial (Netflix)
In The Kitchen With Harry Hamlin Season Two Premiere (IFC)
Jeopardy! Masters Season Premiere (ABC)
The Eternaut (Netflix)
The Rose Of Versailles (Netflix)
Turning Point: The War In Vietnam (Netflix)

SEE YOU ON WEDNESDAY!