Too Much TV: When It Comes To News Coverage, Words Matter
A detention camp by any other name....
Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Monday, July 14th 2025:
PRODUCTION NOTES
Just as an FYI, tomorrow's newsletter will be review-heavy (or review-forward, if you're a Food Network fan). I posted a number of reviews over the weekend and I have more in the pipeline for this week and I am going to be highlighting them here. I don't do a great job of linking to pieces I write for the website and several readers have reminded me of that fact recently. So consider yourself warned.
THE ACCELERATION NO ONE GREENLIT
The newsletter Open Gardens has a really fascinating piece on the growth of "microdramas," short-form scripted content that is booming at a time when much of Hollywood feels as if it's stuck in neutral:
Most of these productions fall into a $250K to $1M budget range. That sweet spot is intentional: just under the thresholds that trigger union minimums or studio scrutiny, and lean enough to stay agile. They move quickly, guided by feedback loops between creators and audiences, not greenlights.
These shoots are structured and recurring. They're not gig work in the traditional sense, but they are happening completely outside of the employment and labor models that built Hollywood.
California just committed $750 million in tax rebates, with a 35% incentive to keep production local. That could theoretically pull some microdrama productions above the radar. But there's a catch: once you trigger those rebates, you become visible to union organizers. That's a line many microdrama producers still aren't ready to cross.
The result? A race between incentives and invisibility.
When you mention short-form video in Hollywood, you almost always hear some variation of a Quibi joke. But the problem with Quibi wasn't the idea of releasing short-form videos. It was believing that the best way to build an audience was by overpaying a bunch of stars to produce half-ass productions they only did in order to cash a check.
THE DEPARTMENT OF WORDS MATTER
I have a lot of off-the-record conversations over the course of any given week. It's the best way for me to keep my pulse on what's really going in the industry. And I am fine with those restrictions, although every so often the conversation veers into a topic that is important enough for me to ask if we can at shift at least part of it to being on background. Because it's an issue that I feel is important and I don't want to try and figure out ways to not break the off-the-record request.
That happened today and the topic revolved around language. Specifically, whether the media should be describing the ICE detention camp in Florida by the Trump Administration-preferred name "Alligator Alcatraz." I was speaking with someone at one of the cable news networks who would have some sway on the language used on the network. And this person was not at all convinced of my argument.
Their explanation for using “Alligator Alcatraz” was fairly straightforward:
1) It's how the Trump Administration describes it, including officials from DHS and ICE,
2) The network often (but not always) describes it as "the so-called Alligator Alcatraz,"
3) And finally, not calling it that would be seen as a "political decision" by some viewers
My response was that calling the facility "Alligator Alcatraz" was itself a political decision. Including the word "Alcatraz" is meant to invoke a comparison to the original Alcatraz, and paint a mental picture of a facility filled with hardened criminals and murderers. And not even ICE is claiming that's the case at this facility.
I suggested that if the White House decided to rename the press area used by the White House Correspondents as the "Media Lies" area, the press would not go along with that suggestion. "Because it wouldn't be truthful," was the answer I received. "Yes, and neither is Alligator Alcatraz."
I argued that describing the facility as the "Everglades Internment Camp" is more accurate and is as non-partisan a choice as anyone can craft given the situation. What followed was a long conversation back-and-forth about names for the facility. But at the end of it all, what became clear was that while the executive agreed with much of my general premise, using a different name would spark a great deal of pushback from conservatives and no one in their organization was going to go out of their way to "poke the bear."
And I understand that in the abstract. However, I also understand that each small decision a news organization makes out of fear only makes if more likely that one day a request will come that you can't accept. And those little capitulations make it more likely you'll fold when confronted with a tough challenge.
APPARENTLY WE ARE NOW DOING EXCLUSIVES FOR TRAILER VIEWING NUMBERS
PRIME VIDEO & VIMEO REMOVED DOCUMENTARY AFTER BEING THREATENED WITH LEGAL ACTION BY UNITEDHEALTH
One of the fallacies of Hollywood is that the bigger the media company, the easier it can be to stand up to frivolous lawsuits and threats of legal action. The truth is that their size makes it more likely they will fold under pressure. Because when you're a massive company, no one title or person is big enough to impact your corporate bottom line. So it's easier (and cheaper) just to fold and move on.
That is certainly what seems to have happened in this case:
Mary Strause, a filmmaker in Wisconsin, logged on to Amazon’s video-streaming service in late May so she could share a link to her latest project, a docuseries that harshly criticized the U.S. health care industry. She was surprised to see that her video had vanished.
Ms. Strause had no way of knowing it, but the video had been taken down after a law firm working for UnitedHealth Group, one of the country’s largest health care companies, sent a letter warning Amazon and another streaming service, Vimeo, that the video was defamatory.
It was the latest salvo in an aggressive and wide-ranging campaign to quiet critics. In recent months, UnitedHealth has targeted traditional journalists and news outlets, a prominent investor, a Texas doctor and activists like Ms. Strause and her father, who complained about a UnitedHealth subsidiary.
Why does this matter? Given the possibility of legal action (or the threat of it), what is the likelihood the soon-to-be-new management at Paramount Global would sign off on a 60 Minutes expose of some troubling UnitedHealth practice? It's important to note that in most cases UnitedHealth isn't arguing the journalism is wrong. They just don't like the news that is being reported.
TWEET OF THE DAY
ODDS AND SODS
* I posted a piece earlier today based on data from Hub Entertainment Research, which showed that overall, TV viewers felt streaming TV was a good value and they would consider cutting back on live events such as concerts and theme parks before they dropped their favorite streaming services. A lot of good data and plenty of charts.
* X's AI Grok stopped responding to me after I asked about the results of the 2020 presidential election.
* Season ten of Ready To Love is set to premiere Friday, August 1st on OWN.
* The new seven-episode sports docuseries SEC Football: Any Given Saturday will premiere Tuesday, August 5th on Netflix.
* Sesame Workshop said an unknown hacker was responsible for posting antisemitic and racist messages to Elmo’s X account. Of course, the bigger question is why is Sesame Workshop still posting on X?
WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW
TUESDAY, JULY 15TH:
* Customer Wars Season Six Premiere (A&E)
* Frontline: Trump's Power And The Rule Of Law (PBS)
* Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction Of Jodi Huisentruit (Hulu)
* 911: Did The Killer Call? Series Premiere (Investigation Discovery)
* Road Wars Season Five Premiere (A&E)
* Trainwreck: Balloon Boy (Netflix)
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16TH:
* Amy Bradley Is Missing (Netflix) - (first look video)
* Bullet Bullet Series Premiere (Hulu)
* Low Life Series Premiere (Hulu)
* Pigs (Britbox)
* The Summer I Turned Pretty (Prime Video)
* To Catch A Smuggler Season Premiere (NatGeo)
* 2025 ESPY Awards (ABC)
* Tyler Perry's Sistas Season Nine Premiere (BET+)
SEE YOU ON TUESDAY!