Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Wednesday, February 16th, 2022

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Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Wednesday, February 16th, 2022. 

My apologies for the lateness of today's newsletter. Some technical issues behind-the-scenes delayed everything a few hours. 

HBO/MAX BOSS CASEY BLOYS ON WHAT SHOWS ARE COMING (AND NOT COMING) 
The Hollywood Reporter has an interview with HBO & HBO Max programming chief Casey Bloys and he answers a bunch of content-related questions, including updates on some long-rumored shows:

What about the rumblings of a Sopranos prequel series for HBO Max. Is there any more to come from The Sopranos or Many Saints of Newark?

Series-wise, not that I’m talking to David about. I don’t know where they left off, whether there were going to be more movies or what, so to your larger question about a Sopranos series, there’s nothing there. And with The Many Saints, there hadn’t been any conversations about it.

With And Just Like That and Many Saints both successful, where are you with other announced revivals of iconic HBO shows like Six Feet Under and True Blood? Now that you can see what HBO library content is clicking with Max subscribers, how much does that play a role in what you revive next?

Believe it or not I don’t my spend time thinking about what shows to reboot. I just want to point out that if you look at the last year, between Mare of Easttown, The White Lotus and Succession and Insecure and now Euphoria and Gilded Age and going into Winning Time, there’s no reboots. In most those cases, they weren’t based on existing IP. I do want to take a moment to make clear that we don’t spend our days thinking about what to reboot because it’s a tricky business bringing a show back. But to your question, True Blood, there were a couple ideas in development but nothing has really come to the fore. As far as Six Feet Under, I personally don’t think that’s a good idea. I think there are some shows that are better left, in Six Feet Under’s case, dead — or finished. So no other news on that front.

He was asked a bunch of interesting questions, although the answer to most of them "we haven't had serious discussions about that yet." I did want to highlight this second exchange:

What’s the status of Contraband, the J.J. Abrams show formerly known as Demimonde? It was picked up in February 2018 and has already changed showrunners …

J.J. and his team is hard at work writing Contraband. We have great scripts and they’re thinking about production plans. But it’s a massive show so it takes a lot of thought around how to build it.

J.J. is doing another Star Trek for Paramount and is busy with Justice League Dark, Subject to Change (an original), Duster and has a new show for Apple. What’s the priority and how are you managing him at this point considering he’s doing stuff for your competitor (though it may be a Warners show)?

Bad Robot is a big producer. It’s not like they can only do one thing at a time. I don’t want to call out what their priority is — I wouldn’t speak for them — but I feel like everything we’re working on with them feels like priority number one to us. That’s what you want in a producer. You don’t want to feel that your show is second fiddle to something else. They certainly make it feel like every show is top priority.

AND IN THE CATEGORY OF 'NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED'
During an investor meeting on Tuesday, Paramount unveiled its name change and an impressive amount of upcoming original content for Paramount+ and Showtime. Company executives stressed that they were focused on maximizing efforts to build the streaming business, even if it meant spending more money in the short-to-medium term to get there.

I've criticized ViacomCBS a great deal in this newsletter. I don't believe you can be a content arms merchant while still building a top-line streaming service. I've been critical of Paramount+'s UX and the service's perplexing decisions when it comes to content discovery. And then there are Viacom’s linear channels, which are in a ratings free-fall.

But I thought yesterday's announcements were overall a step in the right direction. Lots of new programming, much of it building on familiar IP. Paramount will be walking away from a great deal of Pay-1 Window money in order to retain streaming first-run rights for Paramount theatrical movies. The company is making a lot of good decisions, although this is ViacomCBSParamount. So the execution will be the real test.

Of course, investors reacted to "the company is going to spend more money" by selling off ViacomCBS stock, which dropped in price after yesterday's announcement from about $36 a share to just above $28.

Sufficiently spooked by the drop, company executives were speaking with business journalists today trying to spin things. But did they talk confidently about their decisions and express belief the company was headed in the right decision? No, they did now. Instead, they lead with "hey, now we'll be easier to sell:"

I assume that this messaging was supposed to settle down skittish investors, but all it did was remind them that the primary problem with this argument is no matter how you restructure the company, there aren't any logical buyers who have a large pocketbook as well as the need for a media company with both streaming and linear TV assets.

At the same time, I remain perplexed by investors and media analysts who complain the streaming business is a terrible one to be in and that the margins are much narrower than they are in the traditional linear TV business. When I hear these complaints, I always want to ask critics what they would do instead of investing large amounts of money into the content creation business right now.

The linear television business still provides the best margins, but it's also a business in decline. It's impossible to imagine any major media company continuing to thrive in the long-term without a viable streaming strategy. And while there aren't a lot of lessons we've learned from the growth of the streaming sector, one almost certainty is that you need a steady flow of original content in order to grow your streaming service.

Yes, spending a lot of money on original content is painful. It lowers margins and it's unlikely that the cash burn is going to slow down anytime soon. But that is the business that we are all moving into, whether various investors want to or not. I think many investors look back on the golden days of the media business and see that captive audience and the massive revenue they threw off as the norm. It's becoming increasingly clear that those days may have been an aberration. Or at least, a scenario that won't continue as we move into the digital entertainment era.

ODDS AND SODS
* Peacock is premiering the new series Below Deck: Down Under on March 17th.

* Apple TV+ announced a new four-part true crime docuseries. The Big Conn tells the true story of the larger-than-life attorney, Eric C. Conn, who defrauded the government over half a billion dollars in the largest Social Security fraud case in history.

* ABC News has named Quiana Burns as Executive Producer of Tamron Hall.

WHAT'S NEW FOR WEDNESDAY
Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:

Dr. Pimple Popper Season Premiere (TLC)
Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (Netflix)
Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making Of Eternals (Disney+)
Nova: Great Mammoth Mystery (PBS)
Secrets Of Summer (Netflix)
Stuck Series Premiere (TLC)
Swap Shop Season Two Premiere (Netflix)
Thirty-Nine (Netflix)

Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.

SEE YOU THURSDAY! 

If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.