Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Friday, December 2nd, 2022

No, I don't do a "Best shows of the year" list.

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Friday, December 2nd, 2022.

PROGRAMMING NOTE
As it typically the case on Fridays, today's newsletter is a bit shorter than the other editions.

TV SHOWS AUDIENCES MISSED IN 2022
I refuse to do Top Ten or even Top Twenty end-of-year lists. In part because most sites just create them as clickbait. But also, it's impossible to quantify "best" in an era where great shows are being released pretty much every week.

But I am creating some lists that I hope will provide some context and content discovery for 2022. One of them is a list of TV shows that were overlooked when they were released this year. Maybe the marketing was terrible, perhaps they just came out at a very competitive time of the year. But for whatever reason, they didn't get the attention (or audience) they deserved.

While I have my own list, I'd love to hear from you. What shows that were released in 2022 do you think deserved a bit more love from the audience? Send your thoughts along in the comments below or just respond to this newsletter. I'll compile them for a piece in the newsletter and on AllYourScreens.com.

If you need a reminder of what was released this year, check out this depressingly long complete list of 2022 premieres. 

PEACOCK IS DOING REALLY WELL! AND WE HAVE THIS GROUP OF VAGUE STATISTICS TO PROVE IT!
The Hollywood entertainment trades do some things very well. But being skeptical about viewer numbers is not one of them. There seems to be a general consensus that even the vaguest viewer data points are news, even if the reader would be hard-pressed to explain the "news" after reading the story.

Variety just posted a story headlined "'Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin' Is Peacock’s Biggest Comedy Launch to Date," and the data included in the story is so lightweight, the entire thing could float away in a 5 mile-per-hour light breeze.

Think I'm being harsh? This is the opening paragraph:

From Thanksgiving Day on Nov. 24 to Sunday, Nov. 28, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming reached an audience of 120.7 million people. Between holiday content, sports, late night and more, programming across NBCU’s different platforms bested several of its own records.

So this is the total viewing number across Broadcast and streaming, 24/7 for the entire week? I wouldn't even know how to parse those numbers. There's not even context comparing a similar collection of numbers, ie, "that up 5% from the previous week."

Next is the ever-popular "this is the most-viewed streaming show in our history" claim, which never provides any actual numbers:

And when it comes to the streamer’s original content, the Nov. 23 debut of “Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin” marks its biggest-ever comedy launch, though exact numbers weren’t provided by NBCU. Previously, that achievement belonged to “Killing It” starring Craig Robinson.

One thing is clear: combining the viewing numbers of NBC and Peacock manages to make both platforms SOUND more successful, while simultaneously managing to not provide any useful context:

An obvious highlight of the holiday weekend was the 89th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which this year featured a performance by Mariah Carey. With 27 million viewers across the NBC airing and the simulcast on Peacock, it was NBCU’s biggest entertainment telecast of the 2022-23 TV season so far both overall and within the adults 18-49 demographic. And while exact viewership on Peacock wasn’t available, NBCU says that this was the streamer’s most popular “simulstream” event ever.

To add to the confusion, the article goes on to discuss late night and sports ratings. And there's no indication as to whether those numbers are NBC only, or so sort of aggregation of broadcast and streaming.

But other than that, it's a super useful article.

ANOTHER BAD YEAR FOR LINEAR TELEVISION
The new Moffett Nathanson cord-cutting report was just released and the cable bundle was beat like a pinata in 2022. Year-over-year cable/DBS/telco-TV subscriptions fell 10% to 62.2M households, bringing penetration down to just 50% of all TV homes. The industry has lost 35 million households in the past five years alone.

Virtual MVPD additions bring the overall pay-TV universe to 78,496,000 subscribers. But that still represents a loss of 9.74 million pay-TV accounts since Q3 2020.

TWEET OF THE DAY

ODDS AND SODS
* HBO has canceled Los Espookys after two seasons.

* OTOH, Apple TV+ has renewed the Gugu Mbatha-Raw drama Surface for a second season.

* NBC has ordered an additional nine episodes of its new hit comedy series Lopez vs Lopez, bringing the first season total to 22 episodes.

WHAT'S NEW FOR FRIDAY:

A Big Fat Family Christmas (Hallmark)
Candified: Home For The Holidays (Cooking Channel)
Christmas With The Campbells (AMC+)
Cloudy With A Chance Of Christmas (Lifetime)
Darby & The Dead (Hulu)
Dead End (Netflix)
Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (Disney+)
Firefly Lane Season Two Part A Premiere (Netflix)
Hot Skull (Netflix)
Hotel For The Holidays (Prime Video)
Lady Chatterly's Lover (Netflix)
Matt Rogers: Have You Heard Of Christmas? (Showtime)
My Unorthodox Life Season Premiere (Netflix)
Our America: Lowballed (ABC News/Hulu)
Pentatonix: Around The World For The Holidays (Disney+)
Riches Series Premiere (Prime Video)
Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (Netflix)
Sean Patton: Number One (Peacock)
Slow Horses Season Two Premiere (Apple TV+)
Sr. (Netflix)
The Great American Baking Show Celebrity Holiday (Roku Channel)
The Peripheral Season One Finale (Prime Video)
Three Pines Series Premiere (Prime Video)
Warriors Of Future (Netflix)
Your Christmas Or Mine? (Prime Video)

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

SEE YOU MONDAY!

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