Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Monday, November 14th, 2022

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Monday, November 14th, 2022.

CNN'S INTERVIEW WITH JEFF BEZOS WAS SHAMEFUL PR NONSENSE
One of the go-to moves for crisis PR firms is to make moves that will hopefully offset bad news from your client. If you're concerned the news cycle might focus on some especially uncomfortable fact (say, Amazon plans to lay off 10,000 people), then the trick is to get some interview or piece of news out there ahead of time in hopes of burying the bad stuff as much as possible.

That seems to be the primary context for a recent Jeff Bezos interview conducted by CNN’s Chloe Melas the same day that Amazon made its layoff announcement.

Jeff Mirkinson's Discourse Blog has a pretty brutal takedown of the interview, during which Bezos announced he is personally donating $100 million to Dolly Parton's charity organization. The entire piece is a must-read, but this excerpt is just embarrassing for the network:

Here, in order, are all of the questions that Melas asked Bezos in the above clip:

“Talk to me about choosing Dolly Parton.”

“The nation is very divided right now on many issues. Do you think that the American dream is something that really is still attainable right now?”

“You know, when you go and you look at your net worth, it's too much money to even spend in a lifetime. Do you plan to give away the majority of your wealth in your lifetime?”

“How do you decide where to put your efforts?”

“Talk to me about this team that you two have built together.”

“We are in some tough economic times. Some people say that perhaps we're already in a recession. Do you think that we're in one and what is your advice for small business owners?”

“Well, you tweeted, baton down the hatches. That's what you mean by that?”

“Any idea in terms of what you're hearing or just with your expertise as to how long this recession could last?”

That’s it. I won’t go through Bezos’ answers, because they are worthless. (Essentially, he said that deciding where to give all your money is hard, and also that people should maybe not make too many big purchases because the economy’s going down the drain. Thanks Jeff. Oh, and he decried people being mean on social media, which is rich coming from someone who personally instigated a pile-on against a Black woman because she dared to criticize the Queen. )

Yikes.

THE STREAMING VIDEO BUSINESS AT A GLANCE
Racket is a local sorta alt-news web site based here in the Twin Cities. They have a regular feature in which someone will anonymously share their salary and household expenses. I thought this section on subscriptions in the most recent piece is pretty scary if you run a streaming service:

As an FYI, the 27-year-old communications person writing this has a salary of $60K and their partner's salary is $73,000. So if they don't feel the need to pay for their own subscription, what does that say about the streaming business.

And for what it's worth, I'd love to know which streaming services they would pay for if they were forced to do so.

CBS ANNOUNCES ITS MIDSEASON SCHEDULE
Monday, January 2nd:
8 pm NCIS (winter premiere, special time)
9 pm NCIS: Hawai’i (winter premiere, special time)
10 pm NCIS: Los Angeles (winter premiere, special night and time)

Tuesday, January 3rd:
8 pm FBI (winter premiere)
9 pm FBI: International (winter premiere)
10 pm FBI: Most Wanted (winter premiere)

Wednesday, January 4th:
9 pm Tough as Nails Season 4 premiere (two hours)

Thursday, January 5th:
8 pm Young Sheldon (winter premiere)
8:30 pm Ghosts (winter premiere)
9 pm So Help Me Todd (winter premiere)
10 pm CSI: Vegas (winter premiere)

Friday, January 6th:
8 pm S.W.A.T. (winter premiere)
9 pm Fire Country (winter premiere)
10 pm Blue Bloods (winter premiere)

Sunday, January 8th:
7:30 pm ET / 7 pm PT 60 Minutes (winter premiere)
8:30 pm ET / 8 pm PT East New York (winter premiere)

TWEET OF THE DAY
The Twitter account @TVShowGraphs should be on your radar. The graphs are all original and look at TV data is some unexpected ways. For instance, this graph of Nielsen Top 10 data by year and genre:

ODDS AND SODS
* 72-year-old former late night icon Jay Leno has been seriously injured by a fire that broke out in his car garage. "I got some serious burns from a gasoline fire," read a statement from Leno. "I am OK. Just need a week or two to get back on my feet."

* The Paramount Network drama Yellowstone delivered a cumulative viewership of 12.1 million live-plus-same-day viewers, the biggest overnight launch yet for the Kevin Costner neo-Western.

* Australian TV networks are meeting with IOC officials to negotiate on broadcast rights for the 2024 (Paris), 2028 (Los Angeles), and 2032 (Brisbane, Australia) Olympics.

MY PR DAYS OF YES
Like most reporters, I receive a lot of blind PR pitches every day. Some of them might conceivably be a fit for my site. And some are...well...off-topic.

Slate's Dan Kois decided to say "yes" to every PR pitch he received one day and the resulting piece is really fascinating. And not just because many of these clients are paying hundreds (or thousands) of dollars a month to obtain one or two write-ups. But mostly, Kois found the people he spoke with were worth talking to. Even if their products or companies weren't really a great fit for Slate:

The fact is, even the most successful startups endure rocky stretches. Sometimes you find you’ve got tens of thousands of handbags piled up in your St. Louis–area office, and you just need to move some product before the end of the year. Tami Lange started the purse company Save the Girls on her 50th birthday. She was inspired to create her purses, which feature transparent pockets for your phone, after her kids lost their phones and her sister told them to just tuck them into their bra straps. Lange still sounded outraged five years later: “I told my sister, ‘You have breast cancer! You can’t keep your phone in your bra!’ ” (Though the American Cancer Society notes that there’s no evidence that phones cause cancer, Lange saw a Dr. Oz documentary about it.) The company’s name has dual meanings, she says: “The breasts are called your girls, and my girls are my girls, and I want to protect all of them.”

From a TV standpoint, I am most amused by the emails I receive that appear to be nothing more than proof the publicist reached out to X number of journalists. "Hey, I wanted to put this show on your radar. Let me know if you need a screener or want to talk to someone about it. Oh, and by the way, the show premieres tonight."

Still, I love publicists. Not only because I couldn't do my job without them, but also because I could never do their job.

WHAT'S NEW FOR MONDAY:

Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:

American Experience: Taken Hostage (PBS)
Celebrity IOU Season Premiere (HGTV)
E! News Series Premiere (E!)
Stutz (Netflix)
Teletubbies (2022 Reboot) (Netflix)

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

SEE YOU TUESDAY!

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