Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Tuesday, November 8th, 2022

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television.

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, November 8th, 2022.

IT'S ELECTION NIGHT
I've read several big pieces in the Hollywood trades this week in which various streaming executives tout their "digital first" approach to election coverage. NBC News Now execs seem to be especially eager to discuss their live coverage and how they are working to reach the streaming audience, which tends to skew somewhat younger than that for cable and broadcast news.

And yet, in the cases of NBC News Now, CBSN and ABC, everyone's streaming election coverage is live until the broadcast networks start their coverage. And that's when all of the streaming services cut to for the duration.

On one level, I get it. The broadcast teams are the highest-profile, most resourced coverage available. And the various broadcast networks want to include that streaming audience when they send out their press releases tomorrow bragging about the total audience size for their election coverage.

But if you are trying to build a younger audience, trying to lure people into a new habit, offering up Lester Holt or Savannah Guthrie is not going to cut it. This feels like the time to try something different, even if it's low-tech and a bit messy.

IT'S ELECTION NIGHT, PART TWO
Speaking of streaming audiences, imagine that you are a cord cutter or you just don't to wait for the broadcast network election coverage to start. So you decide to fire up the TV and try and find election coverage on one of the major streamers.

I checked about an hour before the first polls closed and the only major streamer that had an obvious link to election coverage was Paramount+:

Which service has the worst election night promotions? Weirdly, despite the fact I have Hulu Live TV, that service was promoting Reboot in its main home page promo slot.

But Peacock might have made the most inexplicable choices. The service wasn't mentioning election coverage at all and unless you went into its channels hub, you wouldn't realize they carried NBC News Now. And I don't understand why the news link was removed from the navigation when it was moved from the top to the left hand side. It's an odd choice, given the amount of news assets Peacock has available.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS FOR DISNEY+
The Walt Disney Company announced this afternoon that its flagship streaming service Disney+ ended the fourth quarter with more than 164 million global subscribers. That was up 39% from 118.1 million subs during the previous-year period. 

The bad news? The company while the direct-to-consumer segment saw an revenue increase of 8% to $4.9 billion, operating loss increased $800 million to $1.5 billion. In a statement, CEO Bob Chapek said the increase in operating loss was due to a higher loss at Disney+ and a decrease in results at Hulu, partially offset by improved results at ESPN+.

North American subscribers increased 20% to 46.4 million from 38.8 million. International subs (excluding India) increased 57% to 56.5 million from 36 million. India’s Disney + Hotstar account for the majority of the platform’s subs at 61.3 million — up 42% from 43.3 million a year ago.

Separately, ESPN+ saw its subbase increase 42% to 24.3 million from 17.1 million.

Hulu ended the fiscal year with 42.8 million, up 9% from 39.7 million. Hulu with Live TV ended the period with 4.4 million subs, up 10% from 4 million. Total Hulu subscriber count increased 8% to 47.2 million from 43.8 million.

NETFLIX CONTINUES TO DANCE AROUND SPORTS PROGRAMMING
The Wall Street Journal has a piece today that recounts Netflix's tentative efforts to add some live sports programming to its service:

The company recently bid for the streaming rights for the ATP tennis tour for some European countries, including France and the U.K., but dropped out, one of the people said. It also discussed bidding for a series of other events including U.K. rights to the Women’s Tennis Association and cycling competitions, the people said.

Additionally, in an effort to bypass the ever-escalating costs of bidding for sports rights, Netflix executives have had discussions about buying lower-profile leagues, people familiar with the discussions said. The company late last year was in talks to buy the World Surf League, but negotiations fell apart because the two organizations couldn’t reach an agreement on a price, people familiar with the potential deal said.

I won't be surprised to see Netflix eventually add some sort of sports programming. But given its desire to have as many territorial rights as possible - and the belief that being forced to renegotiate rights contracts every few years is a fool's game - I would expect it's much more likely that the streamer will buy a fledgling sports league it can promote to its global audience.

WEEKLY WHIP WATCH REPORT: STREAMING ORIGINALS

ODDS AND SODS
* Luxury home designer Michel Smith Boyd is starring in the new HGTV series Lux For Less, which premieres on Thursday, December 1st.

* The Food Network has figured out another approach in its seemingly endless number of baking competition shows. Bake It 'Til You Make It is described as a "docu-series" hosted by Duff Goldman. It will follow seven bakers trying to make a name for themselves in the world of competitive baking and it premieres Monday, December 26th. 

* The standup comedy special Matt Rogers: Have You Hear Of Christmas? premieres Friday, December 2nd on Showtime.

* Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav will keynote RBC's 2022 Global TIMT Conference on Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 & CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels will present at the Morgan Stanley European Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on Thursday, November 17th.

* Apple TV+ has ordered a second season of Bad Sisters starring Sharon Horgan.

WHAT'S NEW FOR TUESDAY:

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

Beat Bobby Flay: Holiday Throwdown (Food)
Minions & More 2 (Netflix)
Neal Brennan: Blocks (Netflix)
Say Hey, Willie Mays! (HBO)
The Claus Family 2 (Netflix)
Triviaverse (Netflix)

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

SEE YOU WEDNESDAY!

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