Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Thursday, April 28th, 2022
James Corden is leaving and Netflix is cutting.
Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Thursday, April 28th, 2022.
JAMES CORDEN LEAVING 'THE LATE LATE SHOW' IN 2023
CBS just announced that James Corden will be exiting The Late Late Show sometime next year. While the timing might be a surprise, the fact that he is leaving isn't. Corden has been hinting about the move in recent months:
Five months ago, Mr. Corden told Variety that he never saw his late-night perch as “a final destination.” In a previous interview with The Sun, Mr. Corden said he and his family were “homesick.”
Mr. Corden’s contract was set to expire August, but he signed an extension that will keep him on CBS through next spring.
“We wish he could stay longer, but we are very proud he made CBS his American home and that this partnership will extend one more season on ‘The Late Late Show,’” George Cheeks, the president of CBS, said in a statement.
As the NY Times notes, this is an unsettling time for the late night television scene, with ratings sliding and this generation of hosts looking for the exit door:
There is a feeling of uncertainty in late night beyond Mr. Corden’s departure. Jimmy Kimmel, the longtime ABC host, has a contract that will end soon and has said publicly that he was unsure if he would renew. Stephen Colbert, whose show precedes Mr. Corden’s on CBS, also has a contract that expires next year. Chris Licht, the longtime executive producer of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” left last month to become the chairman of CNN. And Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” recently went through yet another showrunner change, the fourth in four years.
There are questions throughout the entertainment industry over the longtime viability of the late-night talk show genre. Over the last few years, as viewing habits have rapidly changed, ratings for the shows have nose-dived. Five years ago, roughly 2.8 million people were tuning into Mr. Corden’s show as well as NBC’s 12:30 a.m. show, “Late Night With Seth Meyers.” By 2022, that figure had dropped to about 1.9 million, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data.
So what type of late night talker do you think one of the networks should try next? Who would be a good host for the next-generation of late night talk? Replay to this newsletter or email me at rick@allyourscreens.com.
AMAZON ANNOUNCES FIRST QUARTER 2022 RESULTS
Amazon announced its Q1 results Thursday afternoon and rather than wading through a bunch of numbers you can get elsewhere, I wanted to highlight these two passages from the press release:
Reacher, Prime Video’s new drama series starring Alan Ritchson, ranked on Nielsen’s overall Streaming Top 10 list for the first three weeks of its premiere, with a No. 1 ranking and more than 1.5 billion minutes watched in its first full week and six consecutive weeks in the Top 10 Streaming Originals list. The hit series has been renewed for a second season. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel also landed on Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10 list, with 499 million minutes viewed during the week of its Season Four premiere and six consecutive weeks in the Top 10 Streaming Originals list. Additional Prime Video series releases included the second season of Greg Daniels’ futuristic comedy Upload, mystery series Outer Range starring Josh Brolin, and global superstar Lizzo’s first series, Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls.
Prime Video debuted 30 local originals internationally, including new seasons of the unscripted franchise LOL in Canada, France, Germany, and Italy, as well as Luxe Listings (Australia), Mahaan (India), Bang Bang Baby (Italy), and HOMESTAY (Japan). New locally produced series and movies launched in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK.
Amazon's local originals haven't received nearly as much attention in the U.S. as Netflix's efforts. In part, because a number of them are unscripted and those shows don't always translate across languages. That being said, these efforts are definitely under-appreciated by industry analysts.
I PROMISED MYSELF I WASN'T GOING TO WRITE ABOUT NETFLIX TODAY...BUT
As you already know, Netflix had a terrible first quarter this year and one reason for the larger than expected number of people who canceled their subscriptions. Netflix reported it had 3.6 million cancels in Q1'22 — over one million more than the service has in either Q1'21 and Q4'21.
Antenna decided to take a look at where those viewers went when they left Netflix and it's a bit of a mixed bag.
When you compare SVOD signups in general vs. SVOD signups from people who have cancelled Netflix, Disney+ and Apple TV accounted for 23% of churned Netflix subs' sign-ups vs. 11% for the market as a whole. Conversely, Paramount+ fared worse with former Netflix subscribers vs. the market as a whole: 7% vs. 22% respectively.
The interesting data point for me is that for all of the talk of HBO Max being best poised to take advantage of any Netflix weakness, the Warner Bros Discovery-owned streaming was essentially as popular with Netflix subscribers (12%) as it was with the SVOD market overall (13%)
Another speculation has been that Netflix needs to launch an ad-supported tier in order to retain subscribers. And yet, when viewers left Netflix, they signed up for ad-supported tiers at rival streamers at about the same rate as the SVOD market in general.
OKAY, ONE MORE NETFLIX-RELATED STORY
Netflix has laid off an unspecified number of people in its U.S. marketing division, including some from its new-ish website Tudum, which launched last December. I wrote about it at the time and laid out a bit about why I thought it was a bad idea:
Now there's nothing wrong with hiring some journalists and creating a bunch of marketing-friendly stories about your content. But it's worth noting that when the company made the announcement, they laid out a future for the site that would includes everything from premiere dates to exclusive interviews. The content will also be matched to a user's Netflix viewing habits. So if you sign onto the site with a browser where your Netflix subscription has been accessed, Tudum will use your viewing habits to decide which stories and features to highlight for you.
Netflix touts this as "personalization," and that is certainly true to a certain extent. But it also means that readers will be less likely to see stories about content that is outside of their recent viewing habits. Or more likely to see stories about content Netflix wants to highlight for some reason. And that leaves shows and movies at the mercy of Netflix's internal priorities. There are already plenty of producers and stars who feel as if they need to hire outside PR firms to promote their content. In part because Netflix just has way too much stuff in its pipeline to adequately promote everything equally. But also not all projects are prioritized the same way internally. And for every unexpected breakout like Squid Game, there are a couple of dozen other shows that sank without a ripple.
And in February, Business Insider wrote a piece about the site that focused on the journalists - specifically the fact that they were being paid exceptionally well:
It is honestly not surprising to me that these layoffs had taken place. Tudum is just a terribly inefficient marketing idea and given the pay of some of the journalists, it was an obvious target when the company began to tighten its belt.
That being said, I've written a lot about my belief that Netflix has to better target its PR and marketing efforts. For instance, at a time when some show creators who have worked at the streamer complain that their projects didn't receive any marketing attention, paying for a billboard that just posts "cute" little messages that strive to be viral seems like a big waste of money:
SO HOW HAVE THE BROADCAST NETWORKS DONE THIS SEASON?
As we approach the upfronts, the programming departments of the various broadcast networks are hard at work on next fall's primetime lineup. Which seems like a good time to look back at how last fall's rookie shows fared in the ratings. Here's a rundown of all the new broadcast network scripted shows this year and whether they have officially been canceled/renewed yet. I've excluded some scripted shows that were designed to only last one season, such as NBC's What About Pam? or ABC's Women Of The Movement:
ABC
Abbott Elementary (renewed)
Promised Land (canceled)
Queens
The Wonder Years
CBS
CSI Vegas (renewed)
FBI: International
Ghosts (renewed)
Good Sam
How We Roll
NCIS: Hawaii (renewed)
CW
All American: Homecoming
Naomi
FOX
Our Kind Of People
Pivoting
The Big Leap (canceled)
The Cleaning Lady (renewed)
Welcome To Flatch
NBC
American Auto
Grand Crew
La Brea (renewed)
Ordinary Joe (canceled)
The Endgame
Both Ghosts and Abbott Elementary were the two big break-out shows of the season. And it's worth noting that traditional comedies are a genre that the various streamers haven't been able to successfully launch.
Otherwise, the only big trend seems to be that the audience for broadcast television continues to slump, which is why so many of this season's new shows were reality and game shows. I thought Fox's The Big Leap was a very good show that was done in by the wrong timeslot and the network's inability to frame the show properly in promos. I've also become a big fan of NBC's The Endgame, although it's a show that hasn't received any buzz. And it also hasn't been helped by its lead-in, The American Song Contest, which continues to shed viewers each week.
TWEET OF THE DAY
WHAT'S NEW FOR THURSDAY
Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:
Bang Bang Baby (Prime Video)
Bubble (Netflix)
Dear Mr. Brody (Discovery+)
DoDo (HBO Max)
Made For Love (HBO Max)
Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles (Netflix)
Smother Season Two Premiere (Peacock)
The Offer (Paramount+)
Up Close With Ana Emilia (HBO Max)
Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.
SEE YOU FRIDAY!
If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.