Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Wednesday, March 29th, 2023

Theatrical releases and availability bias.

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Wednesday, March 29th, 2023.

QUICK PROGRAMMING NOTE
My apologies for the lateness of today's newsletter. Sometimes the personal stuff needs to come first.

SHOULD MOST STREAMING MOVIES RECEIVE A THEATRICAL RELEASE?
This is one of those topics that I seem to be constantly arguing over with other people in the industry and that prompted me a few weeks ago to see if I could get a better answer than the typical response of "what's the downside?"

The original plan was to have something together for today's newsletter. But I am still putting the final touches on the piece and it's already a bit long for the newsletter. So here's a look at the first couple of paragraphs and I'll link to the completed piece in tomorrow's newsletter:

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman coined the phrase "availability bias" in the 1970s and it's a useful idea to be familiar with when discussing the streaming video industry. According to the duo, availability bias occurs when people make judgments or decisions based on the information that is most readily available. For instance, news stories about lottery winners and their lavish lifestyles can lead many people to purchase lottery tickets even if they can't afford them. That's because they believe that because of the news coverage, their chances of winning are much higher than the actual statistics bear out.

Availability bias is a common problem when discussing the major trends that impact the streaming video business. It's a relatively new industry, and many of the people working in it as well as writing about it are much more comfortable with the traditional rules of the entertainment business. We often see what we want to see based on our experience or industry conventional wisdom. And that can lead people down some ill-advised paths. 

For instance, take the question of whether or not most original streaming movies should first receive a theatrical release. For now, I'll ignore the people who argue there should be a theatrical as well as physical media release, because this will already be a difficult enough topic to parse.

The argument for a theatrical release has a couple of components. A primary argument is that to a certain extent, a theatrical release is almost found money for the streamer producing the film. Sure, marketing costs can run in the tens of millions of dollars for the average film and often in the $50-$70 million for a star-filled major release. And while the box office numbers sound impressive, it's worth remembering that the studio (or in this case, streamer) only receives part of it after cuts to the distributor and theatre chains. But still, proponents say, there doesn't seem to be much data to suggest a theatrical release hurts the streaming service run of the film. So why not do it? Maybe you'll make a little money and regardless, the theatrical run will provide a higher profile for the film when it hits streaming.

And that would be a great point if a theatrical run and a streaming-only premiere were an apples-to-apples comparison.

I know a large number of subscribers to the newsletter work in the streaming industry or elsewhere in the entertainment world. If you have any thoughts on the question, simply reply directly to this newsletter and I might add them to my finished piece. And as always, I am always interested in hearing from people off-the-record or on background.

AUSTRALIAN SCREEN STORIES VIEWING REPORT
While the data is specific to the Australian TV and streaming market, this study from the Queensland University of Technology has some really fascinating insight:

• Paid streaming services dominate how Australians view scripted series and movies. 41% use them ‘mostly every day’ or ‘several days’ a week. Free-to air-channels (FTA) follow at 36%. Yet 28% don’t use or don’t have access to paid streaming services and 12% don’t use or have access to free-to-air channels.

• 8% of respondents watch both FTA and streamers at least several times a week. High FTA viewers are more likely to be high streaming viewers, but high streaming viewers are not necessarily high FTA viewers – they are just as likely to watch less than a few times per month as they are every day.

• Age, gender, and location in remote Australia matter when it comes to frequency of using different services. Other factors – including language, migration, and cultural background – are less significant.

• Australians’ most valued service or channel is Netflix, followed by Seven, then ABC. Australians rarely use and do not significantly value free on-demand services (especially commercial ones) for viewing series and movies.

• The most common place for Australians to turn to first when they don’t have a particular title in mind is a paid streaming service (38%).

'BLUE BLOODS' RENEWED FOR A 14TH SEASON BY CBS
After a lot of back-and-forth negotiations, CBS has picked up a 14th season of Blue Bloods, reportedly after the major cast and producers agreed to pay cuts of up to 25%.

While that sounds like a bad deal for everyone except for the network, I suspect there are a few things at play here. Ratings remain decent for the series, although they have continued to soften over the past couple of years. The show also has a large cast that is expensive even after cutting back on the number of episodes in which some of them appear.  So the only way the show was returning was with a reduced budget.

But for the cast and producers, there are some good reasons to agree to the cuts. The biggest one that this gives everyone steady employment coming out of a likely writer's strike and that is especially important for some of the show's crew, many of whom have been working on the show for more than a decade. So agreeing to the cut protects the crew a bit while also providing another season of episodes worth of residuals for profit participants.

TWEET OF THE DAY

ODDS AND SODS
* Gordon Ramsay's Food Stars premieres Wednesday, May 24th on Fox. In the series, Ramsay  "puts food industry entrepreneurs through a multitude of challenges designed to showcase their business skills, test their drive and convince Ramsay they have what it takes to earn his personal investment of $250,000."

* In the least surprising news of the day, Netflix has renewed the series The Night Agent for a second season.

* Former KPIX reporter Bill Schechner has passed away at age 81. While he was a TV fixture in the Bay Area, I know him from his stint as co-anchor with Linda Ellerbee on the sadly forgotten 1970s late night NBC hour-long newscast NBC News Overnight.

* Gabrielle Union is celebrating her 50th trip birthday with a continental journey through Africa, from the island of Zanzibar to the coast of Ghana to the parks of Namibia and the nightlife of South Africa. My Journey To 50 premieres June 15th on BET+.

* Season two of Fix My Flip starring Page Turner will premiere Thursday, May 4th on HGTV.

WHAT'S NEW FOR WEDNESDAY:

Abominable And The Invisible City (Peacock)
AEW: All Access (TBS)
A-Ha: The Movie (Viaplay)
CMT Storytellers: Dierks Bentley (CMT)
Emergency NYC Series Premiere (Netflix)
No Way Out (Tubi)
Riverdale Season Premiere (The CW)
Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season Finale (Disney+)
The Big Door Prize Series Premiere (Apple TV+)
Unseen (Netflix)
Wellmania (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.