The down-low on Hollywood’s upfronts

For many of Hollywood’s biggest studios, today marks the beginning of “upfronts” – a time-honored tradition of wooing advertisers with previews of TV’s upcoming shows. Except this year… isn’t going according to plan. 

📺 Background: Started in 1962 – back when there were only three TV networks – the upfronts are much like a Costco for advertisers, who get a discount for buying ads from studios in bulk ahead of the upcoming season, aka “up front.”

And also like Costco, the upfronts make bank. Last year, linear TV networks sold over $20 billion in advertisements, a 5.8% increase from the year before.

❌ But this year… the writer’s strike happened. Meaning late night’s Seth Myers and Jimmy Kimmel won’t be delivering their usual monologues, since there’s no one to write them. Same goes for the actors, who are expected to be no-shows as they stand in solidarity with the writers.

• Changes as a result of the writer’s strike have left studios scrambling. Paramount last week backed out of the upfronts entirely – Netflix then snagged the open slot, only to cancel its in-person upfronts to live-stream the event instead (likely out of fear of writer protests).

🤯 But wait, there’s more! Last Friday, Elon Musk announced that he’d found Twitter’s new CEO: Linda Yaccarino, the now-former head of ad sales for NBCUniversal. According to her team, Yaccarino had been in back-to-back rehearsals preparing for the upfronts as recently as the night prior. Shortly after Musk’s announcement, though, NBCUniversal announced Yaccarino was leaving the company effective immediately.