“This is not exactly the show we expected to do today,” said Warner Bros Discovery ad boss Jon Steinlauf in opening his company’s second Upfronts presentation as a merged company.
That is both an understatement and sums up the entire week. “It’s been a very weird week,” one network boss told Deadline.
While the focus of the upfronts has been increasingly moving to streaming, this year’s event highlighted the struggle that the linear broadcast networks have on the scripted side of the business. ABC unveiled an almost entirely unscripted schedule, Gordon Ramsay cooked up another show for Fox, becoming its lynchpin, CBS announced a fall schedule that could be decimated by the strike and The CW turned to international acquisitions and reality shows instead of superheroes.
As The CW President Dennis Miller said, “the young-adult audience is not making an appointment with broadcast television today.”
It was instead left to Disney+, with Marvel titles such as the upcoming binge release Echo and Lucasfilm shows such as The Acolyte, Skeleton Crew and Ahsoka and FX’s big-budget Shogun, Netflix with the return of The Crown, and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, with season two of …And Just Like That to take the scripted crown.
The writers strike has essentially taken the air out of the biggest week to persuade advertisers to part with their cash and shown that without an avalanche of A-list scripted stars, the annual parade is just suits, numbers and trailers.
There has been talent on display, just not the typical sort. Kim Kardashian impressed many at the Disney event, promoting the latest tranche of episodes of her family’s reality series on Hulu, Vanderpump Rules star Ariana Madix went full Scandoval when she emerged from a box at the NBCUniversal event, and Gordon Ramsay swore as much as you’d expect him to at the Fox event.
There was also a diminished quotient of chief executives opening proceedings. Last year, the likes of WBD’s David Zaslav, NBCUniversal’s Jeff Shell and Disney’s Bob Chapek all kicked off their company Upfronts, but this year ad chiefs once again took center stage. (Plus, Shell and Chapek were both ousted by their respective companies in recent months.)
Alex Wagner, Jen Psaki & Steve Kornacki (Photo by: Ralph Bavaro/NBCUniversal)
If the scripted focus has largely switched to streaming, news and sport took center stage for the linear nets across most of the week. Steve Kornacki, the man behind the magic election wall, drew the largest cheer of NBCU’s romp at Radio City Music Hall, Disney spent more than half of its two-hour presentation introducing athletes including Serena Williams, Damar Hamlin and hotly tipped future NFL star Caleb Williams, CNN boss Chris Licht introduced his new 9pm anchor Kaitlin Collins alongside Anderson Cooper, and Michael Strahan took center stage at both Fox and Disney. There was also more talk of Fox News than in previous years.
As well as the missing stars and creators, there was a clear absence of laughs. There was no Seth Meyers mocking NBC for its slate of reboots or Jimmy Kimmel roasting Bob Chapek or rival streamers. One source pointed out to Deadline, there was a clear absence of comedy writers punching up executive’s material.
There was also drama on the ad side including the absence of Linda Yaccarino, who left NBCU for Elon Musk’s Twitter abruptly days before the Upfronts in a move that she wasn’t expecting to reveal until the summer. Mark Lazarus, Chairman of NBCUniversal Television and Streaming subbed in for her after a few barbed remarks from an animated bear, saying, “What was more surprising today? Being welcomed by a foul-mouthed teddy bear or seeing me here onstage?”
Valerie Complex/Deadline
Outside each of the events were hundreds of writers including David Simon, Good Omens’ Neil Gaiman and The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper protesting, some of which, including outside Radio City Music Hall, forced advertisers to literally cross the picket lines, while Fox put up big bushes to hide the strikers and Warner Bros. Discovery’s picketers were somewhat lost outside of the behemoth that is Madison Square Garden with plenty of construction work going on in the area. Disney’s setup at the North Javits Center created convenient, concrete barriers keeping pickets 200 yards from the entrance.
Despite the omnipresence of the black, red and white picket signs, there was little talk of the strike onstage. HBO boss Casey Bloys said that he was “hopeful that a fair resolution is found soon with writers that would, of course, return talent to this stage. Let’s be honest, making this a far more entertaining show. Until then you’re kind of stuck with me and my clips”.
Mark Lazarus, Chairman of NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, also acknowledged the strike. “We are grateful for the contribution writers make to our company and respect their right to demonstrate,” he said. “It may take some time, but I know we will eventually get through this, and the result will be a stronger foundation from which we can all move forward together.”
Two participants in upfront week without linear networks to mind, Netflix and YouTube, put on shows that didn’t give off “strike vibes” for varied reasons. The former, a major target for WGA picketers, shifted its planned in-person event at the Paris Theatre to a virtual affair in large part to avoid friction for execs and talent. “This is not exactly as we originally planned it,” Co-CEO Greg Peters said, “but we live in a dynamic world, and we have definitely found that being able to adjust to a new reality is very useful.”
YouTube, meanwhile, put on its 12th annual Brandcast jubilee uptown at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Theater. Because it is not a WGA signatory and doesn’t rely on the guild for its programming, no organized picketing shadowed the event, helping it feel less trapped in the 2023 moment. The tech giant’s clout is such that one of television’s kingmakers, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, appeared onstage with Donald De La Haye Jr., aka Deestroying, a YouTuber with 5.2 million subscribers.
YouTube’s multi-billion-dollar deal to stream NFL Sunday Ticket starting this fall is “only the beginning” of the company’s relationship with the league, Goodell said. After testimonials from ad buyers and a full-tilt performance by pop star Doja Cat, Brandcast attendees spilled into the Lincoln Center Plaza, within sight of the Metropolitan Opera’s famous Chagall murals. Music boomed, cocktails flowed and, for a brief while, those taking part in the annual ad-biz conga line felt upfront week had the potential to be at least a little bit of fun again.
