Action-oriented series continues to be a winning genre when it comes to the biggest screen in the home. “Reacher” is back on Amazon’s Prime Video, making a strong viewership debut in its second season.

The sophomore season premiere scored 1.3 million U.S. households viewing within the first three days available to stream, according to the Samba TV Weekly Wrap Report for the week of Dec. 11 to Dec. 17.

The second season’s premiere saw more than a 20% increase compared to the prior season opener. Viewership of the series tended to resonate most with older adults, as Baby Boomers (adults aged 65-74) over-indexed by 10% based on the initial three-day viewing window.

Then there was a jolt from “Barbie” which catapulted Max to No. 3 this week. The much-anticipated streaming release of “Barbie” garnered 1.2 million U.S. households in the first four days it was available to stream. That’s more than five times the number of households who watched Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster film live on demand when it first arrived, signaling a strong preference to stream the movie via subscription service rather than rent or buy the film at home.

Of all income earners, higher-income households making over $200,000 over-indexed by 16% in the initial four-day viewing window compared to the average household.

Coming-of-age drama “My Life with the Walter Boys” starring Suits actress Sarah Rafferty took fourth. In fifth this week was “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” streaming on Netflix and VOD.

The second half of “The Crown’s” final season soared into sixth place, as nearly 700,000 U.S. households tuned in to get their final fix of the Royal Family drama within the first four days available on Netflix. While that’s down double digits from the first part of this season (the fifth season premiere saw 778,000 households tuning in within its same four-day initial viewing window), the fascination around another royal scandal may keep the series on the leaderboard for weeks to come. “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” on Paramount+ followed at No. 7.

With families gearing up for the holidays, Christmas programming had another strong week. Amazon Prime Video’s “Candy Cane Lane” and Netflix’s “Family Switch” both topped the charts at No. 8 and No 9, respectively. Rounding out the final spot is “World War II: From the Frontlines” a docu-series unlike any other, with archival stories and footage with accounts on both sides of the conflict.

On broadcast television, NBC’s “The Voice” earned yet another week atop the leaderboard as the remaining contestants battled it out in the semifinals. Two additional telecasts earned spots among the Top 10.

This week’s linear charts also saw several country music specials make the list. At No. 2 was “Willie Nelson’s 90th Birthday Celebration” airing on CBS, while “CMA Country Christmas” on ABC earned No. 5. 

ABC, meanwhile, has aired the beloved “The Sound of Music” musical this time of year for decades, making it a TV event that is highly anticipated around the holidays. The Rodgers & Hammerstein film came in at No. 3 this week. Game show program “Wheel of Fortune” nabbed three telecasts in the Top 10, followed by CBS’ “Survivor.”

Cole Strain is VP and Head of R&D at Samba TV, a WrapPRO partner. Click here for more data and analysis  from Samba TV. 

The Wrap Report provides an exclusive first look at the most watched movies and TV series from the past week across both streaming and linear television sourced from viewership trends collected from Samba TV’s panel of more than 3 million households drawn from over 25 million connected TVs, balanced to the U.S. Census.

The post ‘Leave the World Behind’ Holds Off ‘Barbie’ and ‘Reacher’ to Win Streaming Top 10 | Charts appeared first on TheWrap.

The Season 45 finale of “Survivor” has scored a win for CBS.

As fans tuned in to find out which castaway claimed the $1 million prize, the “Survivor” finale brought in 4.53 million viewers across broadcast and streaming platforms, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day fast national figures and internal figures. The three-hour finale was up 6% from last year’s Season 44 finale, which aired on Dec. 14, 2022.

As “Survivor” streamed live on Paramount+ on Wednesday night, the conclusion to the CBS competition show also marked the streamer’s most live-streamed entertainment program, with live streaming up 27% compared to last season’s finale on Paramount+, CBS.com and the CBS app.

Finale viewership for “Survivor” Season 45 was down from the 5.24 million viewers brought in by its Sept. 27 season premiere on CBS.

The 45th season of “Survivor” is currently averaging 6.32 million viewers per episode, according to Nielsen most current data, with this season ranking in the top five most-watched non-sports broadcast programs in terms of total viewers.

As 90-minute episodes of “Survivor” aired ahead of 90-minutes of “The Amazing Race” on CBS, the network strengthened its year-over-year viewership for its Wednesday lineup by over 19%, leading the network to score the highest viewership among the major broadcasters.

Since launching its first season in 2000, “Survivor” has tallied up 630 billion minutes of viewing on broadcast platforms.

The survivalist show also made impressive gains on Paramount+ as well, as “Survivor” soared 72% in year-over-year viewership, with 57% of total viewing time for “Survivor” focused on past seasons.

Overall, “Survivor” ranks as the most-watched reality program on Paramount+ and the third most-watched program overall. Additionally, “Survivor” viewers on Paramount+ average 20 years younger than those watching on broadcast, according to internal data.

The post ‘Survivor’ Season 45 Finale Scores 4.5 Million Viewers, Up 6% From 2022 appeared first on TheWrap.

But this deal makes eminent sense for an entertainment conglomerate like Warner that needs to get still bigger to compete, and a legendary Hollywood brand that is trapped in a depressed stock price cycle and declining linear assets.

As news of discussions between the companies reverberated through the industry on Wednesday, TheWrap broke down the pros and cons of what a Warner-Paramount deal could mean for both companies. 

PROS

Max would become the No. 2 streamer

Combining Max and Discovery+ with Paramount+ with Showtime would add 63 million subscribers to Warner Bros. Discovery’s current 95 million, pulling its streaming business just ahead of the 150 million at Disney+. This would achieve a goal Zaslav has touted around Hollywood: wanting to be a genuine challenger to Netflix, which has 247 million subscribers. 

Warner Bros. Discovery turned a $111 million profit in its direct-to-consumer division during its third quarter of 2023 — a $745 million year-over-year improvement and its second profitable quarter in a row. Paramount, which narrowed its direct to consumer division’s losses by 31% year over year to $238 million in the third quarter of 2023, expects full-year streaming losses for 2023 to be lower than in 2022, with fourth quarter 2023 losses similar to the fourth quarter of 2022. The segment remains on track to drive “significant earnings improvement” in 2024.

Shari Redstone could keep a toehold in Hollywood, though not as owner

The fate of Paramount has largely hinged on Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Paramount Global through the holding company National Amusements. As TheWrap reported just last week, her intentions were not entirely clear. Is she ready to give up an empire built by her father Sumner, and that she defended in a contentious board battle with former CBS CEO Les Moonves?

A deal with WBD would ensure that she retains significant shares in an important entertainment player, keeping her involved in the industry even as she spends more time focused on educational initiatives around tolerance and antisemitism. And Redstone, 69, would be selling to a known quantity in Zaslav, with whom she meets for dinner a few times a year.

Paramount would get family-focused IP – and CBS News

A deal would give Warner Bros. Discovery the ability to leverage Paramount’s portfolio of intellectual property, which includes the family focused-brand Nickelodeon and popular hits like the wildly popular “Yellowstone.” Warner badly needs a base of family-focused content if it intends to compete with Disney.

Meanwhile, WBD could also take control of CBS News without violating the Federal Communications Commission’s two network rule — a key challenge that would make a possible merger difficult for other legacy media players like NBCUniversal parent Comcast. 

WBD talks would create deal momentum

Even if the talks don’t lead to a final deal, news that Paramount is in discussions with Warner Bros. Discovery puts more chum in the water for a significant deal to take place – soon. 

News of the talks could put more pressure on other potential suitors, including Comcast – which has long been floated as a potential buyer of either Warner or Paramount – or Amazon and Apple, both of which have reportedly previously held conversations with Redstone, to make more attractive offers. On Wednesday, Byron Allen renewed an offer to buy BET Media Group from Paramount Global, for $3.5 billion. Paramount began exploring a possible BET sale in March. 

A deal “makes sense for Paramount and probably a little less so for Warner Brothers Discovery,” Moody’s debt analyst Neil Begley told TheWrap.. “But if [Warner Bros. Discovery’s] angle is to try to avoid being prey to Comcast or anybody else, it’s probably the best deal for them.” 

CONS

Uncle Sam’s regulatory hurdles

In April, Warner Bros. Discovery will reach the two-year anniversary of its 2022 merger, which was executed under a Reverse Morris Trust for tax advantages. Once the RMT’s two-year lockup period expires, WBD will be free to make acquisitions without incurring a hefty tax bill.

And while Warner would not run afoul of the Federal Communications Commission’s two-network rule by acquiring CBS, a potential deal would still combine two of the five major movie studios and two major television studios, creating a high concentration of linear network ownership. Such a merger could potentially face an antitrust challenge from the Biden Administration’s Federal Trade Commission under chair Lina Khan and from the Department of Justice. 

Even if President Joe Biden loses in 2024 and a Republican  winner — likely to be former President Donald Trump given current polling — were to bring in new regulators, “we still think the regulatory hurdles would be high,” TD Cowen analyst Doug Cowen wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday. Cowen noted that Trump’s DOJ head, Makan Delrahim, made an unsuccessful bid  to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger. “A WBD-Paramount tie-up “would be more problematic from a consolidation standpoint,” he said. “We also note that WBD’s news network CNN has been a verbal target of Trump in the past, and we would guess that he probably still holds a grudge.”

Other stuff: In November, Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro called on the FTC to investigate Warner for “predatory and anticompetitive” practices following news that the film “Coyote vs. Acme” almost became the latest of the company’s finished movies to be killed for tax purposes. Warner has since reversed course on that decision, instead allowing the film to be shopped to other distributors.

Change of control and that pesky debt

A merger would saddle WBD with Paramount’s debt, while it already has plenty of debt of its own. As of the end of the third quarter, Warner Bros. Discovery reported $45.3 billion in gross debt, while Paramount Global reported long-term debt of approximately $15.6 billion. 

A deal could also trigger “change of control” provisions in Paramount’s senior notes, which are designed to protect bond investors from a leveraged buyout of a company. If Redstone were to sell more than 50% of her Paramount voting shares through National Amusements, that would activate  the change-of-control provision for $11.2 billion of the company’s $15.6 billion in debt. 

There’s a second trigger in the event that could lead to the three major credit agencies — S&P Global, Fitch and Moody’s — to downgrade Paramount’s debt to below investment grade. That would mean bondholders could give notice to the trustee that they want to tender their bonds and get paid back 101% of the face value. Fitch rates Paramount at BBB, two notches above investment grade, while Moody’s downgraded Paramount to a rating of Baa3 in August, the bottom rung of investment grade.

“A lot of costs will be taken out, they have very like-kind types of assets, so there’s lots of shared overhead even below the C Suite,” Begley said. “So there’s a lot of cost savings that can be had to de-lever the company.” That would be good for Paramount, he said, and for bondholders.

Begley pointed out several billion dollars of cost cuts and merging Paramount+ into Max would allow WBD to “pretty easily” pay down Paramount’s debt. He estimates that, without any transactions or additional major asset sales, Paramount’s leverage could be between 4.25 times and 4.6 times by the end of 2025. Warner Bros. Discovery expects to bring its net leverage below 4 times by the end of its fourth quarter.  

Zaslav said during WBD’s third quarter earnings call last month that the company’s debt reduction efforts will give the company the balance sheet and stability to be “really opportunistic over the next 12 to 24 months.”

More linear TV is a “financial death sentence”

While linear TV is still a profitable business for the moment, it is bleeding subscribers at an alarming rate due to cord-cutting. “While scaling up and taking out cost is certainly the David Zaslav playbook, it has certainly not worked well to-date for WBD and we suspect investors would further punish WBD shares if they increased their exposure to linear television,” Lightshed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield wrote in a Nov. 21 blog post. That unwanted exposure would include adding substantial sports licensing costs that continue to escalate, he said.

In a separate post on Wednesday, Greenfield warned that WBD or any other legacy media company choosing to add more linear TV assets would feel like a “financial death sentence.” Rather than acquiring Paramount,  WBD would be better served to rebrand Max (back) to HBO and remove any content that does not fit the HBO brand, Greenfield said. 

As for Paramount, the analyst said the company should unwind the integration of Showtime and look to sell the network, shift exclusive sports content back to linear TV, license out high profile originals to third-parties, shut down all existing overseas launches, forgo launching new markets and potentially even revert back to the prior CBS All-Access branding.

Paramount could also look to improve its financial health by “shifting aggressively towards a content arms dealer approach,” Greenfield said. “We still believe Paramount will ultimately be sold, but this would allow it to be in a stronger financial/negotiating position.” 

Talent might not like it

Talent. That’s a big flag. Through his tenure at Warner Bros. Discovery, Zaslav has rankled the creative community by scrapping completed films, pulling content off Max and more or less gutting TCM. Paramount is the home to Hollywood’s biggest star, Tom Cruise, whose “Mission Impossible” franchise and “Top Gun” reboot has driven billions of revenue for that studio.

Would Cruise want to work with David Zaslav – or would he find another place to focus his talents, despite his success with the “Mission: Impossible” franchise? Zaslav would have real work to do to shift his reputation as a ruthless cost-cutter who does not value the work of creatives. Then again, there was that time that Sumner Redstone threw Cruise off the Paramount lot.

Alexei Barrionuevo and Adam Chitwood contributed to this story.

The post Breaking Down the Pros and Cons of a Potential Warner-Paramount Merger | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

The No. 1 film this weekend is expected to be Warner Bros./DC’s “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” a sequel to James Wan’s $1.15 billion superhero hit released back in 2018. “Aquaman” earned an opening weekend of $67 million five years ago and reached $100 million in domestic grosses after Christmas Day two days later.

With Christmas Day falling on a Monday this year, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” is seeing its four-day opening weekend estimates top out at $40 million, enough to likely make it the No. 1 film this weekend.

But with audiences largely abandoning DC ahead of its reboot under James Gunn and Peter Safran, chances are not looking good for “Aquaman 2” to sustain long-term interest among audiences outside the most devoted of comic book fans, and the film would be fortunate to gross even half of what its predecessor made.

All three DC films released earlier this year — “Shazam: Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash” and “Blue Beetle,” — failed to cross $275 million in global grosses. And their combined gross of $526 million is more than 30% short of the $772 million that “The Batman” made alone for the studio in 2022.

Insiders at Warner Bros. told TheWrap they’re still confident that Gunn’s reboot, which will begin with “Superman: Legacy” in 2025, will revive box office buzz for DC when it’s ready. But this year of flops is still a hard fall for a franchise that racked up over $6 billion in global grosses from 2013 to 2019, including cult hits like Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel,” acclaimed works like Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman,” and “Joker,” the first comic book movie to win the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion award.

If Warner Bros. is to have any box office triumphs this winter, it will have to come from their efforts to revive the struggling movie musical genre. After the studio had a big misfire with “In the Heights” in 2021, while Disney/20th Century had similar struggles with Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” there were questions about whether audiences had suddenly abandoned musicals.

The warm reception for Timothée Chalamet and “Wonka,” which has grossed over $43 million domestic and $155 million worldwide and counting, suggests there may be hope for the genre. While that film tries to leg out over the next several weeks, Warner is sending in another musical, “The Color Purple,” on Christmas Day.

If Chalamet’s star power is allowing “Wonka” to succeed where “Heights” and “Story” failed, then “The Color Purple” will certainly benefit from its loaded cast, which includes Taraji P. Henson, Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks, and “Little Mermaid” star Halle Bailey. With the SAG-AFTRA strike over, that cast, along with producer Oprah Winfrey, has been out promoting the film in the hopes of building awards buzz.

Exhibition sources told TheWrap that presales for “The Color Purple” have been robust, with trackers projecting $8-10 million grossed on Christmas Day and $37-40 million through New Year’s Eve on Sunday. Reviews have been generally positive with an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score at time of writing.

With a reported budget of at least $90 million before marketing, “The Color Purple” is looking for word-of-mouth and maybe some Oscar buzz in January to keep turnout strong. Black audiences, particularly older ones, will be the core demographic, but post-release buzz could help the film earn cross-demo support in the new year.

Beyond Warner Bros., Universal will try to win over families with “Migration,” the new, original animated film from Illumination. Chris Meledandri’s animation house has been riding high with the wild success of “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” but is looking at a much lower opening for this title in the low-to-mid teens.

Since theaters reopened in 2021, there have been several animated box office hits, but they have all been sequels or adaptations of popular pre-existing IP. Films that don’t fit into those categories like Disney’s “Wish” and DreamWorks’ “Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken” have fallen by the wayside while Pixar’s “Elemental” needed strong post-release buzz to post a respectable theatrical run after suffering the worst opening in the studio’s history.

Now it’s Illumination’s turn to see if it can get audiences interested in “Migration” without the hook of familiarity. Universal would be thrilled if the film can get even close to the $481 million global run of DreamWorks’ “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” a year ago, though the bar to theatrical profitability is lower given that the majority of Illumination films are budgeted in the $80-90 million range. Early reviews for “Migration” have skewed positive with a 72% Rotten Tomatoes score.

A slew of other Christmas releases are set to open this weekend to less than $10 million, including Sony’s romantic comedy “Anyone But You” starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell. Sporting a $25 million budget co-financed by SK Global and TSG, the film is projected for a $7 million 4-day opening from 3,000 theaters this weekend.

A24 will also go wide this weekend with “The Iron Claw,” Sean Durkin’s tragic biopic about the Von Erich wrestling family starring Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White. The film is projected for a $6 million 4-day opening from 2,500 theaters, as A24 is hoping that the film can gain strong word-of-mouth in the southern U.S. where the film takes place. A24 has touted that early access screenings have yielded the strongest audience scores for any film released by the studio among moviegoers outside New York and California.

Finally, Amazon/MGM’s “The Boys in the Boat” and Neon’s “Ferrari” will release wide on Christmas Day, with “Boat” projected for a $3 million opening day total and “Ferrari” headed for $1 million. “The Boys in the Boat,” which is directed by George Clooney, has received mixed reviews with a 51% Rotten Tomatoes score.

“Ferrari” was one of the first major indie films to receive interim-agreement approval during the SAG-AFTRA strike, allowing stars Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz to attend the film’s Venice premiere. Neon acquired the $95 million production from STX, but presales for the biopic drama have been soft so far. The film received positive reviews with a 76% Rotten Tomatoes score.

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Prediction #1: AI is the headline story, and nothing else comes close

Talk of AI will continue to dominate, as it should given the immense transformation we will see AI take in our industry from this point forward. AI is poised to disrupt lives across the creative community – which means disruption to the meaning of art itself. 

Expect a sobering breakthrough on the path to artificial general intelligence (AGI). There’s a reason why OpenAI’s cautious board members ousted CEO Sam Altman, only to have him returned by the company’s “no holds barred” VC investors. And once AGI gets real, it will upend our entire media and creative ecosystem, not to mention all of our systems period.

Until then, artists and creators will begin to experiment with generative AI in earnest. So will the major studios and streamers, and you can bet that SAG-AFTRA and the WGA will be watching. Few traditional motion picture and television industry jobs will be lost at the artificial hands of AI in 2024, but that will begin to change in the years ahead, even as new AI-born jobs arise.

Look to media-focused companies like Flawless to begin enabling AI-dubbing, which will mitigate the need for subtitling to reach global audiences. At the same time, AI-enabled pre-visualization will become a “thing” in its early stages. And 2024 will be the first full year we will see how consumers respond to AI-infused creative works both their dollars and emotions. Will those works “connect” at a human level?

Big Tech companies, meanwhile, will do their best to skirt any limitations on their AI development and AI’s power. Alphabet (the company formerly known as Google) will promote its new “nice” sounding SynthID system and claim to be a “white knight” for enabling automatic detection of copyrighted works used to train AI systems. But, at the same time, Google and others will look to invest in companies like Character.AI which enables users to create chatbots that impersonate humans like musician Billie Eilish, with or without either license or consent (the company indicates it is up to users to do what is needed).

AI-powered music will increasingly flood our streaming world. Skeptical of Google and other Big Tech players, expect the major labels to turn to new “forensic AI” companies to both track AI fingerprints and enable new ways to pay the artists whose works and identities have been stolen.

Prediction #2: AI regulation is coming to the U.S. (it’s already in the EU)

Congress and regulators will do their best to control AI’s otherwise unbridled rise by developing guardrails to promote transparency, identify content provenance, and protect against the theft of names, images, voices and likenesses for profit, some of which will be necessary and sensible – but several that may not be. Once again, as in the case of social media, they will follow the EU, which just recently passed sweeping groundbreaking measures to regulate AI. The push for a national “right of publicity” will gain steam. 

Ultimately, dollars will decide how this all plays out, since no copyright and content exclusivity (the ability to monetize) come from AI-only generated works, and no one knows how consumers will react to creative works that are increasingly “synthetic.” Copyright remains the most powerful guardrail bar none. Dollars matter and the profit motive is strong, young Skywalker.

As I wrote in my last column, expect the courts to flesh out this fundamental copyright guardrail with critical AI-focused rulings on the issue of what constitutes copyright infringement both on the “input” training and “output” sides of the equation. We can already read the tea leaves of where it’s all heading based on early decisions. Judges have ruled that even full-scale copying of massive numbers of copyrighted works can be acceptable transformative “fair uses.” 

Prediction #3: TikTok encroaches on Netflix’s turf, as streamers continue content belt-tightening

Our collective obsession with TikTok will only deepen, even as Congress continues to threaten to pull the plug. The courts will strike down Montana-like “shut-it-all-down” laws, and younger voters will rebel against any serious “teeth.” The social media platform’s increasing dominance of our attention, not to mention its increasing focus on longer form content, will also begin to eat into our “Netflix and chill” time, and the streaming giant will begin to feel the pain.

Meanwhile, streaming content budgets will continue to fall back to Earth due to basic business realities of costs outpacing revenues. Expect all major streamers including Netflix to do more with less content. Gone are the days of continuous billion-dollar content budget increases. 

Call it the “Barbie Effect,” as all major streamers smartly focus more on evergreen, ever-reprogrammable franchise content. Disney is the gold standard here with its Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and Disney Princesses brands. But tech-first streamers like Netflix will also begin to quietly experiment with AI to further cut costs and generate new content with better economics.

So-called FAST channels (free ad supported television) will continue their surprising assault on paid subscriptions, especially internationally — critical territories for U.S. SVOD expansion. Remember, 40% of the world’s 8 billion population is still offline, most of whom are economically challenged mobile-first eyeballs to capture.

Prediction #4: Social media’s influence and Musk’s madness accelerate

Speaking of TikTok’s and social media’s increasing hold on our attention, Elon Musk will continue to drive X/Twitter’s downward spiral as advertisers continue their mass exodus and billions are shed from the company’s valuation. Musk will turn to his far out, far-right friends to fill his emotional and financial void and excoriate detractors in the name of “free speech.” Unfortunately, we won’t be able to escape how his basest instincts play out, especially in this election year. 

That will be no laughing matter, as the world begins to realize how much power one brilliant, yet increasingly off-kilter man, holds over all of us on this planet, including in the world of global defense communications where Musk can decide when and where to turn on and off his Starlink satellite system.

Prediction #5: A “deep-fake” election year where cable news relevance continues to wane

AI-supercharged social media will fuel divisive flames at a level never before seen. Watch for “deep fakes” and serious danger to democracy around every corner. Being a Presidential election year, 2024 means that politicians will preen, posture and play to their respective bases as pundits pontificate. That means there will be a never-ending stream of it all by a less-disciplined media that is pressed for profits as we watch more TikTok and less cable for our news. 

The resulting mud that is slung will be increasingly dirty, and generative AI will be the shiny new toy used by the most ruthless and unhinged conspiracy fueled campaigns and influencers. 

Prediction #6: The M&A fuse will be lit and spark more consolidation

Not all change in 2024 will be divisive, of course. After a relative pause in 2023, and due to continuing tech-driven headwinds, Hollywood pairing via M&A will reignite in 2024. Disney has openly teased its dealmaking appetite during this past year. Now real deals dipped in cheese will follow as the magic kingdom tries to reclaim its spot as the happiest place on Wall Street amongst other major traditional media companies. Disney will buy out Comcast’s remaining 33% stake in Hulu for more than $8 billion and pay that bill by spinning out its linear channels. Meanwhile, former CNN topper Jeff Zucker will resurface to buy and reimagine the U.K.’s right-leaning The Telegraph.

For their part, Big Tech behemoths will continue to eye increasingly vulnerable traditional media players a la Amazon buying MGM. Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and Comcast’s NBCUniversal are all in their lines of sight. Those storied studios give these Silicon Valley-infused streamers the franchise content they covet to capture and retain our attention to drive sales of their underlying core products. Content becomes marketing first and foremost.

Prediction #7: Zuckerberg trades his metaverse dreams for AI

Mark Zuckerberg, Big Tech’s “Dr. Evil” before Musk, continues his rehabilitation tour both for himself and his company Meta by continuing to jettison the billions he previously spent on his metaverse dreams and redeploy them on AI (notice a theme here?). And for the most part, we all let him off the hook because our focus is now on other more pressing matters.

In fact, talk of the metaverse — which dominated Big Tech discussions just one year ago pre-ChatGPT — now finds itself constrained to the smallest conference rooms across the entertainment industry. As a result, Apple’s VR headset, launched earlier this year, will continue to serve as a niche product asterisk in 2024. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have power. It simply means that a mass-market appetite doesn’t yet exist and won’t for quite some time.

Prediction #8: Live “immersive” experiences will grow in numbers and importance

Although immersive tech in the form of VR headsets finds itself largely relegated to the back burner for now, that doesn’t mean that immersive tech and experiences are not powerful. In fact, tech-enhanced live, experiential entertainment in all of its forms — concerts, festivals, sporting events — will continue to both expand and attract. In fact, such experiences will be increasingly important to escape the surrounding “noise” and connect with our families and friends in the real world to create shared, joyful, lasting experiences and memories.

Just look at what Taylor Swift and the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas did this year. Taylor’s tour generated more money than the economies of several countries (it’s the first to gross over $1 billion), while the Sphere re-imagined what out-of-home entertainment can look, sound and feel like. Bob Iger and Disney’s plans to dramatically increase investment in their theme parks are a smart and savvy sign of the times.

Prediction #9: Gaming will outpace other entertainment, as music keeps growing

Through it all, the nearly $300 billion gaming industry — which is expected to more than double to $650 billion by 2030 — will continue to obsess us as it massively outpaces the rest of the media and entertainment industry. The appellate courts will uphold Google’s game-changing loss in court to Epic Games regarding the excessive toll it takes for purchases in its Play Store (the equivalent to Apple’s App Store). Google will be forced to significantly cut its “take,” and game developers will cheer the significant extra money in their pockets. Ultimately, Apple will follow suit (one way or another).

For its part, the music industry will continue to lift our spirits no matter what the world throws at us. That means TikTok first and foremost, of course (see above). It also means that Spotify will both continue its impressive growth and its search for elusive profitability. Hence its recent mega-layoffs. Music catalog sales will soar despite the current Hipgnosis meltdown (a cautionary tale) since we listen to music in good times and in bad, as reflected in Goldman Sachs’s most recent music industry report which, once again, revised its global music industry numbers upward to about $50 billion by 2030.

Prediction #10: Web3 will be down but not completely out

Web3 in all of its forms – including so-called digital tokens or digital tickets – will continue to hold promise for creating direct lines of communication, shared value and monetization between creators and their audiences. These are worthy goals for a younger generation intent on creating new opportunities and new rules of the game.

But that promise will be lost for now amidst the rest of the industry noise, not to mention continuing skepticism by the older crowd of blockchain-based tech in general. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s conviction for wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering  is still too fresh and Web3 is guilty by association, even if digital tokens have no real relation to him and crypto-currency in the first place.

Daunting forces await in 2024, but so do transformational and exciting new opportunities. It’s the unanticipated and unexpected twists and turns that frequently change our lives more than anything else. Case in point: the launch of ChatGPT just over one year ago. No one anticipated generative AI’s commercial launch and cataclysmic global impact prior to Nov. 30, 2022 — and look at us now. 

The trick is to be stoic about it all and take fearless action to control what you can as we usher in the new year — all with a sense of hope, possibility and a willingness to pass a meaningful part of the torch to fresh young talent with constructive and creative new ideas and ideals.

Cheers to 2024 — and to a bold, inspired, kind, generous, joyful and positive new year! 

For those of you interested in learning more, visit Peter’s firm Creative Media at creativemedia.biz and follow him on Twitter @pcsathy.

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Netflix’s “All the Light We Cannot See” was the only original title in Nielsen’s top 10 streaming list for November, with the drama series ranking in the tenth spot with 2.14 billion minutes viewed.

Leading the list were “Bluey” with 3.78 billion minutes viewed, “Grey’s Anatomy” with 3.7 billion minutes viewed, and “Suits” with 3.29 billion minutes viewed. Rounding out the top five were “Friends” and “NCIS,” with 3.04 billion and 2.91 billion minutes viewed, respectively.

The remainder of the top 10 included “Gilmore Girls” with 2.52 billion minutes viewed, “Cocomelon” with 2.46 billion minutes viewed, “Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse” with 2.44 billion minutes viewed and “Six Feet Under” with 2.33 billion minutes viewed.

The latest figures come from Nielsen’s monthly viewing report, The Gauge, which recorded a 5.7% month-over-month increase in total TV usage in November — the highest since January. While TV usage was up nearly 3% during the first three weeks of the month, viewing during the fourth week — fueled by big rivalries in college football and an expanded array of NFL games — jumped 14.4% over October levels.

Broadcast viewing accounted for 24.9% of TV usage, tying the 2023 high set in January, and was the only category to gain share in November (+0.3 pts). Viewing averaged lifts of 3.2% over first 3 weeks of the month.

It marked the fourth consecutive month of month-over-month growth, climbing 7% largely propelled by the week of Thanksgiving, when usage jumped 18.4%. While overall broadcast usage decreased 5.3% on an annual basis, viewership of broadcast sports climbed 2.8% compared to 2022.

Meanwhile, cable viewing hit a category low of 28.3% share of total TV usage in November, a year over year decrease of 13% and loss of 3.5 share points.

Movie viewership was up 26% from October to account for 19% of cable viewing, making it the highest-viewed cable genre in November. Feature film viewership even surpassed the category’s typical frontrunner — cable news — which accounted for 18.4% of cable viewing for the month. Movie viewership notwithstanding, cable gave up 1.2 share points in November as news and sports viewing slipped 0.6% and 16%, respectively.

Streaming accounted for 36.1% of total TV usage, climbing over 4% from October. However, the lift was smaller than that for total TV usage and the category lost o.5 share points.

Similar to broadcast, streaming in the first 3 weeks was up by 2.3% compared to October, but jumped to over 10% during the holiday week.

Peacock was the biggest gainer among streaming platforms with a 23% increase in usage and a platform high share of 1.3% of TV. Tubo also hit a platform high share at 1.4% of TV, following an 8.3% increase in usage. Netflix also gained 0.2 share points as a result of an increase in usage of 8.6% to finish the month at 7.4% of TV usage. YouTube also saw usage gains, though its share fell slightly to 9% of TV usage.

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“The Kelly Clarkson Show” has set a 2023-2024 season high in national broadcast syndication, averaging 1.439 million daily viewers for the week of Dec. 4.

The figure marks a 4% increase from last week’s 1.378 million viewers, a 6% increase from 1.358 million daily viewers in the same week last year and a 44-week viewership high.

The NBC daytime talk show delivered a national household rating of 1.0, up 11% versus the prior week, 11% versus the same week last year and a 33-week high. It also delivered a 0.3 rating among women ages 25 to 54 for the seventh consecutive week, and twelfth time in the last 13 weeks, and a 0.2 rating among adults ages 25 to 54 for the fifth consecutive week, and sixth time in the last seven weeks.

The ratings record comes as “The Kelly Clarkson Show” won six Daytime Emmy Awards over the weekend, including Outstanding Daytime Talk Series, Daytime Talk Series Host for Clarkson, Live Sound Mixing and Sound Editing, Lighting Direction, Directing Team for a Multiple Camera Daytime Non-Fiction Program and Technical Direction, Camerawork, Video.

The show is produced by Universal Television and distributed in syndication by NBCUniversal Syndication Studios. Clarkson execs produces with Alex Duda, who also serves as showrunner.

In Nov. 2022, “The Kelly Clarkson Show” was renewed for two additional seasons through 2025. Season 5 returned to the airwaves on Oct. 16.

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As HBO hit drama “Succession” closed out its fourth and final season with loyal viewership that grew through the show’s epic conclusion — which was up 68% from the Season 3 finale — the network introduced a post-apocalyptic drama “The Last of Us,” whose Season 1 growth brought its finale just shy of the viewership brought in by the “House of the Dragon” Season 1 finale.

The major broadcasters also took several swings that paid off ratings-wise, as the series premiere of NBC’s “Night Court” reboot brought in a whopping 7.5 million viewers, while ABC’s “The Golden Bachelor” averaged a viewership well beyond the most recent season of “The Bachelor.” Even as CBS pivoted its fall lineup because of the Hollywood strikes this summer to include Paramount Global shows “Yellowstone” and “NCIS: Sydney,” both programs found ratings success among the network’s audience.

Still, there were several ratings hits no one could have seen coming, including the “Suits” streaming phenomenon this summer after its return to Netflix’s library. Pop culture coincided with performance in the case of “Vanderpump Rules” Season 10, as the Scandoval controversy broke in March, while Taylor Swift’s attendance at several Kansas City Chiefs games also boosted the NFL team’s performance.

For the full breakdown of this year’s biggest ratings winners, see below.

“The Last of Us” (HBO)

HBO’s adaptation of Naughty Dog’s video game franchise created a new tentpole series for the network. The Jan. 15 series premiere brought in 4.7 million viewers across its linear and then-HBO Max platforms. It was HBO’s second-largest debut since 2010’s premiere of “Boardwalk Empire,” behind only “House of the Dragon.”

The second episode grew by a million viewers for an audience of 5.7 million, before Episode 3, which was lauded for Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett’s tender performance, brought in 6.4 million viewers — a 37% uptick from the show’s premiere and a 12% jump over Episode 2. The fourth episode drew in 7.5 million viewers, and the show scored a new viewership high with the release of its penultimate eighth episode, which drew in 8.1 million viewers. The Season 1 finale of the apocalyptic drama continued to grow with 8.2 million viewers, marking a 74.5% increase from the series premiere, and about a million viewers off from the Season 1 finale viewership for “House of the Dragon,” which scored 9.3 million viewers.

As HBO closed out the final seasons of beloved series “Barry” and “Succession,” new installments of “The Last of Us” — which creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann revealed might take multiple seasons to adapt video game sequel “The Last of Us Part II” — guarantee a loyal fanbase for the network and streamer in years to come.

“Night Court” (NBC)

The reboot of NBC sitcom “Night Court,” which ran from 1984 to 1992, brought in fans of the original eager to see John Larroquette reprise his role as Dan Fielding, as well as new viewers with the additions of “The Big Bang Theory” star Melissa Rauch and “One Day at a Time” actress India de Beaufort.

The series premiere of “Night Court” on Jan. 17 nabbed a total viewership of 7.5 million and a 1.0 rating in the key broadcast demo among adults 18-49, with the second episode back-t0-back episode scoring 6.9 total viewers and a 0.9 ratings score, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data. With combined figures from broadcast and Peacock, the premiere episode reached 8.0 million viewers with the 8:30 telecast scoring 7.2 million viewers, leading “Night Court” to have the best first day of viewing for any NBC series episode on Peacock, including new and returning shows.

Over the course of its first season, “Night Court” averaged 4.1 million viewers and a rating of 0.52 — up significantly from NBC freshman reboot “Quantum Leap,” which averaged 2.31 million viewers and a 0.33 rating, which was similarly renewed for a second season.

After introducing a cliffhanger involving fellow original cast member Marsha Warfield in its Season 1 finale, “Night Court” is in a likely spot to maintain its viewers as it returns with new episodes on Jan. 2 (and a holiday episode airing Saturday, Dec. 23).

“Vanderpump Rules” Season 10 (Bravo)

As the affair between “Vanderpump Rules” stars Tom Sandoval (Ariana Madix’s longtime boyfriend) and Rachel Leviss — dubbed Scandoval by fans — lit the internet aflame in March, the drama brought a renewed interest to the Bravo reality series.

After the scandal first broke on March 3, the March 8 episode of “Vanderpump Rules” drew in the show’s highest total viewers and highest-rated episode among the 18-49 demo in nearly three years. While news broke during the pre-recorded rollout of Season 10, even more fans tuned in to watch Madix, Sandoval and Leviss address the controversy during the May 17 finale episode, which scored a series high both among total viewers, with an audience of 4.1 million, and in the key 18-49 adult demo with 2.4 million viewers.

The first reunion special on May 24 grew to 4.6 million total viewers across platforms in three days of viewing, making it the most-watched “Vanderpump Rules” episode to date and the most-watched Bravo episode across all series in over nine years. Following all three reunion episodes that followed, the 10th season reached over 11.4 million total viewers across platforms, with more than 115 million hours logged for the season by mid-June. We’ll see if the show can retain interest when it returns for Season 11 on Jan. 30.

“Succession” Season 4 (HBO)

As the prestige drama returned for its fourth and final season, viewership for “Succession” hit series highs almost every week as fans waited eagerly to see which Roy — or which outsider — would be crowned head of Waystar Royco. Season 4 debuted to 2.3 million viewers across HBO and then-HBO Max on March 26 — a 62% uptick from the Season 3 premiere — before setting a new series high of 2.5 million viewers for its third episode. The drama continued to score series viewership highs for its fourth episode, which received 2.6 million viewers, as well as it sixth episode, which brought in 2.7 million total viewers, before going out strong with the Season 4 finale bringing its largest viewership with 2.9 million viewers — up 68% from the Season 3 finale.

While “Succession” did not come close to the 9.3 million viewers who tuned into the Season 1 finale of “House of the Dragon,” the show’s cult following delivered an impressive upward trajectory in anticipation of the drama’s conclusion.

“Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love” (NBC)

Though the one-time special was smaller in scale, TV legend Carol Burnett’s dreams for a 90th birthday filled with a “variety show with live entertainment” paid off in strides, both for Burnett and in the ratings.

The two-hour special on April 26, titled “Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love,” scored 7.6 million total viewers on NBC, making it the night’s most-watched broadcast program. Not only did the special rank as NBC’s most-watched primetime entertainment special since the 2020 Golden Globes, but the tribute program also was the fourth most-watched primetime entertainment specials in the spring 2023 season, behind the Oscars, which brought in 16.7 million viewers, the Grammys, which scored 12.5 million viewers, and ABC’s “Rocking New Year’s Eve.” NBC aired an encore of the special later that week and again in August.

“Suits” (USA Network and streaming on Netflix and Peacock)

“Suits” was the unexpected hit show of the summer. It streamed on Netflix and Peacock several years after its 2011-2019 run on USA Network.

After being first released on Netflix on June 17, the legal drama logged 2.3 billion streaming minutes from June 19 to June 25 across both Netflix and Peacock. Then it set its first record for the most streamed acquired title with 3.1 billion minutes of viewing during the week of June 26 to July 2, a 36% increase in viewership from the prior week, according to Nielsen streaming figures. The next week, July 3-9, the show broke its own record by tallying 3.67 billion viewing minutes in a single week, as it did the next week from July 10-16, which added another 24 million minutes with 3.70 billion minutes. By July 17-23, “Suits” marked its fourth week in a row as the most watched acquired series as it continued to set new records in its category with 3.9 billion minutes viewed — marking its most-watched week to date.

The “Suits” craze slowed down the next week as it tallied 3.6 billion minutes from July 24-30 and 3.2 billion minutes during the week of July 31-Aug. 6. By Aug. 14-20, viewing for the drama dipped below 3 million to hit 2.8 billion minutes, and continued to drop throughout the fall.

While Netflix’s new viewing data release only accounts for part of the “Suits” craze, the report reveals that the USA drama tallied 599.1 million hours viewed on Netflix from January through June, with Season 1 marking the highest viewership of the installments with 129.1 million hours viewed.

The streaming juggernaut is not just making moves at Netflix, as NBCUniversal is in the early stages of developing a spin-off series set in the “Suits” universe, and audience’s love for the show has even inspired USA Network executives to explore revisiting their era of “breezy” dramas with a new slate of programming soon.

“The Golden Bachelor” (ABC)

ABC’s senior iteration of “The Bachelor” might have been just what the reality dating franchise needed to revitalize its audience. The series premiere of “The Golden Bachelor” courted 4.36 million viewers during its series premiere on Sept. 28 — up 45% from the most-recent premiere of “The Bachelor” and more than double the premiere viewership of “Bachelor in Paradise” Season 9, which brought in 2.08 million viewers as it debuted just after “The Golden Bachelor.”

By the conclusion of the series — which saw leading man Gerry Turner propose to Theresa Nist — the finale drew in 6.09 million total viewers, per Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, scoring the biggest audience the franchise had seen since the March 2021 season finale of “The Bachelor.” Viewership for the finale grew to 6.95 million after three days of viewing on ABC — the biggest audience for any “Bachelor” series since the March 2020 finale of Peter Weber’s season of “The Bachelor” — and scored 7.13 million viewers after a week of multi-platform viewing.

Ratings for the finale grew from a 0.80 live-plus-same day rating in the key broadcast demo among adults 18-49 to a 0.98 rating in seven-day viewing on ABC, marking the highest-rated “Bachelor” series telecast since the September 2022 finale of Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey’s season of “The Bachelorette.”

Overall, the season averaged 4.7 million viewers over the course of the season — up from the average viewership of 3 million brought in by the most recent season of “The Bachelor” — and averaged a 0.59 rating, narrowly overtaking the average 0.58 rating for the most recent season of [The Bachelor].”

While neither a renewal for “The Golden Bachelor” nor a green light for a “Golden Bachelorette” spin-off have been announced, ABC is looking to bring back the season’s viewers during a “Golden” wedding special set to air on Jan. 4.

“Yellowstone” (CBS)

When CBS added Paramount Network hit “Yellowstone” to its fall lineup due to gaps left by the Hollywood double strike this summer, the Kevin Costner-led western drama set off a ratings boom for the network.

“Yellowstone” immediately made a splash on CBS as it debuted on Sept. 17 to 6.83 million viewers — up 141% in total viewers compared to the show’s Season 1 premiere on Paramount Network — and a 0.67 rating in the key demo. The show went on to average 4.69 million viewers and a 0.36 rating across its nine-episode telecast on the network, while exposing new CBS audiences to the Taylor Sheridan-created universe.

Of the 21.6 million viewers who tuned in to at least one episode of “Yellowstone” Season 1 on CBS, 52% had never seen a single episode of the show in the past year on either linear or streaming platforms, according to internal research provided by the network.

After wrapping up with the Season 1 finale on Oct. 22, which secured 4.52 million viewers, CBS announced it would begin airing the second season starting on Sunday, Oct. 29. It’s safe to say the ratings trend is continuing to be strong, as the network will debut Season 3 season beginning Sunday, Jan. 14.

“NCIS: Sydney” (CBS)

Another move prompted by the summer’s strikes was bringing “NCIS” spin-off “NCIS: Sydney,” which stars Olivia Swann and Todd Lasance, to CBS after it was initially set to debut solely on Paramount+.

The franchise’s first international edition debuted to 5.64 million viewers and a 0.34 rating, scoring the highest premiere viewership for a broadcast show premiering this fall. The Nov. 14 series premiere exceeded several fall series premieres, including ABC’s “The Golden Bachelor,” which brought in 4.36 million viewers during its series premiere on Sept. 28, NBC’s “The Irrational,” which debuted to an audience of 3.81 million people on Sept. 25, and Fox’s “Krapopolis,” which scored 3.6 million total viewers as it premiered on Sept. 24.

While the show is still rolling out its freshman season through the new year, it has averaged 5.1 million viewers and a rating of 0.33 over its first five episodes.

Kansas City Chiefs NFL Games

As rumors of a romance between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce heated up this fall, Kansas City Chiefs games saw an uptick in viewers as Swifties tuned in to watch the pop star in attendance. When fans spotted the “Midnights” singer at her first game of the season on Sept. 24, the Chiefs vs. Bears game scored 24.3 million viewers on Fox. The next week on Oct. 1, Swift’s attendance at the Chiefs vs. New York Jets game boosted NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” to average 27 million viewers across all platforms, making it the most-watched Sunday since Super Bowl LVII on Fox in February.

Viewership for the Oct. 2 game was up 22% over last year’s Week 4 game, and, as could be expected, viewing among young women 12-17 grew 53% as compared to the first three broadcasts of “Sunday Night Football” this season.

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In the last month alone, Condé Nast, G/O Media, Vice Media and Vox Media have all cut staff, most of whom already had layoffs earlier this year. (Vice filed for bankruptcy in June.)

Broadcast, print and digital outlets collectively saw 2,681 journalism job cuts in 2023, up 48% from 1,808 in 2022 and 77% from 1,511 in 2021, according to a report from employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

With a collapsing advertising-revenue model and more media companies experimenting with artificial intelligence to create content, the outlook for journalism is dimming, media analysts told TheWrap. The decline underscores the need for the public and even governments to fund news gathering if it is to survive in its current form and avoid widespread “news deserts,” they said.  

“All available evidence suggests that the commercial future for journalism is especially dire,” Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, told TheWrap. “We cannot simply let the market drive local journalism into the ground. I expect to see more legislative efforts, especially at state government levels, aimed at shoring up and even expanding local journalism.”

To that end, one bright spot amid the gloomy outlook has been the growth of nonprofit newsrooms, which increased in number by 17% in 2022 and boosted revenues 19% to nearly $500 million between 2021 and 2022, according to a report published this May by The Institute for Nonprofit News.

Last week, Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting, two San Francisco based non-profit investigative organizations, said they were merging and would employ 70 staffers. The combined outlets have $21 million in funding commitments over the next three years, Monika Bauerlein, the CEO of Mother Jones, said in a statement.

“Community-based online media, and nonprofit media more broadly, have been relatively insulated from the layoff march,” Jesse Holcomb, an assistant professor of journalism and communication at Calvin University, told TheWrap. “Those newsrooms are often small, lean, and increasingly revenue diverse.”

Yet even some of them have felt the same industry pressures. In August, The Texas Tribune — an award-winning leader in the nonprofit journalism push — laid off 11 staffers, the outlet’s first job cuts in its 14-year history.

Advertising losses deepen

Heading into 2024, legacy media, which rely on digital and print advertising, are facing tough decisions about whether to cut staff or sell off unprofitable assets.

In November, G/O Media shuttered female-forward publication Jezebel after failing to find a buyer for the outlet, citing a lack of advertising traction for the site. The company laid off 23 editorial staffers, with Gizmodo and The Onion also impacted. In the announcement to staffers, CEO Jim Spanfeller cited challenging market conditions for the “very difficult decision” to trim the workforce. (Paste Magazine acquired Jezebel at the end of November and resumed publication)

Condé Nast said in early November it would reduce its staff by 5%, or around 270 employees. CEO Roger Lynch said the company is having to respond to digital advertising pressures and a decline in social media traffic, according to an internal memo. The job cuts, which officially began at the end of November, are impacting The New Yorker and other brands under the Condé Nast umbrella.

Underpinning the media slide is a darkening advertising outlook. U.S. newspaper publishers are expected to lose $2.4 billion in advertising investment between 2021 and 2026, mostly related to less print advertising, according to a 2022 report from the consulting firm PwC. Print advertising that fell to $7 billion in 2021 will drop to $4.9 billion by 2026, the consultancy said, with digital advertising growth only expected to increase by 1% in that same period — which is not enough to recoup overall lost ad revenue.

Traditional media outlets that still rely largely on ad revenue for income are now having to adjust strategies to “gain a wider reach,” Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins, the national president of the Society of Professional Journalists, told TheWrap.

Big Tech companies, including Alphabet, Meta and Amazon, continue to control the lion’s share — at least 70% by most estimates — of digital advertising. The Justice Department sued Google (now called Alphabet) in January on antitrust grounds for allegedly monopolizing digital advertising technologies, saying the tech giant pockets on average more than 30% of the advertising dollars that flow through its technology products. And as news consumers shift their focus to social media, popular Chinese-owned app TikTok is flexing its muscles, asking advertisers to spend at least 50% more in 2024, The Information reported.

But even if platforms such as Google were to redistribute more advertising revenues back to news publishers, those revenues are “highly unlikely to return” to previous levels, Pickard said.

Wall Street financial players have continued to seize on turnaround opportunities for struggling media companies. In a so-called vulture capitalist strategy, more hedge funds and private equity firms are purchasing news outlets and then “gutting newsroom staffs,” Blaize-Hopkins said. 

And now, under pressure from Wall Street and Big Tech, generative AI has begun to infiltrate the media landscape. Media analysts expect more controversies to occur like the recent debacle over Sports Illustrated using AI to create fake writer profiles that generated articles, which infuriated the publication’s writers guild. (Three top executives were fired in the wake of the scandal.)

Investment needed to avoid ‘news deserts’

The decline of media outlets is creating “news deserts” where local media once operated, which will isolate citizens much like “food deserts” do from a lack of nearby grocery stores. 

“The news deserts metaphor will soon cease to make much sense because we all will be living in such an area,” Pickard said. “News deserts will encompass the entire country.”

A research study in 2022 by Northwestern University’s Medill School found  that some 2,500 dailies and weeklies have shut down since 2005. The study predicted that a third of American newspapers that existed roughly two decades ago will be out of business by 2025.

This year that annual report cited 204 counties that currently are news deserts, with no newspapers, local digital sites, public radio newsrooms or ethnic publications. And Medill identified another 228 counties at substantial risk of becoming news deserts in coming years.

Heading into another presidential election year, news audiences are expected to grow to some degree. But analysts who spoke to TheWrap fear it may not be enough to slow the layoff train. A “small election-year bump,” could benefit media companies, Pickard said. However, “even this is unlikely to make much of a difference.” 

The general public will need to take responsibility to “help stabilize the industry,” Blaize-Hopkins said. “Making sure we invest in local news – whether monetarily or by consuming local news content – is crucial.”

“The health of the journalism industry is closely tied to the health of our democracy,” Blaize-Hopkins added. “When layoffs happen, the public becomes less informed, which puts our very democracy at risk.”

The post As More Media Layoffs Ring in the New Year, Americans Face Prospect of ‘News Deserts’ | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

“Holy Night” is a sequel to the 2021 “Christmas With the Chosen” holiday special for Angel Studios’ hit indie streaming series about Jesus’ teachings in the Gospel. The special set opening day records for Fathom and grossed $13.7 million during its limited engagement.

“Holy Night” isn’t showing quite as strong a start with $4.6 million grossed from 2,094 theaters since its release this past Tuesday, but that is enough to put Fathom’s annual gross total for 2023 at approximately $97 million, the highest ever in the history of the company.

Partnerships with indie companies like Angel Studios and Studio Ghibli distributor GKIDS have helped Fathom expand its slate of offerings to a more diverse array of specialty audiences, with some films forgoing the limited engagement model for longer theatrical runs. Meanwhile, theaters have shown greater interest in screening Fathom limited engagement releases as a way to improve audience turnout on weekends where major studios aren’t releasing top films.

“Going into this year, we saw a need to make some changes to the business model we had employed pre-pandemic, so we drew up some innovative ideas and put them into play,” Ray Nutt, CEO of Fathom Events, said in a statement earlier this week. “We couldn’t be more proud of our contribution to the industry this year and could not be happier about how this new model performed.”

Elsewhere, MGM released Cord Jefferson’s satire “American Fiction” in seven theaters in New York, Los Angeles and Austin, grossing $227,000 for a per theater average of $32,411. The film will expand to 40 theaters in 11 cities for Christmas weekend as it hopes to build up audience buzz ahead of the Golden Globes ceremony and Oscar nominations next month.

“American Fiction” stars Jeffrey Wright as a brilliant but struggling academic and writer who, in a swipe against the stereotypical crime-riddled narratives about Black people that flood pop culture, writes his own novel filled with gang violence, missing fathers and bloodshed. To his shock, the novel becomes a hit, forcing him to pretend that he is an anonymous ex-convict to close the book sale and pay for treatment for his dementia-stricken mother.

“American Fiction” won the coveted audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival, an award that has led to at least a Best Picture Oscar nomination for 14 of its last 15 winners. Critics have also praised the film, giving it a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Another critically acclaimed film that hit theaters is Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” an austere, sobering drama focused on the family of Rudolf Hoss, a top Nazi commandant at Auschwitz, as they live an idyllic life right next door to the Holocaust.

“The Zone of Interest” will run in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles before expanding wide in January. The film grossed $124,800 this weekend for a per theater average of $31,200. The film, which is Glazer’s first in a decade, won the Grand Prix at Cannes and sports a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Among holdovers, Searchlight’s “Poor Things” expanded to 82 theaters and grossed $1.3 million this weekend for a total of $2.2 million. Searchlight will expand the film to approximately 800 theaters for Christmas weekend.

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