I wrote about how Paramount chaos is spooking showrunners, the three big exec showdowns to come in a Paramount-WBD merger, and streamers’ scramble to get series back on air faster. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

TGIF and happy sports ball season, to those who celebrate.

The Emmy race is officially on — but the bigger cliffhanger may be where the Emmy Awards go next. The TV Academy’s broadcast “wheel” deal expires after this year’s NBC telecast, and sources tell me everything from a renewed Big Four pact to a streamer shakeup is on the table. Translation: After YouTube took the Oscars, the Emmys may be the next big awards property up for grabs.

Also today: what the TCA nominations tell us before Emmy noms land July 8, why HBO/HBO Max should be feeling very smug, the Heated Rivalry Emmys-Connor Storrie loophole, and the Knicks ratings fever making live TV feel communal again.

Let’s get into it.

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I wrote about SNL UK surviving the skeptics, the Cannes Film Festival and market with Ashley Cullins and Katey Rich, and YouTubers hijacking reality TV. Email me at manori@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Lesley Goldberg on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

Hello, Series Business readers and guten tag from Germany. I’m in Cologne this week for the Seriencamp TV conference, where things are getting existential. This year, discussions around the creator economy have dominated — why, for example, haven’t we seen a breakout à la Markiplier’s Iron Lung out of Europe yet? — and YouTube comes up in virtually every conversation.

Even at Netflix’s summer party at Soho House in London last week, U.K. content boss Anne Mensah — who greenlit Baby Reindeer and Adolescence — joked that her team’s job was “to make you and your family turn off that bloody YouTube Short!” Days later, media measurement firm Digital i revealed that YouTube has overtaken Netflix for average daily viewing time — 99.1 minutes versus 93.4 minutes — across 18 international markets, including the U.S., U.K., Germany and France.

The numbers have translated into real industry standing. This summer’s MacTaggart Lecture, the most prestigious keynote in British broadcasting, is to be delivered by YouTube’s VP Head of EMEA, Pedro Pina. Past speakers have included Kevin Spacey (2013), Shane Smith of Vice (2016), both Elisabeth and Rupert Murdoch (2012 and 1989, respectively) and Ted Turner (1982). That pulpit has never belonged to a streaming executive before.

British broadcasters have spent the past two years racing onto a platform that is eating them alive. YouTube’s dominance among younger viewers has left the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 with no real choice but to feed their premium content into a machine that keeps 45 percent of ad revenue — a split unchanged since 2007. In return, YouTube uses its presence, and its political relationships, as a shield against tougher regulation. The result is a forced marriage neither side can afford to leave, and a growing suspicion among broadcasters that the more successfully they grow on YouTube, the worse their leverage gets.

Today I dive into…

• The YouTube trap: why British broadcasters have “no option” but to feed the platform eating them

• Why the BBC’s sudden YouTube push marks a major surrender in the war to keep young viewers inside its own walls

• How YouTube uses legacy broadcasters as both premium inventory and political cover against tougher regulation

• Why the 45 percent revenue cut has become the flashpoint — and why broadcasters’ leverage may get worse the more successful they become

• How the SNL UK-eBay deal shows one way to make YouTube math work — and why branded work is only a patch, not a solution

• The U.S. warning: why American networks should study Britain’s forced YouTube marriage now

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I wrote about the three big exec showdowns to come if Paramount’s acquisition of WBD goes through, broke down streamers’ scramble to get series back on air faster and interviewed Off Campus showrunner Louisa Levy. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

New 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton may think broadcast is “an ice cube that is melting,” a sentiment relayed along other disparaging comments about linear TV. But inside Paramount, and particularly CBS, showrunners see something else: one of the last and best reliable engines of creative employment — now rattled by Bari Weiss’ tumultuous CBS News overhaul and David Ellison’s Trump-friendly posture — that has many worried, watching and worse, choosing not to pitch the long-running most successful broadcast network on air.

The irony is hard to miss. Following the breakout success of The Pitt and such Netflix “gourmet cheeseburgers” as The Night Agent and The Diplomat, platforms are leaning ever further into the old broadcast model — trying to do CBS better than CBS can — with fast-turnaround, broadly appealing, repeatable shows that keep audiences coming back. Even broadcast is leaning more into its broadcast model as the number of series on air and in development actually keeps growing. And showrunners still consider landing a show on broadcast the gold standard: a chance at long-term job stability and financial success.

“Why are we dealing with someone so dismissive of something that so many care about and want to improve?” one Paramount-based showrunner tells me of the mood among their peers following Bilton’s “uncomfortable” comments. “I think the kerfuffle at 60 Minutes is disparaging what a lot of showrunners do and are committed to doing in linear, and it’s not a good look.”

While broadcast news and entertainment divisions have traditionally followed separate missions and masters, the disruption inside Paramount — and across Hollywood — is breaking all kinds of industry protocols as CBS News’ traditional boundaries of church-and-state fall away. At least one showrunner has already expressed concerns about Weiss’ moves to senior executives at CBS, I’m told, including network entertainment president Amy Reisenbach and her boss, TV media chair George Cheeks. Reisenbach, too, has quietly raised questions about how the damage at 60 Minutes is impacting CBS’ overall brand as Ellison — pulling every lever to smooth his company’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery — reinvents Paramount to be more aligned with what many see as Trump-friendly values.

I spoke with 10 showrunners to hear their thoughts about doing business at Paramount in the wake of the changes rattling 60 Minutes and all of Paramount. Ellison’s decision to install The Free Press’ Weiss as editor-in-chief at CBS News — and her move to hire Bilton, a former New York Times tech columnist and Vanity Fair writer with no TV experience, as executive producer — have created what one showrunner calls a “scary situation” for creatives at the company.

Today, you’ll learn about the tumult among writers and showrunners looking at the new Paramount, and what the massive changes there — and the ones still to come — mean for the future.

Read on for:

• Why some showrunners are starting to steer clear of the Paramount “brand”

• What Nick Bilton gets wrong about linear TV — and how his misconceptions are rippling beyond the newsroom

• How showrunners with business at Paramount are operating now, and what they expect post-merger

• The career-risk calculation for younger writers who can’t afford to boycott a buyer

• The fear of political meddling, programming mandates and invisible red lines

• How trusted CBS execs are keeping showrunners calm — for now

• The merger dread: “What are you getting in to?”

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My Spring Sellers’ Guide has covered what shows Netflix, Apple TV and Disney’s ABC, FX and Hulu want to buy. I host Ankler Agenda and wrote about microdramas’ embrace of AI, Netflix’s evolving sports strategy and millennial and Gen Z jobs challenges. I’m at elaine@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Lesley Goldberg and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

I’ve got a new TV Sellers’ Guide for you, this time with a focus on Paramount+ and HBO Max, plus CBS and HBO, which are all set to land under one corporate roof with the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. While Paramount CEO David Ellison’s proposed deal appears close to clearing federal regulatory hurdles, it has a fresh legal challenge ahead as Reuters and Bloomberg both reported Friday that several state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, will sue to block the merger.

Assuming the deal does go through, though, the town is looking at the largest combination of streamers since streaming became a thing: Ellison has promised to merge Paramount+ and its 79 million subscribers and HBO Max and its 140 million subscribers into one service, making it a legitimate contender to Netflix’s 325 million subs worldwide. It will also lead to a “Sophie’s choice” of leadership woes, pitting HBO’s Casey Bloys against Paramount+’s Cindy Holland to lead streaming, as my colleague Lesley Goldberg wrote last week.

For now, talking to agents and producers, there’s a wait-and-see attitude to bringing pitches for new programming to HBO and HBO Max, since their parent company WBD may soon be gobbled up. Mergers mean regime changes, and regime changes mean that any development in the pipeline is at risk of being overturned. WBD showcased a cable TV-heavy, executive-light presentation during the Upfronts last month that didn’t even bother bringing up HBO Max until the last 15 minutes. A lot of chatter afterward boiled down to, “Looks fine, but so what? Everything’s about to change.”

Yet HBO/HBO Max aren’t pausing development in the way Paramount did in the period ahead of its acquisition by Skydance. But the WBD platforms’ appetites do seem limited, sellers tell me. (A source close to WBD pushes back on this idea and says it’s business as usual.) Meanwhile, after about two years of being a frozen asset, streamer Paramount+ has been open for business, much to the delight of the town.

If you’ve been reading my Sellers’ Guide series for the last couple of years, you know I wouldn’t normally look to an investment bank confab for signals about a streamer’s programming appetites. But at the MoffettNathanson Media, Internet & Communications Conference a couple weeks ago, new Paramount Skydance CFO Dennis Cinelli offered a backdoor look into what a combined Paramount+/HBO Max streamer will look like.

“As we think about international, you’re seeing us really make sure we can leverage both the global portfolio of content we have — sports being a good one, all the premium content also is really interesting, like the CBS procedurals are really good in international markets,” he said on May 13. “But we’ll add in local where needed, right? One of the reasons why we really feel good about the competitive nature of the deal is we’re going to be another local buyer in these markets for creators.”

Today in my spring Sellers’ Guide, I’ll break down what to know when pitching P+ and HBO Max now, including:

• The Paramount and WBD execs driving programming now, and which are considered MVPs by top agents

• The genres P+ wants to complement the Taylor Sheridan universe, including “female-driven thrillers” and more

• What’s on CBS’ development slate, and what it’s still buying

• Which CBS Studios’ overalls take up the most network hours

• Why Paramount+ is “nixing” comedy for now

• What HBO drama execs are looking for beyond IP

• Why HBO Max is “a really tough place to sell” — unless the pitch follows this certain model

• Merger questions looming for all these teams

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I wrote about the three big exec showdowns to come if Paramount’s acquisition of WBD goes through, broke down streamers’ scramble to get series back on air faster and interviewed Off Campus showrunner Louisa Levy. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

Congratulations to those of us who made it through the week. Pouring one out for Scott Pelley, who stood up for free speech and paid the price for biting the hand that pays him. Since Claire Atkinson popped in to TV in 3 last week to cover Bari Weiss’ hire of Nick Bilton to run 60 Minutes, the challenges for CBS have only snowballed — with Status reporting Thursday night that Amy Reisenbach has quietly voiced concerns about how the kerfuffle is affecting the entire network, not just the news division. As David Ellison hustles to win approval for Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, it’s another headache alongside the executive showdowns the merger will force. Ouch.

I’ll be staying on every angle of the Paramount-WBD rollup, and for today, I’ve got a look at what’s next at HBO and HBO Max as three beloved scripted originals wind down. I also give credit to Amazon for its first (baby) steps toward viewership transparency, and I wrap things up with a look at Netflix’s first efforts at a new (at least for the streamer!) release strategy.

Let’s get into it.

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I wrote about streamers’ scramble to get series back on air faster, interviewed Louisa Levy, the showrunner of Amazon’s buzzy hockey romance, Off Campus, and analyzed Peter Friedlander’s first Upfront as Amazon’s TV head. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

In the nearly 10 months that David Ellison has owned Paramount, the executive has made hiring decisions that have drawn acclaim (see Cindy Holland as chair of direct to consumer) and installed others who have faced widespread backlash — Bari Weiss as editor in chief at CBS News, where Scott Pelley was fired for saying on Monday that Weiss was “murdering 60 Minutes.”

Now, as the aspiring media mogul navigates — maybe loves? — the turbulence surrounding 60 Minutes, he’ll also soon face major leadership decisions around CNN, HBO and Warner Bros. Television (provided his $111 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery clears regulatory approvals).

Paramount Skydance is still targeting a third-quarter close for the deal that would see the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison gain control of WBD’s TV and film studios, HBO and streamer HBO Max, CNN and a plethora of linear cable networks. Combined with Paramount’s current assets, it would create an org chart from hell that includes three TV studios, two film studios and a pair of streaming services, among scores of other redundancies (Ellison has identified $6 billion in cost savings).

Currently, Paramount is contending with growing resistance and a possible antitrust lawsuit from California Attorney General Rob Bonta and his fellow state attorneys general. Ellison, cozy with President Donald Trump, most recently met with officials at the Department of Justice as he looks to secure government approval for a merger that would be both saddled with $79 billion in debt — an amount that has led Wall Street to sour on the deal, and foreign interests from its backers.

As the third quarter draws near, sources tell me Ellison is playing things close to the vest when it comes to his plans for top Warner Bros. Discovery executives including Casey Bloys, who oversees HBO and streamer HBO Max; and Warner Bros. Television Group CEO Channing Dungey, whose remit also includes such WBD linear assets as TNT and Discovery Channel.

But it’s clear, some major C-suite shakeups of the kind this industry hasn’t seen in a while are about to hit.

Amid the uncertainty, I dialed up 10 industry veterans — a mix of agents, managers, executives and creatives — to hear their thoughts (and hopes) about how Ellison could manage the keys to a major kingdom and the fates of some very high-profile subjects in his hands.

Here’s what’s at stake and where the battle lines will be drawn, and what insiders told me:

• The three top exec showdowns about to happen

• Who’s best equipped to run the combined companies’ mega-streamer: Bloys or Holland

• What Bloys has signaled about his ambitions (and bets on whether he’ll want to make “family-friendly shit”)

• Holland’s advantage in a “tech-bro world”

• Studio stewards: how three (Skydance, CBS and Warner Bros. TV) will become one, why it’s inevitable and who will lead

• How George Cheeks’ role could evolve, and which other execs could see their career expire with their contract

• What’s the strategy for the linear networks (“Divest them, shut them down, spin them off”)

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I wrote about streamers’ scramble to get series back on air faster, interviewed Louisa Levy, the showrunner of Amazon’s buzzy hockey romance, Off Campus, and analyzed Peter Friedlander’s first Upfront as Amazon’s TV head. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

In the nearly 10 months that David Ellison has owned Paramount, the executive has made hiring decisions that have drawn acclaim (see Cindy Holland as chair of direct to consumer) and installed others who have faced widespread backlash — Bari Weiss as editor in chief at CBS News, where Scott Pelley was fired for saying on Monday that Weiss was “murdering 60 Minutes.”

Now, as the aspiring media mogul navigates — maybe loves? — the turbulence surrounding 60 Minutes, he’ll also soon face major leadership decisions around CNN, HBO and Warner Bros. Television (provided his $111 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery clears regulatory approvals).

Paramount Skydance is still targeting a third-quarter close for the deal that would see the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison gain control of WBD’s TV and film studios, HBO and streamer HBO Max, CNN and a plethora of linear cable networks. Combined with Paramount’s current assets, it would create an org chart from hell that includes three TV studios, two film studios and a pair of streaming services, among scores of other redundancies (Ellison has identified $6 billion in cost savings).

Currently, Paramount is contending with growing resistance and a possible antitrust lawsuit from California Attorney General Rob Bonta and his fellow state attorneys general. Ellison, cozy with President Donald Trump, most recently met with officials at the Department of Justice as he looks to secure government approval for a merger that would be both saddled with $79 billion in debt — an amount that has led Wall Street to sour on the deal, and foreign interests from its backers.

As the third quarter draws near, sources tell me Ellison is playing things close to the vest when it comes to his plans for top Warner Bros. Discovery executives including Casey Bloys, who oversees HBO and streamer HBO Max; and Warner Bros. Television Group CEO Channing Dungey, whose remit also includes such WBD linear assets as TNT and Discovery Channel.

But it’s clear, some major C-suite shakeups of the kind this industry hasn’t seen in a while are about to hit.

Amid the uncertainty, I dialed up 10 industry veterans — a mix of agents, managers, executives and creatives — to hear their thoughts (and hopes) about how Ellison could manage the keys to a major kingdom and the fates of some very high-profile subjects in his hands.

Here’s what’s at stake and where the battle lines will be drawn, and what insiders told me:

• The three top exec showdowns about to happen

• Who’s best equipped to run the combined companies’ mega-streamer: Bloys or Holland

• What Bloys has signaled about his ambitions (and bets on whether he’ll want to make “family-friendly shit”)

• Holland’s advantage in a “tech-bro world”

• Studio stewards: how three (Skydance, CBS and Warner Bros. TV) will become one, why it’s inevitable and who will lead

• How George Cheeks’ role could evolve, and which other execs could see their career expire with their contract

• What’s the strategy for the linear networks (“Divest them, shut them down, spin them off”)

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My Spring Sellers’ Guide has covered what shows Netflix, Apple TV and Disney’s ABC, FX and Hulu want to buy. I host Ankler Agenda and revealed Netflix sports strategy and millennials’ and Gen Z’s jobs challenges. I’m at elaine@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Lesley Goldberg and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

Talk to TV writers on the record and they’ll likely spit on the idea of using artificial intelligence in the writing process. Even before anyone was using ChatGPT and Claude on the reg, AI as an abstraction — a Hollywood killer — was the headlining Big Bad of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike.

Now, things are a little more complicated. The AI slop inescapably seeping into your social media feeds is easy to decry. But showrunners increasingly are using AI tools on the DL, studios are hiring chief AI officers and Ben Affleck just sold his AI startup to Netflix. As I’ve written about for a while now — and as Erik Barmack covers robustly in Reel AI — this technology is steadily being integrated into the entertainment business even as it makes creatives uneasy about the future of the industry.

Just look at the unfolding debacle around Amazon MGM Studios’ recently announced plans to greenlight three AI-fueled animated TV series. Last Wednesday, the studio and its cloud-computing sister company, AWS, unveiled the GenAI Creators Fund, a “joint initiative that gives creators of all styles and backgrounds access to professional-grade AI tools and funding.” The announcement was made at AI on the Lot, a conference about AI futurism in entertainment, where Amazon’s head of AI studios (and its former co-head of TV), Albert Cheng, said AI tools could be used to “bring production back” to Los Angeles. The company trotted out acclaimed Book of Life writer-director Jorge Gutierrez as one of its inaugural partners who would create a new animated TV show, Punky Duck, using AI; he hyped up the initiative’s “rebellious punk rock” possibilities.

Just two days later, following social media backlash, Gutierrez dropped out. “My intent was to showcase artists, both new and seasoned, both inside and outside the studios, driving this new tech,” he wrote on X. “My sincerest apology to those I upset. I promise to do better moving forward.”

The Amazon blowback shows how toxic AI remains in traditional Hollywood. Microdramas show what happens in a corner of the business moving fast enough — and cheaply enough — to try it anyway.

Therein lies the central tension that Hollywood is facing right now. Microdramas are not just another AI experiment. They’re a preview of the bargain writers may soon be asked to make. AI advancements won’t yet replace them, but it is already good enough to change the terms of their work. In microdramas — fast, cheap, nonunion-ish and built for volume — that future is arriving first.

I encountered this firsthand when I moderated a panel at AI on the Lot last Thursday — “AI Loops Behind Vertical Microdramas” — the day after Gutierrez’s announced series. The onstage conversation included a group of microdrama specialists who employ AI tools to create entire series, from page to screen, in just weeks.

Why should Hollywood proper pay attention? Follow the money. Microdramas are a rapidly emerging market — stories told in minute-long chapters that you watch (and often pay for) on your phone, designed to be viewed vertically, binge-style, on one of the many apps out there, like ReelShort, MyDrama or DramaBox. Veteran Hollywood executives including former Warner Bros. TV head Susan Rovner, ex-Showtime co-pres Jana Winograde and such major players as Disney, Netflix and NBCUniversal have taken an interest in the multibillion-dollar business. And the companies that win in the format, already hugely popular in Asia and other regions and quickly making inroads in the U.S., are poised to score huge audiences and revenue to match.

On my panel, Celestine Pictures founder Grace Gao, Meta AI product leader and former COL Media CTO Enoch Chen, Plot Party founder Sophia Xing and Bogdan Nesvit, co-CEO and co-founder of Holywater (an AI-first entertainment company that has been backed by Fox Entertainment and Brent Montgomery’s Wheelhouse, among others) walked me through how they’re using AI to accelerate development and production and reduce costs on the already lean-and-speedy microdrama process.

Here’s what you’ll learn from the provocative conversation, which drew a standing-room-only crowd at AI on the Lot:

• Why microdramas are becoming Hollywood’s first real AI writing lab

• What kinds of writers are actually succeeding in the format

• How AI can give scribes more creative control while shrinking the traditional pipeline

• The writers’ assistant warning sign: why one founder says her company “would be dead” if it had to hire them

• How AI can open up new themes and genres

• Studios’ dilemma: how to exploit AI’s efficiencies without alienating talent

• Why AI still can’t create original microdrama scripts, even when it’s “trained on understanding the recipe”

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I wrote about streamers’ scramble to get series back on air faster, interviewed Louisa Levy, the showrunner of Amazon’s buzzy hockey romance, Off Campus, and analyzed Peter Friedlander’s first Upfront as Amazon’s TV head. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

Happy Friday, Series Business readers!

Today, I’ve got a look at the latest names in the running to be Peter Friedlander’s head of scripted comedy and drama at Amazon and a wide-ranging interview with Hacks co-creators/co-showrunners Jen Statsky and Lucia Aniello (big-time spoiler alert if you haven’t watched the finale yet!). Read on also for a guest turn from Ankler contributor Claire Atkinson, who just wrote about James Murdoch’s revenge tour, as she talks to insiders, including former CBS news chief Jeff Fager, about Nick Bilton’s hire as executive producer of 60 Minutes — the big move CBS News’ editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has been brewing for months.

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I interviewed Louisa Levy, the showrunner of Amazon’s buzzy hockey romance, Off Campus, and wrote about Peter Friedlander’s first Upfront as Amazon’s TV head, the recent growth in broadcast and the death of vanity production deals. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

What do Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie, Peacock’s The Paper, Amazon’s Off Campus, HBO’s Harry Potter and FX/Hulu’s Alien: Earth have in common? All these scripted originals started work on their second season before formal renewals came through — part of a larger effort across the industry to get streaming shows back on the air on more of a broadcast cadence.

Little House, which doesn’t premiere until July 9, scored a season two renewal back in March as Netflix and producers CBS Studios remain high on their adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved book series. Production on season two begins in June, with showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine telling me the goal is to have the series return every year while its cast remains young (like their characters).

The same is true for Amazon’s college-set romance Off Campus, which likewise was renewed months ahead of its premiere. Showrunner Louisa Levy tells me the team was still in postproduction when the writers room for season two opened before Amazon actually renewed the buzzy series.

“I don’t have an air date for season two, but I would not be surprised if they are trying to get this back on the air as quickly as possible given the appetite for it,” Levy says when asked if the goal is to have the breakout show back on the air by next May. “If that’s their plan, I would love that because I’m someone who doesn’t want to wait too long for my next-season fix.”

And Levy is not alone.

When Netflix entered the scripted originals business in 2013, its first series — Lilyhammer, House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black — all returned on an annual basis. But over time, as originals became more ambitious across platforms, the amount of time between seasons grew. HBO’s high-concept Westworld went two years between seasons. Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has also averaged the same. HBO’s video game adaptation The Last of Us is on a similar course.

Longer wait times between seasons frequently lead to viewership declines despite platforms often spending more on marketing to remind audiences of a show’s return. In 2024, for example, only one returning Netflix show grew its audience (Bridgerton). Last year, the streamer’s returning series The Sandman (nearly three years between seasons), The Recruit, Lupin and You (two years between seasons each) were all down dramatically. In fact, a new report from Ampere Analysis found that the average time gap between seasons on major streaming platforms nearly doubled from a year in 2020 to 21 months in 2025. The result is that streaming shows today rarely make it to four seasons, as platforms would rather shift resources to new originals than pay more for aging shows that are delivering smaller audiences.

“That’s why we’d all hear the conventional wisdom at Netflix that [the model would] be three seasons and out because by that third season, there’s such a decline in viewership that the economics didn’t make sense anymore,” a longtime studio exec tells me. “Every platform now is trying to figure out if we’re lucky to get an audience, how do we keep them? Look at The Pitt, that’s trying to get more on a broadcast cadence, and that’s what happens when you do early renewals and can guarantee shows coming back faster.”

The Pitt, which hails from broadcast veterans John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill (ER), can be considered the fulcrum of the push to get shows back on regularly. The Emmy-winning medical drama is produced much in the same way as a broadcast series — including its 15-episode order — and will return to its January perch for the third time next year. With its ratings and awards acclaim, all earned on modest episode budgets of about $4 million, HBO Max is also developing two other originals in the same model, and other platforms also are focused on converting both new and existing shows into annual performers.

In today’s column I’ll tell you:

• What streamers and studios are doing to get shows back on the air faster

• What makes execs commit to an early renewal even when the audience hasn’t seen a show

• Which hot new series have already launched sophomore writers rooms before announcing their return

• Development and production workarounds to get shows back in production quickly

• How a commitment to annual cadence can cut costs without compromising the creative

• Why filming back-to-back seasons helps budgets and benefits writers and cast too

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My Spring Sellers’ Guide has covered what shows Netflix, Apple TV and Disney’s ABC, FX and Hulu are buying. I host Ankler Agenda and wrote about millennials’ challenges and Gen Z’s entry pains in the current jobs landscape. Email me at elaine@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Lesley Goldberg and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

One of the first stories that Netflix exec Diego Ávalos wanted to tell at the streamer, when it became available in Spain a decade ago, was that of Rafael Nadal, the 22-time Grand Slam winner who hails from Mallorca.

Ávalos, who now oversees original productions in Spain, Portugal and Turkey, had reached out to Nadal’s team back in 2015 or 2016, years before the King of Clay had publicly entertained the idea of retirement.

“It was super early, but we knew we wanted to be in conversation,” he tells me from Netflix’s offices in Madrid. “Obviously, Rafa wasn’t ready to tell his story.” But “the stars aligned” around two-and-a-half years ago, Ávalos continues, and “we were able to partner with Skydance to finally convince Rafa to come and tell his story and his legacy.”

It turns out Hollywood’s latest corporate villain, David Ellison, the man about to mash two legendary studios together in a merger many in Hollywood are hoping to thwart, helped make it happen.

As Nadal told former rival Andy Roddick on the latest episode of Roddick’s Served podcast, he “had a conversation with David Ellison — he’s the owner of Skydance, now Paramount, maybe more — and I think he convinced me that it was the right moment to do it. That’s something that’s going to stay forever there, and in some ways, an athlete like me should leave that [legacy].”

The result is the four-part docuseries Rafa, directed by Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Zach Heinzerling (Cutie and the Boxer, McCartney 3, 2, 1), that offers a vulnerable look at the tennis legend, revealing the extent of the constant pain he battled and the obsessiveness that nevertheless drove him to the top. It is one of two major tennis docs Netflix has on its slate this summer as it chases more sports viewers. The other, Chris & Martina: The Final Set, coming June 26 (after a June 10 premiere at Tribeca Festival), centers on the rivalry-turned-friendship between icons Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova.

So ahead of the Friday release of Rafa, I spoke with Ávalos as well as Netflix’s head of documentaries Adam Del Deo and head of sports Gabe Spitzer to learn more about the streamer’s pursuit of tennis fans, plus its evolving sports doc and live sports strategies, and how they’re being remade around “the biggest leads in the world” after recent years’ deals with the WWE and more.

Today, I go inside Netflix’s new sports playbook and reveal:

• Del Deo’s hard lessons from Netflix’s last tennis doc, a misfire

• Why access, final cut and filmmaker chemistry matter more than a famous subject

• Why the famously obsessive Nadal relinquished control of the project

• How Netflix’s broader sports strategy has evolved, and what WWE has to do with it

• Why global rights matter — and the workaround when Netflix can’t get them

• Why tennis has boomed as a Hollywood power game

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I interviewed Louisa Levy, the showrunner of Amazon’s buzzy hockey romance, Off Campus, and wrote about Peter Friedlander’s first Upfront as Amazon’s TV head, the recent growth in broadcast and the death of vanity production deals. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

Happy Friday, and I hope you’re getting a jump on the long Memorial Day holiday weekend.

But before we slam shut our collective laptops until Tuesday, today I’ve got a look at how Stephen Colbert navigated the Late Show finale, and my analysis of the quasi-homecoming for Shonda Rhimes at Disney, which has a surprise twist worth considering. You’ll also learn about the timeliness and universal appeal of Netflix’s new Little House on the Prairie — straight from the revival’s showrunner herself.

But first! More on my Thursday exclusive about Courtney Kemp’s big move to Apple TV with an exclusive overall TV deal and a first-look film component. Sources tell me Kemp decided not to renew her overall deal with Netflix in the spring, as the Power creator was putting the final touches on her first show for the streaming giant, Nemesis.

The gritty L.A.-set crime drama bowed May 14 and held the top spot on Netflix’s top 10 shows in the U.S. through its opening weekend. It’s the lone original created for the streamer by Kemp, who signed an exclusive deal there in 2021 after growing Starz’s Power into a five-show franchise (as part of her earlier deal with producers Lionsgate Television). Kemp told me the first few years of her Netflix pact were spent developing a drama with Julianna Marguiles that wasn’t quite a “gourmet cheeseburger” enough to get across the finish line at the streamer. Now, with her new multiple-year Apple TV deal, Kemp will have a carve-out to continue working on Nemesis should Netflix opt to renew.

OK, now let’s get to it.

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I wrote about Peter Friedlander’s first Upfront as Amazon’s TV head, the recent growth in broadcast, the death of vanity production deals, interviewed Bravo and Peacock reality chief Frances Berwick, and reported on how A24 is reshaping TV. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

Add Off Campus to the list of romance novels that have successfully expanded their rabid literary fan base to television audiences.

The steamy college-set romance skyrocketed to the top of Amazon’s U.S. top 10 offerings, reaching No. 1 worldwide on the platform following its May 13 binge drop — and boasting an impressive 96 percent rating among critics and a 90 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. While it’s too soon to have viewership data from the likes of Nielsen (or Amazon), longtime data analyst and former NBCUniversal senior vp strategy Ted Linhart reported Off Campus is averaging 800,000 per day over its first three days. A slow start, to be sure, but Heated Rivalry also was a word-of-mouth hit that grew over time.

Drawing immediate comparisons to the Crave/HBO Max queer hockey romance, Off Campus is based on the massively popular Off Campus book series by Canadian author Elle Kennedy. The first book in the franchise, 2015’s The Deal, revolves around the unlikely pairing of music major Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) at the fictional Briar University who (spoiler alert!) falls in love with Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli), the school’s star hockey player, after the duo make a deal to help her earn the affection of another guy (Josh Heuston). It’s a will-they-or-won’t-they on steroids that was renewed for a second season before the Amazon-Temple Hill production even premiered.

Kennedy’s Off Campus franchise has grown to include two multiple-book spinoffs and a total of 12 novels that each revolve around members of Briar University’s hunky hockey team. Across Kennedy’s more than 50 novels in all, the New York Times best-selling author has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, with her works translated into 25-plus languages.

Overseeing Prime Video’s latest buzzy YA franchise — after hits like The Summer I Turned Pretty, We Were Liars and the recently ordered Fourth Wing — is creator Louisa Levy, a writer who came up under former Grey’s Anatomy showrunners Tony Phelan and Joan Rater before honing her skills on The CW’s Life Sentence and In the Dark. Levy hopes Off Campus offers what Netflix’s Bridgerton and Heated Rivalry have — a happily ever after — while also setting the stage for new couples to lead with their own complications.

“We are setting up a love story that gets left hanging so there’s always something that gets a happily ever after and then something that is a little bit messy with more story to tune in for,” the first-time showrunner tells me from the show’s production offices in Vancouver, where she returned this week for work on season two.

The 36-year-old Levy — whose credits include Hulu’s Death and Other Details, ABC’s Stumptown and HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant — grew up in L.A. reading her mom’s romance novels and visiting TV sets where her dad worked as a gaffer. She was first approached with Off Campus as part of an open writing assignment, with Prime Video greenlighting the series in October 2024, about a year after Heated Rivalry was quietly being developed. Levy, who was paired with veteran showrunner Gina Fattore (Dawson’s Creek, Gilmore Girls, UnReal, Dare Me), says she’s glad to have been able to write and film half of the first season of Off Campus before Heated Rivalry made every executive in town run for the romance section.

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“The hardest thing when you’re writing is to try to write the next version of something else,” she says. “And the best thing you can do is write the first version of what you want to write.”

In today’s interview with Levy, you’ll learn:

• How Off Campus is following the Bridgerton model as it plans its future — and what that means exactly

• How Levy explains the “third method” for romance on TV she is using

• Why Prime Video is betting on romance franchises and what kind in particular

• What rights Amazon has to Kennedy’s 12 Off Campus-related books

• How Levy broke into Hollywood and climbed the ladder — and why she fought for young writers to be on set

• The romance tropes Levy loves, and her unique approach to adapting them for TV storytelling

• How Off Campus balances serious subjects (rape, domestic violence) with romance in a counterintuitive way

• Some teases of what to expect from season two

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I covered the Cannes Film Festival and market with Ashley Cullins and Katey Rich, and I wrote about YouTubers hijacking reality TV, HBO Max invading the U.K., and the Iran war’s impact on Mideast deals and production. Email me at manori@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Lesley Goldberg on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

Something about the prospect of a U.K. edition of Saturday Night Live put noses so out of joint in Britain, you’d think SNL creator Lorne Michaels killed one of Queen Elizabeth II’s corgis in a past life.

When the show was first announced in April 2025, it was almost instantly written off by some British media. There was a litany of complaints: American shows don’t work over here. Their sketches are too long. Who even watches SNL anymore, anyway?

Weeks before it launched on Comcast-owned pay-TV operator Sky, one senior TV executive complained to me that it was “appalling” that the U.K. needed an American import to swoop in and try to revive British comedy. Sketch comedy originated in British music halls in the late 1800s, and iconic shows like Monty Python and A Bit of Fry & Laurie helped popularize the format worldwide. “The idea that we need to use a non-U.K. brand to launch something is sad,” continued the exec.

The message was clear: It’ll never work.

And then, inconveniently for the skeptics, it did.

Now, having wrapped its eight-week run on Sunday, SNL UK has silenced the naysayers, or at least the noisiest ones. Even hardened critics have admitted the show’s acerbic political commentary, absurdist sketches and deeply British references have combined for a killer take on character-led sketch that the U.K. hasn’t seen since the likes of Harry Enfield & Chums or The Catherine Tate Show. And in the process, it’s introduced an all-star team of young comics in a vehicle where they can shine.

I learned more about how they pulled it off in an exclusive interview on Monday with showrunner James Longman and cast members Jack Shep, Emma Sidi and Celeste Dring.

With a reported budget of $2.6 million per episode, SNL UK — produced by Universal Television Alternative Studio U.K. Productions and Broadway Video — is likely the most expensive unscripted sketch program ever made on British TV. (Most half-hour sketch shows are produced for a maximum of £500,000, or $670,000, an hour).

The generous budget allows the show to employ 20 full-time writers, 11 cast members and more than 200 crew. In terms of structure, SNL fans will recognize the main format beats of its U.S. counterpart: a cold open, host monologue, Weekend Update and two turns from a musical guest.

SNL UK’s uproarious mid-March premiere, hosted by Tina Fey, set the tone: George Fouracres smashed the cold open with a feeble impression of U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer; Shep played coy as Princess Diana in her “revenge dress” in a Last Supper sketch; Dring and Sidi went bra shopping with Fey; and Weekend Update anchors Paddy Young and Ania Magliano roasted the country’s royals (Beckhams included).

Bill Carter wrote on LateNighter that the debut was “a remarkably polished first effort” and predicted the show would grow more distinctly British as it found its footing. And it did. Later sketches such as “Posh Gits” (a send-up of reality show Made in Chelsea) and “British Pork” (referencing a horrific retro commercial) underlined just how much SNL UK was for the hometown crowd. Sketches such as a Prince Andrew-centered cold open and “King Charles and Queen Camilla Fly Home” have drawn 2.4 million and 2.2 million views on YouTube, respectively.

There are seemingly no constraints around the political satire, either. Fouracres’ stammering Starmer was so popular, Donald Trump shared to Truth Social a clip of a sketch in which the sniveling PM calls the president a “scary, scary wonderful president.” Other British politicians are dressed down for their utter incompetence on a weekly basis — a freedom that may be in sharp contrast to a French edition of SNL that’s currently in the works.

I understand the Canal+ program, which I can reveal has already enlisted Marion Cotillard as one of its guest hosts, could face a turbulent road ahead for any edgy political sketches due to the pay-TV operator’s controlling stakeholder, right-wing billionaire Vincent Bolloré. (The mogul’s influence on the French media giant is currently at the center of a firestorm playing out at the Cannes Film Festival; his Bolloré Group also has a significant stake in Universal Music Group, currently the object of a hostile takeover bid by Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman.)

Luckily for Longman, a former Late Late Show With James Corden exec well-versed in both British and American TV-making, there are no such concerns in the U.K. But that’s not to say the program doesn’t have its share of headaches — namely, the ratings.

The premiere pulled in 226,000 overnight viewers on Sky (tripling the channel’s 10 p.m. slot average), but this figure has steadily dwindled over the weeks, with Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa’s Sunday finale drawing a mere 86,420 (against stiff competition, as Sean McNulty wrote in The Wakeup: the Eurovision finale). Although Sky tells me the show is its biggest program on social media, and has delivered 200 million organic views on YouTube, TikTok, Meta and X, you do have to wonder: How much do ratings matter? Evidently not enough to deprive SNL of a second season. The show, which streams on Peacock in the U.S. the day after it airs in the U.K., will return in September for 12 episodes that will stretch into the new year.

My interview with Longman and the cast, edited for length and clarity, got into the benefits of drafting on a U.S. format while making it very British (on a not-at-all-British budget), their dream guest hosts and how U.K. pols are responding to the satire.

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‘We Just Need to Keep Being Funny’

What are some of the beats from the U.S. show that the U.K. show had to adhere to?

James Longman: We were always due to follow the format of the U.S. show, so we obviously have the same cold open and the monologue, sketches and music. We were questioned a lot in the run-up to the launch about how a U.S. show can become a British show, and I think we answered that with an inherently British program. It was full of British references and humor, and the chances and swings we took at times are very British. It’s a U.S. house, but we had to build our own rooms. With the voices of our cast and writers, we made it a really British experience and made it our own.

But with more swearing, right?

Longman: A bit more swearing.

What was it like on set after Donald Trump posted an edited cut of the first Keir Starmer sketch on his social media?

Longman: It was Sunday after the show, and you’re brain dead and physically dead, because it’s been such an intense week. I was dropping my kids at a party on the Sunday and someone texted me saying, “Donald Trump’s just tweeted your cold open!” and I just started walking and my wife shouted after me going, “You’ve left all the car doors open!” I was very confused about what it meant — whether it was a good thing or bad thing — but in truth it was brilliant. The fact we were part of the conversation from show one was amazing for us. It’s what we wanted to be. We wanted to infiltrate people’s conversations, and we did.

@bbcnewsIn the Saturday Night Live skit, the fake Sir Keir Starmer panicked as he tried to dodge a phone call from the US president and said: "Oh golly - what if Donald shouts at me?" #DonaldTrump #KeirStarmer #UKPolitics #Diplomacy #SNLUK #BBCNews

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Emma Sidi: That was such a weird, shocking and unnerving moment. And then our job was to not give it more air, because he did it for himself.

Jack Shep: That’s the USP [unique selling proposition] of American SNL. It’s a temperature check on culture and what’s going on in the moment. That felt like a very revealing moment of the world at that point in time. That that happened was mental.

You’ve really skewered British politics on the show. Did you get any calls from senior figures after the episodes aired? Was there anything that was off-limits?

Longman: I know that we get spoken about in halls in the House of Parliament from various people. I know we’re definitely part of their conversations, and even political sketch writers now talk about how we’re going to skewer the news and talk about the news that week.

In the lead-up to the premiere, there was a lot of cynicism around the show. I spoke with one executive who said, “Why does the U.K. need an American format imported in order to revive comedy? Why can’t we do this organically from within the U.K.?” What are your thoughts on that?

Dring: As James says, it’s basically inheriting a format, and then not a lot else. So, I understand the question of, “Why do we need that? Why do we have to have an American thing?” Everything in culture is now recycled culture, and I suppose you can kind of lament that if you want, but there’s another way of looking at it: It’s an opportunity for lots of British comics and British voices, particularly those of us in the cast that are a bit older. There hasn’t been an opportunity like this for such a long time. I do understand wanting to bring back certain ensemble sketches, but frankly, there aren’t the budgets for those anymore. I’ve been trying to do sketch for a long time, and there’s just not these opportunities, and there isn’t that kind of money. So, there is an argument for saying, “Look, if you get involved in this massive institution, then what you have is the expertise, resources to take something seriously and really attack it.” I’ve never ever worked on a comedy show where a stunt’s been written into the sketch and someone’s gone, “Yeah, so the stunt woman’s coming on Tuesday.” What we’re able to achieve on this scale is different, and I would encourage people to embrace that rather than worrying about, “Well, it’s an American institution.”

Longman: I also think we’re in such a risk-averse industry now. We know that the show works in theory, and if you get the elements right, you’ll know it works here. People don’t say about The Traitors, “Oh, that’s a Dutch show.” We’ve borrowed and put our spin on it to try and make it work in a way that Traitors or Big Brother has. We’ve just tried to make it our own.

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What’s one sketch from the last series you wish every member of the U.K. public would see?

James Longman: If I choose one sketch, then someone’s gonna be upset, but in terms of the cast, I loved “David Attenborough’s The Last Supper” in episode one (a gathering of “some of history’s greatest Britons,” Winston Churchill to Agatha Christie to Freddie Mercury), because everyone got a chance to show a little bit of their magic, so that was a real thrill for me.

Sidi: Great big crab man. That was The Traitors parody sketch (“A Very Confident Mistake,” which highlighted the U.K. show’s contestants’ unconscious bias against people of color). There’s a moment when I mentioned the people I voted off before — all non-white people — and I could feel the whole audience exhale at the same time as their laughter. You can almost see me breaking because of what that laughter actually sounded like and what it meant on so many levels. That really sums up the show: truly funny as well as toothy and pushing the envelope, and never letting comedy be the last element. Comedy comes first.

Shep: The sketch that blew me away when I first saw it was the hostage sketch, in the episode with Jamie Dornan (as a kidnapper who bonds with his hostage, Annabel Marlow, over her dating woes). At every point of that process — from read-through to blocking to acting — we all knew it was going to crush.

Dring: For me, it was episode two, the “Prince Andrew Plan” cold open (the royal agrees back in 1997 to participate an elaborate MI5 long-game campaign to elevate Prince Charles’ popularity by destroying his own, including via his association with Jeffrey Epstein). The premise was so clever, and with things that are about current affairs, or figures that loom large in the public consciousness, it’s very difficult to find an angle that feels fresh without being obtuse. You don’t want to disappear up your own asshole, but I thought that it struck the perfect tone.

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It’s been reported that each episode costs $2.6 million, which is an amount that’s virtually non-existent for a comedy program in the U.K. Is that figure accurate?

Longman: I don’t really get involved in the budget; I just try and make things funny. But we’re in a very lucky position in that Sky really supported us and helped us make things as good as we can make them. We’re really appreciative of it.

When it was revealed the run was only going to be six episodes, there were lots of complaints that that was too few to make a real impact. And then pretty early on you were extended to eight episodes. How did the show’s original order and then that extension impact you?

Shep: The extension was kind of amazing, because initially we were going to do six in a row, and that — in hindsight — would have been doable. But it would have been incredibly tiring. We would have done it, but it would have been very intense. So it was good news all around, because it meant we were able to have this break in the middle, and get an extra two episodes. That extension really allowed us to make our mark a bit more and try some more things out, and push the boat out even more.

Longman: In the U.S., they never do more than three episodes in a row. They’ve done four in a row once, and it was like everyone’s own personal hell. So for our run of six, we’re very British, and we were like, “Let’s roll our sleeves up, let’s get on with it.” And then when you start making it, it’s so good to have that week break. Even doing four in a row is kind of draining creatively. But Sky are thrilled with how it went.

Was it difficult to get hosts? Tina Fey joked in the first episode that no one in Britain wanted to do it. Other hosts included Jamie Dornan, Riz Ahmed, Jack Whitehall, Nicola Coughlan, Hannah Waddingham and Ncuti Gatwa.

Longman: Lots of them did commit before we started. It’s amazing because they come and they spend essentially six quite intense days with us, taking a chance on us as a show, as a company, as a cast, as writers. We always thought about doing a handover show (on the first episode), kind of passing the baton on, and Tina was perfect for that.

Do you have dream hosts you’d like to get for Season 2?

Shep: I love Tilda Swinton. I think that would be so funny. She’d have such a filmic approach to it in a way that I’d find so genuine. What would Tilda’s monologue be? It’s genuinely unpredictable.

Dring: I’d say Joanna Lumley, she’d be really fun. And I’d love Stephen Graham; he’s a really committed dramatic actor. It’s always really cool to play off that and put them in a comedic space. And I have an idea for a sketch for Stephen Fry, so I kind of need him to do it.

Sidi: I got a bit of SNL jealousy last weekend, seeing Will Ferrell. If he could just come over here, that would be really helpful and really nice.

Longman: There are lots of comedy legends I would love to have pop in at some stage, like the Michael Palins of this world, and Jennifer Saunders, and Joanna Lumley. We grew up watching Tom Cruise. He’s never done it.

I mean, he’s based in the U.K. Come on, Tom. Take the tube over and just do it.

Sidi: We’d save some money on the stunt work.

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The ratings for the show steadily decreased over the course of the run, with a couple of surges for certain episodes. How closely are you looking at the overnight ratings?

Longman: We have over 200 million views on socials. We’re being shared, we’ve been spoken about. The way people watch TV now, and the way people react to things, it all kind of blends into one, and we are the sum of its parts. So, if you take the overnights and the views over the week, and the social media, and in the way we’ve been spoken about — I get messages from dads and mums who say it’s the first show in years they’ve sat down as a family and watched. As far as I’m concerned, we are doing exactly what we should be doing, and the feedback from Sky is that they’re absolutely thrilled with us, and they’re supporting us. We’re ticking boxes, and we’re part of the conversation. We just need to keep being funny.

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Image credits: Ian West/PA Images via Getty Images; Sky/NBCUniversal

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My Spring Sellers’ Guide has covered what shows they’re buying at Netflix and Apple TV. I host Ankler Agenda and wrote about millennials’ challenges and Gen Z’s entry pains in the current Hollywood jobs landscape.

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Lesley Goldberg and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

I’m back from my annual pilgrimage to New York for Upfronts, where major broadcasters, cablers and streamers laid out their next-year wares — and reminded everyone that scripted TV is still fighting for oxygen amid the live sports boom. (Check out the new episode of Ankler Agenda, where Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey and I break down the major takeaways.)

Which makes this a good moment to return to my Spring Sellers’ Guide, now trained on the House of Mouse: what Disney platforms already have on the schedule, what they have in development and, most importantly, where there’s still room to sell.

The short answer: not everywhere.

At Upfronts, Disney offered up a fairly robust slate of scripted TV that included a 13th season of American Horror Story on FX, starring Love Story’s Paul Anthony Kelly, and Hulu psychological drama The Spot, featuring Claire Danes and Ewan McGregor, as well as a new show from Dan Fogelman, and Ryan Murphy’s adaption of Bret Easton Ellis novel The Shards.

As my colleague Lesley Goldberg tallied in her excellent broadcast scorecard, linear network ABC ordered just one new series, The Rookie: North, and renewed all 10 of its original series ahead of Upfronts, including Abbott Elementary, High Potential and Grey’s Anatomy.

While ABC is packed, Hulu’s development slate is robust but crowded, and FX remains one of TV’s great prestige buyers — but, true to form, its target can be maddeningly hard to define.

No wonder reps can feel stymied trying to get their clients a foot in the door for a general or pitch meeting. (Disney+ is its own separate world, and I’ll cover what its execs are looking for in a separate Sellers’ Guide.)

“I mean, they say they’re very excited about comedy, and then, as you saw this year, [ABC] renewed all their shows and didn’t end up ordering any new comedy pilots, so it can be really challenging,” one TV lit agent tells me. “If you go through a new development cycle and don’t have information on whether or not there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, it can be quite frustrating.”

But attracting buyer interest at Disney is art more than science. Today:

• How to fight for Hulu’s “very limited real estate” as its dev slate keeps growing

• Disney’s murderers’ row of overall deals — and where newer voices can still break through

• Two genre sweet spots that always hit at Hulu — plus the code words to use for comedies to catch its attention

• Who’s actually leading creative at FX, ABC and Hulu — and which lieutenants reps praise most

• Why FX’s “vague” target is still worth chasing

• The two FX EVPs with “a lot of political capital”

• Inside ABC and Hulu’s slightly janky exec structure and genre split

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I wrote about the recent growth in broadcast, the death of vanity production deals, interviewed Bravo and Peacock reality chief Frances Berwick, and reported on how A24 is reshaping TV. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

TGIF and congratulations to those of us who survived another insane round of Upfronts. Special shout-outs to my Ankler colleagues Sean McNulty for his great recaps/analysis of each presentation in the Wakeup, Elaine Low for her big-picture look at the winners and losers, and the entire team behind Ankler Agenda for this fantastic in-person wrap-up.

For my own contribution to the Upfronts of it all, I’m reading the tea leaves of Peter Friedlander’s first presentation as head of Amazon’s Prime Video TV business, and how Vin Diesel wasn’t totally wrong about the number of Fast & Furious TV shows in the works for Peacock. Then, after my in-depth look at the growing number of shows on the Big 4 networks, I have the number-by-number breakdown of which TV studios are winning the surge.

Before I jump into all that, some un-Upfront-related news: Cross Keith Cox’s name off Paramount’s potential org chart from hell. One of the key architects of the Taylor Sheridan universe has opted to not renew his contract at the company after an impressive 20-year run that yielded the Yellowstone franchise plus Darren Star hits Emily in Paris and Younger. Cox, who successfully transitioned TV Land into a home for originals with such fare as Hot in Cleveland, is expected to join Chris McCarthy’s company, Creative Partner Studios, which has a deal at NBCUniversal, where he will reunite with the former Paramount co-CEO, Sheridan and other producers including Star.

Now, a look at those NYC shindigs and the studio slates.

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My Spring Sellers’ Guide has covered what shows they’re buying at Netflix and Apple TV. I host Ankler Agenda and wrote about millennials’ challenges and Gen Z’s entry pains in the current Hollywood jobs landscape, and I reported on Taylor Frankie Paul and Disney’s Bachelorette mess.

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Lesley Goldberg and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

The second week of May reliably brings a few things: lovely spring days in New York, plenty of Met Gala postmortems and Upfronts week, where all the biggest networks (and now streamers) hawk their TV (and now movie) offerings to advertisers on Madison Ave.

Upfronts is an old-school TV pilgrimage, but it is also a microcosm of the rollercoaster changes that are making Hollywood’s stomach drop on the daily: the infiltration of streamers like Netflix and Amazon into the advertising space, the rise of creators on legacy TV and a sense of unease permeating industry folk as yet another corporate merger looms.

“We’ve done this time and time again,” Warner Bros. Discovery co-head of U.S. ad sales Bobby Voltaggio assured me last week in a chat with co-head Ryan Gould ahead of Upfronts (and ahead of Paramount Global’s acquisition of WBD). “We’re battle tested here. This is kind of old hat for us, and we have the relationships with our clients that they understand that this IP is not going anywhere. It’s still very much in very high demand. I believe that Ryan and I have their trust in stewarding the business until the merger actually comes to fruition.”

If nothing else, you can always count on a couple of repeat star sightings — depending which performers are having a busy year. Tina Fey made two appearances (one at Netflix for Four Seasons and another at NBCUniversal for the network’s 100th anniversry), as did Meghann Fahy (NBCU and Amazon) and Jane Krakowski (NBCU and Fox).

So in this special edition of Series Business, here’s my take on the winners (live sports, duh) and losers (absent punching bag David Ellison) of this week’s Upfronts. And for more, tune in to this week’s Ankler Agenda for a rare in-person recording — since we’re all in NYC, we borrowed Spotify’s NYC studio — with yours truly, The Wakeup’s Sean McNulty and Like & Subscribe’s Natalie Jarvey.

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I wrote about the death of vanity production deals for celebs, interviewed Bravo and Peacock reality chief Frances Berwick, reported on how A24 is reshaping TV and dug into what’s taking Peter Friedlander so long to set TV strategy at Amazon. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

Here’s the good news heading into this week’s upfront presentations in New York: Broadcast television is growing again.

With the bulk of the renewals, cancellations and new series orders having been completed, the total volume of scripted originals across the Big 4 broadcast networks this year sits at 57 — up a smidge from last year’s tally of 49 at ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. (The CW, since its Nexstar takeover, no longer develops originals in-house.)

This year’s total volume is nowhere near the whopping 92 scripted comedies and dramas the four networks collectively programmed in 2019 — before Covid upended development and everything else in Hollywood — or even 2021’s early post-pandemic count of 79.

But even if the days of 100-plus pilot orders are never coming back, networks have shown an increasing willingness to return to the traditional development model — in a more fiscally responsible fashion. New series orders are up one from last year with others likely to come as the Big 4 continue to make pickups outside of the traditional January-May cycle.

And for all the talk of how challenging it is to deliver a successful comedy, the number of half-hour comedies on the schedule (including animated) is up by seven year-over-year as drama series numbers hold steady.

“Broadcast is a juggernaut,” NBCUniversal president of program planning strategy Jeff Bader tells me. The executive, with more than three decades of experience in the industry, recently examined the number of programs from the current TV season — scripted, unscripted, sports, specials, etc. — that notched more than 1 million viewers in their first 24 hours without streaming and found that more than 12,300 broadcast programs topped that metric.

Streaming content, meanwhile, topped out at fewer than 600 programs getting 1 million viewers in a single day. Removing sports from the equation, Bader said the top streaming show was the Dec. 31 series finale of Stranger Things, which collected more than 9.5 million total viewers in its first 24 hours on Netflix. “In my ranking, Stranger Things is at 180, behind the NBC Nightly News [broadcast on] Feb. 7,” Bader says.

Today I look at what the Big 4 are offering up this coming season (and some of the next) — and I crunch all the numbers from 2019, 2021, 2025 and 2026 to get a scope on the broader trends of how ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC are faring.

You’ll learn:

• Which networks continue to invest in new scripted originals

• How much each network owns of its schedule

• Where the year-over-year growth is — and isn’t

• The major programming trends at each network

• What the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery could mean for CBS’ slate

• How NBC’s experiment with returning to pilots panned out

• Burning questions about how the uptick in originals can continue

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I wrote about the death of vanity production deals for celebs, interviewed Bravo and Peacock reality chief Frances Berwick, reported on how A24 is reshaping TV and dug into what’s taking Peter Friedlander so long to set TV strategy at Amazon. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

TGIF, and happy Upfronting to those of you making the trek to NYC — including my Series Business colleague Elaine Low. While she takes in the presentations, I’ll be back Tuesday with a special column breaking down trends in the broadcast space.

Today, however, I’m looking at how Fox’s latest reboot fits in with the network’s larger push for faith-based programming, HBO’s smart moves to keep the Harry Potter momentum going and how The Bear set the stage for a long narrative around its final season.

Let’s get into it.

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I interviewed Bravo and Peacock reality chief Frances Berwick, reported on how A24 is reshaping TV and dug into what’s taking Peter Friedlander so long to set TV strategy at Amazon. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from me, Elaine Low and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.

In 2018, a year after leaving the White House, Barack and Michelle Obama launched a film and television production company, Higher Ground, and set an exclusive creative partnership at Netflix. Four years later, after the Peak TV bubble burst, the streaming giant downgraded Higher Ground’s deal to a more cost-effective first-look pact — meaning if Netflix didn’t want one of its projects, the company was free to shop it. At that point, executives at the shingle read the writing on the wall.

On April 19, at an event in Philadelphia marking the 250th anniversary of the United States, the former president and first lady broke the news that Higher Ground is “transitioning” to become an independent company with the ability to sell anywhere. (Higher Ground’s next show, Life, Larry and The Pursuit of Unhappiness starring Larry David, bows June 26 on HBO.)

Higher Ground isn’t alone. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Productions also was downgraded from an exclusive Netflix deal, inked in 2020, to a first look last August. J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot pact with Warner Bros. Discovery similarly shrunk to a first-look deal in late 2024, three years after signing a $250 million overall.

Ultimately, multiple sources say, Netflix’s decision to not renew Higher Ground reflects a broader shift as studios and streamers tighten budgets, and are no longer willing to pay for access, heat or headlines — rather, they want execution.

“We need the most experienced non-writing executive producers and showrunners, so ‘celebrity’ star-driven production companies don’t get prioritized as a must-have,” a studio source tells me.

Reps for Higher Ground and Netflix declined comment.

An overall deal carries a higher price tag, where the studio or streamer pays for a production company’s overhead in exchange for exclusivity. First-look deals, on the other hand, give a platform/studio the right of first refusal without having to pay overhead. As Ashley Cullins reported a couple of years ago, first-look deals have become the norm, with overalls reserved for the likes of the Duffer brothers, Taylor Sheridan, Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes.

“There was once an openness to rolling the dice to see if a (producing) actor could help sell a show,” says one lit agent. “Now, every place, no matter how generous, is looking to cap spending.”

Today I get into what the end of the vanity deal means for Hollywood right now — and why it is good news for experienced writer-creators, including:

• Why writers and showrunners are suddenly the most valuable players again

• Who’s still getting deals and what separates them from everyone else

• Hard numbers on what star-driven deals are actually worth today — and how far they have fallen

• The quiet promise that comes with a celebrity-driven production deal — and what happens when it’s not kept

• The star-led production companies considered winners — and losers

• Why studios want projects ready on Day 1 — not after years of development

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