Ankler Agenda

There’s nothing more stressful or exhilarating than the high-wire act of live television. The Ankler Hot Seat podcast host Tatiana Siegel welcomes one of the best in the genre: Hamish Hamilton, director of the upcoming 74th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 12. Londoner Hamilton has helmed some of the most memorable moments of live TV including this year’s Super Bowl halftime extravaganza, Kanye West’s interruption of Taylor Swift’s VMA win, and the London Olympics Opening Ceremony when Queen Elizabeth jumped out of a helicopter (yes, she rehearsed that move 5-6 times!). Hamilton also previews his live Beauty and the Beast with H.E.R., coming up on ABC. An Emmy nominee himself this year (for the 2022 Super Bowl), he also weighs in on two live shows he didn’t direct: the Oscar slap flap and the 2004’s Nipplegate at the Super Bowl. “You want people to be talking about your show,” says Hamilton. “On another hand, you want everybody who hits that stage, for it to be a safe place.” This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following Disney’s Q2 earnings call, many headlines declared the company’s victory over Netflix as Disney+ subscribers reached 221 million — squeaking ahead of Netflix (at 220.67 million). But in this episode, The Wakeup’s Sean McNulty tells Janice Min and Richard Rushfield that, in this case, the numbers don’t reveal the whole story (think India, domestic stagnation and revenue per subscriber). The trio also discuss the town’s curious changing narrative around Disney chief Bob Chapek, the company's declared break-even point for streaming, and the date the company has circled in its calendar to stop losing money on streaming. All this, plus other juicy tidbits (for those who love data and analysis, that is). This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode, hosts Janice Min, Tatiana Siegel and The Wakeup’s Sean McNulty take quick measure of entertainment’s giants after another day of wild Q2 earnings calls all about streaming that included Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Lionsgate. Some quantified(ish) what success looks like down the road; others stayed vague. WBD CEO David Zaslav said that HBO Max and Discovery+, which boast a total of 92 million combined subscribers worldwide, will break even as a united service when it adds another 40 million, likely in 2024 or 2025, as $3 billion in “efficiencies” (ouch), start to unroll. Paramount CEO Bob Bakish called their losses “a growth phase” (a $445 million loss last quarter against revenues of $672 million). All begged the hard question: when does streaming investment actually begin to pay off? Follow us (and like us!) at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, and on Twitter. Also please subscribe at TheAnkler.com/subscribe for more podcasts and stories about the entertainment industry.Related links: * Top Producer Sees Ruthless Future for Hollywood DEI* What?! Netflix Just Lost its Biggest TV Show in America* Will Peacock Exist in a Year?* Which Streamer Has the Most Bombs in 2022?* Who Killed the Marvel Juggernaut? This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As recession fears mount, Comcast becomes the latest to deliver a bleak earnings picture, with its streaming service Peacock stuck firm on 13 million subscribers, despite spending over $2 billion a year on content. Hosts Janice Min, Tatiana Siegel and Sean McNulty discuss what that might mean for its future and what to expect next on the earnings front (Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Lionsgate will report their results in the coming days, and the New York Times and BuzzFeed are on deck amid the ever-shrinking digital ad spend). Also on today’s episode, Netflix gives a limp green light to more of The Gray Man, and lands the opening movies for the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival. But are those slots cursed? RELATED: Peacock Adds No New Subscribers or Free Users in Q2Which Streamer Has the Most Bombs in 2022Netflix Saved by ‘Stranger Things’Never miss another podcast or story about the entertainment industry and become a paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Rob Long has a confession to make: he likes agents—they’re “the friendly bacteria in the lower intestine of the dirty business we call entertainment,” he says. In defense of this controversial point of view (well, for a writer, anyway), Rob offers a cautionary tale about a past-his-prime agent who, along with his assistant, saves the career of a struggling writer with a spec sale of an old script. In the process, he reinvigorates his own career and gets the assistant promoted to agent, too. All’s well that ends well, right? But that’s not the end of the story. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earnings season is underway, and everyone should be taking notice of Snapchat’s dismal performance (and Twitter’s that followed). The tech company’s stock took a 27 percent nosedive immediately after reporting shocking ad sales declines. That portends a bleak near future for every ad-dependent entity — including Netflix and the streaming services increasingly pivoting to advertising to save the day. Is the chill temporary or is a new ice age afoot? Janice Min, Tatiana Siegel and The Wakeup’s Sean McNulty break it down. Also: Yellowstone is TV’s biggest hit, but Hollywood isn't rushing to replicate its success. And TCA scraps its in-person event and goes virtual. Is it really about Covid — or just a convenient excuse? This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Netflix Q2 2022 subscriber numbers are in!  And… huh. No splat. What does the lack of a collapse — but not exactly successful April through June quarter — indicate about the state of the streaming business at the midway mark of 2022?Hosts Janice Min and Richard Rushfield are joined by Ankler contributor Sean McNulty, writer of the daily morning newsletter The Wakeup to dive into the numbers beneath the headlines, including increasing clouds on the U.S. horizon, what the picture looks like in Q3, and what to expect from the rest of the streaming service subscriber reports to come in the weeks ahead.Subscribe to The Ankler, and you also get The Wakeup included in your subscription each weekday morning among the collection of newsletters bringing you behind the doors of the Hollywood and media business. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Emmy noms are in. After months of posturing, positioning and the biggest glut of prestige entertainment the world has ever seen, the votes have been tallied and the final sprint towards the big night is off and running. Besides the usual snubs and surprises, this year’s crop was a barometer on the state of the streaming wars and television in general. To sift through the results, host Richard Rushfield is joined by L.A. Times Pulitzer Prize winner and longtime TV critic Mary McNamara, television writer and Martini Shot host Rob Long, and Sean McNulty, author of The Wakeup. On the roundtable today: which mogul had the worst day? Why is Yellowstone the odd bison out? And lastly, our panelists name their picks for what will win and what should win. Follow us (and like us!) at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, and on Twitter. Also please subscribe at TheAnkler.com for more podcasts and stories about the entertainment industry. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s Ankler Hot Seat podcast dissects this week’s move by the Disney board to extend CEO Bob Chapek’s contract for three more years. Hosts Richard Rushfield and Tatiana Siegel are joined by Ankler contributing editor Peter Kiefer to discuss why the Twitter mob — hailing from both the right and the left of the political divide — tried (and failed) to topple the P.R.-challenged chief from his top perch. The trio also breaks down Disney employees’ internal anger over the company’s exclusion of Planned Parenthood from its corporate matching gift program (which supports many pro-life crisis pregnancy centers). And it’s time to celebrate (or rue) the 15-year anniversary of the iPhone, whereby Hollywood’s collective attention span has become so short it can no longer follow an Adam Sandler movie plotline.  This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Follow us (and like us!) at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, and on Twitter. Also please subscribe at TheAnkler.com for more podcasts and stories about the entertainment industry.Today’s Ankler Hot Seat podcast tackles this weekend’s big studio opening, the oft-challenged biopic Elvis. Hosts Tatiana Siegel and Richard Rushfield are joined by The Wakeup writer Sean McNulty to discuss the $85 million Warner Bros. film that endured a lengthy production shutdown back in March 2020 when Tom Hanks became the first celebrity to land in the hospital with Covid. Add to that an untested star in Austin Butler, a 2-hour-and-40-minute runtime and a jam-packed marketplace with such options as holdovers Top Gun, Jurassic World: Dominion and Lightyear, as well as new horror entry The Black Phone. But McNulty notes that the biggest problem is “Does anybody care about Elvis?” He adds: “I'm in my mid-40s and I have a mild curiosity about him. I didn't grow up on his music. So does anybody born after 1980 really care about Elvis, or really care to find out if they don't know [his music]?”Siegel, who was on the ground for the Cannes Film Festival in May, says that Warners also didn’t capitalize on the built-in buzz of premiering at the festival because — unlike Top Gun — Elvis bowed so late in the festival that most attendees were gone by that point. Additionally, Presley songs have not remained part of the popular music canon in the way Elton John and Queen had before the releases of biopics Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody.Rushfield also highlights that older Middle America — the most natural demo for Elvis — might be put off by director Baz Luhrmann’s take on the King. “The Baz Luhrmann treatment has him skewed in a way that's emphasizing Elvis as this sort of transgressive figure in a way that's definitely not making a pitch towards Elvis' natural fan base,” Rushfield says. “The great advantage of this film is that all the people that you might blame for it are gone. There's nobody at Warner Bros. taking the fall for this movie.”If preview tallies for Elvis are any indication, $3.5 million doesn’t bode well for the film. (The low-budget Black Phone did $3 million in fewer theaters.) The trio also broke down why Lightyear stumbled and what it means for beleaguered CEO Bob Chapek as well as more Netflix layoffs (and more schadenfreude). This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices