On Reddit, maybe. In reality it missed the Nielsen viewership charts just like every single Apple TV+ show not named Ted Lasso.

The fact that it is one of the highest viewed shows on US TV was also likely a factor…

It did around 20.7 million In equivalent complete viewings. That puts it on par with Netflix big hitters like The Witcher, Cobra Kai, and Emily in Paris.

It says Apple realises the only show folks watch on the platform is Ted Lasso so they are trying to replicate that with the other shows.

That leaves Showtime with just Yellowjackets and The Chi. They have cancelled all the shows and axed a lot of the employees. Makes you wonder why they did not just sell at the $3 billion they were offered if they were basically just going to scrap the whole network? I like Yellowjackets but I doubt it was worth $3 billion on its own!

A great opening week for The Night Agent. Its 168,710,000 hours work out at the equivalent of 20.7 million complete viewings. That is the second best any show has done in equivalent complete viewings in a single week in 2023 so far. Only pipped by the 22.7 million achieved by You s4 Part 1 earlier in the year. Be interesting to see how The Night Agent holds in the coming weeks but it is definitely off to a great start. These numbers put the show on par with Netflix big hitters like Cobra Kai, Emily in Paris, and The Witcher and not far behind The Watcher from Ryan Murphy.

Shadow & Bone got 6.8 million (an increase of 9.7%) in its second week and is probably dead in the water. It is looking to end on around 18-19 million after 4 weeks and that is nowhere near the 30-35 million needed for big budget shows. It is a real shame as Shadow & Bone is an excellent adaptation of the books. Changes a few things while keeping the spirit of the story intact.

The Waco limited series had a decent start with 9 million.

You (7.5 million) and The Glory (6.4) million had solid third weeks. The Glory has been great in the numbers while You has still been strong despite a noticeable viewership fade between the first and second parts of s4.

Not much else to note. Sex/Life (24.5 million) and Wrong Side of the Tracks s2 (10.8 million) finished out their 4 week runs. A tad week for the Spanish language show but solid enough for Sex/Life s2. Probably not solid enough for a third season but definitely worth bringing back for a season 2 as it was solid and outperformed most of the new shows as well as Shadow & Bone!

It was pretty quiet openings for the other debut shows. Who Were We Running From (4.1 million), Invisible City s2 (3.2 million), and Murder in the Coalfield (2.6 million) all charted while only The Kingdom s2 missed with less than 1.6 million.

It is a quiet week next week in terms of new releases with just Rob Lowe comedy Unstable dropping so it will be another easy viewership win for The Night Agent again even if it drops hard (which I’m definitely not expecting to happen).

Paramount green-lit the expansion of the Yellowstone franchise after the original Yellowstone became by far the top rated show, in terms of viewership, on US TV. It seems to have been a smart decision for them to build Paramount+ around the Yellowstone franchise and Taylor Sheridan’s other shows.

You can surely find plenty folks worth watching on this cast list! It is not like Apple have skimped on the budget for this one!

No Showtime series has been renewed since the January announcement that the premium cable network will be integrated into Paramount+ across both streaming and linear later this year and renamed as Paramount+ with Showtime.

Showtime is dead. Only stuff surviving will be Billions, Yellowjackets, and The Chi. The rest of the stuff is done. They will just mirror the Paramount+ shows on cable to fill out the time slots and buy in some cheap co-productions from the UK.

I expect them to be announcing they are dropping the second season of Super-Pumped any day now. They have already pulled the first season from the service.

The original date was always a weird one as it would have missed Emmy qualification under the new rules. They were probably trying to squeeze it in before so it qualified but with the eligibility change they had leeway to shove it back a few months into the next Emmy window. They are pretty stacked in terms of volume over the next few months. They hit 8 concurrent shows at one point which will be a new high for the service!

They likely will cancel it given the viewership ratings but someone else mentioned they did cram the second and third books of the Grisha trilogy into this season so that should provide a semblance of a conclusion even if they were trying to set up a spin-off for the Six of Crows characters.

Definitely sounds like the Zas pulled the plug towards the end of production similar to what happened on Carnival Row over on Amazon.

Yep. Westworld s4 was the show HBO had on the air right before House of the Dragon took over that timeslot.

The 154,970,000 hours Outer Banks scored on opening week translated into 17.6 million equivalent complete viewings. Pretty impressive and up from the 12.3 million the second season opened with nearly two years ago. The caveat being this season had an extra day of viewing to add in thanks to the Thursday vs Friday release date. Still impressive and it looks like they made a smart call to renew this for a 4th season in advance of the 3rd season getting released. I’m expecting a small dip next week but still good numbers. YA shows tend to be front loaded unless they are Stranger Things or Wednesday.

The other big success of the week was the Murdaugh Murders docuseries. It got 17 million and just got pipped by Outer Banks in equivalent complete viewings but it is still a big hit for Netflix!

Triptych also had a good debut week. The Spanish language thriller opened to 9 million. That is the best opening week for a non-English show so far in 2023 and the third best weekly numbers for non-English shows in general for 2023 behind the second week of The Glory and the second week of The Snow Girl.

The other debut show was Drive To Survive s5. It opened to a modest 3.9 million. That pipped the 2.9 million opening of Full Swing (which dipped out of the charts after a single week).

Perfect Match gets good engagement in viewing hours but has been a modest performer in equivalent complete viewings with 2.2 million on opening week and 3.6 million this week.

Elsewhere Lidia Poet got 4.6 million, Ganglands s2 got 3.7 million, Red Rose got 3.7 million second weeks.

You s4 got a 6.8 million (-57%) third week. A bad drop but low runtime shows tend to burnout fast. It is already at 45 million though 3 weeks and should land about 48-49 million over 4 weeks. That will be a bit down on the low 50s the third season achieved but the drop is not problematic and the show is still a hit.

Pretty much nothing else worth noting except the fact that The Upshaws Part 3 has completely failed to chart on opening weekend and is on target to be a rare US original that failed to enter the charts at all! Expect the 4th part to be the last for the show.

The big shows next week are Sex/Life s2 and Wrong Side of the Tracks s2. Both were solid performers in their first season so it will be interesting to see if they can hold up in their second seasons.

Variety seem to think differently. They have Amazon taking international rights to a “BBC show”.

Folks do not watch whatever is new on Netflix. As seen by the failure of 4 of the last 5 English language shows released by Netflix in finding an audience (The Upshaws, Red Rose, Freeridge, and Lockwood & Co).

Amazon also tend to miss with most of their shows. They do tend to do well with older male aimed action shows. Citadel fits that mould. It will also get a big marketing push as it will be Amazon’s biggest budget TV release of 2023. The Russo Brothers will be pushed more than the cast (though the cast are competent and not a turn off to the demo). Amazon have two international spinoffs of this show filming and two more in the works. They are invested in making this show work and getting behind it.

Yep…with BBC undoubtedly the lead in both funding and influence.

That was a BBC show…

Sad but true. This sort of fantasy tale is niche even among hardcore fantasy fans.

Why would it not be popular? All the Russo Brothers stuff lately with the exception of Cherry on Apple has been well viewed. To not be a flop Citadel absolutely has to beat viewership numbers for The Terminal List. I’m also pretty sure they will be disappointed if it does not best Jack Ryan.

The biggest worry I’ve got for season 2 is them having to replace John Lithgow and Tatiana Maslany. They were both great in the first season. Despite that I’m still optimistic for the new season for the very reasons you mentioned.

It included them paying debt. It was an on paper loss. They were actually free cash flow positive and had better year on year free cash flow vs the same quarter of the previous year. The $7 billion debt repayments was spread over the last 9 months. The $2 billion reported loss was over the last 3 months.

It is not the exception. WBD have done it with multiple shows at TNT, TBS, and HBO Max. Hell, they even did it with The Nevers at HBO!

The reason why Sony have not launched a streaming service is pretty simple: they do not need to in order to maintain current revenue levels long term. Disney, NBCU, WBD, and Paramount make up a significant portion of their overall revenue from broadcast and cable services. That industry is in free fall thanks to Netflix and Amazon launching low cost, popular, streaming services. In order to chase that lost revenue the likes of Disney, NBCU, Paramount, and WBD have had to launch their own streamers. The problem is that is super expensive and needs heavy investment in the early years to rollout worldwide and to grow to scale. It will eventually be profitable for most of them.

Sony have not got the content to be truly competitive in an overly crowded streaming industry. They were always the weakest of the big studios. They also do not need to invest in streaming as they have very little revenue tied to the collapsing cable and broadcast industry. Sony do not need streaming because they did not have cable and broadcast businesses of note in most markets.

They did invest in niche anime streaming service Crunchyroll which looks an excellent pickup at the $1 billion they paid for it.

During a call with investors, Gunnar Wiedenfels, the company’s chief financial officer, indicated a new projection for $4 billion in cost savings by the end of 2024, a new target.

Oof! Expect a new raft of content being cancelled and disappeared! So much for the worst of the gutting being over.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s TV networks, which also include Discovery, CNN and Food Network saw revenue fall 6% to roughly $5.5 billion, with declines evident in affiliate fees as well as advertising.

Remember when Zaslav said cable was the future? Anybody on Wall Street still dumb enough to believe that utter tosh?

Studios operations saw revenue fall about 23% as the company’ collected less from licensing of its content.

So making less TV shows and movies resulted in less revenue for the studios? Who could have seen this coming when the gutted HBO Max, sold the CW (WBTV’s best buyer), and made a total arse of Warner Bros movie output due to lack of investment?

Meanwhile, losses in its streaming operations narrowed. The operating loss in its streaming operations came to $217 million in the quarter for its streaming assets, compared with pro-forma losses of $728 million in the year-earlier period.

Finally some positive news. For all the groaning that streaming is a bust Zaslav has actually got HBO Max close to profitability in less than 9 months in charge. Year on year losses have improved significantly and the overall quarterly losses are nothing like those we see at rival media companies like Disney, Paramount, and NBCU. These numbers are in line with the lesser players like Lionsgate and AMC. They will probably be profitable by 2024.

The bad news was streamers additions of just 1.1 million. Missing the 1.6 million forecast. The cuts are getting them on the fast track to profitability but the cost is stalled or anaemic growth. Be interesting to see the Q1 additions. They had/have practically no content for the first 2.5 months but the one show they did offer was a massively big budget show that has delivered both in terms of acclaim and viewership. They also finish Q3 with a burst of content like Succession and Perry Mason to spark new acquisitions. Which should put them in a better position for gains than we seen in Q4 when they had a completely dead December in terms of content.

The other good news was the speed of the debt repayments. Debt now $45 billion. Down $7 billion in just 9 months. That is very impressive and exactly what Zaslav and Malone need for keeping this pump and dump on schedule. A year or two more of this and they will have WBD looking like an attractive buy again with a far more reasonable debt load.