PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
The New York Post has launched New York Post Entertainment, focused on scripted and unscripted television. As president of the division, producer Troy Searer (Tijuana Entertainment) will head development of projects for cable, broadcast, streaming and emerging platforms. “There’s 200 years of New York history to tell on the scripted side,” Post CEO and publisher Jesse Angelo told Variety. “In unscripted, there’s an entire spectrum of documentaries, docu-series, and docu-soaps.”
HGTV ordered 28 new episodes of My Lottery Dream Home, which attracted over 15.7 million viewers during its most recent run. Next season launches Friday, September 21 at 9p; production on new eps begins in January 2019.
Louis Shaw Milito and Phil Conserva (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) have launched independent production company Boilermaker Entertainment, aimed at creating and producing dramatic TV, feature films, and unscripted programming. Under the new banner, they have secured an exclusive first-look deal with Vesuvian Media Group to develop and produce Vesuvian’s library of titles across genres.
Streaming service Shudder greenlit a new Creepshow series, with The Walking Dead’s Greg Nicotero attached to direct, exec produce and supervise creative elements. Original Creepshow was an anthology film featuring stories written by Stephen King and directed by George Romero.
Truly Original (Deal or No Deal) has partnered with best-selling author Bryan Burrough (“Public Enemies,” “Barbarians at the Gate”) to develop and produce The Kremlin’s Long Shadow (w/t), a true-crime docu-series chronicling Scotland Yard’s newly reopened investigations into 15 mysterious deaths. Event series will unravel a recent chain of bizarre deaths and assassination attempts.
TV production in LA dipped 15% year-over-year in 2Q18, reports FilmLA, in large part because of a drop in on-location reality TV (1285 shooting days to 879). Shooting days were down by 9% for drama, while comedies rose 23%.
Carl Jackson Motion Pictures Studios signed a multi-year deal with Tubi TV. The deal includes scripted series, unscripted series, docu-series, documentaries, and features. A family dramedy, Southern Girls, starring Denise Richards, Torrei Hart and Vida Guerra starts production in April.
COMING UP
Mega Man: Fully Charged premieres on Cartoon Network on Sunday, August 5. First episode of the animated series from DHX Media and Dentsu Entertainment, based on the Capcom Mega Man video game franchise, will be shown tomorrow at Comic-Con.
Showtime’s Lynyrd Skynyrd: If I Leave Here Tomorrow premieres Saturday, August 18 at 9p. Documentary film features rare interviews and never-before-seen footage.
MEASUREMENT & DATA
Nielsen’s audience segments will be available on Snapchat’s ad buying platform, allowing advertisers to buy inventory on the social messaging app via the Nielsen Marketing Cloud. Clients will have access to audience data across more than 30,000 segments including Nielsen Buyer Insights and Nielsen Catalina Solutions. “Discovering the audiences that drive engagement and offline sales has never been more critical for marketers and we’re excited to continue our work with Snapchat across both our premium audience segments and measurement solutions,” said Jessica Hogue, SVP of digital solutions at Nielsen. “This integration with Snapchat will allow partners to plan, activate and analyze marketing initiatives accessing the highest quality audience data in the market underpinned by Nielsen.”
What to do with all that data? With more ad spend moving to digital, marketers need to be able to quantify how effective their ad campaigns are, and validate results. But does all this data really help a marketer to market better? We’ll analyze the latest solutions with actionable takeaways and an analysis of what’s working at the Cynopsis Measurement & Data Conference on August 2 in New York City. Prices increase tomorrow, so grab your seats now!
CASTING
Add Amber Tamblyn (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) to the ensemble cast of FX drama pilot Y: The Last Man….Jillian Bell (22 Jump Street) landed a lead role in Showtime comedy pilot The Wrong Mans, starring and produced by Ben Schwartz (House of Lies)….Diona Reasonover was upped from guest star to series regular on season 16 of CBS’s NCIS. Reasonover’s character stepped into the void left by the departure of fan favorite Pauley Perrette….Laura Vandervoort (Supergirl), Kyle Breitkopf (The Whispers) and Kimberly-Sue Murray (Crimson Peak) landed roles in upcoming Netflix drama V-Wars, reports Deadline.
DIGITAL
Despite a technical glitch in early hours of Amazon Prime Day, a record 100 million+ products were sold during the event. Best-selling product was Amazon’s Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, half off at $19.99.
Instagram is testing a way for users of public accounts to manually remove followers, without the awkwardness of blocking – users are not notified they’ve been removed. Until now, users would have had to switch to a private account.
An analysis for the New York Times of political ad spending on Facebook over the past two months showed that President Trump is the social service’s top U.S. political advertiser. Trump’s Make America Great Again PAC was number 1, running 4128 individual ads and delivering 26.4 million impressions for $274,000. Individually, Trump lands in sixth place, with 5396 ads delivering 11.3 million impressions for $83,700.
Food-focused Genius Kitchen, from Discovery’s Lifestyle Digital Studios, released a new app that improves browse, search and recipe saving capabilities across platforms. Users can now find and save recipe from any GK episode while they watch in real time, as well as browse a curated section.
Programmatic video platform Tremor Video DSP struck a partnership with applied data science company Dstillery to deliver an audience targeting solution leveraging Tremor’s video bid stream data and creative with Dstillery’s marketing intelligence. “Innovation is imperative in our ever-evolving and competitive advertising ecosystem,” said Jarod Caporino, president of Resolute Digital. “Tremor Video DSP and Dstillery’s joint solution benefits our clients because we can capitalize on their combination of data and video creative to optimize audience reach and amplify engagement.”
WE tv is up 24% year-over-year on its mobile and streaming platforms. Contributing over half the viewing are Braxton Family Values, Mama June: From Not to Hot, Love After Lockup, Growing Up Hip Hop Atlanta and Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars.
Local Now, the streaming service powered by The Weather Channel, is partnering with Yelp to provide users with recommendations, reviews, images and videos for restaurants and bars. “We hope that Local Now viewers will have fun as they get more curated information about local restaurants and hidden gems in their own backyards,” said Shimika Wilder Jones, VP of strategy and business operations at The Weather Group.
InvestigateTV, Raycom Media’s OTT app, struck a content partnership with Investigative Network, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization. InvestigateTV is available on Roku and will be released to other streaming services soon.
KIDS CORNER
Kids brand Pocket.watch closed a $15 million funding round led by Viacom. Already being developed: a kids sketch comedy show, Skoogle, starring Keenan Thompson. Pocket.watch was a Luminary winner at last year’s Cynopsis Kids Awards.
Genius Brands Network, including the Kid Genius Cartoon Channel and Baby Genius TV, will be launching on OTT VOD service XUMO. The deal expands the reach of Genius Brands Network to 80 million U.S. households.
GOING GLOBAL
The European Union hit Google with an antitrust fine of $5.06 billion, on the grounds it imposes illegal restrictions on other Android device manufacturers and network operations. Google must bring the practice to an end within 90 days , warned the EU Commission, or face up penalty payments of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Googale parent Alphabet.
China’s version of Saturday Night Live has been temporarily yanked from video site Youku, not long after China’s content regulator issued a call for shows that protect teens from “low taste and harmful programs.” The show premiered in late June.
Insight TV, focused on entertainment, action, sports and lifestyle content, inked a distribution deal with Dutch telecom operator KPN. Shows include Road to Gymkhana GRiD, King of the Hammers, THRU, Breaking Limits, DarkFEST and more.
London-headquartered production company Buccaneer Media landed TV rights to
The Doll Factory, the 2018 debut novel by Scottish author Elizabeth Macneal. The publishing rights to the novel were acquired by Pan Macmillan/ Picador after a 14-way publisher auction.
Anime and manga destination Crunchyroll is expanding its linear TV programming in Brazil with the launch of a larger programming block on Rede Brasil, starting August 6.
