On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, Variety’s Michael Schneider breaks down the last lap of upfronts week as Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix and YouTube grabbed the megaphone. And Variety music chief Jem Aswad goes deep on the music of “Heated Rivalry” in a session with showrunner Jacob Tierney, composer Peter Peter and music supervisor Scotty Taylor. It was recorded May 7 at Toronto’s Departure Festival for music creatives.
The springtime ritual of the upfronts has changed significantly in the post-COVID era for the largest platforms. As Variety covered extensively this week, the dominant themes were sports, streaming and a lot of tech talk that industry leaders see as vital to bringing the traditional TV business, rooted in advertising and subscription revenue, into the modern era.
The sobering effect of industry consolidation was on display this year at the Warner Bros. Discovery event held May 13 as usual at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. The presentation opened with a tribute to Ted Turner, the late Turner Broadcasting mogul who birthed CNN. That set a somber tone that never really lifted. At the same time, Schneider noted that the biggest players leaned on star power to dazzle Madison Avenue.
