Showbiz Sandbox 384: NBC Has A Big Megyn Kelly Problem

October 16, 2017

NBC forked over millions of dollars to steal Megyn Kelly away from Fox News and then realized they had nowhere to put her. First the network gave Kelly a primetime news show opposite the ratings powerhouse 60 Minutes. When that move prove disastrous NBC shoehorned Kelly into the third hour of their hit morning program, “Today,” only to see the shows ratings plummet.

Marc Berman, the editor-in-chief of Programming Insider, joins us to analyze what went wrong with bringing Kelly to NBC, why putting a former political news anchor into a morning show was a bad fit, and what the network can do to save the “Today” show before Kelly brings down ratings any further. Berman believes if NBC doesn’t act soon, they could get lapped by the likes of CBS.

Speaking of public implosion swof media fixtures, the Harvey Weinstein scandal has moved beyond the movie mogul himself to encompass a culture of sexual harassment that pervades Hollywood. We’ll discuss a plausible idea that Hollywood could take toward ending such behavior.

Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including how Spanish language network Telemundo is gaining ground on its rival Univision, why the ratings of a CW show were significantly boosted by binge viewing on Netflix and YouTube views may soon be included in determining Billboard’s weekly music charts.

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Showbiz Sandbox 287: The Unofficial Line On This Year’s Comic-Con

July 13, 2015

Pop-culture fans from around the world made their annual pilgrimage to San Diego over the weekend for this year’s Comic-Con.  More than 130,000 attendees turned up to a show where the largest auditorium has a capacity of 6,000. Alex Billington, editor of FirstShowing, explains how some fans had to wait in line for days (literally) to get into popular panel discussions such as the one for “Star Wars: Episode VII”.

Billington waited out the neverending lines so he could fill us in on all the events, panels, trailers and collectibles designed to build hype for upcoming films and television shows like “Hateful Eight”, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Deadpool”. In fact, so many movie studios and television networks showed up at Comic-Con, and with so much content, one has to wonder if their marketing messages weren’t ultimately lost in all the noise.

Meanwhile, the Minions spinoff from the “Despicable Me” franchise opened to record box office in North America giving Universal Pictures yet another big hit this year. Surely the studio will want the animated film to stick around cinemas for as long as possible, whereas Paramount Pictures has teamed up with two theater chains in an experiment to shorten the release window on certain films.

Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including a request from publishing groups for an antitrust investigation targeting Amazon, “South Park” continues to redefine television thanks to a new deal with Hulu and the Rolling Stones continue their reign as the concert industry’s top earner.

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