Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Thursday, February 15th, 2024

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Thursday, February 15th, 2024.

PROGRAMMING NOTES
Today's newsletter will be a bit shorter. I'm am frantically trying to finish this off before I board a plane back to the Twin Cities.

The TCAs were really helpful for me this time around and I think I ended up doing 15 or 16 one-on-one interviews while I was here. I also met a number of people face-to-face for the first time. Although I will apologize to anyone who met me today, given that I was dressed comfortably for the flight in an outfit best described as "Columbo's Dad."

THE CW DAY AT THE WINTER TCAS
Today was the final day of the Winter 2024 TCAs and The CW wrapped it up with a flurry of morning panels.

I plan to write more about this in the coming days, but looking at the lineup of new programs, it strikes me as the kind of schedule I would put together when faced with the daunting task of programming a full network schedule on a very constrained budget.

No matter how much you have may have enjoyed the former superhero-rich CW schedule, it was also a programming approach that consistently lost money. That long Netflix output deal helped ease the pain, but once that went away, massive changes at the network were inevitable. That was especially the case once the network was sold and it no longer had easy access to Warner Bros. Discovery IP.

So the new CW schedule is a smart mix of under-valued Canadian shows, some other licensed dramas along with some original scripted shows that are co-produced overseas in order to save costs. There are game shows, true crime programs and a mix of sports and second-tier live events.

Am I going to watch everything on the network? No. But it's a programming mix I think has the chance to succeed financially. And there are some really run "Blue Sky TV" shows on the way.

SPEAKING OF THE CW
I had the opportunity to speak with Malcolm McDowell today about his role on The CW show Son Of A Critch. I'll be posting the interview next week, but at the end of our conversation, I had enjoyed Pearl, a short-lived CBS comedy he had co-starred in along with Rhea Perlman.

McDowell told me that he loved Perlman and had tried to convince her to move to the UK, where she would have the chance to do some challenging female roles. "She could have easily been on of the top three or four best British actresses," he told me. "But being here, she was limited to not-so-challenging TV roles."

I have to say, the idea of Dame Rhea Pearlman becoming a British acting institution is an outcome I would have liked to have seen.



THE DEATH OF NOGGIN?
Paramount Global has a number of under-appreciated assets and one of my favorite is the SVOD Noggin. It began as a commercial-free kids channel in 1999 that was co-owned by MTV Networks and Sesame Street Workshop. The channel split its programming day between a morning preschoolers programming block and a tween and teenage programming block the rest of the day. The preschool programming eventually expanded into a 12-hour block, with the tween/teen hours rebranded as "The N."

Sesame Street sold its stake in the channel in 2002, but until it closed in 2009 (to be replaced by the Teen Nick Channel), it produced some really distinctive original programming and had developed one of the clearest brands in the marketplace. 

Noggin was revived in as a subscription-based streaming service in 2015 and it seemed to doing well early on. Paramount hasn't broken out subscriber numbers for its smaller SVODs in recent years, so the most recent numbers showed 2.5 million subscribers in 2019.

KidScreen is reporting that the recent substantial round of Paramount layoffs included the entire Noggin team with the app set to shut down soon and the content shifted over to Paramount+.

Without having recent subscriber data, it's difficult to know if this is a good idea or not. I suspect marketing Noggin wasn't easy and shutting it down fits in with the recent decision to shut down a number of the companies stand-alone and TV Everywhere apps.

But even if Noggin's subscriber base had dipped to a million paid subscribers, this feels like a business worth keeping.

I do know that Paramount execs originally had hoped to convince cable companies on the idea of offering Noggin as a paid add-on channel. But that effort doesn't appear to be successful.

And sadly for Noggin fans given everything that is happening with the parent company, those Noggin subscribers are worth more to Paramount as Paramount+ subscribers. Assuming they are interested in making the move.

One of the many things that isn't clear right now is whether that Noggin content will remain ad-free when it moves to Paramount+

ODDS AND SODS
* 

WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16TH:
* Blue Bloods Season Premiere (CBS)
* Comedy Chaos Series Premiere (Netflix)
* Einstein And The Bomb (Netflix)
* Fire Country Season Premiere (CBS)
* Life & Beth Series Premiere (Hulu)
* Kevin Hart's Muscle Car Crew (The Roku Channel)
* Rhythm + Flow Italy Series Premiere (Netflix)
* River (Asian Crush)
* Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin (Apple TV+)
* SWAT Season Premiere (CBS)
* The Abyss (Netflix)
* The Grand Tour: Sand Job (Prime Video)
* The Dynasty: New England Patriots (Apple TV+)
* The Proof Is Out There Season Premiere (History)
* This Is Me....Now: A Love Story (Prime Video)
* Totally Funny Animals Series Premiere (The CW)
* Totally Funny Kids Series Premiere (The CW)

SEE YOU ON FRIDAY!