Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Tuesday, June 11th, 2024

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, June 11th, 2024:

LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS TO DROP LIVE BAND IN THE FALL
Every day there are more stories about budget contractions in the television industry - especially on the broadcast TV side of the business. But there are certain moves that deeply resonate when you hear about them because they signal a notable, profound retrenchment for the industry.

In an interview with Vulture, Late Night associate musical director Janney revealed that at the conclusion of Late Night With Seth Meyers’s current season, the show will undergo a “revamp” for budgetary reasons, and the live 8G band will be let go:

When and how did you first get the news that Late Night would be letting the band go?
Basically Seth Meyers and Mike Shoemaker, the showrunner, brought us in in person to talk about it. They expressed their regret and frustration about it. They had been trying to work it out for months, but in the end NBC was adamant about where they wanted the budget to go. It’s not just the band; there’s a whole crew that works with the band, so there’s a lot of people employed. I think this was an easy way for them to cut the budget. Easy is not the right word.

Getting rid of the live band sounds as if it will only be one component of the changes on Late Night, although it will obviously be a major one. According to Janney, while the band won't be playing live, they will be recording walk-on music for the show. So maybe they should just opt for a live DJ?

YES, DEADLIEST CATCH IS STILL ON THE AIR
Discovery's Deadliest Catch is premiering its latest season tonight, and while I didn't receive a review screener, if you're a fan of the show I wanted to point you to a couple of older interviews with Captains from the show. 

In 2021, I spoke with Captain Sig Hansen and among other things, he talked about the impact the show has had on his life:

Speaking of the future, I asked him whether the show had in a way given him a more tangible legacy with his family. Reruns of Deadliest Catch are going to be around decades and it's possible that future Hansen generations will mostly know him from what they see on the show. "I've never really thought about it," Hansen admitted. "But yeah, that would be nice. To think that somewhere down the road someone would say 'Oh look, that's grandpa or great-grandpa Hansen.' Yeah, I'd be happy with that."

And back in 2016, I spoke with Captain Keith Colburn, who already had a pretty clear idea of the impact that climate change was going to have on the crabbing industry:

Q: Viewers of Deadliest Catch know you from your crab fishing and I'm wondering specifically about that part of your business. How much can the climate change before it begins to impact the crab population? How much can the water warm up before it significantly impacts the quotas?

Keith Colburn: It's going to be just the same as we've seen on the East Coast. For instance, Rhode Island used to have a more than 100-million pound a season cod catch. And now it's down to maybe five million. Most of that population has moved north into Maine. What happened in Rhode Island was that as the water warmed, predator fish moved in and started to seek out the cod and other fish that were there. Lobster populations are moving north and at some point you're going to need a Canadian passport to catch lobster on the East Coast.

My concern in Alaska is that we're going to see predator fish moving in. It could be Cod, it could be something else. But my fear is that these fish will move into the warmer water, become more prolific and push out the populations we fish. We just don't know. Scientists really struggle with trying to predict what we're going to fish and when we're going to catch it. And that's the scariest thing right now. We just don't know what's going to happen. We just know it's going to change.

The thing is, the lifespan of a crab is only seven years or so. So it only takes a few years to completely disrupt the biomass as they reproduce.

NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT THE FUTURE OF PARAMOUNT
David Ellison's Skydance Media issued a statement Tuesday afternoon that confirmed earlier reporting from The Wall Street Journal that stated Shari Redstone's National Amusements has ended merger discussions with Skydance.

The two sides had been negotiating for weeks and at one point had a four-week exclusive negotiating window, which expired in mid-May. According to multiple reports, two other parties are interested in acquiring National Amusements, which has a controlling interest in Paramount Global: one led by Hollywood producer Steven Paul, and another group led by media executive Edgar Bronfman Jr., and private equity firm Bain Capital.

Through this entire drawn-out process, it's never been clear what the end game was for Shari Redstone, other than walking away with as much money as absolutely possible. Her indecision and unwillingness to make business adjustments because she was afraid it would affect the amount of money she'd be able to grab has paralyzed Paramount Global and led to some decisions that seem ill-advised in retrospect.

Back in early 2023, Paramount declined a $3 billion offer for Showtime by former executive David Nevins and his backers at private-equity firm General Atlantic. Now that pay channel has been rolled into Paramount+ and no matter how optimistically you value that "synergy," it doesn't add up to $3 billion worth. 

And then there were the efforts to sell its BET business at about the same time, which included a pretty serious offer from Tyler Perry, which Paramount Global rejected because they believed his offer of around $2 billion was hundreds of millions too low.

I think it's been clear for awhile that Paramount Global is likely to be broken up by anyone who acquires it. But Redstone has resisted efforts to make those moves in-house, because a devalued Paramount would make her shares of National Amusements less valuable.

SPEAKING OF NOT KNOWING ANYTHING
After I wrote in yesterday's newsletter about the perplexing decision by WBD to send its Asian-produced original series Suicide Squad Isekai to Hulu in the U.S. rather than Max, I heard from several people who let me know they had seen press coverage that reported the series would be on both services.

Which may or may not be the case. I checked with a Max publicist yesterday and was told Suicide Squad Isekai wasn't going to be available on Max and it's not listed on the June "New on Max" sheet the streamer sent out at the beginning of the month. But several outlets have reported it was going to be on both Max and Hulu.

All of this is an indication of how complicated the streaming business can be. I can't get a clear answer about where something is streaming and I do this for a living.

ODDS AND SODS
* Paul Giamatti will have a recurring role on season one of Star Trek: Star Fleet Academy. He'll be playing "a man with an ominous past connected to one of the cadets," according to a press release from Paramount+.

* CBS has picked up late night's After Midnight for a second season.

* Axios is reporting that Fox Nation has ordered a new series from Kevin Costner, which will premiere in 2025. The as-yet unnamed series will be a spin-off of Yellowstone: One Fifty, which premiered on the streamer in 2022.

* AMC has ordered the six-episode series Anne Rice: The Talamasca, which will premiere in 2025. According to the network, the new series "revolves around the men and women responsible for tracking and containing the witches, vampires, werewolves and other creatures scattered around the globe." 

* Great American Family announced Carlos PenaVega and Alexa PenaVega will star in the Christmas movie Love At the Kettle.

* CBS Mornings co-anchor Nate Burleson will join Drew Barrymore, who will star as the center square, for CBS' reboot of the classic game Hollywood Squares, set to premiere in January.

WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW

TUESDAY, JUNE 11TH:
* Deadliest Catch Season Premiere (Discovery)
* Find My Country House: Australia Series Premiere (fyi)
* How Music Got Free (Paramount+)
* Keith Robinson: Different Strokes (Netflix)
* Love Island USA Season Premiere (Peacock)
* Motel Rescue Season Premiere (Magnolia)
* NBC News Special: Interview With Celine Dion (NBC)
* Pinkalicious A Pinkerton Family Vacation (PBS Kids)
* Supermarket Stakeout Season Finale (Food)
* 30 For 30: False Positive (ESPN)
* Tour de France: Unchained (Netflix)

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12TH:
* King Of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch Season Two Premiere (Netflix)
* My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman (Netflix)
* Mysteries Of The Terracotta Warriors (Netflix) - [first look video]
* Presumed Innocent (Apple TV+) - [first look video]
* Real Estate King Series Premiere (fyi)

SEE YOU ON WEDNESDAY!