Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Monday, March 24th, 2025:
FROM THE ARCHIVES: AN INTERVIEW WITH NEW CNN CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER AMANDA WILLS
CNN announced today that it has named Amanda Wills as group senior vice president and chief content officer. Wills has been chief content officer of video at The Wall Street Journal. But before that, Wills was VP of Content Programming for CNN+.
I interviewed Wills in February 2024, after I had followed the CNN+ live coverage of the NYC subway shooting. While obviously a lot has changed in the digital news market in three years, I the conversation might provide some insight into what CNN viewers can expect from her in the coming months:
I've been part of digital news organizations when you're trying something new. And you do all this testing and you think you know how it is going to work. Or not. There are always surprises - positive and negative. For you, what have been some of the things you've learned so far, even in just the couple of weeks you've been live?
When we were building this product, we spent a lot of weeks rehearsing. And rehearsing is very interesting, right? Because you're going through the motions of rehearsing news, which kind of sounds crazy. And it doesn't really replicate what you actually are doing in the real world. So even this week, for my own team, it was a learning curve in a lot of ways. We realized we are inefficient in some of the ways that we're working. And we need to completely tear down that workflow and rebuild it, and do it better next time.
And I think there have been many moments around that. In particular - since we've been live - that we thought we kind of knew how to do it. But then we actually got live and you discover that actually, that workflow doesn't work. Or it's just easier if we work with this team instead of that team. It's easier if we do the images in this manner. I think right now we're still working through little things like that. Because you have to remember, we all just like came together as a team only a few months ago. And there's a lot of us here. So we're still getting to know each other. We're still getting to know the product. We're still getting to know our audience, and we're all doing it like at 100 miles an hour together during the news.
TRUTH+ COMES TO ROKU
As you likely know, Truth Social is the Twitter knock-off social media service partly owned by Donald Trump. It apparently also has a free streaming video platform called Truth+, which is free to registered users of the social media service.
Truth+ just rolled out an app for Roku, which is ironic given that it describes itself as the "un-woke Roku." But I was curious to see what I would find in the way of content, given that it's free and Truth Social has never made money, so it likely doesn't have a lot of resources it can use to license programming.
There are 19 live TV channels available, and it is a mix of conservative news networks (Real America's Voice, Newsmax 2, OAN, Patriot TV), religious channels (Daystar, The Word Network), a few very small more mainstream conservative entertainment networks (Pure Flix TV, Curiosity Now, Great American Adventures) and some other weird, random FAST channels (Mike Lindell TV, Worldview Tube). And several of those live channels weren't available when I checked.
Truth+ also has some on-demand programming, although if you use the Roku app, there is no way to browse or search the on-demand titles. There is a "Most Watched" and "Trending Now" row of tiles, and I as I write this, the "Most Watched" titles include "Illuminati," "Lizard People: Rulers Of Time And Space" and "Blockchain In 30 Minutes."
There are more options on the web version of Truth+, although "options" is a relative term here. On the "TV Series" page, probably one third of the titles are some variation of an exercise or workout program, and some of the others are just perplexing. Such as the oddly titled Round Penning: First Steps to Starting a Horse, and Visible Founders. And even if there was something here you wanted to watch, the only information that is available is the show's title. So you are pretty much on your own when it comes to content discovery.
The "Movies" section does have a couple of hundred titles, but it is a pretty sad-sack collection of what look like primarily straight-to-DVD titles originally released in 1998. And some of the titles are "Password Protected," but when I attempted to enter the password for my Truth Social account, it wouldn't accept my attempts to type it in.
I am all in favor of niche streaming platforms, but Truth+ barely functions and there isn't much worth watching. Even if you are extremely politically conservative.
JOE ROGAN WON'T GO TO CANADA
Podcaster and former Fear Factor host Joe Rogan has been a color commentator for UFC since 1997. But during his UFC companion podcast over the weekend, he asked his co-hosts when Belal Muhammad would be fighting Jack Della Maddalena, and was informed it would be at UFC 315 in Montreal on May 10:
“Wow. I won’t be there. I don’t go to Canada anymore,” Rogan said. “I don’t.”
Co-host Brendan Schaub interjected, “Nor should you. Discipline them.”
“No, I’d rather go to Russia,” Rogan said, laughing.
TWEET OF THE DAY
ODDS AND SODS
* Over the weekend, I posted a piece called Why Are We Still Listening To Anything Bill Maher Says? and to be honest, I couldn't come up a good reason.
* CBS Media Ventures has renewed the syndicated game show Flip Side for a second season. The company also announced the new Deborah Norville hosted game show The Perfect Line will be premiering nationally this fall.
* Alan Cumming, Emmy-winning actor and host of the U.S version of The Traitors, will host this year’s BAFTA TV Awards for the first time.
WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW
MONDAY, MARCH 24TH:
Hollywood Demons Series Premiere (Investigation Discovery)
TUESDAY, MARCH 25TH:
Alert: Missing Persons Unit (Fox)
Bad Romance Season Two Premiere (ABC)
Big Boys (Hulu)
Chelsea Handler: The Feeling (Netflix)
Con Mum (Netflix) - (photo gallery)
Dark Side Of The Ring Season Premiere (Vice)
Family Legacy Season Premiere (Paramount+)
Frontline: The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram (PBS)
The Cleaning Lady Season Premiere (Fox)
SEE YOU ON TUESDAY!
Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Monday, March 24th, 2025
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- By Rick Ellis
