L.A. Screenings Recap

A full recap of World Screen Newsflash’s L.A. Screenings coverage, including social media analysis from The WIT, on-site reporting from Elizabeth Guider and insight from the U.S. network upfronts.

2018-19 Fall Season Grid

World Screen’s comprehensive guide to the U.S. networks’ 2018-19 season features the prime-time grids for ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and The CW; pop-up trailers; descriptions and credits for each new and returning show; and a listing of series by studio. View the grid here.

Elizabeth Guider Reports

“While the media landscape is fragmenting and rearranging itself abroad as well as Stateside, some things remain constant: foreign buyers yearn for solid, story-led imported series—be they broad-appeal procedurals for free-to-air play or shorter-run, edgier fare for more narrowly targeted platforms–to round out their own domestically produced content,” reported our contributing editor, Elizabeth Guider, from Los Angeles on the eve of the studio screenings, which hosted some 1,800 buyers last week. You can catch up on her recaps of the presentations by Disney Media Distribution, Warner Bros., CBS Studios International, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony Pictures Television, NBCUniversal and Entertainment One, which feature a slew of buyer reactions to the new shows. She also offered up key takeaways from the week-long event.

The WIT Analysis

Tracking tweets, Facebook comments and YouTube trailer views, The WIT provided some insight into which shows are likely to resonate with audiences this fall. Get commentary from The WIT’s Caroline Servy on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and The CW.

Upfront Announcements & Insight

With the potential for lucrative SVOD revenues and more and more slicing and dicing of rights amid challenges in the ad marketplace, content ownership is more important than ever, and that move towards vertical integration could be seen across the network announcements. FOX, for example, revived Last Man Standing, the Tim Allen comedy produced by its sister studio and canned by ABC last year. Its other new pickups also all come from 20th Century Fox Television: the comedies The Cool Kids and Rel and the midseason dramas Proven Innocent and The Passage. FOX only has three pickups for the fall now that it is devoting Thursday nights to NFL football till early next year. NBC, meanwhile, picked up Universal Television’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which FOX had canned. In fact, almost all of the network’s pickups hail from Universal Television, save for Warner Bros. Television’s Manifest. CBS had a smattering of external pickups, among them Magnum P.I. and Warner Bros.’s Murphy Brown, God Friended Me and midseason replacement The Red Line. Its new comedies The Neighborhood, Happy Together and Fam (for midseason) and dramas FBI and The Code (for midseason), meanwhile, are from CBS Television Studios. ABC’s new lineup features a number of productions from its sister studio, including the midseason replacements The Fix and Grand Hotel and the fall comedy The Kids Are Alright, as well as ABC Studios and Kapital Entertainment’s A Million Little Things, the distribution rights for which are with CBS Studios International. The network also opted for Entertainment One’s The Rookie, 20th Century Fox’s Single Parents, Warner Bros.’s Whiskey Cavalier and Sony Pictures Television’s Schooled. At The CW, Warner Bros. owns a fair share of the grid, with the balance hailing from CBS Corporation, with which it shares ownership of the network. The service is expanding to a six-night schedule this fall with the addition of Sundays, which pair the returning Supergirl with CBS Studios’ brand-new Charmed reboot.

Against an uncertain environment, the networks are largely plugging stability for the fall, with many of the new pickups not set to roll out till midseason. The broadcast nets have also stopped trying to be their cable and OTT competitors, scaling back on complex, serialized fare. In a move that is likely to delight the international free-TV buyers, procedurals appear to be back in a big way on the U.S. broadcast networks. And the trend toward reboots and known IP that we’ve seen over the last few years is as prevalent as ever.