On today’s episode of the Daily Variety podcast, Variety’s Brian Steinberg reported on the Upfront Week triple-header kickoff after attending Monday’s presentation by NBCUniversal, Fox, and Amazon Prime Video. He analyzes the pitch for each platform up to Madison Avenue. And Liz Jenkins, chief business officer of NBCUniversal Entertainment, will be heard speaking about risk-taking in turbulent times this month at Series Fest in Denver. “We found our cruising altitude again,” Jenkins said.
The message from Day 1 of Upfront boiled down to a focus on technology and data tools to reach different audiences. Steinberg talks about the importance of driving conversation around sports, streaming and social media, and the rise of reboots. (Hello, it’s a revival of “Baywatch” and “The Rockford Files.”)
“Everyone is trying to balance the need to stay up to date with advertising technology and the need to show content that everyone likes,” he says. “Years ago, it was big presentations about comedies and dramas. And now advertisers are very interested in reaching digital, social and streaming audiences. So they want to hear a lot about very technical ad tech stories. In fact, Fox even put their chief technology officer on stage. It’s kind of different.”
NBCUniversal’s Liz Jenkins (Photo by Savion Washington/Variety)
Variety (via Getty Images)
Jenkins detailed the evolution of NBCUniversal over the past year during a conversation with NPR host John Horne at the Series Fest event in Denver on May 6. Mr. Horn, a veteran entertainment journalist, asked Mr. Jenkins about how studios remain motivated to make big moves when the risks are greater than ever, as the traditional path to making money from film and television production is so difficult. Jenkins says the industry must contend with the chilling effect of deep market uncertainty.
“There’s nothing more deadly than that mindset. I see that mindset gripping our industry from time to time, and I think you can understand why. To me, if you’re playing not to lose, you’re frankly not going to win. And I also understand why it makes sense to have a scarcity mindset when you feel like the pool is shrinking and the amount of series is decreasing,” Jenkins says.
“But innovation doesn’t come from that. Really dynamic stories don’t come from that. So how do you get around that?[NBCU Entertainment Chairman]Donna[Langley]talks about having a growth mindset. And that’s what our people expect too. We talk a lot about making smart, informed bets. It’s not data-driven because the data can’t predict hits. A hit is something that significantly exceeds expectations, but I think data can be part of a multifaceted decision-making process, along with many other important points. ”
(Photo: Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang perform at NBC Universal’s Upfront Presentation at Radio City Music Hall on May 11.)
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