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Every time a fan-favorite HBO series bids farewell, the entertainment industry and the public alike wonder how the prestige TV network will outdo itself next.

This isn’t just any transitional moment for the network, though. Less than a month after the Writers Guild of America strike began, “Succession” and “Barry” aired their highly-anticipated series finales. Also, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, HBO’s new corporate boss, promised Wall Street that its direct-to-consumer business would turn a profit this year. This as linear TV networks across the industry are struggling to maintain viewership as cord-cutting accelerates. Meanwhile, the rebrand of HBO Max to Max has raised worries about the network’s position within the company’s streaming strategy.

Discovery, whose executives now largely run the newly combined company, was “used to low-cost programming,” Andy Goldman, a former vice president of program strategy and planning at HBO who now teaches...

Back in 2018, deep in the dark days of the Trump administration, CNN began running a new series of advertisements for itself. They were called the “Facts First” spots and mostly involved people mistaking a banana for an apple.

“This is an apple,” one of the 60-second promos began, showing a plump red honeycrisp in front of a white backdrop as a piano tinkled a pensive tune. “Some people might tell you it’s a banana. They might scream ‘banana, banana, banana’ over and over again. They might put banana in all caps. You might even start to believe that this is a banana. But it’s not. This is an apple.”

It was a simple, elegant metaphor that said everything you need to know about the nightmare of cable news broadcasting during the Trump era.

But here we are, four years later, and CNN is upsetting its own apple cart,...

Brian Stelter had planned to announce his exit from CNN and the cancellation of his show, “Reliable Sources,” which he’s hosted for nine years, on the air on Sunday, according to an individual with knowledge of the show.

It was not to be. The news leaked on Thursday and once again the CNN newsroom is aflutter with anxiety and rumor: What is new chairman and CEO Chris Licht’s plan for the future of the news network? Why would Stelter, a respected media journalist, get the boot along with his show? Who else is at risk to get the ax after Stelter and, last week, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin? Will the outspoken primetime host Don Lemon or Jim Acosta, the sometimes combative chief domestic correspondent, be next?

To many observers and network insiders, Licht aims to tone down any politically-pointed coverage in a pivot from the strategy pursued by his flashier predecessor,...

The decision to move ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” to Disney+ was “bold” and “genius,” several analysts told TheWrap. Some initial reactions to Friday’s news described the show’s move to streaming as a demotion for the series and ABC — a reflection of shrinking ratings over the course of 16 years and 30 seasons. But a majority of the analysts told TheWrap that the shift was logical in light of changing linear TV viewing habits and Disney’s goals for its streaming service. “This is a clear signal that confirms what everybody has known: The most important platform at Disney is Disney+,” Brian Frons, former president of daytime for ABC TV Group, told TheWrap. Frons, who now teaches entertainment at UCLA, interprets the move as “genius,” but also a sign that ABC “ain’t what it used to be.” Paul Hardart, director of the entertainment, media and technology program at NYU,...

This is the fourth installment of a five-part series examining the transformation of television as the industry prepares to celebrate the Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 19.

Each fall, as part of a long-held ritual, TV networks release dozens of new programs — and dozens of gimmicks, promotions, and marketing schemes to call attention to them.

In years past, CBS tattooed supermarket eggshells with show logos and dispensed cups of yogurt with flavors like “Sheldon’s Bazinga Blueberry” to hawk “The Big Bang Theory.” Fox dispatched pounds and pounds of Halloween candy to media reportes to tout “The Simpsons’ ” annual “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween special. The CW lined up a “Dynasty” bus to take people to the Hamptons with tank tops and tumblers devoted to the soapy reboot. And ABC offered up sessions of “goat yoga” to drum up publicity for a comic drama called “Kevin (Probably) Saves The World.”

As more TV viewers become digital streamers,...

Hollywood is already feeling the impact of the coronavirus (code name: Covid-19) as the disease spreads from its epicenter in Wuhan, China — and bracing for some potentially serious hits to revenues from box office and theme parks as well as disruptions of overseas film and TV production.

“It could have a rather devastating impact on companies, and not just because of the film industry, but for the companies operating theme parks as well,” Sky Moore, a partner at the law firm Greenberg Glusker, said. “The last thing people are going to want to do is go to a theme park, and the second to last thing they’re going to want to do is go to the movies.”

In fact, some Hollywood companies have already begun to take a hit. Disney, which closed its theme parks in Hong Kong and Shanghai last month, announced Thursday that Tokyo Disney would shutter...

The days of comparing ratings are nearly extinct, now verging on becoming a bygone relic of when “Seinfeld” versus “Home Improvement” was measured.

As more customers ditch traditional TV for streaming, services are coming up with their own ways to measure success — and this data is only rarely shared with the public.

This became especially clear this week after Netflix changed how it calculates views. The streaming heavyweight had been counting a “view” after 70% of a show or movie was watched; now, Netflix counts a view after 2 minutes of content are streamed. Netflix admitted the new metric “is about 35% higher on average than the prior metric,” helping to inflate the already-guarded viewer data it seldom reveals.

Netflix didn’t waste time using the new measurement to trumpet some of its recent successes: In its letter to shareholders on Tuesday, Netflix boasted “The Witcher,” the Henry Cavill-led fantasy show, was...

There’s never a dull moment in tech, media and entertainment. Change moves at breakneck speed — be it Roku’s stock price or the latest Facebook controversy. TheWrap asked a handful of industry analysts and insiders to share their best bets for 2020. Some of the predictions, such as Apple buying a major studio or Spotify getting acquired, are pretty juicy. Below is a roundup of what they had to say. (Italics represent a comment from yours truly.) Also Read: Why Netflix Is Betting You'll Want 'The Witcher' Season 2 - Before You've Seen Season 1 Paul Hardart, former Warner Bros. executive and current head of the Entertainment, Media and Technology Program at NYU I have [plenty of predictions] related to film and independent film, but rather than play it safe let’s go with something a bit more provocative. In the race for companies to move to direct-to-consumer relationships and having recurring, predictable...

TV viewers are increasingly unwilling to juggle more subscriptions than they already have — calling into question what new entrants to the streaming landscape, including Disney and Apple, will need to do to pull eyeballs away from stalwarts like Netflix.

According to a new study from Hub Entertainment Research, about 25% of American TV customers believe they already have “too many TV services,” marking a 10% spike from the same time last year. Another 36% of respondents said they’d need to ditch at least one of their current services before considering adding a new one.

“People are hitting a [streaming] plateau,” Hub analyst Jon Giegengack told TheWrap. “This suggests new platforms that enter the market are going to have a higher bar to clear than maybe they had in the past, where people only had Netflix, so adding Amazon or Hulu wasn’t a big deal. Now, people are at a point where they...

On Wednesday Disney will face the Wall Street community in its first quarterly earnings report since closing its $71.3 billion deal to lap up the films, franchises and studio operations of 21st Century Fox’s film and TV entertainment business.

But despite the oversize success of “Avengers: Endgame” — which opened in this quarter and has grossed an astonishing $2.2 billion worldwide in less than two weeks — Cfra Research media analyst Tuna Amobi expects that the media giant’s earnings for the pre-“Endgame” quarter that ended March 31 to be “mixed at best.”

Analysts tracking the company expect Disney to report per-share earnings of $1.59, according to estimates gathered by Yahoo Finance. That would be down compared with the $1.84 earnings Disney reported during the same period a year ago when “Black Panther” emerged as a surprise mega-blockbuster.

Disney’s revenue for the quarter is also expected to be down compared with last year, with analysts forecasting $14.39 billion in revenue,...

Investors are not an easy crowd to shock, but Disney CEO Bob Iger managed to induce at least two audible gasps when unveiling his company’s long-awaited Disney+ streaming service on Thursday afternoon. The first was the news that “The Simpsons” would move all of its 30 seasons over to Disney+ — a sign of just how extensive the company’s library is since its $71 billion Fox acquisition — and the second came with the $6.99 monthly subscription price.

The whole event amounted to Iger firing a warning shot: This is what a true Netflix competitor looks like. But is it a Netflix killer?

Not likely, according to several media and business experts. Instead, once Disney+ launches on November 12, a new streaming landscape is expected to emerge: Netflix atop the hill, followed by Disney+, with a wide chasm separating the two services and the rest of their competitors.

“The question is, will anybody drop...

“I’ll never forget this,” Apple chief Tim Cook gushed, leaning over to thank Oprah Winfrey for closing out the company’s long-awaited unveiling of its new streaming service, Apple TV+.

To some viewers, the soundbite dripped with irony. The ceremony at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters Monday was almost entirely forgettable. Sure, there was plenty of star power, with appearances from Jason Momoa, Steven Spielberg, Winfrey, and even Big Bird, among others.

But Apple’s presentation left more questions than answers. When will its shows arrive? We received only a vague fall release date. Why were Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell and Reese Witherspoon brought onstage to discuss their upcoming series — on the drama of a morning news show — without a trailer to promote it? (Though Apple did release a two-minute sizzle reel of all its shows on Monday.)

Most importantly: How much will the streaming service cost? That remains unanswered.

Roadside Attractions has nabbed a pair of Toronto International Film Festival world premieres: Santosh Sivan's romantic drama Before the Rains, starring Linus Roache, and Tarsem's epic fantasy The Fall.

Rains stars Roache as a British entrepreneur in 1937 colonial India who begins an extramarital affair with a local servant (Nandita Das). When their relationship is exposed, and his wife (Jennifer Ehle) returns from England, his future and the servant's life are put in jeopardy.

Doug Mankoff, Andrew Spaulding, Paul Hardart, Tom Hardart and Mark Burton produced the film from Indian director Sivan (The Terrorist). The film premiered in September and will be released next year.

Music video director Tarsem's Fall, set in a 1920s hospital, centers on a fantastical story told to a young girl (Catinca Untaru) with a broken collarbone by an injured stuntman (Lee Pace). The films brings the tale of five heroes who escape from a desert island to life with violent and surreal imagery channeled through the girl's imagination.