Ankler Agenda

Jennifer Aniston declared the movie star dead. Now hosts Sean McNulty, Richard Rushfield and Tatiana Siegel, joined by Rob Long, offer their condolences as Hollywood scatters the ashes of its once-mighty creation (21:02), destroyed by self-inflicted wounds (and names of those who still endure). The group also talks agents and managers (7:32), and how streaming makes them — for better or worse — mo...

Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Roku, Lionsgate. Third-quarter earnings reports are all variations on a theme: things are bad. Layoffs are hitting every corner, and streaming “clearly [is] not making money yet and will not for another two years if it even gets to that point for some of these companies,” says host Sean McNulty (30:31), joined by Janice Min, Richard Rushfield and Tatiana Siegel,...

Recession. Ad declines. Subscriber plateaus. The tides continue to shift since the Great Streaming Bubble’s implosion of 2022. In the wake of a pessimistic Q3 earnings season, hosts Sean McNulty, Janice Min and Richard Rushfield are joined by CNBC media reporter Alex Sherman to break down the town’s latest thoughts around David Zaslav (1:35); if Comcast should give up on Peacock (16:30); why Apple...

Netflix has released more than 45 films(!) so far in 2022, the majority of which are neither loved by critics nor audience, according to Rotten Tomatoes (and as analyzed film-by-film by host Sean McNulty). Not a single one of the other streamers and studios has reached the same average level of disapproval (for the record, everyone else combined have released a total of 86 films in the same time f...

Netflix took a victory lap on Tuesday with its Q3 earnings report that revealed — surprise! —the company beat its revenue forecast (or, as host Sean McNulty likes to say, Netflix underpromised and overdelivered). In a special episode recorded at Advertising Week in New York, McNulty, Janice Min and Richard Rushfield break down the ad tier (9:00); the streamer’s 2.4 million subscriber growth stagna...

With a potential WGA strike on the horizon, can the chasm between studios and angry writers be bridged? Hosts Sean McNulty, Richard Rushfield and Tatiana Siegel are joined by Martini Shot host (and WGA member) Rob Long to unpack the impending doom. “The Writers Guild continually strikes for a time machine and to go back and change the way [deals] were written,” notes Long. “‘If only I could go bac...

Viewership for Hollywood awards shows is plummeting. Hosts Janice Min, Tatiana Siegel and Sean McNulty survey the rocky terrain that’s led to the Golden Globes’s shaky one-year NBC deal (far less than its once-$60 million a year license fee), and prompted the Academy’s new Hail Mary efforts to remake the Oscars (and red carpet) for ABC. “There’s no way now they’re getting $100 million a year [toda...

Hosts Janice Min, Richard Rushfield, Tatiana Siegel and Sean McNulty take stock of a new phenomenon on the festival circuit fest: the ever-shrinking and choreographed press conference (20:34). High-profile press conferences — from Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical The Fabelmans to Harry Styles’ period gay drama The Policeman — featured questions vetted in advance (likely a result of Venice’s Don...

Oof — well, that’s an Emmys down. Today, hosts Sean McNulty and Richard Rushfield dissect the Emmys, and what it says about the streaming giants who stage their annual showdown over bragging rights with increasingly little meaning to the larger audience. Who comes out of this show stronger Diminished? And would all the streamers just be better off ignoring the Emmys altogether? The hosts also thro...

What does America really want to watch? In recent years, Hollywood has become obsessed with prestige content — the kind, as host Richard Rushfield puts it, that entertainment executives can talk about green-lighting to impress people at dinner parties. Richard, Janice Min, Tatiana Siegel, and The Wakeup’s Sean McNulty break down surprising stats that reveal how and why Hollywood became out of touc...

For the price of just a few coffee runs, you can access the entire Peacock catalogue – Sunday Night Football, Love Island, and all – for a full calendar year right now. That deep-cut offer ($20 for 12 months) might signal red flags unique to the no-growth Comcast streamer, but drastic lever-pulling is engulfing the entire streaming marketplace (16:20) — from price slashing (Peacock, HBO Max, Param...

Rarely does an entertainment CEO become a trending topic on Twitter, but that’s exactly where Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav found himself this week as heat increases over his company’s layoffs, DEI handling, the removal of library content including hundreds of Sesame Street episodes from HBO Max, and those so-called ‘funeral screenings.’ Hosts Janice Min, Richard Rushfield, and The Wak...

The town may finally be acknowledging the undeniable pressures unique to this industry. This week, Jonah Hill, Tom Holland and Ezra Miller all said they are modifying their behavior to protect their mental health. Hill is stepping away from promoting his movies and making public appearances due to panic attacks; Holland announced he has abandoned social media to help stay emotionally balanced; and...

There’s nothing more stressful or exhilarating than the high-wire act of live television. The Ankler Hot Seat podcast host Tatiana Siegel welcomes one of the best in the genre: Hamish Hamilton, director of the upcoming 74th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 12. Londoner Hamilton has helmed some of the most memorable moments of live TV including this year’s Super Bowl halftime extravaganza, Kanye West...

Following Disney’s Q2 earnings call, many headlines declared the company’s victory over Netflix as Disney+ subscribers reached 221 million — squeaking ahead of Netflix (at 220.67 million). But in this episode, The Wakeup’s Sean McNulty tells Janice Min and Richard Rushfield that, in this case, the numbers don’t reveal the whole story (think India, domestic stagnation and revenue per subscriber). T...

On this episode, hosts Janice Min, Tatiana Siegel and The Wakeup’s Sean McNulty take quick measure of entertainment’s giants after another day of wild Q2 earnings calls all about streaming that included Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Lionsgate. Some quantified(ish) what success looks like down the road; others stayed vague. WBD CEO David Zaslav said that HBO Max and Discovery+, which boast...

As recession fears mount, Comcast becomes the latest to deliver a bleak earnings picture, with its streaming service Peacock stuck firm on 13 million subscribers, despite spending over $2 billion a year on content. Hosts Janice Min, Tatiana Siegel and Sean McNulty discuss what that might mean for its future and what to expect next on the earnings front (Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Lionsg...

This week, Rob Long has a confession to make: he likes agents—they’re “the friendly bacteria in the lower intestine of the dirty business we call entertainment,” he says. In defense of this controversial point of view (well, for a writer, anyway), Rob offers a cautionary tale about a past-his-prime agent who, along with his assistant, saves the career of a struggling writer with a spec sale of an...

Earnings season is underway, and everyone should be taking notice of Snapchat’s dismal performance (and Twitter’s that followed). The tech company’s stock took a 27 percent nosedive immediately after reporting shocking ad sales declines. That portends a bleak near future for every ad-dependent entity — including Netflix and the streaming services increasingly pivoting to advertising to save the da...

The Netflix Q2 2022 subscriber numbers are in!  And… huh. No splat. What does the lack of a collapse — but not exactly successful April through June quarter — indicate about the state of the streaming business at the midway mark of 2022?Hosts Janice Min and Richard Rushfield are joined by Ankler contributor Sean McNulty, writer of the daily morning newsletter The Wakeup to dive into the numbers be...

The Emmy noms are in. After months of posturing, positioning and the biggest glut of prestige entertainment the world has ever seen, the votes have been tallied and the final sprint towards the big night is off and running. Besides the usual snubs and surprises, this year’s crop was a barometer on the state of the streaming wars and television in general. To sift through the results, host Richard...

Today’s Ankler Hot Seat podcast dissects this week’s move by the Disney board to extend CEO Bob Chapek’s contract for three more years. Hosts Richard Rushfield and Tatiana Siegel are joined by Ankler contributing editor Peter Kiefer to discuss why the Twitter mob — hailing from both the right and the left of the political divide — tried (and failed) to topple the P.R.-challenged chief from his top...

Follow us (and like us!) at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, and on Twitter. Also please subscribe at TheAnkler.com for more podcasts and stories about the entertainment industry. Today’s Ankler Hot Seat podcast tackles this weekend’s big studio opening, the oft-challenged biopic Elvis. Hosts Tatiana Siegel and Richard Rushfield are joined by The Wakeup writer Sean...