For decades, the middle of May was something of a Holy Week in the television industry. Every year around this time, the big broadcast networks would mount lavish presentations for advertisers and the press, renting out Manhattan venues such as Carnegie Hall and Radio City in order to promote the glitz and glamour of their new fall schedules. But when subscription-focused streamers displaced ad-supported broadcasters as the center of the TV universe, and COVID killed in-person events for a couple of years, TV’s so-called upfront season seemed poised to go the way of rabbit ears and DVDs: still around, but a shell of its former self.
Then something funny happened. The same streamers that for years used their lack of advertising as a tool to bludgeon the Big Four networks to (near) death suddenly reversed course and decided that actually, advertising is good. Under pressure to boost profits, Netflix started selling ads in November 2022, Disney+ followed a few weeks later, and this past January, Amazon joined in and made commercials the default setting for all Prime Video customers. And now, having fully accepted the gospel according to Madison Avenue, the streamers have decided they need to worship accordingly, once again turning upfront week into a marathon of … lavish presentations for advertisers and the press, with all the accompanying star power. 2024’s upfront week might not match the giddy excesses of the network era — I wrote about those days back in 2011 — but it will feel closer to the old “normal” than it has for years.
There are some exceptions to this new age of slightly heightened exuberance, of course. CBS, which for years served up the biggest of all upfront shows at Carnegie Hall, is once again skipping the big week, with parent company Paramount Global instead meeting privately with big sponsors. (The Eye network did throw a nice little bash in Hollywood last week, however, and even held a news conference to announce its new schedule.) And while ABC, NBC, and Fox will all get their moments in the sun when their respective corporate owners present next week, you can expect the biggest moments at the Disney, NBCUniversal, and Fox Corp. events will be reserved for streamers like Hulu, Peacock, and Tubi, as well as their respective sports units.
But overall, there should be a substantial amount of sizzle — or at least copious amounts of hot air and puffery — coming from next week’s upfront presentations. Here’s a Buffering guide to the five biggest events on the agenda.
Amazon Prime Video
While Amazon is no stranger to selling video advertising, this is the first year the company is doing a presentation during the traditional Upfront Week. And it’s no mystery why: Prime Video. To the consternation of many subscribers, Amazon earlier this year rolled out commercials across its main streaming platform, making it an ad-supported service by default. So instead of ads popping up only during the NFL or older library shows presented under the Freevee banner, now just about everything on Prime is available for sponsorship, including big new movies like Road House or the recent Prime smash Fallout. Overnight, Prime Video has become a major force in the ad-sales marketplace, and that’s reflected in the company’s upfront-week strategy.
Amazon has claimed a Tuesday-morning slot, just a few hours before Disney’s presentation, to pitch itself as a must-buy platform. Like other services, it has set up a glitzy website for clients extolling the benefits of advertising on Prime and touting the awesomeness of its audience base (like a claim that Prime Video homes are 25 percent more likely to have an annual household income of $150,000). You can also expect the company to play up its unique ability to connect viewers to Amazon’s main business — shopping — via a just-announced suite of interactive ad formats which let audiences add products to their Amazon shopping carts via their remotes.
But despite those tech twists, Amazon’s event next week is also expected to boast all the traditional hallmarks of network TV presentations during the linear age: overproduced sizzle reels, previews of new shows, drop-ins by actors from Prime series and movies (hopefully with awkwardly scripted banter), and announcements of new projects and premiere dates. And yes, there’ll also be a party for advertisers, though the notoriously frugal Amazon is only doing a one-hour midday reception rather than an all-out evening extravaganza.
Despite playing things a bit conservatively on the party front, Amazon is apparently ready to ask ad buyers to dig deep if they want to position their products on Prime. Citing agency sources, Variety’s ad-industry whiz Brian Steinberg this week reported that companies are expecting Prime to “enter its first upfront market with aggressive pricing demands,” much the way the company asked for the moon when it first started selling Thursday Night Football spots. Whether Amazon gets the digital dollars it wants, and how much ad revenue it pulls away from more established players, will be one of the biggest stories of the upfront selling season the next few months.
Netflix
As big as Netflix is overall in the streaming space, when it comes to the advertising game, the company is still very much a newbie. In fact, while the streamer has been selling ad time since late 2022, this will actually be the first year it holds an in-person event during upfront week after its 2023 got scrapped at the last minute due to worries about WGA strikers picketing and a sense the streamer didn’t have enough ad-tier customers. Netflix’s ad-supported business is still relatively tiny compared to its overall universe of customers, but it’s growing quickly: As of January, the streamer said its ad tier had 23 million monthly active users globally, up from 15 million in the fall of 2023. No doubt that number is even higher today, though the company hasn’t said exactly how many of those ad users are in the U.S.
For its first real upfront, Netflix is taking a sort of hybrid approach. On May 15, it’ll schmooze its biggest and best clients (and a few members of the media) at what it’s calling an “intimate” event featuring top Netflix execs previewing the platform’s upcoming onset slate and making the case for buying ads on the service. Those VIPs will then get the chance to tour “The Netflix Experience,” a multistage “immersive” tour featuring set pieces from various Netflix hits (Stranger Things, Squid Game) and Netflix-themed food stations. Netflix will open the “experience” to a broader section of ad buyers and partners on May 16. It’s an interesting twist to the usual upfront formula, though not unprecedented. In 2008, NBCUniversal replaced its usual Radio City Hall event with the “NBC Experience,” offering the same sort of immersion therapy Netflix is planning (though likely with one-third the budget of Netflix’s event). The company eventually switched back to a more traditional approach, so it’ll be interesting to see whether Netflix’s spin on the idea becomes a regular thing.
One big difference is that NBC’s “experience” was staged at a time of relative weakness for network TV. Netflix heads into upfront season with a strong growth story and a slew of iconic titles with new seasons in the offing. Letting ad buyers play actual Squid Games might turn out to be a good way of convincing them to buy time on the upcoming second season of the show. Netflix has also had some experience in recent years with mounting in-person activations tied to its series, convincing real people to spend real money to hang out in a virtual Bridgerton, for instance. If next week’s event is similarly ambitious, it could prove to be a nice alternative to the typical dog-and-pony show platforms put on for ad buyers.
Disney
While Disney has been selling ad time across its multiple TV platforms for years, this will be the first upfront in the streaming age when it can tout its ability to drive consumers to the breadth of its catalogue via a single service. The launch of Hulu on Disney+ means virtually everything made by the Mouse House — ABC, FX, Freeform, Hulu, Disney+, Onyx Collective — streams in one place.
While the combination of the apps has been touted as a way of reducing subscription churn and wringing more subscription revenue out of bundle customers, it’s also a massive advantage on the ad front. Having FX shows on both Hulu and Disney+, for instance, is exposing them to a much broader audience and encouraging more sampling. Disney CEO Bob Iger recently touted Shōgun as a huge driver of subscriber sign-up to Disney+/Hulu, which clearly means it’s drawing audiences on its own. But it also seems likely that the big Nielsen streaming numbers the show has racked up have been boosted at least in part by it being available on two Disney-owned platforms. Bet on Disney ad sales execs hammering home the benefits of the one-app experience repeatedly next week.
Elsewhere in the Magic Kingdom, there’s a good chance the company will be able to point to a closed or nearly closed deal for NBA rights, bolstering the messaging that will come from ESPN execs. ABC content will also be touted next week, though sadly there won’t be a ton of it, especially on the scripted side. That won’t stop the network from talking about the continued success of Abbott Elementary and the very successful relocation of 9-1-1 to ABC from Fox. I’m also guessing the king of the upfronts, Jimmy Kimmel, will be on hand to roast his employers and the rest of the TV business.
Warner Bros. Discovery
There’s a big shadow hanging over WBD’s upfront next Wednesday: The NBA. As of this writing, it’s a, er, jump ball whether or not the House of Zaslav will work out a new rights deal with the league in time for the event. Rival Comcast, owner of NBCUniversal, has made an aggressive bid for the current WBD package and would of course love nothing more than to be able to tout this deal at its own upfront next week. If that were to happen, it would immediately turn the WBD upfront into a virtual wake, since a big chunk of the company’s ad sales comes from sports. Conversely, were the company to get a deal done, it would make for a very nice announcement.
That said, Warner Bros. Discovery does have other things to talk about to advertisers. While growth of Max has stalled, the platform has some big tentpoles it can point to as big ad-sales opportunities. There’s the new Max original Penguin, which is set in the Batman-DC universe and is a fave of Max execs. And while there hasn’t been any news on it in a bit, Dune: Prophecy is rumored for a late 2024 or early 2025 release and could be teased next week as well, along with season three of And Just Like That. It’ll be interesting to see whether WBD uses the upfront to announce anything more concrete about its upcoming Harry Potter shows. In addition, WBD has some big HBO-branded projects it’ll likely mention, most notably a new season of House of the Dragon. But since Max doesn’t run ads during HBO shows, they might not be of as much interest to Madison Avenue.
NBCUniversal
If NBC revived its own NBC Experience in 2024, it would probably consist mostly of recreations of various Bravo sets (“hang out in a real Housewives mansion!”), a mini version of the castle from The Traitors, and New York– and Chicago-themed food stands to pay homage to the fact that Dick Wolf basically provides 80 percent of the scripted content on the NBC network.
As it stands, the company is actually back in Radio City Music Hall for a more traditional presentation, but expect the aforementioned franchises to take up a lot of time onstage. As noted, the company is also hoping to be able to tout an NBA deal, which, if it happens, could dramatically reshape NBC’s primetime lineup (The Wall Street Journal has reported the network could replace two nights of original programming with basketball). But even if there’s no deal, sports will be a big theme for NBCU, which will brag about the power of the NFL (and Peacock’s exclusive game) and the rising audience for soccer on Peacock. The other big push this year: SNL, which this summer will begin a yearlong celebration of its 50th-anniversary season.