Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Monday, July 28th 2025:
I SUPPOSE IT'S BETTER THAN CALLING THEM 'MISCALCULATION 1' AND MISCALCULATION 2'
Warner Bros. Discovery announced earlier on Monday that when the company splits in half in 2026, the two parts will be named "Warner Bros" and "Discovery Global." Warner Bros will include Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, DC Studios, HBO, HBO Max and Warner Bros. Gaming Studios, as well as their film and television libraries. Discovery Global will include linear networks such as CNN and TNT Sports in the U.S., Discovery, and top free-to-air channels across Europe as well as digital products such as the Discovery+ streaming service and Bleacher Report (B/R).
Here is the press release, which lists the various breakdowns of which executive is moving to which new company.
There is a counter-narrative among a lot of industry reporters that WBD CEO David Zaslav is being unfairly picked on because while the combined company has struggled since the merger, a fair amount of the company's debt has been paid down and there have been some TV and movie hits.
I don't think it's piling on to note that by next year, we will have two companies that resemble the old Warner Brothers and Discovery Communications. But combined they still have a massive debt - much of it the result of the merger - and will collectively be worth about $10 billion less than they were before the merger. The companies have shed assets, tens of thousands of employees and the new Discovery Global will be hollowed out much more than the decline in the linear networks would justify in normal times.
But you know who has benefited from the merger? Executives such as David Zaslav, who continue to be rewarded with bonuses worth tens of millions of dollars, primarily for not making things even worse. And some favored investors like John Malone have managed to extract their own side deals at the cost of the company's employees and other investors.
I've had some interesting off-the-record conversations with WBD executives and while I don't agree with many of their moves, it was helpful to hear their point-of-view. I wish they were more willing to talk about these moves publicly.
I have serious concerns about the fate of the Discovery linear networks after the split. The original programming budget has already been cur substantially and viewers can already see the impact on the respective networks. Once vibrant networks such as The Travel Channel have become zombie channels and pretty much every former Discovery linear network aside from Food, HGTV and Discovery are empty husks. I'd like to think that this upcoming split would allow Discovery to focus on their core linear business. But I don't see any indication that is the plan. Which sucks, because I have been watching those networks since they launched.
THIS IS A BIT LIKE INTERVIEWING DONALD TRUMP AND NOT ASKING ABOUT THE EPSTEIN FILES
I honestly don't like calling up fellow journalists when I feel as if they're either ignoring the 42,000-lb elephant in the room, or have decided to swap access for the ability to ask difficult questions. But here we go.
Deadline has a piece entitled 'NCIS: Tony & Ziva’s Cote De Pablo Explains Why She Didn’t "Need" An Intimacy Coordinator For The Show: "We Don't Want To Be Micromanaged" and it's one of those pieces in which the reporter has assembled a bunch of quotes from other sites Frankenstein-style. Which is fine, but not if the primary point of the piece has been Frankensteined out of the piece.
The headline comes from an interview posted on TV Insider and Deadline amazingly links to the original piece. Which they should, given they aggregate all of the quotes from TV Insider:
In recent years, intimacy coordinators have become the norm on sets for such steamy scenes, but Cote de Pablo told us that she didn’t use one for her upcoming series with Michael Weatherly. “Did not need one. They asked me first, I think because I’m a female and blah, blah, blah, and I said, ‘I don’t need one. Thank you for offering,'” she shared.
“Michael and I have a lot of trust with each other and are great friends. So, when it comes to shooting these things, we don’t want to be micromanaged. We like to explore it, and we trust each other enough that we allow that to happen.”
As for Weatherly, he recalled, “I said, ‘Whatever Cote wants.’ Love scenes are complicated because that level of nonverbal communication — you kiss someone the way you want to be kissed or you touch someone the way you want to be touched — that is a deep level of communication. Physical interaction starts with trust. Luckily, Cote and I do not have an issue in that area. We had to do that right out of the gate in [NCIS‘s ‘Under Covers’] episode.”
The Deadline piece adds some other quotes from the show's SDCC panel. But neither TV Insider nor Deadline mention the reason why Michael Weatherly and the lack of an intimacy coordinator might be of interest - a 2016 incident on Bull involving Weatherly and then co-star Eliza Dushku which resulted in a $9.5 million settlement from CBS:
“I was told that the role would be a six-year commitment to play a smart, strong leading lady, a confident high-powered lawyer meant to counterbalance the existing male lead, and that the role had been written specifically with me in mind,” Dushku said. “However, in my first week on my new job I found myself the brunt of crude, sexualized and lewd verbal assaults. I suffered near constant sexual harassment from my co-star. This was beyond anything I had experienced in my 30-year career.”
She didn’t refer to Weatherly by name, but she added that the male co-star “frequently referred to me as ‘legs.’ He would smell me and leeringly look me up and down. Off script, in front of about 100 crew members and cast members, he once said that he would take me to his rape van and use lube and long phallic things on me and take me over his knee and spank me like a little girl. Another time he told me that his sperm were powerful swimmers.”
Dushku alleged that after speaking to the co-star about toning down his comments, he texted the head of CBS Studios and she was fired the next day. She added that she was silenced by the arbitration clause in her contract.
Weatherly later addressed the allegations in a typically vague sort-of apology in a statement released several years later. "When Eliza told me that she wasn't comfortable with my language and attempt at humor, I was mortified to have offended her and immediately apologized," he stated. "After reflecting on this further, I better understand that what I said was both not funny and not appropriate, and I am sorry and regret the pain this caused Eliza."
Hm. This sounds like the type of additional facts that should be included in a story with a headline that mentions both Michael Weatherly and the phrase "intimacy coordinator."
THE BEST AD-SUPPORTED STREAMING SERVICE YOU'VE PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF
There are scores of obscure streaming services that have some combination of a small subscriber base and/or very little original content. They are the services that exist, but it's not clear who their audience might be or whether it's possible to make money with their existing business model.
But there are a few services which deserve more attention and one of those at the top of my list is a streaming service called "The Network." The service was launched in April 2024, after actor John Leguizamo was unable to place a drama he had co-produced entitled The Green Veil. The drama featured Leguizamo in his first starring role as an FBI Agent "tasked with an unraveling secret mission that threatens to expose deeper secrets." The series takes on the history of oppression in America — and in particular, atrocities committed against the Indigenous community. Co-produced and written by Aram Rappaport and when the duo couldn't sell the show, they launched The Network as a way of getting out to the public.
The Green Veil was teamed with the U.K. acquisition Chivalry as The Network's first two releases. The ad-supported service has added two new shows per quarter, with a combination of original productions and licensed titles that are new to U.S. audiences. The Green Veil was subsequently picked up for a second season and the streamer's catalog now includes eight dramas, two documentaries and a comedy.
The impressive thing about The Network is that the level of curation is quite high for such a small streaming service. There is The Gymnasts, in which a team of elite teenage female gymnasts compete in a high-stakes international tournament in the Italian Alps - under a contestant is apparently murdered. In The Jewish Council, a man and his daughter struggle with the question of the best ways to protect their community in 1940s Amsterdam. There are the three seasons of Kingdom, in which Stephen Fry plays a small town lawyer who assists the local eccentric residents while searching for his lost brother. And there are five seasons of Raw, which is what The Bear would look like if it was rebooted as a gritty Irish drama set in a high-pressure Dublin restaurant.
There are plenty of reasons to check out The Network, which can viewed on the web or via an app on all of the major platforms.
Check out The Network at this link.
TWEET OF THE DAY
JUST ANOTHER DAY IN THE WEALTH CREATION SCAM BUSINESS
The Racket's Jay Boller recounted "My Bleak Day at the Star-Studded, Get-Rich-Quick Jesus Jamboree," which included speakers such as Tim Tebow, Duck Dynasty's Willie Robertson, mall pretzel magnate "Auntie" Anne Beiler, as well as former MTV Road Rules contestant Chris Graebe, who put a photo of his "off-the-charts smokin' hot wife" on the church's Jumbotron.
And according to Boller, the day-long event was quite the experience:
We’d then break for lunch, which was delivered to each row in large cardboard containers. They contained turkey sandwich box lunches from Jason’s Deli—a 245-location Texas chain with no footprint in Minnesota—that were actually delicious, provided you can set aside questions of how they got to Eden Prairie.
Robertson, rocking an American flag bandana and trademark flowing beard, later yukked it up with our host and threw autographed duck calls to the crowd. He told a story about Masked Singer executives who couldn’t fathom that a mallard is different from a wood duck. “Yeah, like there is between a man and a woman,” he said to thunderous approval. Robertson led the church in prayer, though he seemed more excited to set up the trailer for The Blind, a forthcoming biopic about his father, founder of the hunting company Duck Commander that would serve as the basis of their TV show.
ODDS AND SODS
* I wrote a piece remembering the one-season MTV series Dead At 21, which also included the first TV appearance by Adam Scott.
* NBC has released its fall premiere schedule, which pushes season two of The Hunting Party back to a midseason premiere.
* Fox has released its fall primetime schedule, which includes Celebrity Weakest Link.
* When a journalist has the opportunity to speak with a streaming executive, there are two approaches they can take. The first is to ask a bunch of "what's the status of this show?" questions that can be used by editors to build a number of stand-alone pieces along the lines of "What We Know About X!" The second approach is to talk about strategy and the business in general, an approach which is arguably a lot more enlightening, but a lot less clicky.
This "Deadline Q&A" takes the first approach and the results are...fine. Sure, it's a bit strange that the interview has a byline on it, but also uses phrases such as "tells Deadline" and even the questions are written as if the outlet itself was asking the question. I just find it to be a strange approach.
* HBO has renewed The Gilded Age for a fourth season.
* Hope Hicks, who served as Donald Trump’s communications director in his first term, is joining Megyn Kelly’s company Devil May Care Media as chief operating officer.
WHAT'S NEW TOMORROW
TUESDAY, JULY 29TH:
* Dusty Slay: Wet Heat (Netflix)
* Frontline: Remaking The Middle East: Israel Vs. Iran (PBS)
* Running With The Wolves Series Premiere (ESPN)
* Mud Madness Season Two Premiere (Discovery)
* Trainwreck: Storm Area 51 (Netflix)
* WWE: Unreal Series Premiere (Discovery)
WEDNESDAY, JULY 30TH:
* Conversations With A Killer: The Son Of Sam Tapes (Netflix)
* Don't Hate Your House With The Property Brothers Season Premiere (HGTV)
* Human Footprint Season Two Finale (PBS)
* Mr. And Mrs. Murder (Hulu)
* MTV's The Challenge Season Premiere (MTV)
* My Strange Arrest Season Premiere (A&E)
* My Unspeakable Sins Series Premiere (Netflix)
SEE YOU ON TUESDAY!