If you blinked during the recent few days where celebrity deaths and near-deaths for politicians dominated the news cycle, you probably missed most of the newsworthy items that were unveiled during the Summer Television Critics Press Tour, which once again held court at the fabluous and thankfully heavily air conditioned Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. I know for a fact it WAS held, because a couple of personal friends who have made this a July habit for virtually the entirety of this century, and even a portion of the preceding one, were in attendance, and filed updates to their respective newsletters. Personally, I found nothing quite as newsworthy or earth-shattering as even what transpired at the winter event.
You might remember the musing we authored at the midway point of that tour, immediately after the latest “official” update from John Landgraf on the state of the industry and the attempt of an aggressive, agenda-laden attendee from NPR to turn the proceedings into a referendum on representation. Because, of course, that befits the definition of what a television critic should do, right?
But at least there was something newsworthy that happened in February, and one didn’t need to hydrate quite as frequently then. This time around, as THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s Mikey O’Connell lamented in a recap that dropped yesterday, there wasn’t even something controversial enough to be musing-worthy, and not even Landgraf showed up this time:
An event that once stretched more than two packed weeks wrapped its latest cycle on July 17 after a thin eight days. Powerhouse streamers such as Netflix, Apple and Amazon were absent, and not a single programming executive took the stage to face down the press. Frustrations with a staid press conference format, accelerated by Hollywood belt-tightening and the COVID-era shift away from in-person gatherings, to say nothing of severe budget cuts across the media landscape, have taken a visible toll on the press tour.
O’Connell accurately captured how those with a history at these events, moi included, notice these seismic shifts with far more detail and lament than the newbies that are now populating it:
It’s difficult to imagine it now, but the press tour, not unlike the upfronts, used to be an occasion for unfettered shmoozing. During the ’00s, when Fox was drunk on the success of American Idol and corporate events hadn’t yet been permanently kneecapped by the Great Recession, the network regularly shut down the Santa Monica Pier for a TCA afterparty where the talent outnumbered journalists. Fox is now a no-show, and those who did throw closing parties this year largely kept them to brief open bars in the hotel lobby.
I personally have fond memories of riding the ferris wheel at said Pier where the ride I was on was stopped by a panicked and clearly overly imbibed young star of a show I was involved with needing to hurl. Lucky me, I happened to be in the adjacent car and had a close-up view of the massive amount of vomit that was deposited right in front of where we’d all eventually have to disembark.
But thanks to both the current obsession with cost-cutting as well as the reality check that the spheres of influence of a majority of attendees has diminished greatly, there were no such memories being created this time around. And, apparently, not even the question-and-answer sessions themselves proved to be enlightening.
As TOO MUCH TV’s Rick Ellis, another qualified and experienced veteran observed in his own recap newsletter yesterday:
Part of the issue I suspect the TCA is dealing with is the near-extinction level loss of jobs across the industry. I don’t know what the official breakdown is, but the vast majority of the current membership appears to be comprised of either freelancers or very junior writers who are essentially just covering what they are told by their bosses to write about. I had one writer tell me this week that her boss told her not to turn in a piece on any show that hadn’t been nominated for an Emmy. And that lack of expanse in what to cover makes the job of both the journalists and the networks a lot more difficult.
And as O’Connell added:
What started as a way for local and syndicated journalists across the country to bank months’ worth of content for a then-robust media landscape, is now largely a flurry of Tweets and clickbait stories that have little lifespan after the tour wraps.
The main reason why someone like myself and my peers were even invited to these kind of events in the first place was to specifically educate those out-of-towners with information and nuggets specific to the local angles they were seeking. A Boston-based journalist, for example, would note that both Michael Chiklis and Denis Leary were prominent in our star roster, and a colleague of mine who also hailed from the area would join us in spinning the ratings overindexing their shows were achieving versus the national averages in the DMA. Pepper in a half-hour or so with a Sam Adams or two lamenting the Red Sox, and it created a rapport and connection that effectively gave FX priority attention with almost anything else we were launching, even shows with talent that had little to do with the area.
Now, of course, there’s far fewer stories, if any, that heavily shrunk print editions and fractionalized digital iterations from just about every major city outside of New York or Los Angeles will print. The no-show streamers that house the content that especially the younger attendees are most familiar with result in far fewer questions that stray from the rigid narrative that the remaining participants seek to impart, which often can be accomplished with a mere press release. Witness the tone-deaf question that O’Connell highlighted as exemplary of the degree of insightful questioning this year’s crop was imparting:
Jimmy O. Yang hadn’t been onstage for 20 minutes when the nameless reporter — they never announce their names — asked him “where he went wrong” during his journey from UC San Diego economics major to stand-up and actor. Yang was facing roughly 100 members of the Television Critics Association to plug his new series, a Hulu adaptation of Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, but the conversation was drifting off topic.
“How did we all go so wrong to be in this room right now?” he responded to the Pasadena hotel ballroom last week. “We could do better for our parents.”
Such a question was certainly not worth the time and expense that Hulu and Disney elected to spend on this, especially when, as Ellis pointed out, they’re probably already spending something in that ballpark in advertising within the walled garden that includes the purview of O’Connell and his more informed and influential colleagues:
(Penske Media) works hard to be (the) “official” primary outlet for entertainment news. They don’t just own the lion’s share of the big industry outlets, they own (or co-run) awards shows, festivals such as SXSW and ATX, and they also have a thriving live events arm. All of this has been designed to maximize the amount of money the company can extract out of the industry for things such as the lucrative FYC ad campaigns.
And with all due respect to the likes of seasoned, informed and capable folks like Ellis and the others who came away from this summer’s tour with more than a bit of regret that the value proposition was nowhere near what it used to be, most of them simply don’t have the reach and breadth of what a single social media post from a cast member that links to a trailer or supertease can accomplish.
These are indeed different times, to be sure. But at least now the only things that could make attendees vomit will be some of the new shows themselves.
Until next time…