I’d be willing to bet a fig or two that the amount of pizza and Red Bull being consumed this week in the condos and duplexes of those responsible for executive presentations was well above normal. With a headliner event such as BLOOMBERG SCREENTIME, optimally scheduled during the first full week of the uber-critical fourth quarter, it’s all hands on deck for anyone considered important enough to be grilled to make sure they make a really good impression on the eclectic audience attracted to anything with the name Bloomberg attached to it.
I’ve prepped executives and yes, even talent for these kind of shindigs back when WFH was merely three random letters and when it was iced coffee that accompanied the Jacopo’s deliveries. You make sure every possible positive talking point has been buttoned with factoids and anecdotes designed to mollify even the hardest-nosed reporters who would never waste their time on red carpets or at premiere parties. We’d even roleplay with some of them over their objections and insist they veer from their usual inclination to speak to their passion and make doubly sure they at least sound financially responsible. And yeah, we had our own selfish motivations, too. A marginal showing in front of these Torquemadas could result in some dire outcomes from top to bottom.
It certainly seemed like those were the stakes at yesterday’s conference especially when one parses through the stories that rose to the top of the algorithms that digested them. Take how Dana Walden handled the burning question of why everyone’s new favorite late night emotional support system is still not necessarily set to take them to the next election. Even WDW WORLDWIDE NEWS (her in-house equivalent of PRAVDA)’s Arica Conrad couldn’t hide her struggles:
When asked if the late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel will return to ABC next year, Dana Walden said that she’s working on it. “It’s a very challenging daypart, late-night,” Walden said during her Thursday morning conversation at Bloomberg’s Screentime. “That’s not to say that Jimmy is not doing a phenomenal job, and his ratings are up, but they’re up relative to a smaller audience that’s watching late night on broadcast television.”
She notes that millions of people are watching Kimmel on YouTube, which may not be the most lucrative opportunity for the talk show. There’s a balance between making sense of the business while also honoring Kimmel’s closeness with Disney. “What does Jimmy want? What’s the right thing to do, and what’s the right thing for our business?”
Walden is self-aware enough to know her remarks are likely to set off another firestorm of saber-rattling on the part of desperate supporters of her friend and frequent El Cholo dining companion Mrs. Douglas Emhoff–aka the current leader in the clubhouse for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Having survived the red scare last fall that had just claimed the scalp of Stephen Colbert by pulling a few pizza and Red Bull sessions with her other friend Kimmel the sobering reality of needing to pivot to the same actual reason why CBS went the path it did is no doubt personally troubling. The fact that in the wake of all of the forensic analysis of Colbert’s numbers somehow the fact that Kimmel’s were only marginally better in size, skew and geographic efficiency sort of got lost.
She did get some backhanded support from someone who has been through those wars nearly as long as Kimmel has, which naturally FOX NEWS’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn took to like a moth to a flame:
Veteran funnyman Conan O’Brien spoke in blunt terms about what he’s observed in the late-night television landscape Wednesday, comparing its decline to Detroit. Speaking at Bloomberg Screentime 2026, O’Brien was asked by Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman whether he believed late-night TV “made sense economically,” prompting him to look back at the evolution of late-night from its origins. The former NBC host first pointed to how networks in the late 1940s would go off the air at 10:30 and just have the American flag and music playing overnight, until his ex-employer was the first to fill the empty airtime with more television.NBC, in particular, capitalized on it. You have an early show, then you have Steve Allen, then Jack [Paar], then Johnny Carson, and you’re off and running.”
He said late-night TV quickly became “a giant machine that fires out cash” and remained so when he began hosting “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” in 1993.”And then I saw over my 17 years with NBC … I started to see, oh, this is really changing”…”It’s a little like Detroit and automobiles. Like, the things just started to change, and you can get really upset about it,” he continued. “But then streamers come along. And then I’m not even mentioning the internet. For years, we were working really hard to do something innovative and creative at night. Now you’re competing with how many people in America are posting videos every day, or worldwide. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of people are making funny videos.”
O’Brien didn’t even get the chance to note his TBS show that hemorrhaged millions during the 2010s that was among numerous overreaches of the Kevin Reilly era that helped put Warner Brothers on the way to the precarious financial state that ultimately has led to it being tossed around like yesterday’s trash in recent years. Reilly believed in Conan from his NBC days and gave him an outsized check to try and challenge their former employers. They never even came close to doing so even with young adults. And those fourth-place deliveries with young adults are in the range of what Kimmel now delivers on a nightly basis to “win” among the remaining linear viewers.
You know who knows all of these numbers really well? The appropriate surnamed head of Redbird Capital who was one of the conference’s more anticipated speakers and gave THE WRAP’s Roger Cheng some juicy fodder:
While Hollywood is bracing for a bloodbath when Paramount closes its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the company’s biggest backer said those fears are overblown. “The notion that $6 billion of cost-related synergies means the firing of all these people is just completely antiquated,” Gerry Cardinale, founder of RedBird Capital Partners and a major shareholder in the combined company, said during the Bloomberg Screentime conference on Thursday…Cardinale, who first backed David Ellison at Skydance and helped push through the acquisition of Paramount, said a majority of the projected merger cost savings would come through non-labor means. He cited the unification of the tech stack that the different platforms live on, as well as selling real estate, as other ways to cut costs…You don’t spend $40 billion a year making movies and think that your entire premise of your business plan is to fire everybody in Hollywood,” he said. “It’s just the opposite.”
But when you spend that kind of cache you do expect a return on that investment–and you don’t necessarily have the kind of patience that pure creatives might otherwise aspire to have. Which leads me to believe that in the wake of Cardinale’s remarks, as is often the case in the post-mortems from conferences like this, the wheels were churning that resulted in this late night nugget which the dogged Matthew Belloni first reported on but Cheng’s colleague Alyssa Ray courteously chose to share beyond his overpriced paywall:
Warner Bros. film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy are expected to exit the studio with the close of the merger with Paramount, according to a report from Puck.
TheWrap could not immediately confirm the report. An individual close to Abdy and De Luca said neither had been informed of anything by Paramount leadership. Puck cited two sources that the studio chiefs will reportedly not be joining the newly merged company with Paramount, which has yet to release its new name.
Knowing what I know about Belloni’s tentacles, I’m grudgingly inclined to believe him–even as the creative community was doing its best to save their tuchases. As late as Monday COSMIC BOOK NEWS’ Matt McGloin was being played to serve up this sort of propaganda:
Puck News’ Kim Masters wrote this week that there is less confidence that Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy will stick around once David Ellison’s Paramount takes over Warner Bros. Per our insiders, it’s the opposite. “De Luca and Abdy are too valuable and Ellison knows their track record,” the insider tells us. “It would be disastrous if they left because Warners would have to poach someone from Universal or Sony, but even they wouldn’t be as good.”
But Ray provided some far more credible receipts–not to mention lousy timing–that kinda make me wonder if McGloin’s sources perhaps may have been named De Luca and Abdy:
Under De Luca and Abdy, Warner Bros. had a spectacular year in 2025, with two films nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” ultimately winning the top prize, and multiple box office hits, including “A Minecraft Movie.” But 2026 has been much tougher with movies like “Supergirl” and “The Bride” failing to motivate audiences. The reported decision comes ahead of an expected underwhelming domestic opening weekend for the Tom Cruise-led film, “Digger,” which is predicted to bring in $12 million to $15 million.
I was among the many was indeed hoping that their body of work might have gotten DeLuca and Abdy a mulligan. Less than three weeks ago I mused in that direction, and I didn’t have “insiders” cooing in my ear to do so. But I also know that you’re only as good as your last quarterly statement, and it’s one like that which they just turned in that would more than justify Cardinale’s claim that people are not getting fired just to save money. In this case, people who did a crummy job are.
And honestly, unless they have far less control over their spendthrift spouses than I did, I’m pretty damn sure neither will need a telethon or even your condolences. Remember who usually wins these battles. Got that, Matt McGloin?
Until next time…