The Writers Strike Is Blowing Up the Upfronts

If you had to pick one reliable highlight from the upfronts each spring, when America’s content conglomerates woo Madison Avenue with the best and brightest from their upcoming television slates, there’s a good chance it would be Jimmy Kimmel’s stand-up routine while emceeing the Disney presentation. In 2019, The New York Times declared, “J​immy Kimmel Saves Disney’s Supersize Upfront,” while last year’s Kimmel monologue made headlines for its R-rated roast of Netflix. “You know, every year I say, ‘Fuck Netflix.’ And this year it came true!” the ABC late-night star cracked, skewering the streamer for its mega-scrutinized subscriber stumble in 2022. “After those smug bastards choked the life out of us for years, it feels really good to see them stoop to selling advertising. Everybody loves Bridgerton. How much do you think they’ll love it when it’s interrupted by a tech commercial every four minutes, you zillion-dollar dicks?” 

When Disney takes over Manhattan’s North Javits Center on Tuesday for its 2023 upfront, there will be no such side-splitting hijinks. That’s because, to state the obvious, Kimmel won’t be there, a source close to ABC confirmed. (Disney, which owns ABC, didn’t have a comment.) We also confirmed that Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers won’t be yucking it up at NBCUniversal’s shindig at Radio City Music Hall. Like other top television talent, the late night hosts will be sitting out this year’s festivities thanks to the two-week-old writers strike, which has already succeeded in throwing a wrench into the television industry’s annual advertising bonanza. (Stephen Colbert, whose show has gone dark just like the others, didn’t have to cancel because CBS parent company Paramount Global had already decided to forego its long-running upfront at Carnegie Hall. And by the way, the late-night hosts are all WGA members themselves.) 

“Very few actors are gonna show up, very few writers are gonna show up,” a WGA member on the front lines said of the upfronts, which kick off Monday morning. “They’re gonna be dry, and there are gonna be pickets.”

Once a highlight on the media calendar, the upfronts had already been feeling a little tired lately; after all, what exec wants to get up on stage in front of thousands of ad buyers to tout their exciting fall broadcast lineup when they know all the action is in streaming? Now, after a few years of pandemic-related disruptions, the writers strike has the potential to deal the final blow to this cultural institution. You won’t hear them say this publicly, but privately some of the most important people in the TV business are already whispering that the upfronts aren’t as important as they used to be—and a strike-induced downsizing may only supercharge that discussion.

Los Angeles is obviously ground zero for strike activity. But there’s been lots of action on the East Coast too. We’re told that the first big New York–based demonstrations at the beginning of the strike brought out between 700 and 1,000 people. This past week, a few hundred strikers and supporters turned out for a rally at HBO, and smaller pickets shut down production of Billions and Daredevil. “We’re doing everything we can to disrupt production,” said the WGA source, adding, “The guild plans to make our presence felt at every upfront.” 

They got a head start in the first couple days of the strike during the newfronts, the upfronts’ digital-centric little cousin. Bupkis star Edie Falco was supposed to appear onstage at NBCU’s Peacock newfront, but when she learned WGA was going to be picketing the event, she gave one of its members a greenlight to tweet the news that she would be canceling her appearance. “It’s the least I can do,” Falco told him.

In addition to contending with swarms of placard-wielding screenwriters belting out chants like, “DISNEY, SHOWTIME, HBO, WITHOUT OUR SCRIPTS YOU GOT NO SHOW,” the suits have had to re-jigger their upfront strategies to varying degrees. Sources familiar with the presentations at Disney, NBCU, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox Corporation told us the plan was to lean into news, sports, and reality programming. “We’re all in the same boat,” said an executive at one of the companies. “There’s gonna be a focus on stuff that’s not scripted in terms of what you see on the stage. Everybody seems to be doing a version of that.”

And then there’s Netflix, the “villain,” in the words of The New York Times, that has “emerged as an avatar for the writers’ complaints.” For its first ever upfront presentation on Wednesday afternoon, the streamer had planned to stage an event at the storied Paris Theater, Manhattan’s only surviving single-screen cinema, which Netflix has operated since 2019. But as of Thursday, the company opted to cancel its in-person showcase in favor of a virtual one. We learned that execs at the streamer were worried about WGA’s plans to picket its first ever upfront; a source familiar with the decision cited the NYPD’s fears over pedestrian safety. “They’re feeling the pressure here,” said Nick Mandernach, a WGA member who’s helping coordinate picketing outside the historic Sunset Bronson Studios in Hollywood where Netflix has set up shop. “Wherever they go, whatever they’re doing, we’ll be there.” 

In any case, the in-person event would have been a rather understated affair by Netflix standards. The Paris Theater seats just 571 people; in contrast, the Theater at Madison Square Garden, where Warners is set to make its pitch to ad buyers, has room for several thousand. And it appears the virtual Netflix upfront will have even less wattage than what the company was originally planning: our source adds that Netflix has decided not to feature talent during the presentation. 

Plans for all of the presentations were still in flux as we were wrapping up this story on Friday. But a source familiar with Disney’s upfront said the event will continue as planned, and that it will even have talent in attendance. A second source, however, told us that talent involved in scripted projects have been pulling out of their scheduled appearances. 

One more thing: in a surprise plot twist befitting a Hollywood script, NBCU suddenly has a bigger headache on its hands than a bunch of angry picketers. On Thursday evening, just three days before the company’s presentation was set to kick off the entire upfronts shebang on Monday morning, news leaked out that NBCU’s head of advertising, Linda Yaccarino—an ad-world fixture known to dazzle the upfronts crowd with her lavish outfits—was in talks with Elon Musk to become Twitter’s CEO. (Sleuthy Twitter people immediately pounced on her apparently MAGA-adjacent bona fides.) On Friday, NBCU confirmed that Yaccarino, the very person who was supposed to lead NBCU’s Radio City showcase, would leave the company immediately, and Musk confirmed her hiring in a subsequent tweet. As Puck’s Matt Belloni put it in the latest edition of his newsletter, “A television company’s head of monetization bailing on the eve of the upfronts? Brutal.”