Upfront Dispatches: Reboots, Snark and Streaming Punctuate NBCUniversal Kickoff

NBCUniversal kicks off upfronts week with Pete Davidson, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and Miley Cyrus — plus a muted farewell to This Is Us.

Upfront Dispatches: Reboots, Snark and Streaming Punctuate NBCUniversal Kickoff

Pete Davidson and Edie Falco at NBCUniversal’s upfront presentation Monday.Courtesy of Eric Liebowitz/NBCUniversal

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It’s 10:37 a.m. on a Monday, and Kelly Clarkson is belting a cover of Whitney Houston’s “Queen of the Night” for an auditorium full of (mostly unmasked) executives. Money must be on the table.

The upfront presentations have indeed returned to Manhattan, three solid years after media companies last held their marathon dog-and-pony show in person for the advertising community. Kicking things off was NBCUniversal, with its traditional Radio City Music Hall show and Clarkson’s carefully selected choice of tune — simultaneously comical and apt. Sure, linear ratings may be a whisper of what they once were and the stock market is in a tailspin. But this company netted north of $7 billion in early ad commitments with its more subdued 2021 pitch, so maybe the old guard really does still have the stuff that you want and the things that you need.

Over a tiresome hour and 45 minutes, NBCUniversal enlisted a percussive barrage of talent to pass the proverbial offering bucket. Miley Cyrus, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Blake Shelton, Laverne Cox, Mariska Hargitay, Andy Cohen and Nicole Byer each made appearances — as did, in a particularly surreal moment, Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson and TV icon Edie Falco. (Surprise! She’ll be playing his mother in his new Peacock comedy Bupkis.)

“I am here so that the media will finally start paying attention to me,” said Kim Kardashian’s tabloid-fixture beau, who wore sunglasses inside and referred to the streamer as “the ‘cock” to as many snickers as groans. His attempts at courting the crowd were one-upped by Falco.

“Finally, I get to play an overwhelmed mother of two, living in a world of corruption,” the Sopranos Emmy winner deadpanned. “Only this time, it’s Staten Island.”

NBCUniversal was the first major broadcast network to truly ditch the single-channel upfront presentation, trading an NBC-only affair years ago to focus on the corporate parent’s buffet of cable channels — so, in many ways, it was primed to kick off this 2022 affair. Broadcast’s shadow over the TV economy has all but dissolved under the high noon of streaming. The week’s schedule reflects that. Events for ABC and CBS have been rebranded as “Disney” and “Paramount,” their own portfolios and digital counterparts now taking a bigger focus. Peacock may not be anywhere near the level of a Disney+, which now has 137.7 million paying subscribers, but that’s where the company wants to go.

Peacock was the butt of the most jokes on Monday morning and its through line. After an introduction from Tonight Show host Fallon, in which he mocked his broadcast channel as essentially only offering himself, Clarkson, Dick Wolf and “anything that happens in Chicago,” he moved onto the streamer. “Six of you have signed up for Peacock,” he quipped to the audience, before clarifying that there had been 60 million signups (13 million of them paid) care of a roster that includes “The Office, Miami Vice and our hottest new rerun, Yellowstone.” (The popular Paramount drama may air elsewhere but, in a laughable deal, still streams older seasons with the rival.)

Fallon only remained onstage long enough to get in a few more jabs at Will Smith — see Peacock’s “well-timed” reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air — and the short-lived CNN+ before introducing NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell. Oddly, it was Shell’s first time on the upfront stage. He kept it brief, offering one pointed remark about the portfolio: “Our streaming strategy is a correct one with AVOD.”

Shell’s succinct comments about Peacock’s advertiser-friendly status were downright sedate compared to what came from deputy Linda Yaccarino. Toward the end of the presentation, the chair of global advertising and partnerships delivered a barbed soliloquy that called out unnamed competitors by emphasizing that their streaming platform is, was and is likely to remain ad-supported.

“You can trust us,” she said, “because Comcast NBCUniversal isn’t some new Philly startup or adolescent ad-tech company or the latest messy merger.”

Poking fun at M&A may seem like low-hanging fruit, but that last line made the Radio City crowd oddly uncomfortable. The few scattered laughs were drowned out by low-blow “ooohs” and the soft clicks of pearl-clutching.

The one who most amused the crowd, outside of the fevered reception for Clarkson and a closing musical number from Cyrus, was Meyers. The Late Night host dug in a little deeper with the corporate deprecation and the absurdity of the event itself. “What a historical room to tell people you got COVID in,” he observed of the venue before digging into the apparent lack of original programming being trotted out at the programming pitch. Dramatic Fresh Prince reboot Bel-Air, which the company says has reached 8 million viewers, is Peacock’s favored child. And the coming broadcast season gets both a Night Court reboot and a Quantum Leap sequel.

“Every time NBC reboots a show, [Bill] Cosby is somewhere thinking, ‘Maybe,’” said Meyers. “I made that joke four years ago, by the way. You could say it’s lazy — or I rebooted it.”

The bulk of the event was a blur of branding. Inpidual networks were barely named, save a song-and-dance interlude devoted to Bravo convention BravoCon. Specific programming was equally brushed over. Feature Jurassic World Dominion, which won’t even stream on Peacock until four months after its June 10 theatrical release, got just as much plug time as any of the new or returning TV series.

If there was a moment of reverence for what these events used to be, it came from Susan Rovner. NBCUniversal Television and Streaming chair of entertainment content, called her network “the crown jewel of our portfolio,” before a montage of outgoing flagship This Is Us played on the big screen. The series, which once ranked as the highest-rated scripted drama on TV, airs its last episode May 24. In another time, such an occasion would have closed out the show … and not a Cyrus cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” Even a few years ago, the cast of a show like This Is Us would run out for a victory lap and be applauded like their serial drama’s contribution to culture was somehow on par with Nelson Mandela’s. But there was no in-person appearance nor any moment for prolonged reflection — perhaps because, as Meyers pointed out, endings mean very little in TV these days.

“In two years, I’ll be here announcing the This is Us Reboot,” observed the comic. “That Was Them.”