[Medianext.MX]

Upfronts week this week - not quite the event it once was with many pilots going straight to series now and streamers being the bigger players in town, plus the added complication of the writers strike this year.  CBS declared first last week and have already unaxed one show they had dropped in Swat to give it a 13 week final season.  Otherwise though only two new shows in the schedule.

Fox has actually downplayed presenting a schedule and preferred to focus on Fox Sports, Fox News... and Gordon Ramsay dropping F-bombs...

deadline.com 

And NBC, whose upfront was picketed by WGA strikers, had a dearth of big-name stars (barring the presence of Seth McFarlane as Ted, Real Housewives cast members, Mario Lopez, William Levy and Rafael Amaya, etc.) leading the Peacock to ask NBC News talent to serve as emcees:

deadline.com 

Over at Disney, it was an AllFront which became overfocused on ESPN, as it ramps up the production of personality-led episodic programming:

deadline.com 

And Spanish-language network Univision held a joint upfront with Mexico's Televisa (under the TelevisaUnivision JV company) at NY's Pier 36, focusing on its own ViX streaming offering and announcing Univision will air Spanish coverage of Super Bowl LVIII on an agreement with CBS:

deadline.com 

And Netflix has been the casualty of the strike, with its upfront at the Paris Theater being cancelled at last minute and switching to its virtual investor platform. Paramount had already planned to drop its Carnegie Hall upfront last year in favour of more personalised meetings.

variety.com 
deadline.com 

---

More cuts at Paramount: 25% reduction at the newly-combined Showtime/MTV Studio team; MTV News to be ended:
deadline.com 

And the cuts continue... they affect the Smithsonian Channel NY offices; the Washington hub will be less impacted. Additionally, as part of the aforementioned merger of Showtime Networks and MTV Entertainment Studios, all networks will now be overseen by the Entertainment Networks team, led by Chris McCarthy:

deadline.com