Quinta Brunson won the Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy series for her starring role in the freshman ABC series, while her co-star Tyler James Williams won the statuette for best supporting actor in a television series during the telecast, hosted by Jerrod Carmichael. 

Jeremy Allen White won Best Actor in a TV musical/comedy for FX’s The Bear.

Carmichael in his opening monologue addressed the lack of diversity surrounding the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s membership ranks, as well as other issues which forced the HFPA-produced Globes off of television last year. 

Also: Are the Golden Globes Still Golden?

“I’ll tell you why I’m here … I’m here because I’m Black,” Carmichael quipped. He also took the HFPA to task, saying that they didn’t have a Black member, “until George Floyd died." 

Still, Carmichael said that despite the controversy, he said the industry should be recognized for its achievements. “This is an evening where we get to celebrate … I think the industry deserves evenings like this.” ■

In a note to clients Monday, Moody’s senior VP Neil Begley wrote that the quick pace of the vaccine rollout could provide “multiple paths to a recovery for the subsectors of the media and entertainment industry.”

Moody’s noted that ad revenue fell nearly 4% in 2020, dominated by the pandemic that forced most American to remain in their homes. As a result, GDP dipped almost 4% as well.  

Also Read: Selling Cable Short

While Begley warned the recovery might be inconsistent across different areas of the country, he nevertheless expected a strong rebound.

“Where confidence, employment and economic activity grows more quickly because of mass vaccinations, we expect advertisers to spend heavily to attract pent-up demand for many products and services,” Begley wrote, adding that digital advertising platforms, broadcasters and networks should benefit the most. 

Also Read: NFL Deal Gives Amazon Ad Business a Boost: Analyst

The movie business was decimated by the pandemic -- Moody’s estimated that domestic box office in 2020 was about $2 billion, compared to $12 billion in 2019. But after a shutdown in production, Begley wrote that “studio pipelines are as full as they have ever been and ready to fill the void once theaters can reopen at reasonable levels. Broadcast networks and stations may have a harder go at it," he wrote, because of a longer production hiatus. 

“Production did resume in a limited fashion by the fourth quarter, but the content pipeline is not likely to be filled to normal capacity until production returns to a more normal level,” he wrote. “So the speed of vaccinations is imperative for the industry.”

Led by its drama series The Crown -- which swept the Golden Globe awards in the TV drama category -- the streaming service garnered wins in six of the 11 television awards during the mostly virtual and often glitchy live event on NBC hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Pop TV was the only other cable, broadcast or streaming service to garner multiple awards with two for its comedy series Schitt’s Creek. 

Overall, streaming services won eight of the 11 awards in the television category, with Apple TV Plus and Amazon Prime each taking home a Golden Globes statuette. Netflix won 10 trophies overall.

Streaming companies were well represented in film categories, too--Amazon's Borat Subsequent Moviefilm took best motion picture comedy or musical prize, while the movie's star, Sacha Baron Cohen, won the comedy/musical actor trophy.

Also Read: HFPA Addresses Diversity Controversy During Golden Globes Ceremony

Along with winning best TV drama series, The Crown won for best television actor in a drama series (Josh O’Connor) and best television actress in a drama series (Emma Corrin). Series star Gillian Anderson also won for best television supporting actress. 

Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit won two Golden Globes, including best television limited series. 

Schitt’s Creek in its final year of eligibility won a Globes statuette for best comedy series, while series star Catherine O’Hara won for best television actress in a musical/comedy series. 

The streaming service also won hardware on the movie front. Netflix's Trial of the Chicago 7 won best movie screenplay, while the late Chadwick Boseman won for best actor in a motion picture for his role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Also, Rosamund Pike won the best actress in a motion picture comedy award for her role in Netflix's I Care A Lot.

Netflix's Mank, which led all motion pictures with six nominations, was shut out of the winner’s circle. 

Outside of Netflix, Hulu's The United States vs Billie Holiday won best actress in a motion picture for Andra Day’s lead role as the R&B singer, while Daniel Kaluuya, star of Judas and The Black Messiah -- which debuted on HBO Max -- won the Golden Globes award for best supporting actor in a motion picture. 

Also Read: Golden Globes 2021: 'Schitt's Creek' Gets Globe For Comedy, 'The Crown' Gets Top Drama

The Golden Globes winners in the television category are as follows: 

Best Drama Series 

The Crown -- Netflix

Best Television Actor -- Drama series 

Josh O’Connor, “The Crown” -- Netflix

Best Television Actress -- Drama Series 

Emma Corrin, “The Crown” -- Netflix

Best Musical/Comedy Series 

Schitt’s Creek -- Pop TV

Best Television Actor -- Musical/Comedy Series 

Jason Sudeikis, “Ted Lasso” -- Apple TV+

Best Television Actress -- Musical/Comedy Series 

Catherine O’Hara, “Schitt’s Creek” -- Pop TV

Best Television Motion Picture

The Queen’s Gambit -- Netflix

Best Actor -- Television Motion Picture 

Mark Ruffalo, “I Know This Much Is True” -- HBO

Best Actress -- Television Motion Picture 

Anya Taylor-Joy, “The Queen’s Gambit” -- Netflix

Best Supporting Actor -- Television 

John Boyega, “Small Axe” -- Amazon Prime

Best Supporting Actress -- Television 

Gillian Anderson, “The Crown” -- Netflix

And while the TV industry has been changing, those shifts have largely been incremental, which is notable in that the actual technology to enable serious changes has existed for many years now.

The culprit? Inertia. Everyone was still making money hand over fist, and if there's anything that makes people resistant to change, it’s a flush bottom line.

That all changed back in March when the pandemic hit, followed closely by nationwide social justice protests.

Not that these events particularly devastated most industry players’ bottom lines—ad budgets got cut, but not to the level of “devastating” (at least not yet)—but something about the pandemic and the protests and the way they changed the way we see the world seems to have also shocked the broader media industry into realizing that maybe it was time to stop putting off all those changes.

Time is short, stability is fleeting, and all that.

This is not unusual. Periods of great upheaval traditionally result in periods of innovation, as clinging to the old ways no longer makes sense in the new world.

For the television industry, this shift will be helped along by the fact that many of the key pieces were put in place prior to and in the early days of the pandemic.

The launch of four new Flixes (giant multibillion dollar services) from Apple, Disney, Comcast and Warner (with a fifth, from ViacomCBS on the way) has more than doubled the number of streaming options available to consumers. This, in combination with over 40 million Americans unemployed, should also result in a larger-than-expected increase in the amount of cord-cutting as many viewers realize that the bulk of their paid TV viewing has shifted to the Flixes and the money they’re spending on a cable TV subscription would be be best spent elsewhere. Take food, for instance.

There are also the FASTs, the free ad-supported streaming TV services, whose rapid growth can be attributed to their large content libraries, much lower ad loads and, above all, the fact that they’re free for anyone with an internet connection. 

Combine the Flixes and the FASTs and suddenly you have a TV ecosystem that is completely digital, still includes all of the major players and series from the good old days, and seems to be doing a good job of meeting consumer needs.

It’s also doing a good job of meeting advertiser needs, which is critical, given their critical role in making the TV industry profitable.

Advertisers like smaller ad loads (it allows their spots to have more impact) and the increased ability to run addressable TV advertising, both on OTT and on linear is also gaining traction due to the pandemic. As various parts of the country are opening up and shutting down at different times, advertisers are realizing the need for flexibility and the ability to target their messages to specific households in specific regions.

For advertisers, this scenario, often referred to as “The Hammer and the Dance”  means the ability to be able to target local audiences is more relevant than ever before, which is why both local broadcasters and MVPDs are making increased use of OTT to help reach local viewers who are not easily found on linear. By combining both linear and OTT, advertisers are able to reach those local audiences, while maintaining the ability to adapt their messages at the last minute, depending on the situation on the ground.

What’s Next?

The biggest question is whether the industry continues to double down on innovation or whether it reverts to the dysfunction of the past. We are certainly seeing the latter play out with the HBO vs Roku and Amazon beef, which feels like an updated version of the carriage fee battles that certain satellite providers were well known for. 

This is unfortunate because doubling down on innovation would actually be a boon for everyone in the industry, consumers, programmers, distributors and advertisers. 

Take something like the oft-proposed personalized linear channels on the FASTs and even the Flixes, something akin to Spotify’s Daily Mixes, where an algorithm looks at your prior viewing history and creates a linear stream especially for you. That would be a huge PR win for distributors and programmers as the feature would get them a lot of positive buzz, and it would be a big win for advertisers too, as they’d know exactly who they were targeting and could potentially even personalize the ads,

The technology for these sorts of algorithms certainly exists and it wouldn’t be too hard to implement. It would even help the FASTs get viewers to sign up for an account, at which point their targeting could become even more precise.

Another area where innovation is needed is in managing TV subscriptions. While Roku, Apple and Amazon have made great strides, their approach is not necessarily appreciated by larger platforms (hence the current beef-fest with AT&T) but there’s still a need for a service that helps viewers manage their existing subscriptions, find new services and find shows they want to watch without having to resort to Google.

While there are no guarantees that the current global crises will lead to increased innovation when we get to the other side, history seems to indicate that is indeed what will happen. As people and organizations are knocked out of the old, comfortable ways of doing things, newer, better and more efficient methods suddenly seem a lot less scary. 

Viewers 18-34 years of age get 53% of their news consumption from the internet compared to 21% for traditional television, according to Horowitz’s State of Viewing & Streaming 2020 study.

Young people question whether broadcast networks and cable news services like Fox News, CNN and MSNBC are providing a complete picture of the stories that they cover, according to the survey. Only 33% of 18- to 34-year-olds surveyed believe that television is the best way to get in-depth news reporting and analysis, said Horowitz. In comparison, 56% of adults 25-54 and 64% of adults 35+ offer a more favorable view of traditional television news.

“Can the major broadcast and cable outlets rise to the challenge of providing truth and perspective and less sensationalism?,” said Howard Horowitz, president of Horowitz Research. “Just like social media has provided new ways of exposing discrimination and misconduct, so too has it given young people a new way to view and understand the world around them, providing validation of what is really happening and holding major news outlets more accountable.”

Horowitz also reported that 58% of TV content viewers believe that the media plays a very big role in reinforcing stereotypes, and 68% say that they feel it is important that the media represent diverse people and communities in the U.S. in ways that challenge and break stereotypes.

“Poignantly, we are hearing from staff, family members, and social media that young people feel that their parents and older family members, who rely heavily on TV news, are not getting a well-rounded picture of the protests and why they are happening,” said Horowitz senior VP of insights and strategy Adriana Waterston. “Showing looting and sensationalizing violence creates more fear and obscures the issues of police brutality and persistent systemic racism that these young people are seeing, experiencing, and feeling.”

Related: Streaming Services Lead Broadcast Networks and Cable in Program Diversity

The report comes as the entertainment industry continues to use social media and traditional television platforms to reach out to African-Americans in light of the death of Floyd, who was killed while in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.

Streaming service UMC on Tuesday posted on Instagram its support of the African-American community. “There are no words to describe the pain that we feel. As Black people, it is an unspoken language that only we as a community truly understand. We are beyond tired. We have had MORE than enough,” stated the AMC-owned service.

BET on Tuesday announced that it would be developing a series of specials addressing the issues facing Black America, including Justice Now: A BET Town Hall later this month as well as a June 19 BET News Presidential Forum in which the network has invited both President Donald Trump and Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden to discuss issues and concerns of the African-American community, according to network officials. 

“We stand in steadfast solidarity with George Floyd’s family, the many victims of racist brutality, and those who are using their voices and platforms to challenge it. There are no easy solutions for these systemic issues of racism, injustice, and trauma. BET is leveraging every platform and resource at our disposal to support and inform our community and help identify strategies and viable solutions in this time of crisis,” said BET President Scott Mills in a statement. "We are committed to using our unique ability to mobilize our powerful, cross-sector coalition of partners to help drive critical outcomes and amplify leading voices in the Black community.”

Cable operators, who have spent the past several years focusing on the nuts and bolts of customer care -- narrowing appointment windows, improving on-time service and increasing network capacity and reliability -- are now taking a more macro approach, concentrating on bettering the overall customer experience and ensuring that the customer journey is an enjoyable one.

Join B&C /Multichannel News Senior Editor Michael Farrell, along with two of the cable industry's top customer care professionals, and learn tips about the following:

•  Customer experience and customer journey mapping
• How terms like "trust," "effort," "reliability," "likability" and "forgiveness" are becoming essential pieces in the overall approach to customer service
• What role customer service and improving customer experience has in rebranding efforts

Have a scheduling Conflict? We have you covered! Register for the live event and we’ll send you the on-demand recording shortly after the broadcast date.

Speakers

Dr. Patti has deep international experience through consulting and academic appointments throughout Europe, Australia, and Southeast Asia, with extensive experience in building, delivering, and evaluating curriculum in a wide range of settings, including doctoral seminars, MBA and other specialized postgraduate courses, undergraduate programs, and professional and corporate learning. He has special expertise in case method learning and has coordinated several case learning workshops, including a Harvard Business School case workshop. Dr. Patti holds a A.B. (history and literature), an M.S. (advertising) and a Ph.D., all from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.

Courtney has been an integral member of the Atlantic Broadband Customer Care organization for the past 12 years. In her role, Courtney and her team work to ensure the company is delivering an outstanding customer care experience. She oversees residential and business call center operations including phone, chat and dispatch across all four operating regions. Courtney holds a BA from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently pursuing an MBA from St. Francis University. She is also a member of the Young Professionals of the Alleghenies.

Click here to watch! 

Verizon says it received just under 140,000 "demands" for U.S. customer information from U.S. law enforcement officials in the second half of 2015, on par with previous half-year totals. Of those, it said it rejected almost 5% for various reasons.

Separately, the company received something under 500 national security demands from the FBI--it is only allowed to report a general range (0-499 in this case). It also received some number of demands from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, but can't report those ranges for six months.

"While we have a legal obligation to provide customer information to law enforcement in response to lawful demands, we take seriously our duty to provide such information only when authorized by law," Verizon said in releasing its latest report, the third year since telecoms were allowed to reveal aggregate totals of requests in various categories.

The company said there are numerous reasons for denying the requests, from believing them legally invalid, from getting requests for info actually held by another provider, to requests for info it does not have (not longer retained, for example).

The total was 139,568 demands, which broke down into 65,633 subpoenas, 33, 813 court orders, 14,248 warrants and 25,844 emergency requests

The issue of government data collection has been a hot-button subject in Washington in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks and most recently as Congress has worked on cybersecurity legislation and the U.S. works on coming up with a new safe harbor regime for European data stored in this country.

Given that the U.S. makes demands on a host of companies here and abroad, Verizon points out that their numbers provide an incomplete picture and called on the U.S. government to itself make public the total number of demands from telecom, Internet and other companies."

We therefore, again, call on all governments to make public the number of demands they make for customer information "from telecom, Internet and other companies.

The transparency report figures include wireline services--phone, Internet or television--and Wireless service. It does not include, which Verizon bought June 2015.

Slightly more than one-third of consumers polled said that live Tv is the most common default for TV viewing, which is down from 50% in 2013, according to the survey.  Live Tv is also the main choice for 40% of consumers looking to surf content when they don’t have a specific show in mind, while half of all consumers choose live TV if they want a TV show on in the background while they’re doing other things, according to Hub.

Not surprisingly, Netflix is a more popular choice among younger viewers.  About 33% of millennials default to live TV compared to 31% for Netflix, according to the survey, For viewers 16-24 years of age, Netflix emerges as the group’s first TV viewing choice ( 40%), compared to just 26% who default to live TV.

Further, 26% of all viewers looking for a specific show or want to focus on watching TV without interruptions or distractions choose Netflix, while less than 21% choose Live TV.

“It’s important to note that along with an overall decline as consumers’ go-to viewing source, Live TV is losing ground in what one might argue are the more valuable viewing occasions,” said Hub principal Peter Fondulas. “The shows where people are most engaged versus the occasions when they’re just looking for something to have on in the background.”

One more reason for traditional Tv providers to worry about Netflix and other emerging digital content distribution services.  

Ted Sarandos talks about the value of original programming at TCA 2015 in a new "One Question For ..." video.

Rodriguez, who produced and directed the successful Spy Kids and Sin City movie franchises, is the founder and CEO of El Rey Network, a Hispanic-themed general-entertainment network. Launched in December 2013, the network — one of the new minority-owned networks selected for broad distribution by Comcast as part of the Federal Communications Commission’s conditions for the MSO’s acquisition of NBCUniversal — has already put its stamp on the Hispanic television marketplace. El Rey has two original series — From Dusk Till Dawn, based on Rodriguez’s film of the same name, and Matador, featuring Hispanics in lead acting roles and in the producer’s seat.

While the cable industry has numerous Spanish-language networks targeted to Hispanic audiences, Rodriguez’s English-language El Rey, currently in 40 million homes, hopes a mix of original series and acquired movies, documentaries and specials will reach Hispanic viewers, who watched an average of 117 hours of traditional television during the second quarter, second only to African-Americans, according to Nielsen.

Rodriguez recently spoke with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about the plight of Hispanics on television, as well as his El Rey Network and the television industry’s overall diversity efforts. An edited transcript follows.

MCN: Why did you decide to launch El Rey?

Robert Rodriguez: I have a film career that’s very healthy, but the idea of creating a network where we would be able to give diverse voices to people that have been underserved or don’t have a voice was great. And it’s not just my voice on the channel; it’s for anybody who feels they can’t get into the system and they have a story to tell and nobody else is listening. That’s what El Rey is — it’s the people’s network. Instead of having this pyramid where it’s me on top and everybody else is on the bottom, you flip it around and other people become involved. That was the whole strategy and why it’s been so exciting. You have a pipeline now to millions of homes, and people are hearing more and more about it. I recently went into a bar that had El Rey on, and it looked cool, like it was new and different, so it just builds and builds. It’s our best-kept secret.

MCN: Much has been written about the lack of roles in front of and behind the camera for Hispanic actors and directors. How much of a role do you see El Rey playing in changing those numbers for the better?

RR: That’s mainly the reason I did it. Look at the statistics: Hispanics are represented in 5% of primetime shows versus what we do at El Rey, which is 50% to 60%. Another 2% of Hispanics are directors and producers. For our series Dusk Till Dawn, 60% of the directors were Hispanic. So we are really giving people a chance to learn and practice their craft, create their own stories and change the landscape.

The network itself is more reflective of the face of the country than the television networks … It’s not equal right now. Until you start to create your own networks, good luck in seeing yourself on TV. We have to change things.

MCN: How important has Comcast been in the development of El Rey?

RR: They were crucial in showing the industry that we were legit, and it gave us a foothold to build up the network. That’s how we were able to get to where we are today.

MCN: What’s the balance that you want to have regarding original content and acquired movies and series?

RR: As we build our original content up, we’re going to get better in terms of quality. As of right now if you look at our network as opposed to other startups … how many of them have the quality and quantity of original shows that we do? It’s pretty unheard of and dramatic to see how quickly we’re ramping up our original productions. As far as licensed content, we found a way to get inexpensive genre films and to repackage them in a way that makes it exciting for our audience and be on brand. So it’s not filler, it’s actually good programming.

MCN: You’ve mentioned in the past that you want El Rey to reach a broad audience even though it features Hispanic-themed content. So is El Rey a Hispanic-targeted network or a general-entertainment network?

RR: If you target to just Hispanics, then they won’t watch. They don’t want to feel like they have this one little channel in the corner; you want to feel like the whole culture — you want people to be excited about your show. You want everybody to be interested and watch Dusk Till Dawn — [the audience] doesn’t think of it as Hispanic. Take Spy Kids — most people didn’t look at it as a Hispanic family movie, but rather a family movie. Sin City is a broadly targeted movie. You want to do stuff that’s exciting to everyone, but for those who are Hispanic, the lead [for Matador] is a Hispanic actor instead of being a British or other actor. It’s cool because the action and spy stuff is great and the storytelling is great. Nobody wants to go to a movie and get beaten over the head [regarding diversity]. You just want to go to the movies and enjoy yourself.

MCN: In a year from now, what will El Rey look like?

RR: We’re going to stay on brand with shows like Matador, which opens up the network to a broader audience. We want to broaden out as much as possible but still keep our identity. We’re hoping word of mouth on these shows will help us build more awareness and eyeballs. We’ve overachieved for where we’re supposed to be right now, and the goal is to keep overachieving.

MCN: Where do you see the cable industry in terms of its diversity efforts?

RR: It’s not that significant at all. When I looked at the [Hispanic] numbers, I was shocked. At the rate they’re going, it would take 100 years for us to reach where there’s equality between the Hispanic population and representation in television. We have to jack that up, and that’s why El Rey over-delivers because it has to begin to make a change. We have to catch up, so we’ll be the dominant force in that arena for sure. I mean there aren’t many Hispanic CEOs — that’s why I am chairman and CEO. And it’s not about just hiring someone and checking a box; we over-deliver because it means something. This is important for the country … You can’t have a population that’s one in six and moving to one in three and not see themselves in the media … It’s bad and detrimental to a person’s view of self. If all you see in the media is stereotypical characters or you only see yourself in the news as a problem that needs to be solved, that does something to people, and we can’t have that.