The return of several long-running series help usher in the month of May on television this week. 

Hulu on April 28 will bring back its Emmy-winning series Handmaid’s Tale for its fourth season. Star Elisabeth Moss returns to the series, which has already been renewed for a fifth season. 

Returning for its third and final season is Fx’s drama series Pose. The series about New York City’s drag ball culture scene debuts May 2. Also debuting that day is the third season of Starz’s provocative anthology series The Girlfriend Experience.

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting the week of April 26 to May 2 on cable networks and streaming services (for some videos, viewer discretion is advised):

 April 26 -- Exposure (reality) -- Hulu

April 26 -- In Search of Darkness: Part 2 (documentary) -- Shudder

April 29 -- The Big Show with Bethenny (reality) -- HBO Max

April 29 -- Things Heard and Seen (movie) -- Netflix

April 30 -- The Mosquito Coast (drama) -- Apple TV Plus

April 30 -- The Mitchells vs The Machines (animation) -- Netflix

April 30 -- Without Remorse (action) -- Prime Video

Read more TCA ’16 summer tour coverage

Beverly Hills, Calif. -- Starz has greenlit a second season of its limited drama series The Girlfriend Experience, the network announced Monday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour.

The series, produced by Steven Soderbergh, will feature new characters and plotlines for its 14-episode second season. The first season starred Riley Keough (Magic Mike, Mad Max: Fury Road) as a law student juggling her studies and her secret life as a paid escort.

Starz launched all 13 episodes of The Girlfriend Experience at the same time in April on its Starz digital service. Per Starz, about 40% of the average audience of 3 million viewers per episode of Girlfriend has come from non-linear viewing. Only Power and Spartacus among Starz original series have drawn more non-linear viewing than The Girlfriend Experience. 

“The first season of The Girlfriend Experience allowed us to accommodate all viewing appetites with the traditional weekly episodic premiere schedule as well as a bingeing option for the entire 13 episodes,” Carmi Zlotnik, managing director at Starz, said. “We’re excited to offer Starz subscribers a second season that will explore new GFEs, clients and relationships as we take viewers back into this world that questions the price of intimacy and its emotional consequences.”  

Starz this month introduced a new mobile app, simply called Starz, that lets viewers subscribe to the premium channel -- and watch movies and series such as Outlander, Power and The Girlfriend Experience -- for $8.99 monthly "over the top," or without having to first subscribe to a pay-TV service.

The new app also replaced Starz Play and Encore Play apps used as "TV-everywhere" extensions, enabling existing subscribers to watch those services on a mobile or TV-connected device. 

Other premium programmers, including Showtime and HBO, also have OTT apps -- and have separate apps for TV-everywhere views. HBO Go, for example, is a TV-everywhere app; HBO Now is a standalone OTT app. Showtime Anytime is a TV-everywhere app; the OTT app is called Showtime.

Starz thought it would be consumer friendly to launch one comprehensive app that enabled both kinds of mobile viewing -- authenticated and OTT. "This will be one app within the app store, and if you have Starz you just hit 'Have Starz' and it goes to where you authenticate your TV product," Jeffrey Hirsch, the Starz president of global marketing and product planning, told Multichannel News before the April 5 app launch. "If you don't, then you'll go through a buy flow to buy it at $8.99."

Comcast disagrees with Starz's one-app-fits-all approach. The biggest U.S. cable operator and a key Starz affiliate has opted not to participate in the TV-everywhere aspect of Starz's new app.

For now, at least, Comcast is declining to enable the authentication (or verification) of Starz subscribers on Comcast Xfinity who want to use the new app. Representatives of Comcast and Starz both say they are "great partners" and hope something can be worked out to resolve the situation, though it is unclear what might cause Comcast to change its view on the matter.

Apple's latest update of the new Starz app, released yesterday (April 19), states that Comcast Xfinity views on the app are not authenticated. Comcast Xfinity does not appear on the drop-down menus on the app or on Starz.com that list pay-TV affiliates that will authenticate their customers. A Starz spokesman said Comcast Xfinity is the only major distributor not authenticating subscribers to watch Starz and Starz Encore content on the app.

Comcast points out that Comcast Xfinity customers with Starz and Starz Encore subscriptions have other TV-everywhere options, via the Xfinity.com website and the Xfinity TV mobile apps. That's what customer service representatives are telling customers that call to ask about it, Comcast said.  

Comcast Xfinity customers also can continue to use the older Starz Play app on devices including Roku and Xbox 360, platforms for which Starz hasn't introduced versions of the new Starz app yet.

Starz made an effort to position its launch of a standalone app as being done in a distributor-friendly way. CEO Chris Albrecht told Multichannel News in an interview prior to the app launch that Starz would not promote the standalone service on its channels running on distributor platforms, instead focusing more on social media to market the new $8.99 standalone service. Hirsch said Starz would like to work with distributors to pitch the new OTT service to broadband-only customers "to drive more upside." Albrecht also said Starz would be sure to inform affiliates in detail about how the new OTT service would work, because affiliates had told him that premium channels in the past had blindsided them with some of their moves.

A Starz representative said Comcast was fully informed about details of the new app before it launched.

The Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing has been attempting to establish industry standards for programmers and distributors regarding TV everywhere, which has developed slowly but is vital to serving customers these days. Asked about this situation, a spokesperson said: "Developments such as the introduction of the Starz aggregated TVE/OTT app are a regular occurrence in today’s dynamic environment and may introduce new points of potential confusion for the consumer. We’ve been working closely with our members and will be looking at this to learn best practices for this type of app."

Starz drew record audiences for Saturday night's return of original series Outlander, the network said Tuesday.

The second season premiere on April 9 averaged 1.46 million viewers (Live+same day), besting the previous series premiere record of 1.43 million generated by the second season debut of Power, said network officials.

READ MORE: CEO Chris Albrecht has Starz reaching for more (subs. required). 

Saturday’s premiere also more than doubled the 721,000 viewers Outlander’s series premiere episode averaged in August 2014.

With multiple weekend re-airings included (Live +SD) as well as early on-demand/online viewing,  the episode averaged 2.68 million viewers, said network officials. 

Freshman scripted drama series The Girlfriend Experience also debuted well for Starz, averaging 363,000 viewers in its Sunday night premiere, but generating nearly 1.5 million viewers with same-day repeats are factored in, said network officials. Prior to the premiere Starz launched all eight episodes of the series on demand for binge-viewing.

Starz CEO Chris Albrecht’s recent schedule in New York City reflects a busy time for his premium network. There were premieres for the new Steven Soderbergh-produced series The Girlfriend Experience and for returning romance hit Outlander and, related to the Scottish kilt drama, the Tartan Day Parade to attend. (Outlander star Sam Heughan was grand marshal .) That’s not counting the phone calls he planned to make to key distributors, letting them know Starz was about to announce a new direct-to-consumer (but not cannibalistic) online service on April 5.

“It has been said to me by the people that run these companies that of the many things that have been done by our fellow premium services, one of the things that pissed off people the most was that they didn’t get a heads up. And we’re not that kind of partner,” Albrecht told Multichannel News editors during a March 30 visit to the magazine’s offices. With him were communications executive vice president Theano Apostolou and global marketing and product planning president Jeffrey Hirsch, the former Time Warner Cable executive who’s also been busy communicating with affiliates about Encore channels rebranding into Starz Encore.

When Albrecht, a former HBO chief, joined Starz in January 2010, it was a movie service experimenting with some original shows, like Party Down. Now it’s tracking to a goal of 85 to 90 new original series episodes per year. Owned by John Malone’s Liberty Media when Albrecht joined, Starz was spun off in 2013 and has been a takeover rumor on a continuous basis. It also has started to produce real hits with passionate viewer bases, including Outlander, pirate drama Black Sails and the top-rated, New York City-based Power, from executive producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.

Albrecht and company spoke with MCN and B&C editorial director Mark Robichaux, editor Kent Gibbons, programming editor R. Thomas Umstead and senior finance editor Mike Farrell about the state of Starz and the pay TV business. Edited highlights follow.

MCN:Let’s get this out of the way: What can you tell us now about a sales process? Is anything imminent?

Chris Albrecht: I can tell you very directly there’s never been a formal sales process. If there had been a formal sales process, we wouldn’t be here talking about this stuff because someone else would own Starz. You don’t put together a formal sales process and then end up not selling the company to somebody. There have always been lots of strategic discussions.

The interesting thing, if you look at the media business — with all this talk of consolidation and everything and all the sense that putting parts of these companies together, whether it be people looking at what’s going to happen with Sumner [Redstone at Viacom] or the changing of the guard at Fox or now that [Time Warner Inc. CEO Jeff Bewkes] has reduced Time Warner to a digestible piece. So many questions for so many companies, including the free radicals that Malone talks about.

What you realize is that the media business is not a business run by people who are dealmakers. They may be show-makers, they may be schedule-makers, they are terrific executives, but they’re not deal guys. Bewkes has done a great job spinning off stuff , Sumner has split up stuff , Rupert [Murdoch of Fox] does some giant things, [Disney CEO Bob] Iger’s got his four, five, six billion dollar price range that he’s done a wonderful job at. But this is not a business where M&A is …

MCN:Driving everything.

CA: If you’re a Liberty [Media] company, which I had the opportunity and the good fortune to be a part of, you’re working with guys who live for this, right? These are deal guys. All the value they’ve created, everything that’s happened in John’s career has been deals. It’s not like John decided he wanted to be a cable operator. John Malone is, you know, a visionary in this space. So of course there are always conversations going on. And unfortunately everyone has big mouths. People see you walking out of a meeting, and they assume that there is a transaction that’s imminent and then, sort of irresponsibly — no offense to the press, you guys not being one of those transgressors — put out information that is completely unfounded, denied, and then it just becomes almost laughable, if it wasn’t for the fact that it affected so many people’s lives in such a kind of stressful way, the employees of Starz and stuff like that.

But it’s my job, it’s our job, to continue to find ways to build the business. And I firmly believe, John Malone firmly believes, [Liberty CEO] Greg Maffei firmly believes, I think the board of Starz firmly believes that aligning ourselves in some way with other people who can create better opportunities in a combined structure just makes sense. We could be the people that are the leaders. We don’t have to be bought in order to have that happen, and we haven’t been sitting back, waiting for someone to come put us out of our misery. What we have been doing is taking care of our knitting.

MCN:It sounds as if you don’t feel the need to merge or do a deal with anyone right away.

CA: I don’t. I do believe that eventually we will see those kinds of deals being made in the space that Starz lives in. I do believe that Starz is a logical, valuable and potentially powerful addition in a partnership or in a combination structure. We’re unique in our business model. And we’re just getting started on what I think is the new era for Starz. And it’s a direction that people are trying to go in. We’re a small company, relatively speaking. But we still make a lot of money at really high margins. And inside most companies, that ain’t chopped liver. We’re large enough to make a difference, we’re small enough to be nimble on our own and we’re small enough to fi t into a lot of different kinds of structures.

Look, do I think something is going to happen eventually? I think a lot is going to happen eventually. Do I think Starz is going to be a part of that? I think it would be foolish for us to not try and sail in those waters if there is value to be created because our job is to increase value for the shareholders.

From my point of view, Starz is an undervalued asset right now because the opportunity far outweighs the risk. We’re stabilized. We’ve got our product in order. We’ve got a new technology that we think is going to offer us a great opportunity. Now let’s go grow the top line. Now let’s go show people that Starz is an active company with a long and healthy future. And if people want to come in and out of the stock, great. If people are coming in for M&A, maybe there will be a deal tomorrow, maybe there will be a deal three or four years from now. In that period of time, however, we believe in the value of our stock, in the value and strength of our company.

MCN:Isn’t there a fairly high amount of risk now, though, to be a premium channel that’s either number two, number three, in that category in a world where people are paying $9 for Netflix or they’re adding on Amazon Prime, where they have so many different options?

CA: There is always more competition, and I think some of the decisions we’ve made show that we can play in that space. We also have the opportunity of still having a pretty good business with guys that aren’t going away any time soon.

We know we’re not going to be Netflix but we can be somewhere in between a true premium channel and an SVOD service. And if we can grow our business effectively, then we are just a good stock to have in your portfolio. If we can put on really compelling programming that fits in some of the cracks that we see and appeal to audiences that respond to our brands and give them not just the products but the features that they can access that stuff , then I think … Look, any business that continues to grow is a good business.

MCN:Stepping back, then, where is Starz at this moment in its evolution, based on your strategic vision?

CA: This is an important time for Starz. For the last six years or so, we’ve been kind of cleaning up some business decisions that had been made by Starz to go into the movie business; to make a Netflix deal; as a part of Liberty to have tracker stocks, two tracker stocks, one tracker stock; to be reattributed to Liberty; to be spun out by Liberty; the decision to go into original programming; the decision and the announcement for Liberty to spin away from Starz. You know, along with just doing your job of selling subscriptions and working with [multichannel video program distributors] and growing an original programming lineup, that’s been more than a full-time job.

We’ve been looking at an evolving landscape in the media business, and I think all of those things, for us, have pointed to a lot of opportunity for the subscription television business, premium channels, of which we consider there to be basically three — us, Showtime and HBO. The SVOD services aside — Netflix is a true SVOD service; Hulu, kind of a hybrid; and Amazon, a great retailer that has decided to give video away for free until recently they made a deal with us and Showtime and a few others.

In looking at that evolving landscape, we thought that it was important that we preserve the very important historical relationships with the largest video suppliers in the world, which are the MVPDs, and yet take advantage of what seems to be now an inexorable pull towards alternative choices, be it alternative choices in the packaging offered by the traditional distributors or be it alternative choices offered by new entrants who are looking to create an architecture of virtual MVPDs or wholesalers.

And then to look at this opportunity to say, OK, the biggest obstacle to the expansion of premium subscribers over the decades that there have been premium channels has been two things. One is content objectors, who don’t want uncut, uncensored movies in their homes. The other is just price. As basic-tier channels and sports rights and everything just pushed the price of entry up, with the premium being the cherry on top, that became more out of reach of even more people.

And yet, when you look at the content that people want to see and the features that they want to use and the way they want to watch it — commercial free, at their leisure — you think, OK, well the premiums, we’ve got [multiplex channels], we’ve got choices, we’re ad-free, we’ve got the kind of originals they want, we’ve got the technology features, on-demand, authenticated apps. We’re what they want — they just can’t get to us.

And how do we get it to them and how do we not have it cannibalize our current business? How are we more distributor-friendly while we’re trying to do this, and how can we maybe even have the two of them work together and show ourselves as a more forward-thinking, more technologically-based company?

MCN:Is it harder to get the distributor’s attention, to get them to prioritize marketing your service?

Jeffrey Hirsch: I think first and foremost, gaining and keeping subscribers is the biggest priority for them. And I think figuring out how to grow revenue on top of that, obviously, is the second priority, and that’s where we come in. So if we can help in any way — whether it’s putting this app on top of the broadband-onlys to drive more upside there — then we are willing.

CA: We make money for them. We are not in there jamming them with big price increases. We just want to grow our business consistently in their lane.

MCN:Do you see more companies like Netflix or Amazon emerging?

CA: It’s hard to make shows. I know everybody thinks it’s so easy. [Laughter.] Let me tell you something. It’s only television, as I like to say, but on the other hand this isn’t so easy. So you’ve got YouTube out there; you’ve got Google. I mean there are big companies that could decide to do anything, but big companies can trip over themselves. Just because somebody does one thing well doesn’t mean they’re going to be able to do everything well. There is obviously some synergy in how a lot of companies can make money together, to the question you had before: “I did this well, you guys did this well, let’s do both things even better together.”

MCN:Do you think we are hitting a ceiling with regards to the amount of content that’s coming into the marketplace?

CA: I sure hope so. [Laughter.] I think what you’ll see is — I think you’ll see people kind of going to the sidelines. Not everybody is going to be able to do this, particularly ad-supported [networks]. Again, I like the subscription model, I like the premium, non-advertiser supported model.

The big broadcast networks, some of the big channels, right now they’re doing great, they’ve been well-funded for a while. But I think there’s risk. Less eyeballs don’t hurt us. Less subscribers hurt us. Less eyeballs hurt advertiser guys, and if they can’t charge enough money for their commercials, then they’re going to have a hard time getting enough money to make shows.

That to me is a world that I think has got a different trajectory, different challenges than where we are, which is a model that kind of is what everybody else is trying to get into. You know? Not a lot of people are trying to build ad-supported stuff right now. Everybody’s trying to build subscription, non-ad-supported stuff. So, hello, we’ve got that. Now let’s figure out how we can do more of it better.

MCN:You’ve taken a different tack than most networks in that you’re reaching out to different target audiences with your content, be it African American, urban, Hispanic. Will that continue?

CA: Yes. We’re going to expand on that. And it’s even the millennials with [Ash vs. Evil Dead], Blunt Talk, some of the other things that we’re doing. We’ve got American Gods coming up. Targeting a specific audience makes a lot of sense. It helps you focus your marketing, helps you focus your PR, helps you know what you’re doing. Through social media, through all of these opportunities, put something on that appeals to a demographic group, especially if they are avid users of social media, especially if they’re vocal.

And although we may not have the biggest audiences on television, we do absolutely, by major social media platform metrics, have some of the most engaged. That’s good, because they’re going to talk about the show and other people have a chance to find out about it and that’s the best recommendation engine you can find. Other people talking about the programs and then ultimately talking about your brand.

MCN:What about bingeing? Are you going to extend the practice now of launching some series in advance, all the episodes, much like Netflix does or is that something that you …

CA: We’ve got two shows launching the same weekend: Outlander [April 9], which is going to be one episode at a time, and The Girlfriend Experience [April 10], which is dropping them all. Different audiences, different shows.

And just because we drop all the episodes doesn’t mean that people are obligated to watch them. Look, Outlander is a big-tent show. If you want to watch a season of Outlander, for me, however long, I binge it — as a grownup, I don’t really have that much time. But when we got all the rough cuts delivered to us over the summer from [Steven] Soderbergh on Girlfriend Experience. I got them on a Friday night. I woke up Saturday morning, I had a beach house for the summer and I thought, ‘All right, I’ll watch a couple episodes.’ I downloaded them all. I’ll watch a couple episodes, I’ll go and take my bike, go to lunch, come back, I’ll watch a few more, I’ll go to dinner, I’ll watch the rest tomorrow. I started watching them, 13 half-hour episodes. Six and a half hours later, I was starving, but I was like, ‘Holy shit, what was that?’ I could not stop watching it. It was fantastic. And the research showed that young women — maybe even counterintuitively, until you see this amazing performance by [series star] Riley [Keough] — are actually drawn to this show and they’ll enjoy being able to make that choice to watch multiple episodes in a row if they want to.

MCN:We’ve talked about everything that’s coming in on Starz. Disney movies are going away in another year. How do you fill that void? You get oneStar Warsmovie [the 2015 box-office powerhouseStar Wars: The Force Awakens] and you’re out.

CA: I like to say we have the only Star Wars movie. [Laughter.] But I mean, look, if you’re looking at the launch of this thing that we’re talking about, so you’ve got Outlander and Girlfriend Experience into Power and Survivor’s Remorse, into Ash and Blunt Talk and over that the only Star Wars movie. You know, Disney is a great partner. Sure, it would have been great to have them. We love the Sony guys and the future that Rothman has there. We need good movies, we’ve got library deals with everybody. I’m telling you, if you’re looking for a movie to watch, you’ve got a better shot at finding something you want to watch in a library deal than hoping that the studio output deal that you have is getting lucky. And by the time it flows through the theaters, flows through pay per view, flows through home entertainment, flows through whatever, [electronic sell-through], not that many people still are waiting for it in the pay window. But something they haven’t seen for a few years, you go, yeah.

Starz has ordered 13 half-hour episodes of The Girlfriend Experience, based on the 2009 film by Steven Soderbergh.

The premium programmer didn't announce a premiere date for the anthology series, trading on high-end prostitutes, which will be executive-produced by Soderbergh and Philip Fleishman. Fellow executive producers Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz will serve as writers and directors for the series.

The Girlfriend Experience is produced by Transactional Pictures, which licensed the rights from the owner of the original feature film, Magnolia Pictures. Starz will retain all domestic multiplatform pay TV rights and serve as the worldwide distributor of all other rights to the series.

 “We are all such fans of the movie that the idea of exploring this world through many different characters, voices and points of view was especially intriguing,” said Starz CEO Chris Albrecht. “Steven and Philip’s approach to the format is unique and not something seen on the entertainment landscape today. Working with Steven is always a thrill, and we are excited to break the mold with this project yet again.” 

The show reunites Albrecht and Soderbergh, who worked on an improv comedy about the nation's capital, that ran for one season on HBO in 2003.

“We’re in an exciting period of auteur-driven television right now,” said Soderbergh. “When Philip floated the idea of a Girlfriend Experience-inspired television show, I thought: ‘let’s make it a different woman in a different city, let’s pair two independent writer/directors, one male and one female, and let them do the whole thing.’ I’ve known Lodge for 20 years and I became a fan of Amy’s when I saw her first feature last summer.  We went to Chris Albrecht because he and I have been trying to find something to do together since we did K Street 11 years ago. He responded without hesitation to both the idea of the show and the approach.”

Directed by Soderbergh and written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, the theatrical drew attention as it featured then porn star, Sasha Gray, who has subsequently crossed over to acting’s mainstream, including an arc on HBO’s Hollywood buddy series, Entourage, in which she played herself as a love interest of Vinny Chase (Adrien Grenier).