Surprising new TV shows and the growing importance of diversity with billions of dollars on the line.

It's time for the story behind the story about this year's TV up fronts.

Welcome to this week's Reliable Sources Podcast.

I'm your host Brian Stelter, and this weekly podcast

in between our Sunday television broadcast

is a chance to go more in-depth behind some of the week's biggest

media stories.

This week I wanted to dig into the entertainment side of the media world because the TV

up fronts just wrapped up.

The up fronts are a week in May where all the big broadcast networks

present their new shows to advertisers, hoping to lock in big commitments for ad dollars. It can all seem a little old-fashioned in the age of

Netflix and Amazon and Hulu, but the up fronts still bring out stars, ad executives, and

lots of journalists.

Let's talk about it with CNN media critic Brian Lowry.

He joins me now from LA.

Brian, were there big surprises at this year's up fronts?

Did it feel like the up fronts were

reflecting the revolution that's going on in television? No, not really. I mean I

think the interesting thing you've seen over the last few years is I think

the networks have responded to the sort of daunting change that's assailing the entire television

sector by becoming more conservative in a lot of ways.

You know, it was, I saw headlines building up to the announcements about a bloodbath of shows that were canceled.

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