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The Town with Matthew Belloni

Who Won (and Lost) TV’s Annual Billion-Dollar Cash Grab

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2026

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matt is joined by Rich Greenfield from LightShed Partners to recap this year's TV upfronts, highlighting the best, the worst, and everything in between from TV’s most glamorous week (00:00). Matt finishes the show with a box office prediction for this weekend (32:15). Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Rich Greenfield Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jon Jones Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Industry voters visit StarzFYC.com. Book a new kind of stay at HolidayInn.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode of The Town is brought to you by Stars' Outlander.

0:08.5

Everything has led to this.

0:10.3

The final chapter of the time-traveling drama and cultural phenomenon starring Sam Hewain

0:15.0

and Catriona Balfe is only on Stars.

0:18.2

Vogue declares Outlander one of television's greatest love stories,

0:21.2

and the rap raves Balf and Hewinn have perfected this on-screen relationship.

0:26.0

Industry voters can access all episodes at StarsFYC.com.

0:32.1

It is Thursday, May 14th. It's TV Upfront Week. Or it was. It's over now for the advertising buyers in New York that

0:39.5

got whined and dined and subjected to hours of star-studded presentations and badly written

0:45.2

onstage banter from top executives at the networks and streamers, all claiming that they

0:50.3

deliver the biggest and most high-quality audience. It's been a few years now since the streaming platforms really took over what used to be a

0:58.3

broadcast TV phenomenon.

1:00.3

So instead of the suspense over the NBC fall schedule, we got renewals of Netflix and

1:05.5

Amazon shows you've never heard of.

1:07.4

YouTube telling everyone that same line that YouTube is TV now. And legitimate movie stars

1:13.1

like Anne Hathaway at the Disney event or Michael B. Jordan at Amazon, all mixed in with late

1:18.5

night hosts and sports figures and the NFL's Roger Goodell hugging Joe Buck for some reason.

1:24.3

Disney brought Lindsay Lohan just for the hell of it. The upfronts are a massive business,

1:29.2

of course. Billions of dollars and ad commitments are made, though it's always been unclear to me how

1:33.6

much all this singing and dancing really impacts how the dollars are spent across platforms.

1:38.9

At this point, all of these platforms have football. They've all got hit shows and stinkers,

1:43.8

movies from their

...

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