The C21 team discusses the hot topics informing this year’s LA Screenings

LA SCREENINGS: Today, C21 North American editor Jordan Pinto and Cveintiuno co-editor Gonzalo Larrea look ahead to this year’s LA Screenings, with Hollywood still reeling from streaming and strikes, Paramount up for grabs, and buyers’ enthusiasm for US shows in question.

Tune in to C21FM by CLICKING HERE.

The US upfronts, LA Screenings and ‘pilot season’ – such as it exists these days – have rolled around the again – the annual American TV cycle which begins in New York as the networks unveil new fall season series to  the advertisers, followed by the studios offering them to overseas buyers at a string of events in Los Angeles.

The industry has changed dramatically over the past five years, with the studios all pivoting to streaming in a bid to catch up with Netflix – a move that meant, for a time, withdrawing from programme licensing. Not only that but these shifts brought about the mega-mergers of Disney and Fox, Viacom and CBS, Warner Brothers and Discovery, and now Paramount is in play with Skydance, Sony and Apollo circling.

With peak TV having well and truly peaked, Netflix and Amazon are going after the networks’ dwindling ad revenues and the studios have to varying degrees returned to licensing, but buyers in the meantime have had to source shows from elsewhere and besides, audiences have warmed to non-English programming and are arguably less reliant on the US fare that once also formed the centrepiece of local broadcast schedules.

As if all that weren’t enough, last year’s strikes have dented supplies and the potential impact of AI looms over everything. C21 North American editor Jordan Pinto and Cveintiuno co-editor Gonzalo Larrea spoke with Jonathan Webdale.

C21FM is live 24/7, with a block of interviews starting at 10am BST every day HERE.