💥 BREAKING NEWS: Disney unleashes a bold upfronts strategy that signals its intent to outmuscle every rival in the race for audience dominance ⚡.NH

This year’s Upfront presentations, where media companies showcase their upcoming schedules to advertisers, unfolded before a backdrop of unprecedented upheaval. In the past year, AT&T bought Time Warner, bringing its TV offerings (TNT, TBS, HBO, CNN, and Adult Swim) under the WarnerMedia umbrella, with plans for a stand-alone streaming service; NBCUniversal owner Comcast purchased Sky, adding an international component to its roster as it also plans a stand-alone streaming service; CBS faced its first presentation in over a decade without its disgraced former chairman, Les Moonves; and perhaps most important, Disney acquired 21st Century Fox, folding FX, FXX, and Nat Geo into its own slate. Oh, and for those who somehow missed the news, Disney has now also gained full control of Hulu.

As one insider put it to V.F.’s Joe Pompeo ahead of the PowerPoint-heavy Upfront week, “Who the fuck knows what’s gonna happen next?”

From the presentations mounted all week from Radio City Music Hall to the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden, it’s pretty clear that, as with every year, some guesswork is involved—but some networks definitely bluffed better than others. And right now, Disney is doing the best job of at least casting its domination as inevitable—even if its presentation ran long and had a couple misfires.

NBC

NBC kicked off the week with a blah-but-not-bad performance on Monday morning. The showcase was pretty reminiscent of its presentations in years past, with an impressive array of talent—hello, Oscar winner Rami Malek!—and the occasional interstitial skit. Ad-sales chairman Linda Yaccarino teased the possible addition of The Office to NBCUniversal’s yet-to-be-named streaming service, but Seth Meyers, who emerged partway through the presentation to rib his network’s leadership as well as his audience, took a more satirical approach: “It’s time to come up with a name for the streaming service,” Meyers said. “This is like when people have still not named their kid two weeks after it was born. ‘This is Baby’ does not reflect badly on the kids, but it makes the parents look a little weird.”

Overall, NBC is in one of the more comfortable positions of the week; it has no new corporate structure to explain, and no #MeToo crisis to answer for as high up the chain as CBS’s was—Matt Lauer notwithstanding. Still, the network’s presentation rang pretty ho-hum—at least, to someone who isn’t totally fluent in Advertiserspeak. With Disney already bragging over detailed plans for Disney+—a streaming service that, unlike NBCUniversal’s and WarnerMedia’s, has a name—some flash is going to be necessary to draw back the spotlight. Had NBCUniversal brought some new details to share, it could have notched a more impactful morning than the solid but cagey show attendees saw. The most impressive and memorable component was its sheer star power: Malek, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, three Kardashians, a number of S.N.L. cast members, and several other A-listers logged appearances before the show was over.

FOX

Fox, tasked with explaining its existence as a mere shard of what it once was, was a stark contrast in its presentation Monday afternoon at the Beacon Theatre further uptown. The network’s talent pool skewed far heavier on athletes than actors, with several football commentators taking the stage to walk the audience through a lineup that features three nights of pure sports content. Fox Entertainment C.E.O. Charlie Collier characterized the newly slender Fox as a “start-up,” and argued that this juncture in the network’s history is merely a chance to start over and innovate.

The presentation, however, seemed strained at times; it started late, and was the only show of the week without a dedicated comedian to inject some life into it—a feature that seems superfluous until you sit through an entire Upfront presentation without one. The closest Fox got to a thematic jokester was Collier, whose recurring joke about the Jets, though tiresome at times, did pay off when Joe Namath was unmasked during the show’s live, truncated iteration of its surprise reality breakout The Masked Singer. Unfortunately, that was the high point of the afternoon—and the low point was an offensive joke from athlete-turned-sports commentator Terry Bradshaw, who has already been forced to apologize.

Whatever the Fox brand was before, that identity appears to have disappeared—save for a re-emphasized commitment to an all-animated Sunday night. All that’s left are sports and a bunch of new and returning series that appear to have little in common—and Fox News, which went completely without verbal mention during the presentation, although Collier did take multiple beats to shower Fox owners Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch with praise. At least there’s plenty more Masked Singer where Season 1 came from?

DISNEY

Perhaps the most highly anticipated Upfront of the year was set for Tuesday afternoon: for the first time there was no ABC Upfront, but instead a gargantuan presentation from Disney of its juggernaut collection of brands, which includes ABC, FX, Freeform, ESPN, and National Geographic. Disney teased the event to attendees by imploring them to arrive early for an “interactive experience” that, on the day of, largely fell flat: it was, as far as this reporter could see, a series of photo setups, some fancy electronic displays for fun facts about network metrics, and a couple of ABC stars milling around the crowded lobby as everyone awaited entry into David Geffen Hall. (The real belles of the ball, apparently, were at the nearby overflow venue, Alice Tully Hall, where a bunch of rescue puppies had been corralled for the reception.)

Once inside, attendees were pummeled with an overwhelming series of (admittedly very impressive) offerings. ABC’s turn didn’t come until almost two hours in, the point at which most Upfront presentations have ended entirely. ABC dedicated a good chunk of its allotted time to honoring Modern Family as its swan song approaches—likely a nod to all the Emmys the series has won the network over the years. Although the sheer volume of Disney’s presentation made individual offerings a bit hard to remember, the overall effect was undeniable: Disney ended this week looking, overall, like the company with the most enviable hand of cards—that is, if you ignore the layoffs that struck just one day after the presentation.

ESPN’s Kenny Mayne, whose F-bomb-laden rants from “J.V.” theater Alice Tully have become an Upfront staple, assumed his normal position this year, firing off a series of jokes about the network and its new corporate structure. “You think Bob Iger is showing up for this bullshit?” Mayne said. “Bob Iger is trying to figure out what in the f— this reorganization is about.” (Iger was, in fact, in the crowd at David Geffen on Tuesday, along with newly installed Fox imports Dana Walden and Peter Rice.) “We are postmodern and we are transparent,” Mayne concluded. “So much so, that you can probably see through our bullshit . . . Hold on to your wallets, close your eyes, and roll along for the ride.” Jimmy Kimmel’s set this year was relegated to the very end of the show, and as always, he was one of the bolder commentators of the week. “What a year it’s been for all of us,” Kimmel cracked. “Roseanne is gone and the measles are back. Remember last year when we got you all excited for It Takes Two, The Kids Are Alright, Roseanne, and Speechless? Well, canceled, canceled, racist, canceled. But we still have the Bachelor franchise!” But perhaps the best summation of ABC’s Upfront came when Kimmel went a little dirtier: “We own Disneyland, we own Iron Man, and we own Star Wars. At this point, the only cherished moment of your childhood that we don’t own is jerking off.”

WARNERMEDIA

The following morning, the suits dragged themselves a little further downtown, for WarnerMedia’s presentation at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday. (It’s worth noting, however, that “Hulu” had been scrubbed from the name in invites and R.S.V.P. confirmations—an interesting detail considering AT&T’s recent sale of its stake in Hulu.) The presentation, like NBC’s, came up short with regard to its planned streaming service; as with NBC, a couple juicy hints, or at least a name, would have gone a long way. Still, executives did occasionally emphasize the ways the networks were preparing for it. The most dramatic shift in programming strategy is the abandonment of genre identities for TBS and TNT, both of which now program both comedies and dramas. (I overheard one attendee behind me confusedly tell a colleague they’d thought Snowpiercer was a TNT series, presumably because a few years ago it absolutely would have been.) Warner hailed the return of several star-studded series, including the Chris Pine vehicle I Am the Night, Tracy Morgan and Tiffany Haddish’s The Last O.G., and Miracle Workers, which stars Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buscemi. And while TBS breaks into drama, TNT will push a greater emphasis on unscripted, with Ann Curry’s crowdsourced medical series, Chasing the Cure, and the Shaquille O’Neal–centric reality program Shaq Life. CNN touted its anti-Trump stance, while HBO, which runs without ads, received not even one mention.

Like Kimmel, Conan O’Brien came ready with plenty of jabs at his bosses, and Upfronts in general. “Why does anyone come to this?!” O’Brien asked. “I know why I am here—it’s contractual. I don’t know why you are here.” O’Brien also couldn’t help but drop a few very cheesy jokes about cell service: “Because this is AT&T, after the show there will be a terrible reception,” he said. “Because it’s AT&T, the after-party only has two bars.” After a perfectly timed pause, he added, “You are looking at a man with very little time left in the industry.”

CBS

Like NBC, CBS played up its reliability as a player that didn’t just go through a major corporate transformation. Executives including CBS Entertainment President Kelly Kahl argued that CBS has been the No. 1 most-watched network for 11 years running; they know what they’re doing, and will continue to do it. And with the Super Bowl coming in 2021, Kahl predicted the network will remain No. 1 for the next few years as well. The Eye did make sure to thank its own outgoing comedy sensation, The Big Bang Theory, welcoming Chuck Lorre and several cast members onstage just a day before the Thursday night series finale. Presenters also paid a notable amount of lip service to the network’s diversity initiatives—perhaps to combat its troubled past in that area, or the viral op-ed from one former CBS executive about the network’s “white problem.”

Les Moonves, who resigned last year after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, once relished the role of Upfront ringleader. (Moonves denied the allegations at the time, saying, “Untrue allegations from decades ago are now being made against me that are not consistent with who I am.”) The Upfront obliquely addressed its change in power through a sports analogy at the top of the show, enlisting sportscasters Jim Nantz and Tony Romo to stage a faux pre-game show where they admitted the network had faced “some changes at the top.” The two quickly launched into praising acting C.E.O. Joe Ianniello, who never took the stage himself Wednesday afternoon.

But one person at the Upfront did offer one small dig at Moonves: during his monologue, Stephen Colbert noted that he’d been given a long list of stats to underscore about CBS’s success. “I didn’t have time to get through all of it,” he said, “so I just read Bill Barr’s four-page summary. ‘Les Moonves: totally exonerated.’ I did not see that coming!”

One could argue that these extremely muted references to what happened at CBS last year were not quite sufficient—especially given the network’s recent, controversial decision to renew Bull despite sexual harassment claims against star Michael Weatherly. (In a statement at the time, Weatherly apologized for his behavior, which he characterized as “some jokes mocking some lines in the script.”) How much of a concern any of this is to advertisers remains to be seen—but for those outside the ad game, CBS might have a lot more work left to do in repairing its image.

So where does this cocktail-soaked week leave us? It depends on what advertisers value most. Both Fox and WarnerMedia promised a certain degree of nimbleness and ingenuity, while NBC and CBS leaned on reliability and brand safety. (Fox, whose news division has seen advertisers pull back due to controversial statements from anchors like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, faces a tougher sell on that last count.) Disney, meanwhile, essentially showed up, laid all the goods on the table, and left witnesses to breathe the exhausted sigh of acknowledgment. It might still feel really weird to see the Disney logo show up on posters for series like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but this is the future—and if Disney’s Upfront had one thing to say, it’s that the future is here, and the future is all Disney, all the time.

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