Ad Age reports today that TBS and TNT will join the streaming club, which is becoming a theme at this year’s Upfronts. Turner announced at its pre-Upfront conference Wednesday morning that cable and satellite TV subscribers will have access to live streaming of both scripted and non-scripted programming, starting this summer. In exciting news for sports fans, the available content will include Turner sports coverage, including TBS’ regular-season and playoff Major League Baseball games, TNT’s NBA coverage, and both networks’ NCAA basketball coverage. Turner hyped its multi-platform initiatives throughout the presentation, including implementing a new system for measuring viewer engagement through social platforms, ATHENA (Advanced Tool for Harnessing and Evaluating Network Audiences).
And of course there was the usual unveiling of new shows at the Turner Upfront, including new projects from Steven Spielberg, Steve Carell, Sylvester Stallone, Dick Wolf, Nicholas Sparks and Jamie Foxx, among others.
Meanwhile, over at the CBS pre-Upfront press conference Wednesday morning, the goal was to be less smug. The Hollywood Reporter writes that CBS Corp. president and CEO Leslie Moonves told reporters “We’ll try to be less smug” in response to Jimmy Kimmel’s joking that the No.1 network are “smug motherf—-ers.” From there, Moonves went on to, with what we can only imagine was a notable lack of smugness, characterize other networks touting multi-platform initiatives as companies that “do not have much else to sell.” To that end, Moonves proceeded to sell CBS’ upcoming lineup for 2013-2014, dominated by comedic fare such as “We Are Men,” Chuck Lorre’s “Mom,” the Will Arnett-starring series “The Millers,” and “The Crazy Ones,” which has Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar teaming up for workplace hi-jinks.
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