Welcome back to What I’m Hearing from rainy NYC, where I’m participating in a documentary project and attempting to make tonight’s Committee to Protect Journalists gala. I’ll also be in the studio on CNBC’s Squawk Box tomorrow at 8:20 a.m. ET—tune in for the sexiest NBCUniversal spinoff discussion on TV...

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Let’s begin…

• Bravo to that cable TV network spinoff…: Big picture, it’s pretty amazing: Of the dozens of cable channel brands that Comcast launched and acquired over the years, the only one it has deemed worth saving from this week’s announced spinoff is Bravo. The same Bravo that came close to dying several times before being reinvigorated by Andy Cohen and the crazy-lady franchise pipeline. Real Housewives, Vanderpump Rules, Below Deck… Bravo content drives viewership on Peacock, so it stays. By contrast, a source familiar with the data told me that only 2 percent of Peacock viewership comes from programming on non-Bravo cable networks. So, bye-bye to those.
• Netflix’s most wanted: Sellers know Netflix is currently seeking great game show ideas and a companion docusoap to pair with Selling Sunset. And here’s a note to music agents looking for a paycheck and 280 million potential viewers: Netflix is also actively seeking a major artist to headline a real-time concert broadcast in 2025, part of its big live programming push. This act must have a global following, multigenerational appeal, and a great show, per sources, one of whom adds that labels are pitching. Unfortunately, Beyoncé is already booked on Christmas Day.
• The Saudis’ price is right for Spike: If it’s the holiday season, it’s time for Saudi Arabia’s annual whitewashing extravaganza, the Red Sea Film Festival. The going rate for stars like Johnny Depp and Sharon Stone to put aside any concerns about human rights abuses or journalist dismembering in order to walk the red carpet is typically about $1 million (plus travel). But this year’s jury president, Spike Lee, may be making more. Two sources familiar with similar offers say the jury president is paid between $2.5 million and $3 million. So Spike is probably making about the same, but whatever, I’m sure he’s doing it for the art. (Lee’s rep didn’t respond.)
• Box office over/under: Final Wicked tracking is anywhere from $100 million to $150 million, so let’s set the line at $125 million. I’ll take the over based on amazing presales and Universal bundling in tons of previews. Gladiator II is at $65 million, and I’ll also take the over, though I worry a little about more women than predicted dragging men to Wicked.

Maybe C.M.O. Michael Moses and his marketing team went a tad overboard, but thanks to the ubiquity of the materials, total awareness for Wicked: Part One hit 91 percent in the final NRG report. Even more impressive, awareness among men over 25 is up to 89 percent, a wild number for a Broadway adaptation. Critic and audience scores are both in the 90s on Rotten Tomatoes, and box office projections for this weekend shot up in recent days to between $100 million and $150 million. Not bad for 2 hours and 40 minutes of show tunes followed by a cliffhanger for Part Two.

So I guess it’s fitting that Wicked is coming out the same week that Donna Langley, the longtime Universal film studio chief, finally got that big promotion we all knew was happening. Officially, Langley’s new title is chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment and Studios, but it basically means she’s got greenlight power for all movies, all television, and all streaming. That’s programming and marketing across the entire NBCUniversal portfolio—which, now that most of the cable networks are being cleaved off (we’ll get to that), means Universal Pictures, Focus Features, Peacock, NBC, and Bravo. Langley has been working with the TV group for a while through her previous chief content officer remit, but she didn’t have full authority until now.

That’s all clarified now. Langley will have everything, from if the dinosaurs go to space in the upcoming Jurassic World (or the one after that) to whether Pete Davidson will get and then abruptly walk away from another Peacock sitcom (please, Donna, spare us), to managing the decline of late night and a post-Lorne SNL, whenever that happens. She and Matt Strauss, now chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, will work out the organizational details soon. She’s been in New York this week starting this process. Lazarus, meanwhile, will run the spinoff cable network company.

Is that a cool opportunity or a consolation prize? Mike Cavanagh, the acting NBCUniversal C.E.O., was careful in his memo announcing the spinoff to note that Lazarus and C.F.O. Anand Kini “raised their hands” to run CrapCo—sorry, SpinCo—the ice floe of cable networks that, once broken off from the NBCU glacier, will presumably journey through a sea of cost cuts and diminished revenue until it eventually is bought by private equity or melts into nothing. No, it’s not as glamorous a role for Lazarus as being arguably the most important person at the Olympics, but it’s a C.E.O. gig, and he will likely make a boatload of money. He also gets to run a public company, albeit one still controlled by Brian Roberts, the Comcast C.E.O., who will maintain 33 percent voting power over the new entity. That will set Lazarus up for bigger jobs down the line.

Also, it’s a chance for Lazarus to exceed the low expectations for these declining assets, whether by taking on more networks from Warner Bros. Discovery or Paramount Global or A+E Networks or AMC, launching niche streamers for MSNBC or E! or Syfy or Oxygen, or adding stuff like sports or live experiences, all to slow the melt. If I were Mark, my first call for advice would not be to cable-era kingpins like John Malone or Jeff Bewkes but to the private equity bosses at Alden Global Capital who are managing similar fade-outs at newspapers. That’s his job now.

For Langley, meanwhile, this is a formal anointment. With Shari Redstone finally selling her father’s jewels, Oprah Winfrey becoming less mogul and more personality-for-hire, and Disney’s Dana Walden still overseeing only television and streaming, Donna is now the most powerful woman in traditional Hollywood. (Bela Bajaria at Netflix and Jen Salke at Amazon still oversee larger content budgets… though neither has won a best picture Oscar. Langley has two.) And she’s paid her dues. Without superheroes or a deep library of I.P., Langley and the team have developed a fairly reliable pipeline with Jurassic, Fast, Illumination, DreamWorks Animation, and Blumhouse. (We’ll forget about that whole “Dark Universe” debacle.)

Perhaps more importantly, especially when compared to the remake/sequel machine at Disney, Langley has a stable of event filmmakers in Chris Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Jordan Peele, and potentially the Daniels, who are all making new, original movies for the studio. And the post-Covid release strategy, prioritizing a short theatrical window followed by a quick move to premium video-on-demand, then S.V.O.D. and the rest of the waterfall, seems to have struck a sustainable balance between the demands of commerce and the demands of creatives. Universal makes and releases more movies than any other studio, and many of them miss (The Fall Guy… Renfield… Cats!?!). But the ratio is pretty good and the formula is working, at least for now.

So credit to the Comcast guys for recognizing the obvious. One thing Philadelphia has gotten right from the beginning of their Hollywood adventure is acknowledging the fact that they’re outsiders to the culture. For years, they kept Ron Meyer in an undefined role at Universal that basically amounted to “problem solver and industry whisperer,” until his personal behavior finally caught up with him. Bonnie Hammer, who basically built the cable networks business they’re now spinning off, is still employed in a senior role in the TV group, though I dare you to ask anyone what she actually does. She’s an ambassador type, and that’s enough for Roberts and Cavanagh.

Disney has other businesses besides television networks, of course, but a similar separation would be a logistical nightmare. The Hulu streamer, for instance, is powered by content from FX, a cable network. Same with the ESPN stand-alone streamer set to launch next year. Imagine if that service was part of a different company than the ESPN linear channel? They could figure something out, of course—similar to how Lazarus may now populate his networks with news and sports content currently controlled by NBCUniversal. But it would be tough, and probably why Iger floated then decided against a spin of his own.

But Roberts can do this, so why not? Cable networks are over as a growth business, and they have dragged the stock down for a while. Plus, he’s never loved MSNBC and the political problems it causes for the rest of the Comcast empire he does care about. Maybe the news networks, with their dedicated yet aging audiences, can serve as “locomotives,” in Comcast-speak, to drive the other network railcars and maintain carriage fees without NBC (and its NFL deal) as that lead engine. With 60-something million subscribers to these networks and a clean balance sheet, who knows, maybe Lazarus turns the ice floe into a glacier of its own.

That’s the real challenge. Langley, not to mention Roberts and Cavanagh, still have their own secular hurdles in movies and broadcast TV, and Peacock is still not profitable. All of these spinoff machinations might just be foreplay to a coming merger or similar transaction. But mostly Langley just needs to make great content, and now she’ll have freer rein to do that.

Got a question, comment, complaint or your best Jay Leno “accident” conspiracy theory? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.