Just a reminder that I am trying out Beehiiv’s new community feature. You can check it out here and there is a community link on the top of every page on the TooMuchTV website.
Also, if you live in the Twin Cities, you know the name Jason DeRusha. He was a longtime fixture on morning TV and now hosts Drivetime With DeRusha on WCCO-AM. He’s also a well-known foodie and has carved out a second job writing about and promoting the local culinary scene. His newsletter DeRusha Download combines all of that together and I laughed quite a bit when I read this passage in today’s newsletter:
My wife is my proofreader, although our work flow doesn’t make much sense. She reads the newsletter after I send it. This morning Alyssa tells me that I forgot to fill out the “WHAT I’M DOING THIS WEEKEND” Section.
This is exactly the same conversation I frequently have with my wife. Although she has cut back on her feedback, because it just makes me cranky. Now she will just say something along the lines of “Were you extra distracted when you were writing today’s newsletter?”
‘The Non-Event Formerly Known As ‘Shark Week’
It’s been an exciting Shark Week. Lots of talk on social media, shark-related memes everywhere, TikTok videos, entire TV morning show segments devoted to it, multiple jokes on late night television, promos for the week everywhere…ah, no.
While this is indeed Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, I don’t think I’ve seen a mention of it anywhere other than on Discovery and its sister linear channels. And while earlier seasons had some big celebrity tie-ins, I’m not sure that the debut of the first, official Shark Week song, "Om-A-Nom (Shark Week)" featuring Ken Jeong is going to create much buzz.
The idea of Shark Week feels played out and I think some of that is just due to its longevity. How many different ways can you show a Great White jumping out of the water?
I also suspect the overall promotional and marketing cuts at Discovery haven’t helped. There are just fewer people there to promote it and many of the outlets they used to pitch to no longer exist. In past years, the network used to send massive Shark Week press kits filled with screeners and swag. If the network sent anything out this year, no critic I know received one.
I live and breath television, and I would be hard-pressed to name one Shark Week special this year. Which is a big change from previous years, when I would review multiple specials.
It’s kinda sad to see Shark Week become a zombie event. It likely gets enough viewers to make it worthwhile for Discovery. But like new seasons of Storage Wars and American Pickers, it is premiering to collective yawns from most of the world.
A Conversation With PBS Chief Digital and Marketing Officer Ira Rubenstein
Ira Rubenstein is Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at PBS and since he joined the network in 2014, he's led the expansion of PBS’ general audience and children’s content to mobile devices, over-the-top (OTT) services, and other digital platforms.
Given his wide range of experience, I was interested in speaking with him about how he sees the streaming and digital world, along with finding out more about PBS' approach to the current multi-platform world.
I recently spoke with Ira in Denver at the StreamTV show and we had a wide-ranging discussion about everything from the challenges of negotiating deals on behalf on 140 member stations
Here is an excerpt of that conversation, which can be read in full here:
From the outside, it seemed like that live TV business was hard for PBS to break into. I know when the YouTube deal deal happened, that was a really big deal. It was good for the stations, but viewers were also happy. And on a related note, I was a subscriber of Hulu Live TV when they added my local PBS station and I was really happy about that.
In theory, adding PBS would seem like an easy decision, but it sounds as it’s much more of a challenge than viewers might think.
Ira Rubenstein: Part of the challenge is that when I come to table, I have to be fair. In some markets, it more than one station, It could be three. So from an interface standpoint, how does YouTube TV or Hulu Live TV show more than one?
And especially if the two of them are showing the exact same show. So there were some technology hurdles that they had to overcome. There were also some localization hurdles they had to overcome.
And I'm also coming in as a non-commercial partner. There's no inventory for them to monetize.
So a lot of it is relationships over the years. We have a very strong partner with Kelly Merriman at YouTube TV. I worked with her at Sony Pictures.
And then from there as a Hulu live subscriber, I'm sure you were complaining. We understand it was the number one complaint. And so competitively they had to add us as well.
And as a reminder, you can read this interview -along with a lot of other great PBS coverage, in my special PBS vertical section.
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Odds & Sods
Of all the skills I have, I think I am the proudest of my interviewing skills. When I have some time to stretch out and have a conversation, I modestly think it can come out very well. But I am always trying to learn from other journalists, and this David Marchese interview with Mick Jagger is quite good.
YES Network and MSG Networks are leaving the Gotham Sports app, which will shut down, to take their local game streaming to DAZN.
This piece argues that every Black Mirror episode was quietly part of a shared universe.
The series Crew Girl premieres Thursday, September 10th on Netflix. Here is the official logline: “Sixteen-year-old Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau) was a rising star in single sculls rowing until a family scandal capsized her future. Forced to relocate with her mom (Jessica Paré) to the East Coast, Teagan starts over at the prestigious Easton Prep, where she’s not just an outcast but stuck aground - there’s no girls' rowing team. Her only way to the water is to take the helm of the school's notoriously dysfunctional boys' varsity crew as their coxswain. Thrust into a world of old money and brutal competition, Teagan must find a way to lead a team that doesn't want her and somehow bring them together. As she juggles her own rowing ambitions, the demands of the boys' crew, and her family’s escalating complications, she also finds herself unexpectedly caught in the orbit of the team’s two most competitive rivals: the arrogant team captain, Josh Regis (Sam Braun), and the quiet but intensely driven underdog, Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark).
Starz and Crunchyroll have announced a new bundle now available through Prime Video in the U.S. New customers can access both streamers for $16.99/month, a more than 23 percent savings.
Netflix has acquired the documentary Avedon from director Ron Howard. Here is the official logline: “Avedon traces the life and legacy of an artist who used photography to reinvent the world around him. Drawing on unprecedented access to his personal archives—never-before-seen stills, intimate behind-the-lens footage, and new interviews with his closest collaborators—the film explores how his singular eye both reflected and reshaped the visual language of the 20th century, and why even the most iconic image is only half the story.”
Season two of Chad Powers premieres Thursday, September 3rd on Hulu.
AMC and Netflix have struck a five-year, $500 million “co-exclusive” streaming deal for The Walking Dead universe. The deal will bring all six spin-off series to Netflix starting next year, shared with the AMC+ streaming service. The original Walking Dead series will also come to AMC+ for the first time next year.
Season two of Luanne premieres Thursday, August 27th on Netflix.
Current with Christine Romans is premiering Monday on NBC News Now.
WGBH has announced its lineup for the upcoming season of American Experience, a series which has been directly impacted by the Federal funding cuts. The three-part documentary Lindbergh will premiere in May 2027, executive-produced by Ken Burns. In the fall of 2027, the four-part series The Bureau: A Secret History of the FBI, will chart the rise, weaponization, and survival of the nation's most powerful law enforcement agency. Also in development is a series on the Great Depression. American Experience will also re-air two groundbreaking films from award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson in winter 2027: his Emmy-Award winning Freedom Riders, which premiered in 2011, and Freedom Summer, which originally aired in 2014. Both films marked the 50th anniversaries of pivotal moments in the civil rights movement, as told through the voices and experiences of student volunteers and local citizens.
The series Earle Meets World premieres Friday, September 4th on Netflix. Here is the official logline: “Gen-Z’s ultimate It Girl, Alix Earle, is making the next big jump in her career. Can she balance her burgeoning business empire with being that unfiltered, twenty-something, hot mess that America fell in love with? Now she’s taking her candid chaos from your FYP to TV… and nothing is off limits.”
‘Person Of Interest’ Is A Show You Should Binge
The CBS drama Person Of Interest is widely underrated and watching it now resonates a lot differently than it did back when the idea of an all-powerful surveillance state run run by a mostly unstoppable AI seemed more like science fiction than an Elon Musk wet dream.
I just ran across this interview with Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman, and there are quite a few interesting passages in the piece:
There’s two distinct sort of technological moments that are sort of captured in the show: There’s surveillance technology, and there’s AI. Those are two distinct things, right? There’s a lot of snake oil s— happening now, where they’re trying to blend those two things together. There’s an assumption, and interestingly…this is something that the show sort of anticipated cannily, although not at all consciously; I guess we read s—, that AI would emerge from large amounts of data, right? That the way that these LLMs work—and the reason why China may well win—is because they have the biggest data pool.
At one point, when we were making the show, I was invited out to talk to a Chinese technology company, and I sat there [listening to] everything they were talking about. I was like, “Oh, f—, this is either a buzzword or this is about to happen.” And the emphasis there was on the sheer quantity of data and computing, and that is still very much the world we’re living in. So the two things do collapse into each other, but they are distinct topics, and they were distinct things that we were covering.
Everyone’s gotten very curious about the AI of it all, and I think they’ve taken their eye off the ball a tiny bit in terms of the surveillance part. We sort of, in that f—ing frog in a pot of water way, just decided to trade privacy for security, right? That was always the gambit. I don’t think it works; I think it actually works the other way around.
It is amazing how closely the show tracks with so much of the AI issues we’re facing in 2026. As was the case with Fringe, the early episodes feel like a fairly normal procedural. But things went sideways pretty quickly and the story became something else entirely.
What’s Coming Tonight And Tomorrow
THURSDAY, JULY 30TH:
Accused: Guilty or Innocent? Season Premiere (A&E)
How To Train A Great White (Discovery)
The Bombing Of Pan AM 103 (Netflix)
Ultimate Shark Dive (Discovery)
What Shark Attacked? (Discovery)
FRIDAY, JULY 31ST:
Adults Stand-Alone Episode (FXX)
Batman: Caped Crusader Season Two Premiere (Prime Video)
Cape Fear Season One Finale (Apple TV)
Fightland Series Premiere (Starz)
My Strange Shark Addiction (Discovery)
Nightborn (Shudder)
Put A Ring On It: Cheathab Series Premiere (OWN)
Secrets Of The Great White Kill (Discovery)
Sharkzilla Takes New York (Discovery)
Snoopy Presents: There's No Place Like Home, Snoopy (Apple TV)
The Twin Who Lived (LMN)
Time And Water (NatGeo)