Digital Demand Will Spur U.S. Advertising Gains in 2021, Predicts Analyst

MoffettNathanson's Michael Nathanson sees Alphabet and Facebook and advertising VOD platforms like Pluto TV helping fuel a recovery next year for the U.S. advertising industry.

A U.S. advertising industry gripped by a downturn amid the coronavirus pandemic should be preparing for ad spending to return to pre-public health crisis levels in 2021, MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson predicted on Tuesday.

"Given both the shifts in consumer behavior to e-commerce and the ability of digital to produce more targeted and efficient results, this snap-back is essentially fueled by a return to growth in digital spending at the two largest ad platforms (Alphabet and Facebook)," a bullish Nathanson argued in a May 26 investors note.

He forecast U.S. advertising growth to fall by 8.6 percent in 2020, led by a 13 percent decline in traditional spending and a 3 percent fall in online ad spending. But a digital landscape shaped by a streaming space that predates the coronavirus pandemic explains the rapid recovery forecast for next year.

"By 2021, we estimate that digital ad spending -- even excluding the TV dollars that go into the AVOD platforms like Hulu, Peacock or Pluto -- will source 54 percent of all ad spending in the U.S.," Nathanson argued. Also creating a floor for the advertising industry is national TV ad buys made during the current Upfronts and not easily cancelled and political ad buys on local TV stations ahead of the U.S. presidential election offsetting lost advertising revenue from embattled marketing brands.

New streaming video services became a boon for U.S. advertisers before the COVID-19 crisis, with new digital behemoths accounting for big jumps in domestic advertising spending, as have digital-first marketing vehicles like Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet.

"Big picture, we see a solid bounce back in ad spending in 2021 led by +20 percent growth in online ad spending (which returns to pre-2020 growth rates), while TV spending is expected to be flat," Nathanson said of next year after a gradual "U-shaped" recovery in 2020.

At the same time, the coronavirus advertising impact has been deep so far. A late March 2020 study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which surveyed nearly 400 media buyers and brands, found 74 percent of respondents said that the novel coronavirus outbreak would have a greater impact on advertising than the 2008 financial crisis.

And 70 percent of buyers at the time said they had adjusted or paused their ad spend and 16 percent said they were still determining their course of action.

Looking beyond 2020, Nathanson doesn't see the digital ad spending rebound next year coming at the expense of traditional linear TV, but having emerged as a digital outgrowth of consumers long heading online. "...Digital has grown their ad base from clients that are not entirely represented by the brand dollars that emanate from Fortune 500 TV advertisers," Nathanson argued.

A wider question is whether lost traditional TV ad revenues from cord-cutting will be offset by an increase in digital ad buys on AVOD streamers. "The traditional media companies are hedging their bets by acquiring/building AVOD platforms (e.g. Hulu at Disney, Peacock at NBCUniversal, Pluto at ViacomCBS). Going forward, we will be tracking to see if these AVOD players can indeed help stem the outflow from traditional TV ad budgets," Nathanson wrote.

Jimmy Fallon Apologizes for "Terrible Decision" in Doing Blackface on 'SNL'

"I am very sorry for making this unquestionably offensive decision and thank all of you for holding me accountable," said the 'Tonight Show' host.

Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday apologized for doing blackface 20 years ago during a sketch on NBC's Saturday Night Live. 

The Tonight Show host and SNL vet said he was sorry after the clip resurfaced and he was criticized for the moment across Twitter. 

"In 2000, while on SNL, I made a terrible decision to do an impersonation of Chris Rock while in blackface. There is no excuse for this," Fallon said in a tweet. "I am very sorry for making this unquestionably offensive decision and thank all of you for holding me accountable." 

The sketch in question featured Fallon in blackface impersonating Chris Rock on Regis Philbin’s (Darrell Hammond) late-night show.

Fallon has done his Rock impression a number of times over the years, such as on Howard Stern's radio show.  

There is no legitimate clip of the segment available, with NBC having scrubbed it from the SNL site, but bootlegs are floating around YouTube and Twitter. 

Aardman Debuts First Clip From New Wallace & Gromit Adventure 'The Big Fix-Up'

Aardman Animations has revealed the first clip from Wallace & Gromit: The Big Fix Up, the studio's iconic characters' first new adventure in a decade and their first told exclusively in augmented reality.

In the new story, inventor Wallace and his faithful dog Gromit's new business venture, Spick & Spanners, takes on a contract to "Fix-Up" Bristol, the city where Aardman is based. In the first clip, which debuted on Tuesday, work is piling up, so the duo embark on a recruitment drive in their "Spick & Span mobile." The full interactive AR adventure — which fans will be able to experience as a free download on supported Apple or Android smartphones — will be released globally, starting this fall in the UK.

The production is a partnership between Aardman and Fictioneers, a consortium of British creative companies including Potato, Sugar Creative and Tiny Rebel Games, with research support from the University of South Wales. The project is backed by a multimillion pound R&D grant from UK Research & Innovation as part of its Audience of the Future program to pioneer immersive experiences.

The original plan was to include a live-venue story component in Bristol, but amid COVID-19, the production team changed direction slightly, scanning the city center and using 3-D mapping technology Fantasmo to create an exclusively virtual experience. In creating the hybrid stop-motion and CG production, the team also partnered with Unity, which provided its MARS (Mixed and Augmented Reality Studio) toolkit, designed to help users create experiences that intelligently interact with a real-world environment.

Merlin Crossingham, Aardman's creative director of Wallace & Gromit, who is helming The Big Fix-Up, noted that "Wallace & Gromit's heart and soul is in stop motion, but they often dabbled in the cutting-edge of tech, and this is one of those occasions." He added that Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park was involved from the start of the project and was "fundamental in getting Wallace & Gromit to feel comfortable in their new adventure."

Wallace & Gromit appeared on screen for the first time in 1989's Oscar-nominated animated short A Grand Day Out, which was followed by several more shorts, including A Close Shave and The Wrong Trousers, both of which won Oscars, as well as TV series and the Academy Award-winning animated feature Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

"We at Fictioneers are on a mission to innovate storytelling. ... It's a rare privilege to be able to do so with some of the most beloved animated characters in the world and give fans the first opportunity to join in Wallace & Gromit's story," said Susan Cummings, co-founder of Fictioneers and managing director of Tiny Rebel Games.

Marvel to Rerelease 'Avengers', 'Iron Man 3' in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is the place to be right now for superhero movie fans with Marvel Studios the latest company to join the rerelease bandwagon. 

Marvel is set rerelease The Avengers and Iron Man 3 in Hong Kong cinemas from May 28 until June 10 as the industry attempts to lure back still wary customers after virus-related lockdowns were lifted earlier this month. Although only two titles have been announced so far, The Hollywood Reporter understands more Marvel films could be rereleased in the coming months. 

Heat Vision breakdown

The move by Marvel in Hong Kong to rerelease iconic blockbusters from the recent past follows a pattern that is being repeated across Asian countries that have tamed the novel coronavirus and have reopened cinemas. Warner Bros. is rereleasing Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy in Hong Kong and Taiwan this summer, including in Imax theaters. Warners also rereleased a 4K remastered version of The Matrix in Hong Kong. 

In China, all four of Marvel's Avengers movies are being rereleased in the country and Hollywood blockbusters including Avatar and Warner Bros.' Nolan films Inception and Interstellar are also getting a second outing on the big screen. 

In Japan, Toho Cinemas, the country's largest multiplex chain, has decided to lean heavily on the classics. Among the titles the company has brought back to the big screen are Ben-Hur (1959), The Wizard of Oz (1939), East of Eden (1955), Bonnie and Clyde (1969) and Blade Runner (1982). Westside Story (1961) and Rio Bravo (1959) also were playing at several locations, along with other favorites of the 1980s and 90s, like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994).

 

Amid Lockdowns, Universities' Actor Showcases Go Online: "Change Needed to Happen Anyway"

Students are self-taping their performances for year-ending theatrical productions, which are geared toward talent rep audiences, in childhood bedrooms and dorms: "I think actually we're going to get the students in front of more people than we would have before."

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign student Brian Seungheon Kim passionately recites a monologue about Asian-American typecasting that he wrote himself as he stands in front of a white sheet hung beneath an exposed pipe. After a brief cut, his classmate Emma L. Anderson performs a rendition of a Manson girl's speech from Quentin Tarantino's 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from inside a dark, parked car. Dane Brandon follows with dialogue from Jordan Seavey's 2017 play Homos, or Everyone in America, which he performs while sitting on a couch in front of plants, string Christmas lights and windows exposing a cloudy day.

In 2020, UIUC's B.F.A. Acting students — like so many other drama students across the U.S. this spring — had to self-tape their year-ending showcase presentations from dorms, childhood homes and neighborhoods for the first time, rather than perform them onstage, in front of a live audience. Showcases, year-ending theatrical productions that highlight graduating students' achievements, typically take place at venues in New York and Los Angeles in order to attract those cities' population of agents, managers and casting directors to watch, take meetings with and potential sign graduating students. This spring, within a manner of weeks, however, institutions including the University of Southern California, the University of California Los Angeles, New York University Tisch, the Julliard School, Loyola Marymount University, University of California Irvine, Savannah School of Art & Design and Temple University, among many others, had to convert these traditional events to online performances. Students filmed themselves with their own equipment, made their own sets and costumes, and sought scenes that would convey their skills onscreen, while industry members were sent links to watch live or on-demand.

While the ensuing presentations haven't been ideal for graduating students who lack professional equipment or professors accustomed to directing for the stage, some say the transformation has accelerated changes already occurring to the annual tradition. Talent representatives say they were already advocating for schools to add video components to annual showcases so that they could watch performances on their own time, return to them and see students' work onscreen. "Sometimes change happens out of necessity, but the change needed to happen anyway," USC director of the MFA acting program David Warshofsky says. "This area that we're discussing may fall into that category. We're about to find out."

***

University acting showcases, once exclusive events reserved for students enrolled in select schools, have proliferated over the last few decades. The genesis for today's programs started in 1979, when the League of Professional Theatre Training Programs Actor Presentations began annually spotlighting graduating talent at League-affiliated schools including Carnegie Mellon University and Yale School of Drama for an industry audience in New York. In recent decades, many more schools have created their own iterations of these events by annually traveling to New York and L.A., renting out theaters and inviting industry types to view their students' work. Thirty-five to 40 schools present in Los Angeles alone each year, Prestige Talent Agency vp Mark Scroggs estimates. Despite the rise in popularity of these events, however, "the actual showcase presentation hasn't changed much in a quarter century — until now," Warshofsky says.

In March, schools facing the impossibility of gathering a theatrical audience together in the coming months had to move quickly to transform the format. Professors at the Yale Drama School, the alma mater of Lupita Nyong'o, decided to uphold its tradition of pairing actors together for showcase scenes. Most students didn't end up performing the original scenes they'd begun preparing before the pandemic: "Some of the [scenes] are from plays, but most of them are from television and film, which we felt would show off the actors [over Zoom]," Yale Acting Department chair Walton Wilson says. Paired actors performing from divergent locations tried to match lighting and décor in the background, to the best of their abilities. (Still hopeful the Class of 2020 can gather eventually, Wilson reserved room in his department's budget to stage a theatrical showcase when COVID-19 restrictions eventually lift.)

Julliard's actor presentations, which screened for viewers live on Monday, May 18, also presented two actors per scene over video chat. While students didn't change the material they had begun preparing pre-COVID-19 for the new medium, "We found ways to bring the [scenes] to life" over the computer screen, the school's Richard Rodgers director of the drama division, Evan Yionoulis, says. Actors used backdrops in their personal spaces or made use of their home's kitchens or walls for performances, she explains. Paired students even played with the side-by-side nature of the video-chat medium by seemingly throwing objects at each other or clinking glasses.

In the past, USC undergraduates have also primarily performed two-person scenes at their showcase; this year, however, all were advised to perform a monologue to suit the new video format. Most students used their iPhones to shoot their scenes in natural light, says Dan Shaner, an assistant professor of theater practice at USC and the head of the School of Dramatic Arts Career Center. "I encouraged them to go outside or find a nice room in their home, something that was visually interesting and pleasing," he adds. "I'm very, very pleased and excited by the way that it turned out." (Warshofsky, who oversees the graduate student showcase, also instructed his students to perform monologues for their video.)

Carnegie Mellon's School of Drama managed to squeeze in the school's actor showcase in New York in early March, though May dates in Los Angeles were canceled. In its place, the school is updating actors' individual webpages with examples of their work and converted a separate annual showcase, which brings all School of Drama students together with industry figures, to take place exclusively online. "I think actually we're going to get the students in front of more people than we would have before," Anne Mundell, an associate professor of scene design at the school says of the "E-Showcase," which took place from May 18 to May 20, "but we have to be very programmatic about it, rather than relying on chance meetings during a party." Organizers of the event created separate chat rooms during that students could mill in and out of in order to speak with industry figures.

One group of talent representatives, meanwhile, has been helping students' work circulate more widely within the industry. In mid-March, Scroggs posed the question, "Is there anything we can do for these kids?" to a Facebook group of industry reps that he is a part of. A few members of the group began participating in conference calls to discuss and, by late March, they had gotten in contact with the founder of Breakdown Services, the ubiquitous end-to-end casting services system. Breakdown's Gary Marsh, it turned out, had already been working to present and distribute school showcases online via his company's Eco Cast audition system. Marsh arranged a demo, which impressed Scroggs' group so much that joined Marsh in recommending to schools that they submit their video showcases to the platform for added visibility. UCLA, Pace University and the University of Texas are among the around 40 schools have since signed on. Each showcase has been getting about one thousand click-throughs each from members of his service, per Marsh. (The arts network Acceptd is also distributing senior showcases.)

Some representatives believe that, even after social distancing measures fade, schools will begin to incorporate video into at least part of their showcase models. On-demand video allows agents and managers to avoid the hassle of attending a live event, to choose the time when they view the showcase, to take meetings with students over a longer period and to see actors who they are considering for television or film projects onscreen. Some, like Scroggs, also argue that the online model democratizes showcases by introducing reps to schools whose presentations they otherwise wouldn't attend and by allowing schools that aren't local to save money on travel and accommodations. "Three-quarters of the auditions now are self-tapes, at least, even before all this happened," he adds.

Though he's enthusiastic about online showcases, the head of DDO's theatrical division, Anthony Boyer, whose agency previously signed Dynasty's Jade Payton and Joshua Andrés Rivera from Steven Spielberg's upcoming West Side Story after meeting both in university showcases, notes one downside: "The truth is it still is going to favor people," he says of online showcases. "If you're in a bad housing situation or you don't have a lot of money and you can't afford good recording equipment, that is really difficult." He adds that video showcases allow representatives to select candidates rather than watch all of them, so he is making a point of viewing every performance that a school offers.

Drama department professors themselves are, for the most part, considering working with video again for their showcases in the future. "If it's something that you can do well, I think it could be of great use to the actors, potentially," Yale's Wilson says. "This has been a good lesson for [students] to help them market themselves in the right way," USC's Shaner adds. "It's really forced them in a lot of ways to be more resourceful than they normally would be."

Boyer notes that schools that are interested in combining in-person and video performances for their showcases might look to one peer institution that has already pioneered one dual format: Azusa Pacific University. The Azusa, California-based school has, over the last few years, created a webseries of graduating students for reps to view while also performing live monologues at the American Film Institute in the spring. "It just answers a lot of questions: It gives you a sense of [students'] personality but also a sense of their on-camera work," Boyer says. "Those are things I would love to see schools lean into."

'American Horror Story' Season 10 Delayed to 2021 at FX

FX is solidifying its future.

The basic cable network, ahead of corporate parent Disney's virtual upfront presentation to ad buyers, has firmed up its slate through 2021. The cabler on Tuesday revealed that the forthcoming 10th season of American Horror Story, which traditionally bows in October timed to Halloween, has been delayed to 2021. The John Landgraf-led outlet also confirmed it has ordered an anthology spinoff from creator Ryan Murphy, though no additional details were provided about the hourlong offshoot.

FX, like nearly every linear network, has had to delay multiple series from its schedule in the wake of the near industry-wide production shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic. Those included Fargo, A Teacher, Y: The Last Man and animated comedy Archer were all expected to launch this year. Whether any of those make it to air this year depends on the timeframe for when it's safe for productions to resume work.

As for the next installment of Murphy's Emmy-winning American Crime Story anthology, Impeachment, the series was in pre-production and could potentially still make a 2020 premiere, though that also depends on factors that involve the current state of the world.

Still, FX used its time with ad buyers to outline its slate through 2021, though there were no premiere dates or timeframes for any of the new and returning series on its sprawling lineup. Shows included on FX's roster included Pamela Adlon's Better Things and cable's longest-running scripted series, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, though both series are awaiting formal renewals. Sources say both shows are a shoo-in to return, despite the lack of official pickup from the network.  

Here's FX's roster, including docuseries, of programming expected to air through the end of 2021, with additional shows that are currently in developing also potentially joining the lineup: the newly ordered American Horror Stories anthology, American Horror Story, Archer, Atlanta, Better Things, Breeders, Cake, Dave, Fargo, Hip Hop Untold, Hysterical, Impeachment: American Crime Story, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Mayans M.C., Mr Inbetween, The Old Man, Pose, Pride, Snowfall, A Teacher, untitled B.J. Novak anthology, What We Do In The Shadows, The Weekly, A Wilderness of Error and Y: The Last Man.

FX American Horror Story

Banff: Jennifer Connelly Talks Return to TV in 'Snowpiercer' Adaptation

The Oscar winner told the media festival's virtual panel she jumped at playing a female lead in TNT's reboot of the 2013 feature film of the same name.

Jennifer Connelly, the Oscar winner for A Beautiful Mind, said it took playing a female lead on TNT's adaptation of the feature film Snowpiercer to get her back to working in television.

"There's great work being done in television right now. I like the idea that I can stay awhile. And I like that there was a woman at the heart of this whole darn thing. That was pretty compelling," Connelly on Tuesday told a Banff World Media Festival online panel.

Snowpiercer, based on the 2013 film by Bong Joon Ho, is about a massive train that carries what's left of humanity around the world after an attempt to stop global warming leads to a new Ice Age. Connelly plays Melanie Cavill, a first-class passenger who works as the Voice of the Train, responsible for making the daily announcements over its PA system.

A TV role was a departure for Connelly, who has mostly starred in features. In movies, the screenplay morphs a little, but remains a finite document, she told the Banff panel. "Here we were getting scripts as we're working. It's a different collaboration with the writers," she explained.

Daveed Diggs, the Tony Award-winning star of Hamilton who has appeared on TV shows like Black-ish and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, also talked about changing speeds as an actor while starring on Snowpiercer, which was also picked up by Netflix. "I never spent that much time on a TV set. I had never done that many stunts before. I'd never worked on a big sets and a super-high budget," Diggs said of joining the project.

The TV adaptation of Bong's postapocalyptic thriller-satire calls for an eponymous global-circuiting train, a 1,001-car ark of humanity, that often had Connelly wondering where she was next due to work on set. "There's so many sets. Outside they [train cars] all look the same. Two seasons in, I'm always lost," she told the Banff panel.

Added showrunner Graeme Manson: "The design had to reflect the confined space. It just adds to the sense of place and connected sets. It was one of the biggest challenges and one of the biggest jobs for all of us, to go onto the sets and lose yourself on those trains."

Banff's online-only festival kicked off Tuesday with the master class by Snowpiercer creative and cast after the in-person Banff festival was forced to go virtual by the coronavirus pandemic. The 2020 Banff World Media Festival was initially set to run June 14-17 in the Canadian Rockies, but will continue through the summer with virtual events.

Virtual Cannes Market Unveils Works-in-Progress Titles

Four festivals have picked projects in post-production that will screen for buyers, sales agents and festival programmers.

The Cannes Marché du Film has unveiled the titles that will screen as part of its works-in-progress section "Goes to Cannes" for this year's online-only film market.

Four film festivals — Hong Kong's Asia Film Financing Forum, Poland's New Horizons International Film Festival, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and the NFDC Film Bazaar from India – will showcase a selection of curated projects, all in post-production, that are looking for sales agents, international distributors or a slot in future film festivals.

The films themselves are as varied and diverse as the festivals that selected them. The New Horizons' selection includes Piotr Stasik's The Moths, a survival tale in which a group of young boys escape their digital detox camp to hide in the woods, without speaking to one another. After 20 days they are found again but one of the boys is missing. Thessaloniki's picks include Esperanto from director Stratis Chatzielenoudas, a look at canary breeders which is billed as an intimate and atmospheric film essay about communication and self-isolation.

The Asian Film Forum has picked, among other titles, Fei Pang Wong's Dear immigrants: What Was Your First Meal?, a documentary that looks at the lives of immigrants to Hong Kong through their first culinary experience in their new homeland. And the NFDC has included among its selection for Cannes Shankar’s Fairies from director Irfana Majumdar, a drama set in 1960s India that follows the friendship between a little girl born into a privileged family and a village man who is the family servant.

The "Goes to Cannes" selection will screen online on June 22 and June 23 as part of the virtual Marché du Film, which runs June 22-June 26. For the first time this year, industry professionals attending the online screenings will be able to organize one-on-one virtual speed meetings on June 24 with the project reps, from between 9 am to 9 pm local time.

"While film festivals around the world are going through a transformation never experienced before, we wish to rally together to bring positive change to the film industry," said Marché executive director Jérôme Paillard. "We are proud to offer these major festivals and markets an online platform to help the filmmakers reach their audience in these unprecedented times."

Richard Herd, Mr. Wilhelm on 'Seinfeld,' Dies at 87

He also appeared on 'T.J. Hooker' and three 'Star Trek' shows and on the big screen in 'All the President's Men' and 'The China Syndrome.'

Richard Herd, the venerable character actor who played Mr. Wilhelm on Seinfeld and appeared in such notable films as All the President's Men and The China Syndrome, died Tuesday. He was 87.

Herd died of cancer-related causes at his home in Los Angeles, his wife of 40 years, actress Patricia Crowder Herd, told The Hollywood Reporter.

With his commanding features, Herd often portrayed men of authority during his five-decade career, and in his first recurring role in a TV series, he played Captain Sheridan, William Shatner's boss, on the ABC action cop drama T.J. Hooker. 

The Boston native also made a name for himself in the world of science fiction by portraying Supreme Commander John in the 1983 NBC miniseries V and its sequel a year later; the Klingon L'Kor on Star Trek: The Next Generation; Admiral William Noyce on seaQuest 2032; and Admiral Owen Paris on Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Renegades.

Herd played the ex-CIA agent who led the team that broke into the Watergate Hotel in All the President's Men (1976), and when a shift supervisor (Jack Lemmon) takes control of a nuclear plant in The China Syndrome (1979), he was the plant's scheming chairman trying to cover up its problems. 

Herd also portrayed Gen. Omar Bradley in the lauded 1979 ABC miniseries Ike: The War Years and military men in Private Benjamin (1980) and Sgt. Bilko (1996). 

One of those journeymen actors known more by his face (some say he resembled Karl Malden) than by name, Herd appeared 11 times over three Seinfeld seasons as Wilhelm, the clueless New York Yankees exec who supervised George Costanza (Jason Alexander) after he landed a job with George Steinbrenner's team as an assistant to the traveling secretary.

In the 1996 episode "The Bottle Deposit," Wilhelm goes into great detail about a secret project he wants George to do, not realizing that George has missed most of what he was saying. The more George tries to uncover the details, the more cryptic they become. 

George is saved when Wilhelm goes off his meds, completes the project himself and gives George the credit.

In "The Checks" from 1996, George discovers that the company that cleans the Yankee Stadium office carpets is a front for a religious cult and gets upset when the group shows no interest in recruiting him. When the crew arrives for a cleaning, its newest recruit is Wilhelm, now calling himself "Tania" (the pseudonym Patty Hearst adopted during her kidnapping). Flabbergasted, George asks the crew head, "Him, you brainwashed? What's he got that I don't have?" 

"He was always doing things that never got done and always going over to Mr. Steinbrenner and apologizing to him," Herd said of Wilhelm in a 2016 interview. "Some days, he had clear days, other days he didn't. He was very vulnerable. He had an odd sense of humor. … He was way out there on occasion. I've taken a few trips out there, so I know all about it."

Wilhelm ultimately got the last laugh on George. In 1997's "The Millennium," George is offered a job as a scout with the New York Mets — but only if the Yankees fire him. Try as he might, he can't get this to happen — that is, until he ties the team's championship trophy to the bumper of his car and drags it around the stadium parking lot while shouting derogatory slurs about the ball club.

Steinbrenner (voiced by Larry David) is all set to fire George, but Wilhelm comes in and takes the fall, telling the owner that it was all his idea. The Boss fires Wilhelm instead, but he doesn't care. He has a new job … as a scout for the Mets.

Herd said he was surprised to be cast because of something he mentioned during his 1995 audition. "It was easy. It was fun. It was very inviting," he recalled. "And as I left, I turned around and said, 'Look, I have to tell you this. I hope it doesn't make a difference, but I'm a Red Sox fan.' And they all threw their scripts at me. The next day they said, 'Come on out and play with us.'"

Richard Thomas Herd Jr. was born on Sept. 26, 1932, in Boston. His father, a train engineer, died at an early age. His mother, Katherine, remarried, and the family relocated to Brockton, Massachusetts, where his stepfather worked in an auto shop. His mom instilled in him a love of music and the arts, he noted.

Herd survived a serious illness as a child and said the experience helped shape his career.

"I had osteomyelitis, a serious bone infection, and almost didn't survive," he told The Patriot Ledger in a 2015 interview. "I became ill in second grade and went to the Cotting School, as it's now known, in Lexington, for young people with various ailments. I was in and out of Boston Children's Hospital. Lying there, month after month, you become very stoic. It really stimulated my imagination, and I think actually helped me later as an actor."

Herd was saved when he became one of the first patients to receive the recently introduced drug penicillin.

He had a two-year apprenticeship at the Boston Summer Theatre and got the opportunity to learn from the legendary actor Claude Rains.

"One evening, he heard a group of us rehearsing Shakespeare and offered to come in early each night to work with us," Herd said. "He taught me you shouldn't just get involved with the language, but look ahead for the intent and direction of the character you are portraying."

After a brief stint in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, Herd headed to New York, studied acting and art and built a career on the stage. He made his film debut (as did Arnold Schwarzenegger) in the 1970 cult classic Hercules in New York.

When Richard Long died in 1974 before filming on Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men began, Herd took his place.

Herd later appeared on the big screen in F.I.S.T. (1979), The Onion Field (1979), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). 

Herd continued to act into his 80s, appearing in A Christmas in New York (2016), Get Out (2017) and The Silent Natural (2020) and on such series as Rizzoli & Isles, Shameless and Hawaii Five-O. He also was a member of the ensemble on the 2012 prank show Betty White's Off Their Rockers.

Herd was a painter and a founding member of The Enterprise Blues Band, made up of castmembers from various Star Trek series. The group released the albums Enterprise Blues and Intergalactic Roots Music in 2004 and '05.

Survivors also include his daughter Erica, son Rick and stepdaughter Alicia.

CBS, NBC, ABC Affiliates: No Ownership Opportunities for Women Unless Supreme Court Intervenes

If there are no television stations, then there can be no female- and minority-owned television stations. That's the big argument from affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — pitching a bit of deregulation to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The high court will soon be deciding whether or not to review media ownership rules. Specifically, the FCC wishes to abandon a ban on a single company owning a local newspaper and broadcast station in a single market as well as a restriction on common ownership of more than a single top-four-rated television station in a given market. The media regulator has repeatedly been restrained from nixing those rules by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which most recently told the FCC to do a better job explaining how allowing more concentration would lead to more female and minority ownership of media outlets.

So how would a single company owning, say, both an NBC station and a Fox station in Chicago or St. Louis or Houston be a welcome development for minorities?

Well, according to this amicus brief (read here), the Third Circuit has overlooked new competitors who operate "largely unregulated."

"Today, broadcasters' businesses remain subject to limits on ownership that originated years before the Internet became widely available, before Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix formed part of the media landscape, and before Apple's iPhone allowed tens of millions of viewers to access video programming on demand on handheld screens," states the brief. "The incongruity between today's video landscape and the marketplace envisioned by the ownership rules in 1975, 1999, or even 2006 is staggering, and the consequences of that discrepancy will prove dire for local television broadcasters if the path is not cleared for the FCC to make much-needed updates to its ownership rules."

If premonitions of a dire situation isn't sufficiently alarmist, after singing the praises of local TV outlets in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the high court is told that "local television broadcasters cannot remain in business if they cannot compete in an increasingly crowded and fast-growing marketplace that offers viewers a multitude of sources of news, information, and entertainment programming."

The TV affiliates say they can generate efficiencies and cost savings though common ownership of big TV stations in single markets as well as new television-newspaper combinations. Let the FCC throw out the old rules and there will be an expansion of news-gathering, they say.

And if not?

"Unless the Commission is allowed to make predictive judgments and critically needed updates to its local media ownership rules without judicial second-guessing of the agency's expert judgments, it is only a matter of time before many local television stations go the way of local newspapers," write attorneys from Brooks, Pierce as well as Cooley LLP. "No opportunities for women, minorities, or anyone else will be available if local media outlets are non-existent."