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Debate Ratings Record?; Advice for Lester Holt; IMDb's Age Law; Why LAX Is So Terrible

September 26, 2016

What's news: 80M? 100M? Even more viewers for the debate? Plus: SAG-AFTRA gets a big win with a law allowing actors to remove ages from IMDb, debating whether $35M is a strong opening for Magnificent Seven and Woody Allen's first TV show reviewed. — Matthew Belloni, Erik Hayden and Jennifer Konerman.

BIG QUESTION: Will the first Clinton v. Trump debate nab Super Bowl-like ratings?

The context, from Michael O'Connell: Some politicos and pundits, whose unchecked enthusiasm has the subtlety of a red-white-and-blue lobster bib, have speculated that north of 100 million viewers might tune into the showdown. Such a number would surge past all previous presidential debates and put the event on par with the Super Bowl — that's a not terribly realistic prospect.

February's Super Bowl 50, the third most-watched telecast in U.S. history, averaged 111.9 million viewers. That's 85 percent of the number of Americans who even bothered to vote in the 2012 election. Over the course of last three presidential elections, the first debates averaged 60.7 million viewers. And those were in years when considerably fewer Americans were consuming their media on other platforms.

Matt's ratings guess: Prognosticators have guessed anywhere between 80 million to 100 million or beyond (80 million tuned in for the first Carter-Reagan debate in 1980, currently the high mark). But don't underestimate the digital factor. The debate will be streamed on news and entertainment sites, which should cut into the overall TV viewership numbers. It's also taking place at 6pm Pacific, when many west coasters are still in their cars. My prediction: 78 million.

Also:

— Will Trump call Clinton "Crooked Hillary" to her face? Marisa Guthrie notes: In a "TRUMP Debate Preparation Survey," sent out in a recent fundraising email, was this question: “Do you think Trump should refer to Hillary as ‘Crooked Hillary’ on stage? Yes; No; No opinion; Other, please specify.” One wonders if "please specify" means he’s soliciting for additional nicknames.

— Will Lester Holt avoid getting Lauer'd? The new format for presidential debates, instituted in 2012, calls for the moderator to be less intrusive and facilitate give-and-take between the candidates. But observers note that this actually makes the moderators’ job harder.

↱ Quoted, Jim Lehrer, who moderated 12 presidential debates: "The moderator is not there to show off how smart, or tough he or she is. The more a moderator can stay out of it and facilitate the discussion between the candidates, the better off everybody is going to be." ↲

— Will there be commercials? No, it's ad-free. "Some advertisers want to take advantage of those impressions that are available but others want to steer clear of the whole thing," says Sam Armando, lead investment director at media firm Mediavest-Spark.

— Do newspaper endorsements matter this time? The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times both ran their big "Hillary Clinton for President" editorials in the Sunday print papers prior to the big event. Trump still has no major paper backing him.

— Will Gennifer Flowers really be at the debate? It doesn't look like it. But Mark Cuban will be.

— And one more thing. Stephen Galloway writes: "It’s one of the supreme ironies that an industry populated by Democrats has laid the groundwork for their party’s possible defeat. If Donald Trump becomes the 45th president, some of the most talented men and women in entertainment should take a good hard look in the mirror."

Meanwhile...

^President Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio are set to discuss climate change at the White House on Oct 3. Afterward, DiCaprio's new climate doc Before the Flood will be shown in what is being billed as a "first-of-its-kind film screening." In the White House-released photo above, what do you think the duo are talking about? Send a caption to newsletter@thr.com and we may include the response.

How 'Magnificent' Is $35M

The Magnificent Seven galloped to a domestic debut of $35M, but was it enough? Pamela McClintock's box office wrap:

The tentpole placed No. 1 in North America and corralled one of the top openings of all time for a Western, not accounting for inflation. And overseas, Antoine Fuqua's film rode to $19.2M from 63 markets for a foreign cume of $24.8M and global total of $59.8M.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros.' animated family film Storks, the weekend's other new nationwide offering, came in No. 2 with a modest $21.8M.

At the speciality box office: Disney's Queen of Katwe, in 52 theaters, earned an estimated $305,000 for a location average of $5,865. The inspirational drama skewed female (54 percent), while nearly 30 percent of ticket buyers were over the age of 50. Full weekend chart.

► THR Takeaway: Is $35M a strong opening for a $90M action film starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt? That's debatable. True, Westerns are a tough sell. But Denzel is considered one of the few stars who can still open an action pic (Seven is only his third best opening after The Equalizer and Safe House). And tracking had predicted a $40M bow. The key will be whether film drops more than 50 percent in its second week and how it performs overseas.

Elsewhere in film...

↱ Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, reviewed. Tim Burton's latest is about a boy who travels back in time to discover a World War II-era school for eccentric children, presided over by a shape-shifting headmistress (Eva Green). Chief critic Todd McCarthy: "Close, but no cigar." ↲

► Wanda opens China theme park amid battle with Disney. The company's $3.6 billion theme park in the city of Hefei, the capital of China's eastern Anhui Provence, opened Saturday. The development is the second of 15 mega-resorts planned by 2020.

► Wolf of Wall Street lawsuit update: Red Granite Pictures may still be under investigation by the federal government, but the company has one less legal nightmare to worry about now that a civil racketeering lawsuit has been dropped.

► Bulgari family nabs stake in Italy's Leone Film Group. Maite Bulgari, wife of Paolo Bulgari, chairman of the luxury goods company, is buying a 10.6 percent stake from shareholders in Leone Film Group, which owns the movies of late Italian director Sergio Leone.

► Changes at Sony’s marketing division: Michael Pavlic, who has headed domestic creative advertising for the past two years, is leaving the studio. Meanwhile, Josh Greenstein, president of worldwide marketing and distribution, is adding three new executives.

► R.I.P., Bill Nunn. The actor best known for playing Radio Raheem in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing passed away at 62. Lee shared the news, writing that the actor died Saturday morning in his hometown of Pittsburgh. Obit.

Podcast: Ruth Negga on Loving. The best actress Oscar contender speaks with Scott Feinberg about getting cut out of 12 Years a Slave and tapping into "the spirit" of one half of the couple at the center of the landmark 1967 interracial marriage Supreme Court case. Listen here.

A Landmark IMDb Age Law?

Matt writes: For years, actors (and their representatives) have complained about how hard it is to get IMDb and Studio System to change wrong age information in profiles. Now, thanks to the California legislature, an actor can simply ask that his or her age just be taken down entirely.

In a big win for SAG-AFTRA, a bill signed Saturday by Gov. Brown requires online subscription databases to remove ages upon request. Caveat: the person requesting the removal must be a member of the site.

Backers, including SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris (who wrote a THR column lobbying for the law and citing her own experience on Beverly Hills, 90210), say the law will combat "age discrimination" in Hollywood.

They note the law is designed not to protect the major stars whose ages are all over the Internet anyway but the up-and-coming and lesser known actors who might lose an opportunity if a casting director knows he or she is 25, not 18 as the character is written.

But is the law constitutional? Already, the Internet Association, which lobbied against the bill, is saying California is "suppressing factual information on the Internet." We'll have a full legal analysis in tomorrow's newsletter but for now let's just say this fight likely isn't over.

Elsewhere in TV...

► Matt LeBlanc gets new Top Gear deal. The actor was confirmed today by the BBC as the host of the 24th and 25th seasons of its flagship motoring show, set to air next year under a two-season deal.

► ABC's Quantico beheaded a major political figure. It was shocking network television last night. No spoilers, but star Priyanka Chopra and showrunner Josh Safran speak about the brutal ending of the season two premiere here.

► NBC's Superstore gets back-nine order. The pickup comes just a day after the single-cam series launched its second season on a new night and time: Thursdays at 8 p.m.

↱ Woody Allen's first TV show, reviewed. Chief critic Tim Goodman's take on Amazon's Crisis in Six Scenes: "It's pretty obvious that he did it for the money, it was probably a bit of a headache and he prefers films — which likely means there won't be a second season." ↲

► Ride With Norman Reedus renewed. Like season one, the AMC show's 2017 return will consist of six episodes. The series features motorcycle enthusiast Reedus traveling the world with different guests each week.

► CBS' Sunday Morning hires Jane Pauley. She succeeds Charles Osgood, who has anchored the program for 22 years and has been at CBS News for 45 years. Her first broadcast in the new role will be on Oct. 9.

► R.I.P., Arnold Palmer. The gentleman golfer from Latrobe, Pa., whose thrilling, go-for-broke style made him the first television superstar of his sport and earned him generations of devoted fans, died Sunday. He was 87. Full obit.

Jann Wenner is selling nearly half of Rolling Stone. Wenner is planning to sell to Singapore-based BandLab Technologies, a startup digital music company that was founded by Kuok Meng Ru, a son of agriculture-business mogul Kuok Khoon Hong. Details.

Why Is LAX So Terrible?

^An evergreen question most Angelenos ponder. But now, really, LAX is trying to improve its status as one of the world's least enticing airports, as Peter Flax finds. Here's how:

There is hope in the not-too-distant future. Several big construction projects are underway to bring the airport, which is landlocked, historically underfunded and uses terminals built during the 1960s, into the 21st century.

That includes improved terminals (the ongoing $14 billion modernization plan is tackling Terminals 1, 7 and 8), a new Metro station far closer than the Green Line's Aviation/LAX stop, a centralized rental-car facility, a new station to siphon shuttle buses away from the terminals — all connected by a sophisticated tram system.

The airlines have plans, too, including American's Flagship Lounge for business and first-class passengers, set to open in 2017, and a $1.9 billion project to move Delta into radically modernized Terminals 2 and 3 that recently was approved by airport officials. In a decade or so, we'll be golden.

Or, an alternative take: "LAX just sucks," says Paul Guyot, an exec producer on TNT's The Librarians. "The traffic is horrendous. I purposely schedule flights to avoid the worst traffic, but it still can take 20 minutes to cover the last few miles. After you get there, even if you fly first class and get in one of those 'fancy people' lines, you still have to do the Bataan Death March to get through security."