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College football ratings are down; should networks be concerned?
A thoughtful college football viewership analysis by The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel, published Tuesday, has been circulating in sports media circles. The top-line figures don’t look great for the sport through the first eight weeks. Average viewership is down by 6% for games airing on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and ESPN. Last season, games on those…
Packers’ Recently Released RB Gets Cowboys Workout 2 Weeks Later
The Green Bay Packers‘ recently released running backs has attracted interest from a classic NFC franchise.Rookie running back Damon Bankston, who was on Green Bay’s practice squad for portions of the 2026 season, worked out for the Dallas Cowboys on Tuesday, Nov. 3, just a couple weeks after leaving the Packers.NFL reporter Aaron Wilson reported […] The post Packers’ Recently Released RB Gets Cowboys Workout 2 Weeks Later appeared first on HEAVY.
USA TODAY Sports National High School Esports Championship standings: Week 3
Gadsden and Bob Jones are tied atop the USA TODAY Sports High School Esports National Championship standings after three weeks of competition.
‘Most Bizarre Health Situation,’ ‘Really Sad to See’ – NBA Fans React to Kristaps Porziņģis ‘Contemplating’ Retirement Amid Mysterious Health Struggles
Kristaps Porziņģis has not been at the Golden State Warriors’ facility since early October, and the question of whether he will suit up for them again has followed the team through the opening weeks of the season. On Wednesday, it also became a question about his paychecks.
Vikings May Be Cooling on Star Running Back Trade
The Minnesota Vikings have been linked to one of the biggest names on the trade market for weeks, but it appears the Jonathan Taylors of the world my cost too much.
Cook County Public Health: Vaccinate Now Before the Holidays - Cook County Department of Public Health
As families make plans for holiday gatherings, health officials say now is a good time to get vaccinated against flu, COVID-19 and RSV. "It takes two to three weeks for respiratory vaccinations to provide maximum protection in vaccinated individuals. So, this is a perfect time to get vaccinated before gathering with family and friends for Thanksgiving," said Dr. Kiran Joshi, chief operating officer of Cook County Department of Public Health.
AI Teammates Launches Ongoing AI Implementation Program for Mid-Market Business Owners
Program builds a working AI system in the first 6 weeks, then continues as an ongoing operating partnership for owners of $1M to $20M businessesSilicon Valley, California--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2026) - AI Teammates, founded by Alice Y. Chen, has launched the AI Architecture Method, a structured implementation program that builds and operates AI systems on behalf of business owners rather than training them to build their own.Image Credit: AI TeammatesTo view an enhanced version of this..
Sean 'Diddy' Combs' prison release date moved up following transfer
Weeks after Sean "Diddy" Combs was hospitalized for a head injury suffered while serving time in federal prison, his release date has moved up. The disgraced music and alcohol mogul
Pacers News: Indiana Finds Bright Spot Amidst Injury Woes
The Indiana Pacers' news cycle lately has consisted of injuries; however, following the contest against the Hawks, Indiana may have found a diamond in the rough. The Pacers' main story for the start of the season has been their injury-plagued roster, including Tyrese Haliburton, missing at least two weeks due to a hamstring strain. In …
Maura Higgins Looks Back on ‘One of the Toughest’ Weeks on ‘DWTS’
Maura Higgins opened up about her “lowest” week on Dancing with the Stars. On Monday, Nov. 2, the Love Island alum shocked fans when she and her professional dance partner, Mark Mallas, scored last du...
The Last Disney+ Original?
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Before we get going, I wanted to remind readers about how I plan to keep your trust while I add advertising to this newsletter. As you’ve no doubt noticed, I’m running ads now, but the danger is that it could impact my analysis and writing. I have a list of sponsors on my About Page, so if you think I’m biased, you can check out who’s sponsored this newsletter! This is something that I’m not sure anyone else in digital media does (if you’re a writer or media outlet and you do this, let me know and I’ll shout you out!) but it’s something I’d love to see embraced by the entire industry. Sunlight, i.e. transparency, is often the best disinfectant. Okay, on to this week’s issue. We (finally) have another major Disney+ TV show to talk about, so that’s my main focus for today. Plus, we had a lot of new shows come out, including the fourth seasons of The Diplomat and Tulsa King! And Love is Blind! The Lowdown! Also, four (four!) straight-to-streaming films came out this week, featuring a lot of big names and celebrities, so I’m going to look at those. All that, mixed news for the WNBA, Reacher ends its run on the charts, Skydance does well in September viewership, NYU’s Sundance dominance, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of October 12th to October 18th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Television - Disney+’s Porridge Problem Listen, per my headline, VisionQuest isn’t the last Disney+ Original. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s not. They have other MCU shows in development. Well, maybe one: But it sure feels like the end of an era. I’d call it their “porridge too hot” era, to quote myself from The Ringer. I told Ben Lindbergh that Disney+ seemingly couldn’t figure out the right amount of content. In the heights of the Streaming Bubble Era (circa 2019 to 2022), they started releasing an insane amount of TV shows. After their growth slowed, they’re down to two or three shows a year, and that might be down to 1 by 2027. Here’s my TV shows by year chart: Even at the time, I thought Disney was making too many shows (that cost too much). Today? They’re definitely making too few shows (though the budgets are more in check, at least according to the reporting). Porridge too hot, porridge too cold; too many shows, now not enough. Which makes evaluating VisionQuest so interesting. This show didn’t have a great lead-in, whether it be a Marvel Cinematic Universe film (the last non-Sony-produced-Spider-Man flick came out The Fantastic Four from July of 2025) or Marvel Cinematic Universe TV show (the two this year were Wonder Man back in January and _Daredevil: Born Again_in May, both of which underwhelmed). And so far, VisionQuest hasn’t quite recaptured the MCU Originals glory, but it has some signs of sparks. First, it made Samba TV, though at a lowly ninth place. At least it made it, a feat some other Marvel shows didn’t accomplish. (Ironheart landed on the Samba TV charts one week at tenth place, but Wonder Man and Daredevil: Born Again both missed.) VisionQuest also made Luminate, though with only 3.0 and 7.6 million hours. But it missed Nielsen in its first week. The best news might be its 7.8 on IMDb, on 12K reviews so far, great numbers, even for a superhero show. Looking at those numbers, this show will really need to pick up in future weeks—and it may since it’s coming out weekly—or Disney will have another disappointment on its hands. Disney+ binge-released their last few shows to try to boost numbers, but that meant shows like Iron Heart and Wonder Man didn’t last long on the charts. _Daredevil: Born Again’s_last season missed entirely (though it came out weekly). Here’s the Disney+ Originals by totals: And for a fun new look, here are those same shows, rearranged by the years they came out: That really shows that, in addition to Disney+ releasing fewer shows, those shows just don’t hit like they once did. If I had to offer one main explanation, it’s that Marvel Studios moved away from characters who starred in the Avengersmovies (The Scarlett Witch, Vision, Hawkeye, Loki, Falcon, Winter Soldier) to characters who didn’t (Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Iron Heart, Wonder Man, Daredevil). It sounds trite, but more popular IP tends to do better than less popular IP. In Marvel’s case, beloved, decades-old characters trump newer ones. And yes, I think this is a problem for Disney. The failure of Marvel TV shows to linger for weeks on the charts, unlike in 2021 and 2022, explains why Disney’s share of the charts has plummeted: That’s a strategic issue. Yes, these shows are really expensive, but without them, Disney+ will struggle, especially if Disney+ keeps raising prices AND licenses out its shows non-exclusively. My recommendation? Return to the core value proposition, which is Disney+ as “genre HBO”. The goal is six shows a year, coming out weekly, spaced out throughout the year. When a show hits, keep it coming back. Make three to four of those shows Marvel or Star Wars, and fill out the rest with IP swings like Percy Jackson, Goosebumps or something like National Treasure. And make YA-skewing shows like Coven Academy to fill out the schedule. Disney, you can get this porridge just right, er, make the right number of shows. Quick Notes on TV Netflix’s sophomore, er, junior, er, senior season slump abated very, very slightly this week. I speak of The Diplomat, which returned for its fourth season on 15-Oct. Credit where credit is due, this show debuted in April of 2023, and has put out new seasons every year since. Has that helped the viewership? Not really. This season opened to 16.4 million hours, which is down significantly from the first season (21.7 million hours) and down somewhat from the second season (18.0 million hours), but it is up from last year’s 14.2 million hours opening. On Samba TV, it opened to third place; that’s also very good. On Luminate, it opened to 25.0 million hours, which is good, but over thirty million hours is a hit on that platform. Netflix wisely renewed it, since it’s steady and, frankly, Netflix needs hits.1 Paramount+ put out Tulsa King’s fourth season on a Friday. After putting out most of their big, usually-Taylor Sheridan-scripted shows out on Sundays last year, they’ve clearly moved to Fridays going forward. Was this a thought-out strategic change, Netflix mimicry, or a data-inspired move? Tough to say. Fridays are crowded with new movies, but so are Sundays with new shows. Anyways, this one is coming out weekly, and we haven’t seen it hit the Nielsen or Luminate charts yet. But it did make Samba TV at fifth place, which is a good opening. Still, if this doesn’t make Luminate or Nielsen next week, I’d call it a disappointment. Netflix had two unscripted shows hit the charts this week, one a docu-series and one a reality competition show. Tyson is a four-episode docu-series about one of boxing’s most popular fighters, and it made both the Samba TV and Luminate charts, but not Nielsen. That’s a solid run for only four episodes (assuming it didn’t cost an arm and a leg to produce). Netflix’s latest season of Love Is Blind also returned for its eleventh season, which opened to 10.0 million hours, down from previous seasons. It also had 11.0 million hours according to Luminate, roughly in line with the Nielsen numbers. Last issue, I analyzed the triple successes of Below, Carrie and Crystal Lake, noting that all three have done well. I mostly used Nielsen, but all three shows also made Samba TV (see above). Crystal Lake in particular did very well on Luminate, getting 35.0 million hours, top for Peacock among first seasons: The top “show” of the week would have been Thursday Night Football again, at 41.7 million hours. This is still above last year’s game, but it continues the season’s overall downward trend, which happens every year. (Though a big week is coming, based on the news stories I’ve seen.) As I said before, I’ll do a deeper dive on all the October games later this month, with comparisons to previous years. One company is quietly on a roll, when you consider the shows it makes and streams. I speak of Skydance—a point Variety made—noting that it produces Neagley and Reacher for Amazon, along with Paramount+’s Lioness, which means it produced three of the top four shows of September according to Nielsen. By the way, Neagley fell off the Nielsen charts after four weeks, which is a pinch short for how well it started, but it’s still a huge success. (Interestingly, it finished just 7.3 million hours ahead of the cancelled Ride or Die.) The point, though, which I’ve made before, is that Prime Video still has a problem with how many co-productions it buys, most notably _The Boys_from Sony and Reacher/Jack Ryan from Skydance. It’s not a critical flaw—everyone licenses shows—but Amazon still struggles to make its own hits. Reacher finally fell off the Nielsen charts, so here’s its final rank for season four: We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… ...An example of the algorithm NOT picking a film… …whether or not Netflix buys shows simply for the movie poster… ...if East of Eden is above the Obliterated Line... ...what four star-studded straight-to-streaming films didn’t chart... ...and a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you want an idea of just how much content you’d get in a full issue, check out this older issue.
Xbox Made an Alligator-Shaped Series X, and You Can Win It Before GTA 6 Launches
GTA 6 is mere weeks away from launch, and to celebrate, Xbox is bringing the wildlife of Leonida to players’ living rooms with a one-of-a-kind console.
A downtown Royal Oak parking garage has been razed. Now the city is asking developers what’s next.
Demolition on the garage started several weeks ago.
ESPN’s Michael Wilbon Takes Indefinite Leave After Years of Health Warnings: ‘I Should Have Listened’
Tony Kornheiser spent weeks urging Michael Wilbon to take a break from Pardon the Interruption. On November 2, Wilbon took his longtime cohost’s advice. He ... Read More
Jury begins deliberating at Russell Brand's rape and sexual assault trial
Jurors have started deliberating in Russell Brand's trial on charges of rape and sexual assault. After three weeks of evidence, the judge at London’s Southwark Crown Court instructed the jury
It Sure Looks Like BioWare Had A Big N7 Day Blowout Planned Before It Was Shut Down
The Mass Effect studio was shuttered weeks before its annual celebration would have taken place
Merck Animal Health launches nonadjuvanted rabies vaccines for dogs and cats as human exposures rise
NOBIVAC NXT Rabies, available in 1-year and 3-year formulations, arrives weeks after the CDC warned of a nationwide increase in reported human rabies exposures.
USA TODAY Sports Super 10 Georgia high school flag football rankings, Week 7
With just a few weeks left in the regular season, here are the top teams in the latest Georgia flag football rankings.
Flu season began weeks earlier than usual, health officials say
Flu season began weeks earlier than usual across the U.S. health officials are urging people to get the vaccine as they monitor a new strain.
College Democrats and Republicans debate the state of politics before midterms
With the midterm elections just two weeks away, the WashU College Democrats and WashU College Republicans (WUCR) took to Tisch Commons to debate federal and local issues before a 50-person audience.
Stephen A. Smith happy Michael Wilbon is prioritizing his health: ‘This is good news’
While Michael Wilbon’s indefinite leave of absence from ESPN is sad news for many, Stephen A. Smith insists it is a good thing. Less than two weeks after celebrating the 25th anniversary of Pardon The Interruption, Michael Wilbon announced he was stepping away from his ESPN responsibilities to address medical issues. Wilbon insisted this wasn’t…
This year, everyone is going low: Political groups spend 3 times more on negative ads than positive
If you feel like you saw an inordinate amount of negative political ads on your phone or TV the past few weeks, you’re right: Of the $47 million that outside groups have spent on the general election as of Oct. 19, the vast majority has gone to ads attacking opposing candidates rather than touting preferred […]
In an Alaska fishing community, the Dan Sullivan episode takes an ominous turn
In Petersburg, Alaska, nobody has seen Dan J. Sullivan for weeks. Sullivan's rustic home stood dark a day after FBI agents paid a visit to friends who donated to his campaign to unseat the Republican senator with the same first and last name.
UCF begins preparations for Kansas with uncertainty at quarterback
Once again, UCF faces a quarterback quandary. The Knights found themselves forced to make a quarterback change in their 41-9 loss to Baylor on Friday night after starter Keyone Jenkins went down with an ankle injury early in the third quarter. The senior had been dealing with the injury for several weeks, coach Scott Frost said after the game. Alonza Barnett III stepped off the bench to finish ...
Anderson’s music surging
Country music legend and Smithville, Tennessee resident, John David Anderson, has left an untold amount of music that will live on posthumously, despite his early, untimely death almost two weeks
Yaya Diaby expected to miss some time
Buccaneers LB Yaya Diaby on track to miss a few weeks because of sprained MCL
Trump administration promised farmers $15 billion in weeks before midterms
President Donald Trump’s administration has made $15 billion worth of promises to agriculture producers in the last few weeks before the midterm elections.
Zachariah Branch set to miss at least one game
Falcons WR Zachariah Branch sidelined with injury and has a chance to miss multiple weeks
Cashius Howell set to miss multiple weeks
Bengals DE Cashius Howell could be IR candidate after wrist surgery
iOS 27.2.1 Coming Soon, iOS 27.3 Beta Likely Available Tomorrow
Apple has started testing iOS 27.2.1, according to the MacRumors visitor logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions. iOS 27.2.1 should be a minor update that includes bug fixes and/or security patches, including for the iPhone Duo that launched Friday, October 23. We do not know exactly when the update will be released, but usually upcoming iOS versions begin to show up in our logs a few days to a few weeks before they are made available to the public.
Zach Cregger’s RESIDENT EVIL Passed A Massive Box Office Milestone
Even though it’s been overshadowed by other movies at the box office in recent weeks, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil just passed a major milestone. A milestone that only a handful of other horror movies have ever reached, I might add.
Saquon Barkley Reveals Frustrations After Eagles’ Loss vs Commanders
Veteran running back Saquon Barkley is having a tough season. The Philadelphia Eagles star has battled setbacks since Week 2. First, it was a stinger, which didn’t result in any missed games. Two weeks later, Barkley suffered a hamstring injury. After missing two games in a row, Barkley returned to the field for the Eagles’ […] The post Saquon Barkley Reveals Frustrations After Eagles’ Loss vs Commanders appeared first on HEAVY.
I Tried Docking My Phone at Night for 2 Weeks to See If It Could Finally Calm My Early-Morning Anxiety
Better sleep was only half the equation.
Beware the ‘red mirage’ if California Republicans have an election night lead
Don’t be fooled by early election returns. It can take California weeks to tally votes, leading to ‘red mirages’ and ‘blue shifts.’
Europe hit by another wave of grocery store freezer hacks
The new incidents come weeks after a cyberattack on fridges and freezers in France that forced supermarkets to throw away food.
Gears of War: E-Day's "$500 million budget" story oversimplifies The Coalition's contribution to Xbox
Over the past few weeks, I've been investigating Gears of War: E-Day's budgetary discourse ahead of looming, widely expected layoffs. Here's what I've discovered so far.
The curious tale of Virgil van Dijk and Dan Burn
Exactly two weeks ago I wrote an article about Dan Burn and Virgil vak Dijk. Newcastle United had lost 1-0 at home to Aston Villa on the Saturday.
NASA Swift Reentry: Science Ends Below 171 Miles [2026]
NASA Swift reentry is expected within weeks after the telescope dropped below 171 miles and made its last observation on Oct. 20, 2026.
Marlins will Enter Rule 5 Draft Facing Important Roster Questions
The Fish will have to consider some prospects to protect over the next few weeks; the event is scheduled for December 9
Andrew Shue marries Marilee Fiebig, weeks after their exes Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes tied the knot
The couple’s “low-key” ceremony was held at their 92-acre New Jersey estate on Sunday.
Andrew Shue marries Marilee Fiebig, weeks after their exes Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes tied the knot
Andrew Shue and Marilee Fiebig tied the knot in a ‘low-key ceremony’ at their 92-acre New Jersey estate on Sunday, weeks after their respective exes, Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes, got married in Arkansas.
'Three's Company' star Joyce DeWitt recalls final hours with John Ritter
Joyce DeWitt believes she had "divine assistance" in spending time with her "Three's Company" costar John Ritter weeks before he unexpectedly died.
Inde Navarrette mocks Shane Gillis' gym joke in 'SNL' monologue
Three weeks after Gillis complained about women's workout clothes, Navarrette had a response.
Chargers Remain Stubbron in Khalil Mack Trade Plans
The Chicago Bears admitted they reached out to the Los Angeles Chargers front office multiple times, and everyone was just waiting for the trade announcement to drop. It never did.After weeks of Mack-to-Bears reunion and Mack-to-several-other-teams rumors, The Athletic’s Jonathan Jones confirmed that “The Chargers have confounded teams by not engaging in trade talks. The […] The post Chargers Remain Stubbron in Khalil Mack Trade Plans appeared first on HEAVY.
The midterms will test the nation's political direction and confidence
At least some portion of the nation is likely to have its political confidence — and perhaps even its sense of security — tested in the days and weeks ahead. That test could also continue for some time to come.
Mike Matheson Sidelined and Kids Stepping Up for Montreal Canadiens
On Saturday morning at the Bell Centre in Montreal, the media were given a team injury update that included Mike Matheson sidelined for an additional two weeks with a lower-body injury. This would certainly not be received as good news by the Montreal Canadiens. They have already been functioning without top-six forwards Nick Suzuki and …
Lions’ Sam LaPorta Makes Personal Admission About His Contract Situation
Sam LaPorta wants his future in Detroit sorted out, but the Lions front office isn’t making it easy. Determined to land a new deal, the contract standoff between the two sides has heated up over the past couple of weeks, especially after LaPorta’s recent public comment about his future with the franchise. On that note, he […] The post Lions’ Sam LaPorta Makes Personal Admission About His Contract Situation appeared first on HEAVY.
Vikings Get Massive Saquon Barkley Update Amid Trade Rumors
The Minnesota Vikings are being heavily linked to Colts RB Jonathan Taylor as the trade deadline looms. A couple of weeks ago, Saquon Barkley was rumored to be in play as well.As of Saturday morning, the Colts made it clear that they are officially open for business on a Taylor trade. Indianapolis hadn’t made it […] The post Vikings Get Massive Saquon Barkley Update Amid Trade Rumors appeared first on HEAVY.
Trump administration promises US farmers $15 billion in weeks before the midterms
President Donald Trump’s administration has made $15 billion worth of promises to agriculture producers in the last few weeks of the midterm elections.
Giants GM Joe Schoen explains the Jameis Winston extension
Jameis Winston has seen it all through the first seven weeks of the New York Giants season.
Scientists discover a surprising brain benefit of eating peanuts every day
A surprising new study suggests that eating peanuts every day could help support brain health and memory in older adults. Researchers found that consuming about two servings of unsalted, skin-roasted peanuts daily for 16 weeks improved insulin responsiveness in brain regions important for memory, a function that often weakens with age and has been linked to Alzheimer's disease.
Scientists discover a surprising brain benefit of eating peanuts every day
A surprising new study suggests that eating peanuts every day could help support brain health and memory in older adults. Researchers found that consuming about two servings of unsalted, skin-roasted peanuts daily for 16 weeks improved insulin responsiveness in brain regions important for memory, a function that often weakens with age and has been linked to Alzheimer's disease.
Paris FC predicted XI v Monaco: Luca Koleosho out
Paris FC will be without winger Luca Koleosho as they prepare to host AS Monaco at the Stade Jean Bouin on Sunday afternoon. Koleosho, an Italy international who has been in fine form in recent weeks,...
US study finds wildfire smoke's autism link strongest with exposure after 15 weeks of pregnancy
Visible smoke isn't required for exposure; smoke can travel long distances.
‘Heart dropping’: Bride says Metro Detroit mobile bartender won’t refund after selling business
For weeks, Local 4’s Kyla Russell has been hearing from brides who say they were ghosted by wedding vendors on their big day. One name that keeps coming up: Sip of Eden, a mobile bartending service based in metro Detroit.
Malik Nabers Is Giants’ Only True Star Through Seven Weeks
Malik Nabers leads the Giants' midseason awards with 509 yards in four games, proving he is the team's top asset despite injuries and QB changes.
Did you remember the 2026 Arizona Diamondbacks?
Three weeks ago, we asked if you were able to name all the players who took the field for the 2026 Diamondbacks. If you missed that, here’s your chance: you still have a chance to take the test before your eyes stray down to the rest of the article. The rest of us will wait […]
Report: Steelers Star Getting Trade Deadline Interest
As the NFL trade deadline approaches in less than two weeks, a Pittsburgh Steelers fan favorite has been rumored to […]
PENN Entertainment (PENN) Faces An Earnings Test, Is A 35% Discount Enough?
Wall Street is looking for higher earnings and revenue when PENN Entertainment (PENN) posts September quarter results on November 5, even as a negative Earnings ESP hints at softening sentiment around the upcoming report. PENN Entertainment has seen a quick rebound in recent weeks, with a 7-day share price return of 9.66% and a 30-day gain of 8.53%, following a 90-day share price decline of 22.55% and a 1-year total shareholder return that is down 3.40%. Spot fresh momentum ideas around PENN...
Inside Trump’s final two-week campaign sprint across deep-red America
Ballrooms. Cognitive tests. The male physique. President Donald Trump’s closing message to midterm voters has veered into some unexpected places.
Juventus needs to stop hurrying and build with Spalletti
Luciano Spalletti could be facing the sack at Juventus if the club’s results do not improve over the coming weeks. Such a decision would potentially leave the Bianconeri facing another rebuild, cont...
Meta’s Muse Could Upend All Kinds of Businesses. It Hasn’t Yet
Companies have spent the past several weeks trying to reassure investors that Muse and other AI agents pose more of an opportunity than a threat.
Scaring Up Customers for Halloween Streaming
(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) Way back in 2022, I did a deep dive into each streamer’s horror offerings, looking at the top horror film and TV shows, and which streamers had the best library titles and best Halloween landing pages. If you’d like to check out those articles... Way back in 2022, I ranked all the streamers’ Halloween landing pages. I updated my thoughts in 2023... ...and 2024. After taking last year off, I’m back at it again this year. My theory—then and now—is that Halloween landing pages provide a subtle but surprisingly valuable insight into how the streamers position themselves, and what they do well and what they don’t. They show who relies on libraries, whose libraries across TV and film have the most value, who understands how customers want to access those libraries, and, being blunt, which product teams actually put the time in to make a quality holiday user experience. Plus, three “horror” TV shows had big debuts this month! So today, I’ll answer the questions... What are the all-time biggest horror shows and films on streaming? What streamer has the best library? What streamer has the best landing page? And what does this say about the streaming wars today? But first, let’s look at three big new horror shows on streaming... Subscribe Horror TV Has Dominated October So Far In a fun twist this month, three different streamers released three different horror TV shows. Many scary stories come out every October, but the twist is that all three did well: Two of the shows got over 20 million hours, which is just good. You can see that Below is helping Netflix start October/Q4 off well: And that Carrie is a top seven show for Amazon through two weeks: But here’s the crazier note: even though it doesn’t look huge, Crystal Lake is Peacock’s biggest debut yet: Let’s discuss the streaming elephant in the room: two of these shows are based off classic horror IP: Jason and Carrie. So once again, IP works, in theaters and on streaming. It just does. Oddly enough, horror IP doesn’t draw a tenth of the ire that other IP does, even though, arguably, horror films are the original franchise films, starting in the 1930s and continuing on through the slasher film 80s. So horror TV shows are off to a great start. While I’ve written before that horror films do NOT over-perform on streaming, TV shows are a different story. The Top Horror Films and TV Shows on Streaming All Time To start, here are the top first seasons for all streaming TV shows since 2020 (the start of the Streaming Ratings Era): First take: yep, that’s some power laws at work right there. The biggest TV show hits aren’t just bigger than other hit shows, they’re orders of magnitude bigger. Wednesday dwarfs The Last of Us (a big hit!) and is ten times bigger than the next six most popular horror shows. Wow! So yes, horror or horror-adjacent shows can do as well as the top shows on streaming. Wednesday is proof of this. (Though, even Wednesday is more horror-adjacent than proper horror.) Also, note that Below, Carrie and _Crystal Lake_could/should keep moving up the charts. That said, there is some weakness in these numbers. Only eighteen horror first seasons made the charts, which is low. For context, 541 season ones have made the Nielsen originals charts since 2020. Eighteen out of 541 isn’t great! Plus, again, the IP issue. Wednesday and The Last of Us came from popular IP, and It: Welcome to Derry and Goosebumps are spinoffs. Next up, every horror show from season two on: The bad news here? Besides one iconic example, horror shows don’t last long i.e. generate very many seasons. While many straight-to-streaming horror shows were limited series, many weren’t and only four horror shows got to a second season or beyond. That’s a bad hit rate. And yeah, only one horror show made it to a fifth season! This genre is just not elite (on streaming). Okay, on to the top horror films all time (er, since 2020): We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… ...What streamers have the most horror films... ...And how FASTs have embraced horror films... ...How many elite horror films are on linear TV or aren’t on TV at all… ...How streamers make it very, very hard to find horror films… …And a lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you’d like to read more about why you should subscribe, please read this article about the Streaming Ratings Report, why it matters, why you need it, and why we cover streaming ratings best.
Reese Witherspoon Makes Surprising Career Pivot Weeks After Major Business Deal
Reese Witherspoon's major business deal has been followed up with a surprising twist. The post Reese Witherspoon Makes Surprising Career Pivot Weeks After Major Business Deal appeared first on Mandato...
Halle Berry ex's restraining order dissolved, modified visitation stays
A Los Angeles judge dissolves the restraining order against Halle Berry, weeks after her ex-husband Olivier Martinez accused the actor of physically abusing their teenage son.
Chiefs’ Rashee Rice gets massive injury update for Broncos game
The Kansas City Chiefs are getting a major offensive boost ahead of Sunday’s matchup against the Denver Broncos, as Rashee Rice is expected to return to the lineup. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Rice has no injury designation for Sunday and is expected to play after missing the last few weeks . His return could not come at a better time for […] The post Chiefs’ Rashee Rice gets massive injury update for Broncos game appeared first on ClutchPoints.
Robert Kelker-Kelly: 'Days of Our Lives' actor's official cause of death
Actor Robert Kelker-Kelly's official cause of death has been determined, weeks after the 'Days of Our Lives' star died at age 62.
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Difficult negotiations lie ahead in Israel after Netanyahu's bloc lost its parliamentary majority
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DeForest Area Public Library News
Phew! We made it past the Family Halloween Party a couple of weeks ago, and past the Haunted Library this past weekend. And it isn’t even Halloween yet!
The Pixel 11, 11 Pro, and Fold just hit an all-time low price weeks ahead of Black Friday
This Pixel 11 sale puts the entire Google Pixel 11 family on sale, taking up to $350 off unlocked models at several retailers.
Health dept issues violation for broken elevator at Indy apartment complex
INDIANAPOLIS– The Marion County Health Department has issued a violation notice to an Indianapolis landlord after residents complained their only elevator has been broken for several weeks. Tenants at the Commodore Apartments, located at 30th and N Pennsylvania St, are having a hard time getting groceries up and down the stairs. Anthony Foreman is in […]
Zach Hyman Injury Puts Oilers Forward Depth to the Test
Has a curse descended upon the Edmonton Oilers? The Zach Hyman injury marks another setback for the Oilers, who continue to deal with injuries throughout the early stages of the season. In just his fifth game back after missing over two weeks with an upper-body injury, Hyman is back on the injured reserve with a …
Spot available on Mental Health Board - Illinois Times, the capital city's source of news, politics, arts, entertainment, culture
Sangamon County Board is seeking to fill a vacancy on the Mental Health Board in the next few weeks. Interested individuals should submit a résumé, letter of interest and “any supporting documents, such as letters of recommendation” in person to 200 S. Ninth Street or to County@SangamonIL.gov by Nov. 5 at 5 p.m. Sangamon County […]
Five Ways Out Of Israel's Political Deadlock, Most Are In Netanyahu's Favour
The fragmented outcome sets the stage for difficult negotiations to form a government that could last weeks, as deep-rooted political and ideological divisions make any seemingly straightforward coalition almost impossible.
Australian actor and martial artist Richard Norton’s 2025 death linked to peptide usage
The 75-year-old died in March 2025, less than two weeks after a doctor prescribed the trendy anti-aging medication.
Steelers ready themselves ahead of Browns rematch
The Pittsburgh Steelers are preparing for a rematch against the Cleveland Browns following a defeat in Cleveland four weeks ago.
Apple Releasing HomePod Mini 2 Tomorrow With These New Features
Following more than two weeks of pre-orders, the HomePod mini 2 will begin arriving to customers and launch in stores this Friday, October 30. Siri AI will be one of the HomePod mini 2's key upgrades, but the feature will not be available at launch. Apple said Siri AI support on the speaker will arrive in a future software update, but it did not say when the update will be released.
A golden age of science is coming
It’s almost hard to remember, but just a few years ago, a lot of very smart people thought that science was in terminal decline. Respected researchers were writing papers with titles like “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?”, “Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time”, and “Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science”. In 1996, science writer John Horgan even published a book called The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age. The fundamental idea was that the Universe only has so many insights to discover, and that we’ve picked the low-hanging fruit. It was the idea that Joseph-Louis Lagrange expressed when he said that “we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.” As the big ideas and the simple ideas get mined out, we’re forced to throw ever more brains at the mysteries of nature just to keep scientific progress going at a fraction of its old pace: It looked like science was hitting a wall. Then along came AI. It’s far too early to tell how much AI will eventually speed up the growth of total factor productivity. But already we can see signs of a speedup in science. Anthropic Founder Jack Clark assembled some of the hopeful data points in a recent lecture: [ Dror Poleg@drorpoleg "If you pick different parts of science, you see the same pattern show up: Progress is accelerating, and it has started to accelerate in the last two years." Jack Clark @jackclarkSF I’m speaking at the IMF in an hour about the singularity and why I believe it has begun and the choices we'll need to make. Watch live here: https://t.co/Hj9HzcXx5h 6:08 PM · Oct 18, 2026 · 21.2K Views 2 Replies · 10 Reposts · 123 Likes ](https://x.com/drorpoleg/status/2111882070376980529) Anthropic is accelerating its investment into drug discovery, and is already announcing some impressive preliminary results: [ BioTender@Junioryu136689 BREAKING: Anthropic unveils early results from six Claude-powered drug development collaborations. • 70% shorter CAR-T signaling domain • ~35,000 antibody designs • >10× tighter antibody binding • 89% less batch-record review time Still largely preclinical. Anthropic @AnthropicAI Over the past few months, Anthropic scientists have engaged in deep research partnerships with six organizations developing new medicines. We've also begun drug discovery efforts of our own. In doing so, we’ve learned much more about how Claude can support the many stages of 9:43 PM · Oct 27, 2026 · 11.2K Views 3 Replies · 24 Reposts · 205 Likes ](https://x.com/Junioryu136689/status/2115197821150495150) Claude also appears to be enabling rapid progress toward a treatment for food allergies. OpenAI, meanwhile, announced a possible breakthrough treatment for neurodegenerative disease. Meanwhile, Google Cloud Chief Scientist Pushmeet Kohli has a list of recent scientific advances that have been enabled by its new Gemini model, including breakthroughs in nuclear fusion reactor design, rare disease research, and quantum computing: [ Pushmeet Kohli@pushmeet Gemini 4 Argon is a step change in model performance. In recent weeks, it has had a transformative impact on the Science projects in our team at @GoogleDeepMind and our external collaborators, and helped make a number of remarkable advances across scientific disciplines. 🧵👇 4:47 PM · Oct 13, 2026 · 36.5K Views 8 Replies · 41 Reposts · 497 Likes ](https://x.com/pushmeet/status/2110049807385702623) But as cool as these stories sound, they’re just very minor, preliminary efforts. There are a number of reasons to think that AI is going to propel us into a golden age of scientific discovery. That age might not last forever — AI might still run into diminishing returns eventually. But the next few decades are probably going to be an absolutely amazing time for human science. The number of “effective researchers” is no longer limited The most important input into science is scientists themselves. Until this year, that meant human brains — talented, highly trained human brains. The number of trained human brains could be increased by sending more people to grad school, but only to a point — the smartest people tend to be sent into the hardest research fields first, and if you 10x the number of researchers, the average quality will go down. This constraint was already starting to bite, as Ekerdt and Wu argued in 2024: We argue that a substantial portion of the downward historical trend in U.S. research productivity is a composition effect resulting from self-selection in researcher ability and the dramatic expansion of the research sector…[W]e find that this composition effect has lowered average researcher ability by between 37% and 53%[.] And of course, low fertility was making the problem worse, because fewer children meant fewer people who were able to become future scientists. AI just blows up this constraint completely. If an AI agent can function as an autonomous researcher, there’s no constraint on the number of researchers in the world — you can just build more of them, by building more computer chips and data centers that enable the running of more AI agents. Whether or not massive hordes of agents can collaborate to solve individual problems much faster, increasing the number of agents allows them to tackle many different research questions in parallel. What’s more, these AI “researchers” can be trained incredibly quickly compared to human beings. A human scientist takes decades to train, and more years to reach the frontier of their research field by diligent reading and conversation. This is the “burden of knowledge”, and it’s commonly believed to be one reason ideas have been getting harder to find — by the time human scientists can get up to speed, they’re often so old that their ideas are no longer novel. AI just annihilates this constraint — it can assimilate the entire literature and reach the frontier of research extremely quickly, and it can also tell human scientists where the frontier lies without forcing them to discover that for themselves. It can also pivot to new research directions more easily than humans can. And there’s also a self-reinforcing economic cycle here. Because scientific advances enable higher GDP, they enable more resources to be invested into the creation of yet more electronic “scientists”. Now that doesn’t mean the amount of scientific research goes to infinity — there may still be some essential bottleneck task that human researchers are still needed to perform. There are some indications that AI’s progress on open-ended conceptual research tasks is slower than in other dimensions, and it may be that humans are still needed to provide some of this long-term conceptual thinking. I’d bet against this being true for much longer, but it might be true for a long time. Even in this most “pessimistic” case, though, the amount of effective capital that scientists can use to leverage their work just went up by a lot. AI eliminates the theory bottleneck Science proceeds by an iterative process of theory and experiment. The theory part of that cycle is typically short, but non-trivial — it took a couple of years after the blackbody radiation spectrum was observed for Max Planck to come up with the quantum hypothesis to explain it, and decades longer before quantum theory as we now know it was created. It took about a year for Watson and Crick to figure out the shape of DNA after the requisite data was gathered. AI will basically eliminate the theory bottleneck entirely — or at least shorten the turnaround time between experiment and theory by an order of magnitude. AI is an absolute beast at math. Recently, an OpenAI model solved some of the most important open problems in computer science, math, and theoretical physics, and no one even batted an eyebrow because that sort of triumph is becoming increasingly commonplace. One of those solutions was a proof that the Standard Model of Particle Physics could be mathematically well-defined — a problem that human theorists had so far been unable to tackle. Not all research relies equally on theory, but understanding novel experimental results almost always involves some important component of either mathematical or spatial reasoning. That part of the task has now been made much, much faster. And on top of that, science is now open to a greater number of humans who aren’t naturally good at theorizing. AI can read the whole literature Much of the work of human scientists involves reading and understanding endless amounts of papers and going to endless conferences and seminars. The purpose of that work is to understand the existing scientific literature. Understanding the literature allows scientists to do the following things: Come up with new ideas for hypotheses to test Avoid doing research that someone else has already done Synthesize approaches from different areas or fields AI can reduce this effort to almost zero. Consider this excerpt from OpenAI’s blog post about their new research into neurodegenerative disease: The team divided the analysis among thousands of AI agents powered by GPT‑Rosalind, an approach we call distributed biological reasoning. The agents examined a whole-brain CRISPR atlas…a dataset showing how gene disruptions affect different types of cells across the mouse brain. Each agent investigated a gene disruption, analyzed cellular responses, searched scientific literature, and proposed explanations for the results. Their reports were combined into a reasoning atlas linking genes, cellular effects, relevant publications, and possible biological mechanisms. The research team estimated that comparable human analysis and literature review, conducted one perturbation at a time, would take months to a year. The agents reproduced findings from human analyses while uncovering additional leads. Their assessments of novelty and scientific value also aligned with judgments from blinded human experts. These findings help prioritize further experiments needed to test the proposed biological mechanisms. Some of these insights point to new leads for understanding brain disease. [emphasis mine] This is one case in which parallel work by a large number of agents really does make a huge difference: [ Haider.@haider1 this is actually insane openai deployed thousands of GPT-Rosalind agents to analyze millions of mouse brain cells in 32 minutes, work that could take human researchers months to a year also the agents uncovered new leads for brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's OpenAI @OpenAI GPT-Rosalind surfaced a new lead for drug discovery: could restoring cholesterol transport protect neurons from degeneration? DCTN1 is a gene linked to Perry syndrome, a rare neurodegenerative disorder. In mouse-brain data, disrupting it increased expression of genes involved in 2:41 PM · Oct 21, 2026 · 51.5K Views 26 Replies · 95 Reposts · 1.26K Likes ](https://x.com/haider1/status/2112917197903540516) Not only does instantaneous literature review vastly speed up the research process, but it allows AI to make novel conceptual leaps from combining approaches from wildly different fields of research. AI regularly does this in math research, combining results, approaches, and theorems from far-flung places that no human mathematician would have thought to combine. It can do it in science, too. Much of scientific innovation, historically, has been “recombinant” innovation — scientists applying insights from one field to another. With AI, essentially all research is now cross-disciplinary — AI can read not just the literature on a particular subject, but the literature on a million other subjects that might have produced useful techniques or insights for the problem at hand. Superscience So far, all of the factors I’ve listed are ways that AI can speed up science as it’s already done. I’ve basically described how AI can send gigantic hordes of superhumanly fast, superhumanly well-read, superhumanly mathematically gifted researchers to re-accelerate scientific discovery. But it’s also possible that AI will enable types of discovery — and ways of understanding the natural world — that no network of humans, no matter how large or how brilliant it was or how long it had to work, would ever be able to discover. In a post back in July, I wrote about how that might work: What if there are lots of…aspects of the Universe that [are] too complex to understand in terms of simple laws, but not so complex that they just dissolve into unknowable chaos? It’s possible that we can reliably control these complex phenomena with AI, even if we never reduce them to the kind of principles that we can teach a grad student in a textbook… Another way of saying this is that there may be laws of the universe that humans can’t understand but AI can. I call these “cloud laws” — causal regularities that can be exploited by technology, but which are too diffuse and complex for an individual human being to either intuit or communicate… Perhaps social sciences like economics, sociology, and political science obey similarly complex regularities, and AI can help us find them. Perhaps there are physical processes — plasma, or topological materials, or aerial turbulence, etc. — that obey cloud laws instead of chaos?… [H]uman collaboration is bottlenecked — it’s limited by our ability to intuit patterns at an individual level, and to communicate these patterns from one individual to another. AI, being a computer, just doesn’t have this sort of limitation; it can work with vast, diffuse patterns without having to break them into pieces or simplify them in order to compress them into the tiny pipelines of person-to-person explanation… If much of the Universe turns out to be ruled by cloud laws, we could be on the precipice of a scientific renaissance. In order to discover cloud laws, AI will need huge amounts of data about the natural world. AI figured out human speech by assimilating essentially all of the text humans have ever written. If it’s going to figure out hidden patterns in biology, neuroscience, materials science, etc., it’s going to need similarly massive amounts of data from physical instruments. That data will be far, far more than humans — individually or collectively — would be able to parse, label, characterize, or model. But AI was built to do this. If scientists simply build huge arrays of sensors to measure complex phenomena like the brain, the cell, the economy, etc., they may be able to feed this flood of data to AI directly and bypass human cognitive intermediation entirely. AI would then learn about the world directly, and it might learn things that humans never could. This “superscience”, if you want to call it that, would actually go beyond the kind of science humans have done heretofore. Many of the technologies it yielded would be beyond human comprehension — indistinguishable from magic. But to the AIs, they would make perfect scientific sense. In any case, it seems clear that the scientific slowdown that threatened human progress will now be delayed — at least for a while. Unless humans have somehow found most of the actual exploitable regularities in our Universe, we’re about to enter a new golden age of science. Subscribe Share
‘Took care of his business’ – Chiefs coach Andy Reid defends controversial Justin Tucker signing
Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid had to face the media fire after the team signed kicker Justin Tucker to the practice squad. Tucker was suspended by the NFL without pay for the first 10 weeks of the 2025 season under the personal conduct policy for allegations of inappropriate conduct during massage sessions between 2012 and 2016 while on the Baltimore Ravens.
Garrett Wilson makes decision on Jets
New York Jets wide receiver Garrett Wilson has been visibly frustrated in recent weeks, with the team sitting at 2-5 and the star wideout rarely getting the ball. And with the trade deadline approaching, that frustration has led to plenty of speculation about his future in New York. On Wednesday, Wilson addressed that speculation head-on,…
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Fox News viewer dip pre-election suggests Republican unease
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Here's what's happening in St. Helena
Here's what's happening in St. Helena in the next few weeks.
Official | Lens’ Odsonne Édouard undergoes surgery
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In brief: Amy Poehler stars in 'Dig' official trailer and more
The official trailer for Dig has been unearthed. Amy Poehler co-created and stars in the show that also features Hugh Laurie, Geraldine Viswanathan, Antonia Thomas and Fina Strazza as parts of its main cast. The 10-episode season of the new comedy premieres on Peacock on Nov. 23 ...Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir has released its worldwide season 7 rollout strategy. The show is set to debut in the U.S. and Latin America on Disney Channel on Nov. 20. It will be available to stream on Disney+ the next day. The animated children's TV series is incredibly popular, having ranked fourth among all TV series globally — not just children's programming — in Parrot Analytics data covering the days between June 21 to Sept. 18 ... TNCMS.AdManager.render({region: 'fixed-big-ad-top-asset', slot: 1, fold: "above"}); Billy Crystal is sticking around on Broadway a bit longer. His new solo play 860 has been extended six weeks due to popular demand. It will remain playing at the Imperial Theatre until Feb. 14, 2027. The show finds Crystal recounting the aftermath of the Palisades fire that destroyed his home and uses that incident to reflect on his life ...Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. Thank you for reading kmaland.comAt KMA, we attempt to be accurate in our reporting. If you see a typo or mistake in a story, please contact us by emailing kmaradio@kmaland.com.
Politics is medicine on a large scale
In February 1848, a 26-year-old doctor named Rudolf Virchow arrived in Upper Silesia, a poor, rural corner of Prussia that’s now part of Poland. A typhus epidemic was killing thousands, and the Berlin government wanted a doctor to assess how to contain this pathogen, advise local authorities, and propose a plan. Virchow spent a few weeks going from villa…
‘Surprised’ Marshall Director Opens Von Braun Space Exploration Symposium
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Inside Melania Trump's secret diplomatic role in the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire deal
Melania Trump spent weeks negotiating between Moscow and Kyiv to broker a localized ceasefire in Oleshky, a devastated city in Ukraine's Kherson region.
907 Sports: ‘Probably the big story for ASAA this year,’ the future of 9-man football in Alaska
Over the past two weeks, Alaska has seen four football programs crowned as state champions of their respective class. However, only three of those championships were sanctioned by ASAA, the governing body of high school athletics in the state, with the 9-man division excluded from an official state championship.
Fourth Graders Explore the Wonders of Space in Science Class
Mrs. Bridges’ fourthgrade science students at Wheeler County Elementary School had an exciting start to the school year as they explored the wonders of space during the first several weeks of class. Throughout the unit, students participated in a variety of hands-on activities designed to expand their knowledge of the universe. They created Solar System
Stacy’s Streamers: Five Players to Start in Week 8
Stacy Perez highlights at least one player at each position who is capable of helping your team through all the injuries and bye weeks in Week 8.
Further Thoughts on the Googlebook, in Comparison to the MacBook Air
I’ve had the Googlebook now for a couple of weeks, and I have gotten a chance to both use it on a regular basis, and compare it with the MacBook Air I have (it sports an M4 processor). One of…
Animals Starves while the Kardashians Miss the Charts Again
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Before we get going, I’d like to offer congratulations to Jonathan Funke, whose suggestion “midflicks” won the poll for what I should call straight-to-streaming films which aren’t big or cinematic enough to go to theaters but seem too expensive for a TV movie. It’s so useful a term, I just used it last week! Now I just need to add this term to my data dictionary! Okay, on to this week’s issue. We’re starting out looking at Netflix/Ben Affleck’s latest crime thriller, Animals. I’ll also look at Disclosure Day heading to Peacock (it did better than you’d remember in theaters...) and a new movie based on toys. Plus, a long-time streaming flop returns for its eighth season...will it finally chart? (No.) Will anyone at Disney care? Probably not. All that, plus another look at new shows landing on streaming on 1-Oct from Reelgood, what streamer hasn’t had a film make the Luminate charts since August, Reacher’s long run on the charts, M_onster: The Lizzie Borden Story’s_ short run, the top shows in 2026 according to Samba TV, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. And I mean that last part: putting this week’s issue together, I assembled OVER 25 images, most of which are bespoke looks I made just for this report. Really, publishing articles like this takes the work of writing two articles: one is the narrative and the other is making charts/graphs. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the week of October 5th to October 11th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - Netflix’s Latest Star-Studded Thriller Goes For Glory The tempting angle for anyone writing about streaming film this month, like yours truly, is to ask, “Is this why Dan Lin lost his job at Netflix?” Take Animals, the Ben Affleck-starring-and-directing, Artists Equity-produced crime thriller that opened on 9-Oct. (Kerry Washington and Gillian Anderson are also in it.) If it did really well, then one could argue that Lin has another success on his resume. If it underperformed, then it’s another example of a Netflix underperformance this year. So where did Animals fall? Kinda in the middle, but that means it’s more “not a hit” than “big hit”. On Nielsen, it opened to 12.0 million hours, and here’s how that stacks up for 2026 films so far this year: Obviously, that’s not great. It’s both under my 15 million opening bar for “fine” for a Netflix film and 20 million bar for “great” opening. It did a bit better on Samba TV, getting to first place. That’s very, very good, though again, looking at the Nielsen data, it probably means that it was a light week overall. Luminate’s data is a bit closer to Samba TV’s, tied for 17th all time for single weeks since May of 2024: To top it off, no one seemed to like it. It has a 33 on Metacritic and only a 5.7 on IMDb. Both of these numbers could have been impacted by the stories about Affleck’s comments about using AI to make the film. Given the controversy, the film might not have been as bad as the ratings suggest, but it’s also not a bullish sign. All to say…yeah, on net this film isn’t a point in Dan Lin’s favor. At this point, Netflix’s slide has been long enough—going on since February—that I’m almost tempted to lower the bar for what a “hit” is on streaming. Post-February of 2026 or so, it seems like straight-to-streaming films just haven’t hit the same heights as they did from 2022 to 2025. Before we head onto the “Quick Hits” for film, I want to shout out a fellow newsletter whose articles I’ve been loving this year, LA Material, a new LA-based news outlet. For just a highlight of my favorite articles since July... I loved this article on Ghost Town, a group on Venice that clears homeless encampments. As a Los Angeleno, obviously I adore their articles on LA parking issues. Their article on illegal parking tickets got the City Council to address the issue! Also check out their article on people parking in medians. Check out their deep dive on what went wrong with the LA Jazz Festival and how it fell apart, or what’s wrong with USC’s finances. Finally, they wrote up a voter guide on voter guides for the LA General Election. So meta! In search of a city? L.A. Material is an independent news outlet covering the people, politics, culture and glorious chaos shaping Los Angeles. L.A. Material brings you intel on the city you can’t get anywhere else. From exploring how Reddit short stories became Hollywood’s hottest commodity to reporting on the survival jobs keeping entertainment workers afloat. And answering, once and for all, why the AMC Burbank escalator is always broken. Through their newsletters, podcast, videos, events, and member community, L.A. Material is designed to help Angelenos connect to Los Angeles and each other. Sign up now for the free weekday newsletter. Quick Notes on Film Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Disclosure Day, came to Peacock on 9-Oct, and I’ll admit that, after pulling its stats, I did a pinch of a double take. As I wrote throughout my deep, deep, deep dive on summer box office/Obsession/Backrooms/IP/superheroes, oftentimes the film media discusses films as “flops” or “misses” or “hits” without clarifying what they specifically mean. Since Disclosure Day didn’t make $250 million in the US or $500 million globally, it was definitely a disappointment by Spielbergian standards, who is the highest-grossing director of all time, and arguably even more ahead in adjusted grosses. But it did make $245 million globally on a $115 million budget, so it isn’t as big of a miss as I remember. That’s still probably not enough to break even in the theatrical window, when you factor in marketing costs…but it’s close. And it grossed a lot more even in the US than some titles with about ten times more coverage. Anyways, lots of preamble to say this one only did 4.5 million hours according to Nielsen, so it did make the charts, but on the low end. Here’s how it stacks up to other Peacock titles: Apple TV (née +) followed up their “success for them” Mayday with Matchbox The Movie. This one doesn’t look like a success even for them, but at least it’s not a miss. Apple/Skydance clearly tried to take advantage of the success of Barbie at the box office—let’s greenlight all the toy properties!!!—but of course, this didn’t make it to theaters. And it stars John Cena, who, as I argued earlier this summer, NEEDS to get his movies back in theaters. Anyways, this one has mixed-to-bad numbers. It missed the Samba TV and Nielsen charts in its first week, but did make Luminate with 7.1 million hours. That’s just enough to not be an outright miss, and about half what Mayday did earlier this summer. Speaking of Apple Studio’s Mayday, it ended up lasting five weeks on Luminate, which isn’t bad for Apple TV. On Nielsen, it had a three-week run, racking up 13.5 million hours total. Again, like Matchbox, the issue is the budget; I doubt that this viewership earned enough to justify that budget. Also, to be clear, neither of these films are “midflicks”; both should have gone to theaters. Toy Story 5 is not hanging around on the streaming charts on Disney+, so it’s not as leggy as either Zootopia 2 or Moana 2, and definitely not in the same class as Encanto. (It did make all the money at the box office, so Disney is going to be fine…) The Breadwinner on Netflix (from Sony) is down to 3.9 million hours in its third week. It only lasted for one week on the Samba TV charts. Netflix’s Doing Life had a smaller-than-normal binge release curve bounce, only going to 7.1 million hours from 6.0 to start, but it made Samba TV at fifth place in its second week. The Netflix documentary, The Widower: Til’ Death Do Us Part, also had a small binge release curve bounce to 6.5 million hours, but did make a second week on Samba TV. Meanwhile, Netflix’s Unabomber fell off after two weeks on Nielsen—which is not great at all—and Demon Slayer fell off after just one week. Over on Luminate, the two smaller titles The Swan: Behind the Mirror and Kill. Bury. Print both fell out of the Luminate top ten charts. The story of library film at the first of the month is the arrival of the Ice Age films on Netflix. Now, here’s a small example of optimizing your library that even Netflix could do better. Say you want to rent/license a new film series from Disney**.** A streamer could pay a big paycheck and then drop each Ice Age film on the exact same day of the month, the fourth of October. That’s one choice. In contrast, the streamer could have released each film one week apart, and make each one a mini-event for folks watching Ice Age films. Or even roll them out monthly. Netflix opted for the former strategy, and as a result, only three of the films made the Nielsen charts this week. The “Miss of the Week” goes to Tubi’s YA-ish horror film_, R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead 2_, which didn’t even make the Luminate charts like Tubi films usually do, or, should I say, “used to”? Tubi films, most of which are straight-to-streaming, used to reliably make the Luminate film charts (which only covers straight-to-streaming films), but a Tubi film hasn’t made it since August. The first Pumpkinhead got 1.4 million hours last year according to Luminate. As I wrote about this film before, it seems to be a bit muddled in terms of age: too scary for young kids but probably not scary enough for older kids. Speaking of Luminate, Netflix’s latest doc about a comic (expect more docs about comedians all month), Who Is Martin Mull?, flopped, getting just 200K and 700K hours according to Luminate. Three other film/special misses belonged to Hulu, including a standup special, Jamie Foxx: Take Care of Yourself, Neon’s latest horror film, Hokum, which made $17 million in the US, and a Family Guy Halloween special. (That last one was only 22 minutes, so it’s not a surprise it missed.) Finally, another Netflix standup special missed the charts, Mojo Brookzz: I Know You Lying missed too. I can confirm last week’s misses, most notably Paramount+’s Jackass: Best and Last, MUBI’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and HBO Max’s Evil Dead Burn. Television - I Can’t Visualize Nothing: The Kardashians Story Normally, in the mini-dive essays that open the Streaming Ratings Report, I focus on shows that do well or, at the very least, make the charts. Why? Because as I’ve said time and again, I can’t visualize nothing like, say, the Kardashians’ TV shows. Here’s the TV debuts chart for this week with a missing spot for The Kardashians, whose eighth season just landed on Hulu:
Neonatal intensive care unit at Penn State Health Lancaster Medical Center to open Saturday
Beginning Saturday, parents with babies born at 32 weeks and above in Lancaster County will have another choice of hospitals as Penn State Health Lancaster Medical Center’s three-bed level II
Bucs Rookie Named Biggest Offseason Addition Through Seven Weeks
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers struck gold with their second-round selection in this past draft, with linebacker Josiah Trotter serving as head coach Todd Bowles' best defender. As the team gets back into the playoff picture, his production will be expected to continue.
GTA 6 game size revealed, as pre-load commences in just over two weeks
It’s no surprise that GTA 6 is going to be massive and demand a lot of storage space. We now know exactly how much, and a lot of PS5 players are going to have to do some reorganizing.
Trump’s Ukraine Moves and Middle East Tensions Have Europe on Edge Ahead of Elections
As Americans head to the polls, many people in both Europe and the Middle East are on edge, wondering how the midterm elections may shape U.S. foreign policy in the weeks and months to come. While much of the attention domestically has focused on fuel prices and the cost of living, President Donald ...