The 11th Hour Dispatch — Monday, August 20, 2018
BINGE WATCH
TNT has greenlit a late night pilot from Niecy Nash, star of the network’s Claws series. Nash will host and executive produce the pilot, which is currently titled Naked with Niecy Nash. The show would feature Nash giving love, sex, and romance advice. Former executive producer of Netflix’s Chelsea and E!’s Chelsea Lately will executive produce and showrun the series. If the pilot gets a series order, it would be the first late night show in TNT’s history. This would also make Nash the only other female late night comedy host besides Samantha Bee and her TBS series Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Over the weekend, Netflix announced that it canceled The Break with Michelle Wolf after just 10 episodes, and late last month, BET pulled the plug on Robin Thede’s The Rundown with Robin Thede.
YOUNG MONEY
PepsiCo has purchased DIY sparkling water company SodaStream for $3.2 billion. The purchase was announced by Indra Nooyi, who is on her way out as chief executive. Nooyi has received a lot of props for directing Pepsi in a “healthier” direction with its products, and SodaStream fits right into that mission. The deal, which has already been unanimously approved by both companies’ boards, is expected to close by January once approved by SodaStream shareholders. Judging by the amount of sparkling water this office goes through, I’m personally not surprised by this purchase in the slightest.
BIG BUSINESS
Giphy is also getting a piece of the Stories format craze. The GIF library is reworking its home page to incorporate Giphy Stories, which will feature curated selections of GIFs by editors throughout the day. The picks featured in the Stories will align with whatever the top stories of the day are. One story will be published every hour in the Entertainment, Sports, and Reactions categories. The Verge describes Giphy’s new format as “a cross between a Twitter Moment and Snapchat’s Discover content,” which seems like a pretty fair assessment, as Giphy Stories will feature not just top stories and themes of the day, but also television episode recap collections and topical reaction packs.
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
Read this story about this woman that gathered a bunch of Tinder dates at one place for “a Hunger Games speech about what it’s gonna take to date her.”
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