After which the opposite a part of the query?
If we return subsequent yr, I might say the expertise technique is up for dialogue. We simply got here out of a few conferences this morning the place we’re attempting to postmortem to say what works, what didn’t work out, the identical form of questions you’re asking. We’ll evaluation it, however I don’t suppose this turns into the norm. I don’t suppose we simply say let’s go with out expertise now that we did one with out expertise, and we obtained fairly good press about it, and we obtained good attendance. Is that the tip of expertise on the upfront presentation? I might say no.

This time final yr, the merger had solely simply been accomplished earlier than upfronts. Now, you had a full yr to arrange. What have been the main variations between the 2 years?
The most important factor is we perceive one another’s enterprise. The way in which mergers work in our business is there might be no communication between Warner[Media] advert gross sales and Discovery advert gross sales whereas the regulatory course of was unfolding. It closed on April 11, so not solely did we’ve to prepare for MSG in 2022—we had a restricted period of time to prepare for that—however we additionally had very restricted period of time to begin sitting down and strategizing about, “What do you do with GroupM? What are you doing with OMG? What do you do with Publicis?” The underside line is we didn’t have sufficient time final yr to have the ability to put the precise technique collectively realizing what the histories have been with every of those firms, and we did the perfect we may. We had some successes. We had some failures. We most likely didn’t carry out on the stage of expectation. It was an earlier market final yr, I don’t know when it’s going to maneuver this yr, however the market moved on the sooner facet. We additionally had that working towards us, and we had a lot work to do to mix forces and to mix portfolios. This time round, we’ve been collectively for 13 months. We now work in the identical constructing in virtually each metropolis. I’m sitting right here proper now in Hudson Yards. We’ve about 400 New York-based salespeople all collectively—similar factor in LA, similar factor in Chicago, similar factor in Detroit, similar factor in Atlanta. We’ve structured our groups in a means the place we’ve folks working—what we name quads. There’s a group that’s engaged on a set of networks, one other set of networks, one other set of networks and a number of our standalone devoted digital group. They know one another, work collectively, strategize collectively and are available to the entrance along with full information of all the things occurring at every company’s portfolio.

You touched on this just a little, however what are you able to inform us about early negotiations thus far?
All I’ll say thus far is the demand is constructive for us in sports activities. I see a shift to sports activities. I’m seeing that the scores are staying fairly agency within the sports activities world, and there’s a number of speedy attain. We’re seeing the advertisers saying our sports activities budgets are going up, or we’re placing extra manufacturers into sports activities, or we’re placing extra manufacturers which can be twin to even female-skewed when it comes to its focusing on into sports activities. I believe that would be the style of our enterprise that’s going to be most profitable on this upfront will likely be sports activities, and I believe the side-by-side with sports activities will likely be streaming. Total demand is probably not up all in while you rely all the things, however with CNN, we’re heading into an election yr, so we all know that brings sponsors in numerous methods for protection of the election cycle. The advertisers are listening to CNN, realizing that the scores are about to take off as they all the time do in election cycles.