It was another full week of TV news with both streaming services and professional wrestling companies gearing up to go to war with one another. This kind of intense competition for viewers usually brings out the very best from writers and results in some amazing shows. While many people may worry about where the industry is heading, I say lean back and enjoy because, with almost 500 shows airing on TV in the US, there has never been another period in time with literally something for everybody.

ANOTHER WATTPAD DEAL GIVES SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHORS A WAY INTO THE INDUSTRY

Wattpad, the online database of self-published stories, signed a content-deal with Viu, a streaming service that operates in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South Africa. The deal will allow the service to develop projects based off of stories published on Wattpad. Over the last two years Wattpad signed similar deals with iFlix, Sony TV, Mediacorp, Lagardère Studios, NL Film, Mediaset and Bavaria Fiction, with each company gaining exclusive access for a different region of the world.

The abundance of deals signed by Wattpad should be celebrated by all aspiring writers out there who can’t figure out how to break in. The industry’s eagerness to mine Wattpad for material shows that it’s willing to take chances on emerging talent and that it recognizes a strong story can originate anywhere. Wattpad is providing writers from all around the world with an opportunity to expose their material to studios, networks and production companies while simultaneously finding a fanbase for their voice in Wattpad’s 65 million users. So far these deals have resulted in movies like The Kissing Booth and After as well as the Hulu series Light As A Feather.

HBO MAX GOES PILOT CRAZY

WarnerMedia’s streaming service ordered three pilots from vertically integrated Warner Bros. Television to boost its line-up of exclusive projects in preparation for its launch. Do you remember the movie Practical Magic? Well, HBO Max hopes so because its first new pilot is Rules of Magic from writer Melissa Rosenberg, which is based on the same series of books as the 1998 Aidan Quinn killing movie. The next show is 17-year-old writer Zelda Barnz’ Generation, which is an HBO Max version of Euphoria, which will also be available on HBO Max. Generation will follow a generation of teenagers who explore sex in a conservative neighborhood. The final pilot is Red Bird Lane, written by Sara Gran, about a group of strangers who stay at a house full of terrifying mysteries and mysterious terrors.

APPLE AND DISNEY FINALIZE PLANS FOR STREAMING SERVICES

Disney finally announced what many fans around the world have been waiting to hear. The Disney+ streaming service will launch in the Netherlands and Canada day and date with the US on November 12, with New Zealand and Australia getting the service one week later. The company has already said that it expects the streaming mega-service to be available in most major countries within two years. The service isn’t complete, however, as the Canadian commercial announcing the date did not have any mention of The Simpsons, which is incredibly popular in syndication and may have its international rights tied up for awhile. The only reason Disney was able to take The Simpsons away from FX in the US was because it bought 20th Century Fox. Unless it's planning on doing that in every country you will probably have to wait until current deals are over before The Simpsons is added to the Disney+ lineup.

Apple isn’t going to wait around for Disney to take control before it launches its competing Apple TV+ service. Although nothing has been confirmed, it’s been rumored that Apple will launch in November as well at a $10 price tag. If Apple wants to see this plan through it will need to get out details fast, because right now consumers believe the choice is between Disney+ with the full Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic and The Simpsons libraries with the brand-new Star Wars show The Mandelorian thrown in, and Apple TV+ which may launch with The Morning Show, a 10-episode drama about day-time television that’s more expensive than Game of Thrones. There is no further information on what will be included with Apple TV+ so its target demographic may be “people who sign up for a free trial and forget to turn off recurring billing.”

VIACOM BANKS ON CARS BEING THE NEW TVS

In a story that proves that absolutely nobody knows what the future of media will look like, Viacom International Media Networks signed a deal to make its channels available in German cars. Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central will all be added to infotainment systems created by Access to run in German vehicles. Content creators now have more outlets than ever for their material, and this could just be the beginning. With driverless cars on the horizon, how long will it be before ride-sharing services begin offering exclusive entertainment? And how will this affect storytelling? Will writers have to time the length of their show to be the same as the average ride time? Will they be forced to end episodes on cliff-hangers to entice viewers to return for another ride? Do you call an Uber to see the new episode of its quirky new comedy or order a Lyft because it’s the service with exclusive ride-share rights to The Office? While all of these questions are hypothetical, it’s not outside the realm of possibility and shows how quickly the entertainment landscape can change.

STARZ, TNT AND USA  GEAR UP FOR SOME ‘RASSLIN

Anybody who grew up in the late 80 or the late 90s and experienced the Rock N’ Wrestling and Attitude eras of professional wrestling will be pleased to hear that cable television is gearing up for a new round of wrestling wars. At the summer upfronts, TNT announced that the upstart wrestling league All Elite Wrestling would get a two-hour slot every Wednesday to launch a new program. Networks from Pop to Destination America have dipped their toes in the wrestling waters, but they did it half-heartedly. That’s not how TNT rolls. Kevin Reilly, President of TNT, told Variety that AEW would be the network’s next sleeper hit, signalling that TNT is going all-in on the new league. 

Unfortunately for them, it doesn’t look like WWE, the world’s biggest pro-wrestling league despite the continued absence of Brutus ‘The Barber’ Beefcake, will be allowing AEW to operate unopposed. The company announced that its WWE Network show NXT, which features an exclusive roster of wrestlers not used on the main television programs Raw and Smackdown, will expand to two-hours and move to USA. NXT will launch on Wednesdays to compete directly against AEW, but will have the benefit of premiering a couple of weeks earlier. This will either be incredibly exciting or incredibly frustrating for wrestling fans, depending on whether they remember to set their DVR.

Starz is also getting into wrestling, but in a different way. The premium cable network gave a series order to Heels, from Survivor’s Remorse showrunner Mike O’Malley and Arrow star Stephen Amell. The show will follow the behind-the-scenes drama behind a fictional wrestling promotion, hoping setting up a wrestling war between Heels and Netflix’s GLOW for fictional wrestling superiority.