This week, we pour one out for all the introverts who love to sit in cubicles and watch old TV shows that were almost lost to time as The Paley Center has shut down its Beverly Hills museum. On the other hand, we have Pablo Escobar’s pet hippos to look forward to.

THE INFORMATIVE PALEY CENTER CLOSES ITS DOORS

Los Angeles-based writers have lost a great resource. While the Paley Center will still run events, they’ll do so without the ability to watch some of the first comedies ever broadcast on American television. The museum closed the doors on its Beverly Hills location—and on exhibits, events and screening rooms where visitors could watch classic TV and radio shows. PaleyFest, the group’s annual screening and Q&A sessions with the cast and crew of popular television programs, will continue to operate from the Dolby Theater, while other special events will use the Directors Guild of America building. The archives will still be accessible from the Beverly Hills Library and they are well worth the visit. There’s so much that can be learned by watching the many classic programs that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s especially interesting to see how comedians adapted their radio acts to television. Mediums always evolve and storytelling has been forced to evolve with it, being able to see the history of that process is priceless. The Paley Center’s lease wasn’t due to expire for another four years, but the owner offered them nearly $50 million to exit early, so the property could be redeveloped into a high-end retail outlet. Getting $50 mil to vacate a property with dwindling attendance is pretty much a no-brainer and will hopefully give the Paley Center the time and funds it needs to find a smaller venue for the museum.

PABLO ESCOBAR’S PET HIPPOS FINALLY GET THEIR OWN MOVIE!

We’re not even two months into 2020 and already the most important news of the year has dropped. Netflix is developing the feature length film Cocaine Hippos, from writer Jordan VanDina, based on the greatest story never told. You see, this fellow Pablo Escobar was a drug kingpin who wanted some hippos. The problem is, hippos don’t live in South America. But are you going to tell a violent drug kingpin that he can’t have hippos? Of course not. You go and get some hippos, which is exactly what his people did. The only problem with owning hippos is that eventually you die in a shootout and the hippos are left to their own devices. With nobody to care for them, Escobar’s hippos took off and started breeding, which led to Colombia having the world’s largest hippo population outside of Africa. There are millions of great untold stories like this one that can inspire writers to put their own spin on them. In this case, a comedy about adventurers looking for Escobar’s treasure. Proof you should always keep an ear out, because you never know what true life story will cause inspiration to strike.

PARAMOUNT’S BIG SONIC GAMBLE PAYS OFF

Last year, Paramount debuted the trailer for the big-budget adaptation of the Sonic the Hedgehog videogame and the internet reacted with pure terror. The decision to get rid of Sonic’s iconic design and replace it with a lifelike human-hedgehog hybrid did not go over well with fans and non-fans alike. Thankfully, the Cats trailer came out shortly after and the internet had a new punching bag. In the meantime, Paramount decided to delay the release of the movie and completely replace Sonic with a version that looked more like the cartoonish character we know and love, and less like something that escaped from Dr. Moreau’s island to eat the flesh of children. The gamble was a big one. Spending millions of dollars to appease the masses could be a costly mistake. That’s what Cats decided. Instead of redesigning its characters, the studio believed that the people making fun of it wouldn’t go either way and that Cats fans would turn out in droves to support the film. Sonic believed listening to the fans would bring them out to support the new product. So how did it work out for the two films? Sonic made $70 million domestically over the Presidents’ Day weekend and Cats made $73 million worldwide for its entire run. It looks like when it comes to anthropomorphized characters, the best idea is to go cuddly and not devastatingly terrifying.

CORD CUTTING LOSES ANOTHER 6 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS

A record six million Americans decided to cancel their traditional TV subscriptions in 2019 and there’s plenty of speculation as to why. Is it the annual price increase for cable packages? Is it because smaller telecoms are getting rid of cable to focus on selling internet? Has the rise in streaming services led to cable being irrelevant for people who don’t watch live programming? I would speculate that audiences are switching to internet TV services, but those are also losing subscribers. Content providers used to rely on distributors to get their shows out into the world, but now the content providers are creating their own streaming services to distribute their material, leaving cable and satellite services on the side of the road with no Uber coming to get them. So what’s the work around? For AT&T and Comcast, the answer was buying studios and creating those streaming services themselves. That’s why AT&T bought Time Warner to launch HBO Max, and Comcast bought NBCUniversal to launch Peacock. Expect Charter and Verizon to look at their losses and then peruse the content aisle of their closest studio store to see if ViacomCBS, Sony, AMC or Lionsgate are interested in getting acquired.

STUDIOS LOOK INTO BUYING THE REMAINING INDEPENDENT STREAMERS

Speaking of mergers and acquisitions, two new reports claim that Fox is in discussions to buy Tubi for half a billion dollars and NBCUniversal is interested in buying Vudu from Wal-Mart for an undisclosed sum. Ad-supported streaming services have become increasingly popular as the overabundance of paid services have led people to seek out free alternatives. With ViacomCBS snapping up Pluto TV, it left Tubi as a major acquisition target thanks to its robust library and 25 million monthly users. It’s 2020, and if you don’t own a streaming service, you are doomed as a studio. Now that Fox has Disney-money to burn and a need to get a streaming service under its belt, it’s a no-brainer for it to target a service that has tried to bring in audiences between the coasts. Which is also Fox’s target demographic. There had been rumors that Wal-Mart wanted to unload Vudu and focus on more profitable parts of its business, which is perfect for NBCUniversal, who doesn’t seem like it wants one of the largest AVOD services to go to a competitor right before Peacock launches.