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Mark Marshall on NBCU’s Post-Linda Yaccarino Upfront Event

Published

2 years ago

May 18, 2023

Max

Mark Marshall on NBCU's Post-Linda Yaccarino Upfront Event

So based on that answer, I think I already know what you’d say to this next question, but, with the presentation in the books, will we see you back at upfront week next year?
I plan on being—I hope so [laughs]. I think NBC will be there. I think our intention is to continue to do that and kick off the week. It would be nice if it wasn’t the day after Mother’s Day. But we’ll get to work on that.

You mentioned Mother’s Day on stage, and how people need to generally travel on it to get to NBCU’s upfront. You used to travel yourself. Why was it important to you to mention that?
I think we have an unbelievable history of making Mother’s Day challenging for the entire industry because of the slot we’ve been assigned over the years [laughs]. And so many people in our industry are females who are leaving their families, and I thought it was appropriate to acknowledge the efforts that they’re making to show up to our show.

You had already been tapped to lead the upfront earlier this year, but how does Linda’s exit affect negotiations?
I don’t think it changes anything on that side of things. Obviously, I worked with Linda for 10 years. We were aligned in terms of getting the value for our content and our properties. So I don’t think it really changes a whole lot on that side of what we’re doing.

Regarding the writers strike—plus other guilds, like the directors guild, are going to have contract negotiations— how does the strike affect negotiations, or is there some point later where that comes into play?
I don’t think so. We feel really great about the schedule that we have all the way through the end of this year, so hopefully, this comes to a resolution in short order. But we feel really good about it. This was not a surprise. We had been game-planning for the past year on that. So we feel great about the content that we have already shot.

You mentioned on stage that this was your first time closing things out. For next year, what do you want to do differently? What do you want to continue?
I think we are just focused on getting through this upfront of where we’re at. And every year, we do a post-analysis of what worked and what we’d like to do differently on the show. We haven’t done that to this point. But I think we were very happy and had great feedback from the clients so far.

You said Nick Jonas was your favorite of the Jonas Brothers before bringing him out to perform. Is he really your favorite?
Yeah, by the way, he is the nicest guy. I met him backstage and was super engaging. Really a nice guy. He’s the only Jonas Brother I know. He’s absolutely my favorite. I think he did a phenomenal job.

And speaking of that, you had great performers, with Nick Jonas, Grace Potter and Reba McEntire. Can you talk about getting that talent there?
I give all the credit to [Josh Feldman, evp, head of marketing and advertising creative for NBCUniversal] and team. These guys put together the show. They started working on it about six months ahead of time and obviously had many pivots this year. I thought they did a great job. And as I said, I think it demonstrated the breadth of our content, including even a musical [number] with Reba, who will be on The Voice. We just had the Jonas Brothers on The Today Show last week. It was a proud moment to see all of that content come together during the show this year.