CBS has a new hit from the Yellowstone universe. Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ finale broke records. And everyone, everywhere, needs more shelf space they don’t have.
Every May, television’s most powerful executives pack into New York venues and spend a week making the same argument to the same advertisers: trust us, our audiences are valuable, your money is safe with us. The pitches have gotten stranger as the business has gotten stranger. But the ritual endures.
The 2026 upfront season kicks off Monday, May 11, and the dynamics going into this particular week are worth understanding clearly — not the spin, but the actual state of play.
The dominant story is live sports. NBC and ABC each devote as many as three full primetime nights per week to live events in the mid-fall. Scripted programming is getting squeezed off the schedule, which creates an odd secondary effect: fewer cancellations, because there were fewer shows to begin with. The bubble shows of 2026 barely exist because the bubble itself has shrunk.
CBS arrives with its best franchise launch in years. “Marshals” — the first broadcast original spun from Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone universe — posted the largest scripted premiere in more than seven years among broadcast series not airing behind an NFL game. The network also had solid freshman launches with “Boston Blue,” “CIA,” and “Sheriff Country.” The problem: CBS killed “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and replaced it with a Byron Allen deal, a decision that generated more head-scratching in the industry than perhaps any other this season. The network is also losing “The Neighborhood” and “DMV” from its comedy stable.
NBC/Peacock is riding the residual energy from what it called a “Legendary February” — an unprecedented stretch of Olympics, Super Bowl LX, and NBA All-Star Weekend that broke viewership records and gave advertisers a rare mass-audience moment. Peacock’s comedic mystery series “The ‘Burbs” starring Keke Palmer became the streamer’s best season ever in overall reach. The challenge: the broadcast network needs new non-franchise blood, and is betting heavily on a “Rockford Files” reboot with David Boreanaz and a civilian version of “The Traitors.”
Netflix walks in with its biggest card already played — the final season of “Stranger Things” is already being cited as one of the streamer’s most-watched seasons of all time, and “Wednesday” Season 2 returned to enormous numbers. The miss column is significant: “The Witcher’s” fourth season landed poorly, and the Harry and Meghan partnership yielded virtually nothing. The company’s need: a procedural drama franchise it can anchor across multiple seasons, something Netflix has conspicuously failed to produce.
Amazon/Prime Video has “Thursday Night Football,” “Fallout,” and a hyper-anticipated “Vought Rising” prequel series to “The Boys.” Under new TV chief Peter Friedlander, the streamer is investing heavily in romantasy adaptation “Fourth Wing” and video game properties “Tomb Raider” and “God of War.” The risk: if any of those expensive bets turns out to be “Rings of Power” — watchable, expensive, and culturally inert — the whole strategy gets questioned again.
Warner Bros. Discovery enters what might be the most uncertain week of all. The pending Paramount-Skydance acquisition of WBD continues to generate speculation about what a combined Paramount+/HBO Max would look like, what happens to the linear cable networks, and whether any current ad sales strategy survives the merger. HBO’s hit list — “The Pitt” Season 2, “Euphoria” Season 3, the Game of Thrones universe — remains as strong as anywhere in television. The comedy gap is real, with “Hacks” ending and “The Comeback” a one-off.
Fox won the advertising sales equivalent of a philosophical argument this week by releasing data showing its ad campaigns drove restaurant foot traffic up 81% among viewers. Whether that becomes a genuine industry currency or just a good conference slide is the real upfront-week question.
One consistent theme across every network and streamer: everyone needs more original scripted content than they’re currently producing, and nobody has quite figured out how to afford it at the quality level audiences now expect.
