Entertainment
How The Pitt Avoided the Sophomore Slump
“The Pitt” has officially avoided the sophomore slump, with Season 2 averaging 16.2 million viewers in the U.S. to date, per HBO Max, an impressive and increasingly unique 57% rise from its first run.
While the Noah Wyle-led medical drama closed out its second installment to series-high ratings that doubled the audience of the Season 1 finale, several other streaming shows are seeing declining numbers for their sophomore seasons, including some recent Netflix binge releases.
Kate Hudson-led “Running Point” debuted Season 2 to 5.3 million views on Netflix last week, sliding down from the 9.3 million views Season 1 tallied in its first week in 2025. Likewise, “Beef” Season 2 debuted to only 2.4 million views on Netflix in its premiere week and took the last spot on Netflix’s most-watched TV list, but climbed to No. 3 in its second week with 4.1 million views. Beef Season 1 debuted as the No. 3 most-watched TV show of the week back in 2023, before Netflix changed their viewership metrics methodology so data comparison isn’t apples-to-apples.
While it’s undeniable “The Pitt” benefitted from awards chatter and an eager — to say the least — fanbase, the HBO Max medical drama benefits from a predictable release schedule that other streamers could learn from. Its weekly cadence has set it up for success, giving both its fans space to convene weekly in the wake of a new episode as well as a more approachable midseason entry point for first-time watchers, which can be seen in the weekly gains gathered by the show.
“The Pitt” returned on Nielsen’s weekly streaming list in January to a new weekly viewership high upon its Season 2 premiere, which garnered 939 million minutes. Viewership quickly spiked to over 1 billion viewing minutes per week, growing for another three weeks before sliding down slightly, and later remaining stagnant, though never dropping below the viewership milestone seen in the Season 2 premiere week. By the release of its 12th episode of the season, “The Pitt” nearly matched its previous series high with 1.21 billion viewing minutes.
In fact, with numbers for just 12 out of the 15 episodes reported, Nielsen figures bring “The Pitt” Season 2 viewing to 8.3 billion minutes, setting the scene to eclipse the 11.4 billion minutes the show tallied in 2025. And when combining viewing for both seasons, “The Pitt” has amassed 13.2 billion viewing minutes overall since Season 2’s launch, demonstrating new viewers are catching up on Season 1 amid the sophomore installment’s rollout.
“The Pitt” also benefits from sharing a streamer with HBO powerhouse programming like “The White Lotus” or “The Last of Us,” but the weekly release strategy helps shows beyond HBO Max. Look at reality shows like “The Traitors” and “Love Island USA” on Peacock, which have grown into must-watch appointment television boosting viewership season after season.

Several other streaming shows have had luck with ratings growth in their second season thanks to a staggered approach for release. Hulu’s “Paradise” saw its three-episode Season 2 drop boost the Dan Fogelman-created series to a new Nielsen weekly high of 950 million viewing minutes. The same rise can be seen in Prime Video’s “Gen V,” which similarly saw a weekly high of 424 million minutes viewed for its Season 2 launch’s three-episode drop back in September before dropping off the list.
While “Paradise” secured another season order from Hulu in accordance with Fogelman’s envisioned three-season arc amid growing awards buzz, “Gen V” couldn’t sustain its momentum with Season 2, which explains why Prime Video canceled “The Boys” spinoff last week.
Since ratings growth isn’t the only deciding factor to justify an additional season renewal during this moment in the industry, making a series stand out in the larger cultural conversation is paramount — just look at the discussion surrounding Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s fashion and her relationship with JFK Jr. that helped boost “Love Story” to become FX’s most-watched limited series ever on Disney+ and Hulu. A second installment for that Ryan Murphy-produced series remains in question, too.
NBA ratings milestones continue
Fresh off of closing out the biggest regular season audience the NBA has seen in 24 years, the season is now averaging 3.84 million viewers for games on ABC, NBC, ESPN and Prime Video, marking a 7% rise from games on ABC, ESPN and TNT in the same period last year.
That increase rises to 20%, however, when including games last year on NBA TV, which averaged 3.2 million, which marks the most-viewed playoffs through the first 27 telecasts since 1993.

Stanley Cup Playoffs pay off for TNT
Another sports ratings rise is happening on the ice, with viewership for the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs up 67% from last year with coverage across TNT, TBS, truTV and HBO Max averaging 1.1 million viewers, marking the best start for the NHL playoffs since the networks acquired NHL hockey rights in 2021.
Most recently, Minnesota’s Game 4 victory over Dallas on Saturday gathered 1.9 million viewers on TBS, truTV and HBO Max, up 127% over last year’s comparable window, ranking as the No. 1 most-watched first round game on TNT Sports ever, excluding Game 7s. Game 4 of Pittsburgh-Philadelphia similarly rose 86% from last year’s comparable window.
CNN and MS NOW see viewership gains
Both CNN and MS NOW are seeing viewership gains, with MS Now scoring its fifth consecutive month of year-over-year growth in April, which saw viewership rise 20% among total viewers and ratings rise 43% in the 25-54 demo, according to Nielsen. CNN is also seeing year-over-year growth after closing out April with a 66% rise in the 25-54 demo and an 85% increase in total viewers.
ICYMI:
- Charlize Theron’s “Apex” scored an impressive debut on Netflix that boosted the action flick to the top of Netflix’s most-watched film list for the week.
- Tony Dokoupil’s “CBS Evening News” era keeps hemorrhaging viewers to record lows.
- “American Idol” viewership rose for the sixth consecutive week with Monday’s Taylor Swift night, scoring its best audience in over two months.
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movies
Obama Relives Tan Suit Debacle In ‘Life, Larry & Pursuit of Unhappiness’
As Larry David‘s comedic trip through U.S. history comes to an end, he took credit for one of the nation’s more recent presidential scandals.
On Friday’s season finale of the HBO sketch comedy miniseries Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance as himself in a sketch set in 2014, as David advised him to wear the now-infamous, outrage-inducing tan suit during his live press conference on military response to ISIS.
Following some banter on how the POTUS avoids stains, David accidentally spills juice on Obama’s suit jacket when he leaves the room. When the 44th president returns, the comedian recommends he wear the tan suit that Obama planned on taking it to Turin for NATO Summit, for “a daytime event, it’s outdoors, a little more casual.”
“First of all, it’s a gorgeous suit,” David declared. “And this is casual Friday!”
“It is a great suit,” admitted Obama, as David told him, “Oh boy, oh boy. I think this is the move. … Old lips won’t let you down. You’ll thank me!”
As Obama models the look, David gives him his signature, “Pretty good! Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.”
“You sure about this?” asks Obama, as David assures him, “Never been more sure about anything in my life. People are going to be talking about this for a long, long time.”
Obama’s cameo in the finale comes as David marks the United States Semiquencentennial with the seven-part sketch comedy limited series, which recounts major events in U.S. history through the comedian’s signature observational humor.
David’s longtime Curb Your Enthusiasm partner Jeff Schaffer, who serves as an executive producer on Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, previously told Deadline that Obama, who produced under his Higher Ground banner, reached out to his buddy David to ask if he’d be interested in making the show to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.
“When you’re doing a show about American history, you want to do it warts and right now we have this orange saggy wart that we wish would go away,” said Schaffer. “But the nice thing about having President Obama produce this and be a part of it is that this country’s had a lot of fuck ups, we’ve seemed to have learned very little, but we’re still moving forward sometimes, and then we move back a little bit, but we always move forward again. While Larry’s pointing out a lot of the steps back, the President is telling us we can still step forward.”
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movies
Matthew McConaughey Performs “Quill” From ‘Rivals of Amziah King’ — Watch
Matthew McConaughey shows off his vocal skills (and some hidden banjo talents) with his latest role in The Rivals of Amziah King.
On Friday, Lakeshore Records released the single and music video for “Quill” from the original motion picture soundtrack, performed by the Oscar-winning and co-star Ben Hardesty, also featuring Miranda Zickler, Angelina LookingGlass and Andrea Pister.
Set in the backwoods of Oklahoma, The Rivals of Amziah King follows the musically gifted Amaziah King (McConaughey) and his bluegrass-playing band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey-making operation in town. When Amaziah’s estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns, he leaps at the chance to reconnect and create a family business. But the honey game is ruthless, and Amaziah’s rivals threaten to destroy everything he has built.
Premiering Aug. 14 in theaters, the Andrew Patterson-written-and-directed drama also stars Angelina LookingGlass, Cole Sprouse, Jake Horowitz, Tony Revolori and Kurt Russell.
Producers are David Heyman, Teddy Schwarzman, Jeffrey Clifford, Michael Heimler, James Montague and Will Greenfield.
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movies
Jane Schoenbrun On Tackling “Toxic Soup” Of Slasher Genre In ‘Camp Miasma’
With their latest directorial outing, Jane Schoenbrun used subtle pieces of nostalgia to deconstruct the slasher genre.
The Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma writer/director explained to Deadline that they wanted to create “a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary,” noting the frequent symbolism of candy and junk food as providing an atmosphere “that’s actually safe” while diving into a horror movie or exploring sexuality after trauma.
“There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe,” said Schoenbrun, who is non-binary. “Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, ‘Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.’”
In Schoenbrun’s latest film, Hannah Einbinder stars as queer director Kris, who is tapped to helm a new installment of the long-running Camp Miasma horror franchise. While courting Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the actress who played the “final girl” in the original film, to reprise her role, the pair spirals into a psychosexual frenzy as the slasher’s killer, Little Death (Jack Haven), comes to life.
Acknowledging the problematic trans representation of horror films like Psycho (1960), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995), Schoenbrun admitted the genre has been “catnip to me since I was 10 years old,” and they jumped at the chance to direct their own.

“So many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals … And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy,” they explained.
“But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants,” said Schoenbrun. “It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language.”
Read on about Jane Schoenbrun’s love letter to the slasher genre with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, now playing in theaters.
DEADLINE: It was really fun to see the slasher genre through your eyes. Tell me about finding inspiration in that genre and “final girls.”
JANE SCHOENBRUN: I mean, it was the easiest thing in the world because it’s just one of those genres that has been catnip to me since I was 10 years old. I just raided the horror section of the video store as a kid from an age when I really shouldn’t have been doing that, like in 5th grade, I watched in the span of about one week, every Nightmare on Elm Street movie. I think that I was always drawn to movies and really anything entertainment where it felt forbidden in some way, like the thing on the tape, how is that even allowed? And that’s the thing that I love about a lot of my favorite slashers. Don’t get me wrong, I love like brutal ones, like I love Texas Chainsaw, that’s a nasty movie at its core, and that’s what’s so special about it. But so many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals of, OK, what’s the most outrageous way that like these like dumb kids can get killed? But watching it, it’s not about fear a lot of the time, it’s about joy and celebration. And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy. But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants, whether that be Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill or Sleepway Camp or Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface in drag. It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language.

DEADLINE: I’m curious about the symbolism of all the processed junk food and the chandelier of wrappers.
SCHOENBRUN: The junk food in the movie, I forget when it found its way in there. It’s like so much of the movie is about, like I said, ritual, about being in a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary, whether that be Kris [Hannah Einbinder] in bed, with, you know, with Raisinets and the popcorn, watching a schlocky horror movie, or the two characters learning how to be present and enjoy sex after a lot of trauma. There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe. Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, “Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.”
DEADLINE: And one thing I really love—I just feel like it’s a theme in your work—is how it depicts the way media and entertainment influence us. Why does that inspire you?
SCHOENBRUN: I think it comes from a fascination and sensitivity to the complex relationship between what we think of as fiction and what we think of as reality, which we tend to, as a society, think of as pointing in one direction. Like, reality dictates fiction, not vice-versa, but when you actually look at the way the world works, it’s like one echoes off the other. And I think a complicated, sometimes terrifying and sometimes beautiful way, where the fiction, the cultural norms, the things we grow up looking at on our screens, the roles that we’re told people play, they kind of inspire us to create reality. There’s something liberating when you start thinking in that way. I think it’s a way of thinking that we as a culture, could do a lot more of. To think about the idea of fiction inspiring reality just as much as reality is inspiring fiction, is a potential path to liberating us from this hellscape that they’re telling us is the only way the world can be.

DEADLINE: And I know you have the Secretary reading. Tell me what it’s been like prepping for that and why you all chose that movie.
SCHOENBRUN: I mean, that was such a huge influence on on Miasma. There just aren’t that many fun and funny movies about deviant sex. And just the way that movie is like feather light while talking about really raw and taboo things, it is just really inspiring to me. And the dynamic between those two main characters is definitely one that had a lot of influence on on Kris and Billy’s [Gillian Anderson] relationship in Miasma. And it’s already to me a very queer movie in its way, but having Gillian reading the James Spader part and Hannah reading the Maggie Gyllenhaal part, I think it’s just gonna be like a very unique joy. Honestly, we’ve been prepping a little bit, but I think it’s just gonna be about getting up there and feeling the chemistry of it all, and just letting these folks who we have all gotten to know each other really, really well, but we haven’t actually done anything wacky and creative like that in a while, like as a reunion, it’s gonna be a real blast, I think.
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