Welcome to 2024.

Tonight happy new year. It's an all geek news edition of the podcast on this edition of Multiverse Tonight and here's our host, Thomas Townley. Well, hello everyone and happy new year. This is, of course, multiverse Tonight, and I'm your host, thomas Townley, and this is episode 205, recorded New Year's Day 2024, hopefully not the last year ever, now, of course, this being a podcast on New Year's Day, you know, of course we have to look at the cat in the room, which is, well, it's a new year, Of course, New Year being relevant to whatever planet you're on. I didn't do much for New Year's Eve, you know. We stayed home, we watched TV, we watched the ball drop on CNN, we watched you know I played Animal Crossing, so I got the New Year's Eve experience there as well. But for the most part, yeah, there's a nice quiet night at home Right now. The weather outside is frightful it's cold, it's overcast. Yep, winter is here Now. If you're watching the video, you'll look over my right shoulder here, stage left, You'll see my Migo Ghostbusters figures, which I got. Those were $20 on clearance from Migo, so I had the. You know it's like I have to get that. Ghostbusters is one of my favorites, so they're over my shoulder there. And while we're here, at the beginning of the show normally this is something I do at the end of the show is, you know, the plea for support. But I thought I'd start the show today, since it is the first day of the New Year and, who knows, maybe you're feeling generous. Yeah, it only takes a dollar. Just go over to multiversedonightcom. Hit the support the word support at the top of the page. It'll send you to a page that says help, send me to more Comic-Con, and there you'll find links to Patreon, glowfm, Ko-fi, ko-fi and buy me a coffee. And all you have to do is pick one of them. Any of them, it's fine by me. Hit the button, it'll open up the page, the specific page for that, and you can donate monthly, you can donate yearly, you can donate one time. Yeah, I'm. As this new year starts, I'm going to be on a big budget. I have a thousand dollar hospital bill I have to pay off. I have, you know, I was a little bad, I spent some money on credit, so I have to pay those down. You know I want to pay those down this year. And I have to get a new car, because here's how my at the end of my 2024 wins my car, Ford Focus, died. Well, the transmission died, so I have you know I have to get myself a new car. So if you could just see yourself to. You know, go to multiversitonitecom and donate. You can even buy a t-shirt from my t-public store. That would do just as well. You know, it would be a big thank you. And I thank all of you out there for listening to me over the years. You know it'd be nice, of course, if you wrote in every once in a while. But you know that again, you can go to multiversitonitecom. There's a link there. You can send me, you know, send me information. You know, talk to me about how you feel, talk to me about you know what geeky things you do I would love to know. Anyway, as I said at the intro of the show, this is basically an all geek news edition because at the end of the year corporations don't like to put out a lot of news, you know, they want to vacation themselves. So what we have is just a few stories. So this will be a nice short episode. So let's go on to the geek news. Yeah, no, I let that music go on a little long, didn't I? Lionsgate has announced that acquisition of global entertainment platform E1 from Hasbro is done. The transaction announced last August as 6,500 film intelligent titles to Liongate's large library and diversifies and strengthens its scripted, unscripted television businesses. It also extends its portfolio of brands and franchises and expands its presence in Canada and the United Kingdom. Now the deal is for 375 million in cash plus the assumption of some production financing loans. Now E1 produces ABC hit franchise the Rookie, quickly claims showtime series, yellow Jackets and the long running Discovery unscripted series Naked and Afraid. The library also has 1917, atomic Blonde, green Book, grease and Anami, criminal Minds, renegade and Designated Survivor. Now the transaction also includes film development rights to Hasbro's monopoly brand. The Lionsgate knows that property well and had specifically carved out the film development rights as part of the overall deal. Now most Hasbro IP led by family brands will remain, with the Pawtucket, rhode Island based toy maker, including animated projects Peppa Pig, transformers, earthspark and Milo Pony Tell your Tale. Hasbro said when the deal was announced that it was retaining a creative development and business affairs team to shepherd its 30 plus Hasbro based projects and development of its Transformers and GI Joe franchises, play-doh, dungeons and Dragons, magic, the Gathering and Hasbro's board game portfolio. Lionsgate CEO John Feldheimer said in a statement quote the E1 acquisition concludes a busy year in which we continue to execute our strategy and the strict thing are studio businesses as we prepare for the separation of Lionsgate and STARS into pure play standalone companies. As we've conducted our integration planning, our analysis has reaffirmed our conviction that E1 will be a valuable and highly accredited addition to our businesses. We are pleased to welcome E1's talented group of employees to our Lionsgate family. Unquote. Now, with the deal closed, lionsgate last week confirmed it will split the studio business and stars. In the first quarter, a special purpose acquisition company called Screaming Eagle will acquire stars, which will become a stand-alone publicly traded company. The company, which also renewed its three arts partnership with an increased majority stake, is on a nice run, with the stock hitting up 88% this past year. Amazon announced in September that ads were on the way for its Prime Video Entertainment content, and now we have the date. On January 29th, commercials will be air-duced to series and movies airing on the service. In the US, the change will happen in the UK, germany and Canada on February 5th, where the service has begun notifying customers as well. That will be followed by France, italy, spain, mexico and Australia later in the year. Now, the move was announced in a letter sent to subscribers that described the addition of what was termed quote limited advertisements to allow the service to quote, continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment for a long period of time. Unquote, in other words, just get used to ads. As someone who grew up in the era of television, just get used to ads. Use them wisely. Get up, walk to the kitchen, get yourself a snack. Just lean in to ads folks. They're not going anywhere. Anyway, the Peeps brand yes, this is a Peeps story has done plenty of brand collaborations before, whether it's Dr Pepper flavored marshmallows or Peeps flavored Pepsi flavored Peeps. Now the snack maker Slizk Club has caught the eye of many because of how killer the combination it is. Wednesday, a snack tracking Instagram feed revealed the imminent arrival of Rice Krispies flavored Peeps Coming to Ad Snackulator. The new collab will be a Walmart exclusive and should be available soon, if it isn't already. No further information, such as the time frame the snacks can be purchased, was available at press time and I can tell you at the Walmart store I work at, they have the Rice Krispies flavored Peeps in stock and so far no takers. So I'd probably look for someone to try those online and tell you how those are. I don't know if I will, rice flavored Peeps Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, the last of us is the most pirated TV show of 2023. The popular series the Throne of Last Year's Winner House of the Dragon, keeping the prize in the HBO family. Now in the second place spot we find the Mandalorian, while another Disney Plus series, loki, rounds out the top three for 2023. Which, what stands out most is that the video subscription service content dominates the top 10. With the current streaming landscape being so fragmented, it appears that many people prefer to pirate instead of paying for another subscription. Bad, bad people. Interestingly, netflix releases are nosebleed absent, which causes speculation that Netflix users are less likely to give up their subscriptions as it's the dominant streaming platform in most parts of the world. We should also note that the chart is based on bit-torn traffic, which represents a small portion of the piracy landscape. Most people use streaming sites and services nowadays, which generally do not report viewing stats. Now there is a list of the most torrented TV shows worldwide in 2023, per episode. The ranking is estimated based on sample data from several sources. The most download TV shows on BitTorrent 2023 were, of course, number one. The Last of Us number two. The Mandalorian, number three. Loki, number four, ahsoka. Number five, secret Invasion. Number six, silo. Number seven, monarch Lake Seaf Monsters. Number eight, tulsa King. Number nine, gen V. And number 10, ted Lasso. And we close out today remembering someone who passed as our last victim of the Grim Reaper of 2023. That person is legendary comedian Tom Smothers, composer and one half of the famous musical comedy duo the Smothers Brothers, who passed away at the age of 86. Born in 1937 at the Fort Jay Army Post in Governor's Island, new York City, tom and his younger brother, dick, and younger sister Shuri, had a father who ended up dying in a POW camp in a Japanese internment camp. The family was moved to California where Tom and Dick both graduated from Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, california. Tom would go on to become a competitive unicyclist and state champion gymnast on the parallel bars and went on to attend San Jose State College, aka San Jose State University, where he competed in both gymnastics and on the track team in the Pole Vault event. After college, tom and Dick's mothers pursued a career in folk music. It was Tom who felt that he lacked the necessary musical skill for a folk music career, so he leaned on another talent he had comedy. Tom and Dick started to transform their act into a balance of music and comedy, which led to a break in 1961 when the Smothers Brothers appeared on an episode of the Steve Allen show. That was followed by an appearance on the popular show Berks Law. Once they had proven they had talent in the television medium. Cbs gave the Smothers Brothers their own show, the Smothers Brothers Show, which ran for one year from 1965 to 1966. The show didn't make Tom all that happy and he reportedly won more creative control, which turned out to be an important lesson learned before the Smothers Brothers moved on to their next venture. The Smothers Brothers' comedy hour premiered on CBS in 1967 and was a much bigger success for Tom and Dick's mothers. The comedy hour series helped CBS compete against the run of the success of NBC's Bonanza, while groundbreaking new ground with the late 60s youth cult are pushing boundaries with political and social satire, as well as featuring new age and, at the time, musical acts like the who, cream, the Doors, simon and Garfunkel, ray Charles and other legendary names. The same youth culture appeal that made the Smothers Brothers' comedy hour success also made the show lightning rod with older, more conservative crowds. The Smothers Brothers vs Bonanza became somewhat of a cultural showdown. Cbs and the Smothers Brothers had continuous conflict over the show's content, laying to force to re-runs and ultimately a sudden cancellation in 1969. The Smothers Brothers would go on to file a preach of contract suit against CBS that would be settled in 1973 in favor of the Smothers Brothers, ordering them of a million dollars, or 4.6 million when adjusted to today's money. After the show was canceled, the Smothers Brothers, especially Tom, became more politically active. Tom was famous for chatting Bill Cosby over being politically neutral linked to a physical altercation between the two, as well as befriending the likes of John Lennon, with whom he co-wrote the song Give Peace a Chance. It would continue to be a cultural icon throughout his life, revisiting the Smothers Brothers Act for numerous specials and anniversary occasions, continuing with his comedy act and even taking on more film and TV roles. Thomas Bullen Smothers III, born February 2, 1937, passed away on December 26, 2023. And with that, that brings us to the end of this edition. Now be sure to share us, to check us on social media. We're still on Twitter at Multiverse, tom, although really I hate to say it, folks, I really don't post much there anymore. I am on Blue Sky now as well as threads, and I'm also still on Facebook and Instagram as well. So find me on any other platform, but really I'm trying to wean myself off of Twitter. Slash X Now. If you found the value to the show, thank you. Feel free to contribute. Check out our show notes, visit the T-Public store and so much more at MultiverseTonightcom. If you're a subscriber, thank you very much. It's always a joy seeing the numbers. Be sure to share us with friends. And if you're brand new to the show, please be sure to subscribe and let me know and leave some feedback. Let me know how you're doing. I would love to hear perspectives from other geeks around the world. That would be just excellent. I also would like to give a special thanks to Shane Ivers for the intro music and Lobo Loco for the outro theme music. Thanks for watching this edition of MultiverseTonight. We'll be back in two weeks with much more sci-fi and comic book news. Now please exit the universe in an orderly fashion. Good night. Multiversetonight is a production of Half-Bake Genre Production. Copyright 2023, all rights reserved. This podcast is part of the Popcos the Culture Podcast Network. Find out about our other podcasts at popcostheculturecom.