Greetings from 30,000 feet! I’m flying home from a few days in New York of TV upfront presentations, steak dinners, and (I really hope) NOT catching Covid. So What I’m Hearing is a little shorter today…

Amazon Prime time live: I’m told that Amazon has picked up the one-year option on the Academy of Country Music Awards, which is interesting for a couple reasons. First, it’s a small vote of confidence in awards shows, which are scrambling for a lifeline as audiences shrink on linear TV (though Amazon never released viewership for its March experiment with a commercial-free broadcast co-hosted by Dolly Parton). Second, it’s further evidence that Amazon wants to go deep into live programming, with all the major streamers experimenting with either live sports, events or both.

Defamation by email?: Donald Trump’s awful media lawyer Charles Harder is now going after small-time writer Alexander Hakimi, purveyor of the @backstagebombshell Instagram account. Why? Harder reps businesswoman Lou Taylor, the former business manager for Britney Spears, who was the subject of unflattering attention for, among other things, her coziness with Britney’s father, JamieSpears. Hakimi sent an email to a few media people noting that Mary J. Blige, another Taylor client, had thanked Spears at the Billboard Music Awards, despite TriStar, Taylor’s company, having been “accused of dissipating Britney Spears’ assets” and “facilitating Jamie Spears spying on his daughter.” Taylor apparently didn’t like that, so Harder had an associate fire off a silly harassment letter. Read the nonsense here if you’re interested.

Now on to the TV upfronts. I may have a little more on Sunday, but here’s my general takeaway….

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No kidding. I am not a regular TV upfront attendee. This time of year, I would usually opt for the Cannes Film Festival, another absurdist media circus, albeit one with better views and bigger stars. But with the freshly-merged WBD presenting for the first time, Paramount Global doing its inaugural combined upfront, and a new advertising push from streamers like Disney+ and Netflix—two companies that, until recently, seemed to consider the $70 billion television advertising business beneath them—it seemed like a good time to check out Hollywood’s first in-person pitch to ad buyers in three years.

Never mind that Covid is surging, or that even many of the big agents and studio presidents (stalwarts of past events) decided not to attend, or that much of the fanfare and showmanship of upfronts past had disappeared, like Les Moonves and Steve McPherson, long before the pandemic. This is still a best-foot-forward situation...