One of the bright spots of this awful pandemic has been John Krasinski’s Some Good News, an internet TV show that has managed to put together multiple The Office reunions, a Hamilton performance, and a start-studded virtual prom all in the name of giving people something positive and uplifting in the midst of so much misery and darkness. But alas, this is the entertainment industry we’re talking about, and something purely positive and uplifting can only survive for so long before being consumed by the ravenous maw of… corporate interests. So yeah, it was a good run, but Some Good News has been taken over by ViacomCBS in what The Hollywood Reporter says was a “rich” licensing deal—meaning John Krasinski got some good money to sell off this nice thing he made.
This is the part where ViacomCBS would normally offer a reassuring statement to fans about how “nothing will change” about the show they love, but it actually sounds like pretty much everything is going to change. For starters, Krasinski will be replaced as the host (though he will stay on as an executive producer and will have some kind of “on-air presence), and CBS All Access will exclusively have the “first window” for new episodes of the show before it moves on to other platforms in the ViacomCBS family—i.e. not YouTube. Also, the show is being renamed Some Viacom News With John Viacom: A ViacomCBS Production. (That’s a joke, but the rest of this is true.)
The Hollywood Reporter story says that Krasinski was initially hesitant to sell Some Good News, even as offers rolled in immediately after the first episode, since he wanted to keep it free and make sure it could reach as wide an audience as possible. It’s unclear what changed, but considering there’s also talk of a “massive bidding war” for SGN, we’re going to guess that it rhymes with “shmump truck full of shmoney.” THR doesn’t say when Some Viacom News will start, but it sounds like it might be tied to an overall CBS All Access rebranding that’s going to happen later this summer.