TV leaders open Variety summit with talk of audiences and AI
Five television executives kicked off Variety's Entertainment & Technology Summit in Los Angeles on Thursday to compare notes on audiences, creators and artificial intelligence. The one-day event, presented by EY, brings studio, network and streaming leaders together to discuss how the business finds viewers Variety.
The opening discussion featured Clancy Collins White, president of creative affairs at Warner Bros. Television; Simran Sethi, president of scripted programming for Hulu Originals and ABC Entertainment at Disney; and Liz Jenkins, chief business officer of NBCUniversal Entertainment. They were joined by Abhijay Prakash, president of Blumhouse Atomic Monster, and Rahul Purini, president of Sony's Crunchyroll anime-streaming service.
Jenkins said NBCUniversal has got surgical about its choices. The company now prioritises specific audience groups and works to super-serve them, rather than trying to make everything for everyone. In plain terms, that means fewer broad bets and more series built to keep loyal fans subscribed.
Prakash pointed to two summer box-office hits from his company, Obsession and Backrooms. Both projects came from YouTube creators moving into cinemas. His point was simple. Big-screen horror can still start online.
He then drew a line around artificial intelligence. Short-form, lower-production-value creator content, meaning quick videos made cheaply and fast, is most likely to be disrupted by what he called AI slop. That is his phrase for low-quality material churned out by generative tools.
By contrast, he said Obsession and Backrooms could not have been created from an AI prompt. They could not have been spat out of algorithms and large language models either. Only people could have made them, in his account.
The summit was scheduled for 17 September 2026 in Los Angeles as a single-day gathering. The programme also added actor Owen Thiele and musician Este Haim, with sessions spanning Hollywood and Silicon Valley Variety.
For fans, this means two things to watch. Expect broadcasters and streamers to chase their core viewers harder, with shows shaped for particular tastes. And expect studios to keep scouting online creators, while insisting the leap to film and television still needs a human hand.
