How Upfronts 2022 Became Covid Superspreader Event

deadline.com:

Late-night hosts are brought in by networks to provide comic relief at their upfront presentations. But turns out Seth Meyers was only half joking when he told the thousands who had packed Radio City Music Hall for NBCUniversal’s presentation, “What a historic room to be able to tell people you got Covid in.”Ten days later, Covid cases are sweeping through the ranks of those who attended the marathon of events in New York last week.

Top-level executives at virtually all of the major networks and studios have been impacted, along with support staff that worked on the presentations as well as media buyers and reporters who attended the string of events.The subject is inevitably brought up in every conversation this week that involves someone who had been at the upfronts amid what is likely the largest Covid outbreak in the senior ranks of the TV industry since the start of the pandemic.The first in-person upfronts in three years turning into a superspreader event is not entirely surprising given the confluence of the festivities’ unfortunate timing amid a surge in New York and not very strict Covid protocols as businesses across the country have been lifting restrictions.

The majority of attendees did not wear masks most of the time, and, while we hear some executives underwent daily testing as part of their own companies’ guidelines, none of the non-affiliated guests were required to take a Covid test throughout the week. (Vax cards were mandated at all venues.)On Monday, the first day of the upfronts, New York City health officials strongly recommended that people wear masks when they were in densely populated indoor spaces, but they didn’t go as far as mandating this, and for the next couple of days, there were not a