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Andy Cohen to Receive Variety’s Inaugural Creative Impact in Television Award at Newport Beach TV Fest

Andy Cohen will be honored with the Variety Creative Impact in Television Award at the Newport Beach TV Fest on Friday, June 5. The award is to recognize individuals who have made indelible contributions to the television industry.

Cohen is an Emmy-winning and five-time Peabody award-winning host, producer and author, best known for his role as host and executive producer of Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen.” He is also an executive producer of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives” franchise, curates two SiriusXM channels and founded his own book imprint.  A five-time New York Times bestselling author, Cohen also notably annually co-hosts CNN’s “New Year’s Eve Live” with Anderson Cooper.

“There’s no one in the entertainment business like Andy Cohen,” said Variety‘s managing editor, Kate Aurthur. “Cohen, or just ‘Andy’ as his fans call him, is an executive producer of Bravo’s culture-defining ‘Real Housewives’ franchise and hosts his talk show ‘Watch What Happens Live’ nightly on the network — all on top of hosting a twice-a-week talk show on Radio Andy. Can’t wait to grill him! Maybe we’ll play Plead the Fifth.”

“Andy Cohen has had an undeniable impact on the television landscape, shaping the way audiences engage with pop culture and redefining the talk show format for a new generation,” said Gregg Schwenk, CEO and executive director of the Newport Beach TV Fest. “His creativity, authenticity,and influence across the industry make him a true trailblazer, and we are thrilled to honor him in partnership with Variety with the Creative Impact in Television Award.”

The Newport Beach TV Fest, presented by the Newport Beach Film Festival, is a premier four-day celebration of television artistry, set for June 4-7. Held at the historic Lido Theater in Newport Beach, the event will showcase a dynamic lineup of events, honoring both established and emerging talent in television.

Expecting the largest gathering of Guild and Television Academy voters outside Los Angeles and New York, the event offers a unique platform for innovative storytelling, cementing Newport Beach as a hub for creative excellence in the evolving landscape of television.

April 28, 2026
Dave Chappelle Re-Teams With Netflix for Three Comedy Shows During Netflix Is a Joke Fest

Dave Chappelle is joining Netflix Is a Joke 2026 with three nights of shows at the Hollywood Palladium.

The streaming giant has announced that Chappelle will take over the iconic venue from May 7-9 with shows that blend music and comedy. Tickets will go on sale on April 29. Netflix also released a teaser for Chappelle’s performances, which can be seen below.

Chappelle has often blended music and comedy, frequently collaborating with artists like The Roots, Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def), and John Mayer among many others.

Chappelle has a long-standing relationship with Netflix going back nearly 10 years. Netflix released four stand up specials by Chappelle in 2017 alone — “The Age of Spin,” “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” “Equanimity,” and “The Bird Revelation.” The releases marked Chappelle’s first specials to be aired publicly since 2004. He has since released five more specials on the streamer, including “Sticks & Stones” and most recently “The Unstoppable.”

Netlfix also famously stood by Chappelle amidst controversy over jokes he made about transgender people in his stand up act and in multiple specials. Chappelle has repeatedly asserted he is not transphobic, recently saying “I did resent that the Republican Party ran on transgender jokes. You know, I felt like they were doing a weaponized version of what I was doing. That’s not what I was doing,” Chappelle told “NPR’s Newsmakers” host Michel Martin.

Netflix Is a Joke is scheduled to run from May 4 to 10 with over 350 events planned all across Los Angeles. Along with Chappelle, the lineup includes a roast of Kevin Hart, John Mulaney at the Hollywood Bowl, and Katt Williams at the Intuit Dome.

April 28, 2026
Games Done Quick will host its first ever event in Europe

Games Done Quick, the charity video game speedrunning series, is making its European debut in a live event at Germany’s Gamescom this summer.

GDQ’s marathon event will run for the duration of the three-day show in Cologne, starting August 28-30, and will feature popular runners and an on-site live audience. The event will be broadcast on Twitch and YouTube, with programming kicking off at 4am ET (one for all you early risers) daily and running until 2pm.

“We’re thrilled to expand Games Done Quick globally and to bring a live event to gamescom in Germany, an opportunity that’s incredibly meaningful to our team,” said Ashley Farkas, Games Done Quick’s Owner and Business Director. “This partnership not only supports an amazing initiative, but also creates space for more runners to participate, especially those who haven’t previously had the opportunity to travel to the US.”

Games Done Quick was established in 2010 and has since raised more than $60 million for charities worldwide. Its first event of this year took place back in January, and featured live speedruns of Super Mario Sunshine, Hades II and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, to name a few.

April 28, 2026
The age of Agentic Commerce has arrived. Consensus 2026 is where you can experience it IRL

Something fundamental is changing in how commerce works. It’s happening right now, at the intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain payments, and most people haven’t fully registered what it means yet.

AI agents – software systems that can perceive, decide, and act autonomously – are beginning to transact. They’re paying for APIs, settling invoices, and interacting with infrastructure in ways that traditional payment rails were never designed to handle. The credit card, the bank login, the merchant onboarding flow: all of it is friction that agents can’t navigate the way humans do.

Ask yourself: how many agents do you think you’ll have? Three, five -it’s a common answer. Ten. I have 200.

By the numbers -if you have 10 or 20 agents per human, you’re between 70 to 140 billion agents in the world. Universally, most people will agree: there’s going to be more AI agents than there are humans. – Yat Siu, Animoca

What comes next -the rails, regulatory frameworks, and business models – is precisely what Consensus 2026 is convening to figure out. When 15,000+ of the world’s most influential crypto, AI, and finance minds gather at the Miami Beach Convention Center from May 5 to 7, agentic commerce will be one of the defining conversations of the week.

“That’s assisted checkout, not true agentic payments”

Christian Catalini, MIT professor and founder of the Cryptoeconomics Lab, draws a line most people in the industry haven’t drawn yet.

“Most agents today operate just as LLMs paired with a credit card,” he says. “That’s assisted checkout, not true agentic payments.”

“Real agentic payments begin when the AI is the counterparty,” Catalini explains. “The actual test for programmable rails isn’t whether an agent can pay – it’s whether it can do things no human-facing rail allows: atomic settlement against delivery, per-second payment streaming, or transacting with a counterparty that has no KYC footprint.”

That’s not a near-future scenario. It’s a near-term engineering problem. And Consensus is where the engineers, investors, and policymakers working on it will be in the same room.

The internet was built for humans. Agents need something different

Google Cloud is not a company known for hedging its bets on technology cycles. Its presence at Consensus 2026 – and its active investment in blockchain payment rails – is as clear a signal as any that agentic commerce is being taken seriously at the highest levels of the technology industry.

“The convergence of agentic AI, blockchain payments, and commerce is still in its early stages, but momentum is building,” says Rich Widmann, Google Cloud’s Global Head of Strategy for Web3. “Google is actively participating in open protocols like x402 and deepening partnerships across the Web3 ecosystem to help bring these use cases to scale.”

Widmann is direct about where the friction lies: “The biggest friction points center on the fact that most products are still built for humans, not agents. Sign-ups, logins, and manual onboarding create barriers that slow agentic commerce down.”

The rails race: x402, MPP, and the fight for the agentic stack

If AI agents are going to transact at scale, they need payment infrastructure designed for them from the ground up. Two protocols are emerging as early contenders for that role, and both will have a presence at Consensus 2026.

x402, the open payment protocol built on HTTP and championed by Coinbase, is designed to allow agents to pay for API access and digital services with stablecoins in a single, frictionless flow. Erik Reppel, x402’s founder and Head of Engineering at Coinbase, will be at Consensus making the case for why open, interoperable rails are the right foundation for the agentic economy.

MPP (Machine Payments Protocol), developed by Tempo and backed by Stripe, offers another vision for how agents can negotiate and settle payments autonomously. The presence of both protocols at the same event – in front of 15,000 developers, investors, and enterprise decision-makers -makes Consensus the de facto arena where the early standard-setting debate gets played out.

Also in the room: Stefano Bury, head of Virtuals Protocol, one of the leading platforms for deploying autonomous AI agents, and Chi Zhang, co-founder of Kite, whose team is building at the intersection of agent infrastructure and decentralized payments.

CoinDesk University: From Theory to Implementation

For attendees who want to go beyond the mainstage debates and into the mechanics of how to actually build and deploy agentic payments, CoinDesk University offers a structured, three-day curriculum that takes participants from first principles to advanced implementation -no prior crypto experience required.

Day 1 lays the foundation. Afternoon workshops walk attendees through setting up a stablecoin wallet and business dashboard with Circle, then pivot to session on compliance, followed by back-to-back workshops on using OpenClaw and x402.

Day 2 goes deeper into the stack, with sessions on building a full agentic infrastructure, managing agentic economy risks, and the increasingly urgent question of how to prove human identity in an AI-saturated world. By Day 3, the curriculum reaches masterclass territory: workshops on deploying AI trading bots with stablecoins, trading on prediction markets with autonomous agents, and a capstone Agentic Masterclass that brings the full arc together.

The format is intentionally immersive. Each day pairs hands-on workshops with mainstage sessions, networking lunches, and “No Dumb Questions” Q&A sessions.

The window is open. It won’t be open forever

Agentic commerce is not a future state. It is an early-stage present, moving faster than most industries have had time to notice. The protocols being debated at Consensus 2026 could become the rails that trillions of dollars in machine-to-machine transactions run on. The regulatory frameworks being discussed could define what’s permissible for a decade.

The people in the room at the Miami Beach Convention Center from May 5 to 7 will be the ones who had a voice in how this unfolds. Everyone else will be working with what they decided.

April 28, 2026
World Cup fever: Chiliz expands to Solana and Base to supercharge fan token trading

Sports-focused blockchain Chiliz is expanding its roster of over 70 fan tokens to Solana and Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network developed by Coinbase (COIN).

Chiliz rolled out its own layer-1 network in 2023 to host the trading of its tokens, but is transitioning to what it calls “omnichain distribution,” according to an announcement on X on Tuesday.

“By using an Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard, fan tokens will exist on each supported chain with a unified supply, eliminating the need for wrapped tokens or fragmented liquidity pools,” Chiliz said.

Fan tokens are digital assets that represent membership of a community such as a sports team’s fan base. Chiliz has developed over 70 such tokens, including tokens for some of Europe’s soccer giants like Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, Manchester City and Juventus. These teams use tokens to farm engagement from fans who are not in the stadium, by giving holders the chance to win exclusive rewards and voting rights on minor issues such as the colour of the players’ warm-up kit.

Chiliz said it hopes that expansion to Solana and Base will give these tokens a major trading volume boost ahead of this summer’s FIFA World Cup. Chiliz already offers tokens representing the Argentina and Portugal teams with more expected to be unveiled in June.

Read More: SportFi’s next act: onchain markets built around match-day results

April 28, 2026
Georgia and New Mexico Lose Major Studio Services Provider in Pivot With Dozens Of Staff Cuts

For years, when industry pros talked about production flight it was usually about projects leaving traditional film and television hubs like Los Angeles and New York, enticed by new tax credits, cheaper workplaces and less regulation in other U.S. states (or overseas). While that’s still true, some of these rising players now may be feeling the pain of fickle production, too.

In early March, the CEO of a major studio soundstage operator indicated that a few markets that had been seen as up-and-coming production players were now starting to experience some film and TV downturns. “L.A. and New York have seen a rise in production with the downfall of other markets like Albuquerque, New Mexico, New Orleans, Louisiana, Atlanta,” said Victor Coleman, who runs Hudson Pacific, the Sunset Bronson Studios owner where Netflix is a tenant in Los Angeles.

Less than two months later, Hudson Pacific is pulling the plug on its studio services supplier Quixote operating in Georgia and New Mexico as well as laying off 70 staffers in Atlanta and Los Angeles as it pares back its footprint, a source familiar with the decision tells The Hollywood Reporter.

In Georgia and New Mexico, Quixote operated a vehicle fleet along with offering production supplies for film and TV projects. In Los Angeles, the services firm is winding down leases at Quixote West Hollywood, which hosted commercial and music video shoots, as well as its Van Nuys lease at Quixote Central Valley (formerly named Chandler Valley Center Studios, aka the backdrop for NBC’s The Office.) The operator also leases Griffith Park Studios, which has an ongoing tenant, and will keep that location.

“Quixote’s fleet, equipment and supply rentals remain fully operational and ready to support production needs,” Sean Griffin, svp of sales for Quixote, stated to THR. “For clients of Quixote’s soundstage and Atlanta operations, we are taking a phased, collaborative approach to minimize disruption, while continuing to deliver a high level of service during this transition period.”

Hudson Pacific acquired Quixote in 2022 for $360 million at the height of the Streaming Wars content bubble when soundstages were seen as a better bet than office space. The firm is a notable provider of equipment, lighting, vehicle rental and other services for film and TV shoots and employer for below-the-line workers on projects. (Those Star Waggons trailers parked on a typical movie set for talent? That’s Quixote, the vintage Star Waggons brand was sold to Hudson Pacific in 2021 as part of a $222 million deal to bulk up its services offering.)

Since that Quixote buy in 2022, which Coleman described this March at a Miami investor conference as “not the best deal we’ve ever done,” major studios have pulled back on content spending, trimmed slates and dialed back episode orders from the days when the likes of HBO Max and Disney+ were in a global subscriber race with Netflix (they lost that race). The number of original series on TV networks and streamers has declined for three straight years since then, with 2025 marking an 11 percent drop in premieres from 2024, per data provider Luminate.

Hudson Pacific is forecasting $21 million to $27 million in potential annualized cost savings from the move to wind down Quixote operations in Atlanta and relocate “select” equipment to Los Angeles and New York. Both New Mexico and Georgia saw dips in filming count and production spend to start 2026, per industry platform ProdPro. Georgia had once been home to Marvel Studios shoots, which have now largely decamped to the U.K.

The moves also reflect the reality of occupancy rates at Hudson Pacific soundstages. The operator’s Hollywood stages are 96 percent leased while Quixote stages “reached 53.3 percent,” the company’s president Mark Lammas said on a late February earnings call, signaling lots of open space at leased soundstages.

In a statement on Tuesday, Lammas added, “Quixote is taking steps to move away from leased soundstages and markets characterized by structural cost or demand disadvantages, which will allow Hudson Pacific to focus financial and operational resources on our office portfolio and higher performing segments of our studio business.”

Those high performing segments include Sunset Studios, where Netflix is the anchor tenant at the ICON, the EPIC and CUE buildings as part of the complex on Sunset Boulevard until 2031. The streaming giant, however, is in final talks to buy the historic Radford Studio Center in Studio City, with speculation that it may look to make the complex its new Los Angeles headquarters. That could open up even more studio soundstage space in Hudson Pacific’s portfolio.

April 28, 2026
BAFTA-Winning ‘Under the Shadow’ Filmmaker Babak Anvari and Production Company Two & Two Pictures Sign With Range (EXCLUSIVE)

Range has signed BAFTA-winning filmmaker Babak Anvari and his production company Two & Two Pictures.

The London-based, Iranian-born filmmaker’s feature directorial debut “Under the Shadow,” which he also wrote, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. The Persian-language psychological supernatural horror film established Anvari as one of the biggest discoveries out of the festival and Netflix quickly acquired the film, later releasing it to continued critical acclaim. The film went on to win numerous festival awards, including the New Visions Award at Sitges. It was also selected as the United Kingdom’s entry for best foreign language film for the 89th Academy Awards and was nominated for two BAFTA Awards in 2017, winning for outstanding debut. It was also nominated for six British Independent Film Awards, winning for best screenplay among two other wins.

Anvari’s second feature film “Wounds,” which he also wrote and produced, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight section. The psychological horror film, starring Armie Hammer, Dakota Johnson and Zazie Beetz, was distributed by Hulu in the United States and Netflix internationally. His follow-up feature was “I Came By,” a neo-noir thriller with Netflix. Anvari’s most recent film, “Hallow Road,” starring Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys, premiered at SXSW in 2025 to acclaim.

In television, Anvari served as an executive producer of “Monsterland,” a horror drama anthology series on Hulu, and also directed the series finale.

Anvari is also the co-founder of Two & Two Pictures, a production company he launched with Lucan Toh. The London and Los Angeles-based company is focused on filmmaker-driven, elevated genre films aimed at a global audience. Two & Two’s films include Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s “Asphalt City,” which premiered in competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival; Yorgos Zois’ “Arcadia,” which premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival; Max & Sam Eggers’ debut film, “The Front Room,” for A24; and Jim O’Hanlon’s “Fackham Hall,” starring Thomasin McKenzie and Damian Lewis. Next up, Two & Two produced Bassam Tariq’s “You Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” starring Mahershala Ali, for Orion MGM, which will be released later this year.

Anvari continues to be represented by WME, Independent Talent Group and Ziffren Brittenham. Two & Two Pictures continues to be represented by WME and Ziffren Brittenham.

April 28, 2026
‘Pluribus,’ ‘Beef,’ ‘I Love LA,’ ‘Big Mistakes,’ ‘Death By Lightning’ Among This Year’s Gotham TV Awards Nominees

Netflix’s ‘Big Mistakes” and “Death By Lightning” led the nominations for this year’s Gotham Television Awards, as announced Tuesday by the Gotham Film & Media Institute. The org revealed noms in 12 award categories.

“With today’s nominations, our third annual Gotham Television Awards celebrates an incredible year of breakthrough comedies, dramas, and original films, as well as a newly expanded Limited or Anthology Series category recognizing where some of television’s boldest work is being made,” said The Gotham executive director Jeffrey Sharp in a statement. “As the first awards show of the new television season, we’re proud to bring together the industry’s most exciting voices, celebrate the year’s achievements, and deepen our commitment to supporting the creative community we represent here at The Gotham.”

‘Big Mistakes” and “Death By Lightning” received four noms, while “I Love LA,” “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” “Alien: Earth,” “Pluribus,” “Beef” and “DTF St. Louis” recevied three nods each.

The Gotham 2026 Television Awards event will be held on Monday, June 1, at 7 p.m. ET at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. The Duffer Brothers will be given a special honor for “Stranger Things,” with additional awards to be announced soon.

Nominations were selected by a group of film and television critics, journalists, festival programmers and film curators. Additional juries of “writers, directors, actors, producers, editors, and others directly involved in making television” will choose the final Gotham Television Awards winners. Last year’s honorees included “Adolescence,” “The Studio,” “The Pitt,” “Social Studies” and “Pee-wee as Himself,” in addition to tributes for Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, Hwang Dong-hyuk and Elisabeth Moss, as well as the cast of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Parker Posey, Brian Tyree Henry, Sheryl Lee Ralph and David E. Kelley.

Here are the 2026 Gotham Television Award nominations are:

Breakthrough Comedy Series

“Big Mistakes” (Netflix)
Dan Levy, Rachel Sennott, creators; Etan Frankel, Timothy Greenberg, Dean Holland, Dan Levy, Anne-Marie McGintee, Rachel Sennott, executive producers

“The Chair Company” (HBO Max)
Zach Kanin, Tim Robinson, creators; Andrew DeYoung, Zach Kanin, Adam McKay, Tim Robinson, Todd Schulman, Igor Srubshchik, executive producers

“I Love LA” (HBO Max)
Rachel Sennott, creator; Emma Barrie, Aida Rodgers, Lorene Scafaria, Rachel Sennott, Max Silvestri, executive producers

“Long Story Short” (Netflix)
Raphael Bob-Waksberg, creator; Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Noel Bright, Steven A. Cohen, executive producers

“Too Much” (Netflix)
Lena Dunham, Luis Felber, creators; Tim Bevan, Michael P. Cohen, Lena Dunham, Eric Fellner, Surian Fletcher-Jones, Bruce Eric Kaplan, executive producers

Breakthrough Drama Series

“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” (HBO Max)
George R.R. Martin, Ira Parker, creators; Sarah Bradshaw, Ryan Condal, Vince Gerardis, Owen Harris, George R.R. Martin, Ira Parker, executive producers

“Alien: Earth” (FX/Hulu)
Noah Hawley, creator; Dana Gonzales, Noah Hawley, Joseph E. Iberti, Clayton Krueger, Ridley Scott, David W. Zucker, executive producers

“Dept. Q” (Netflix)
Scott Frank, Chandni Lakhani, creators; Rob Bullock, Scott Frank, Andy Harries, Charlotte Moore, executive producers

“Pluribus” (Apple TV)
Vince Gilligan, creator; Jeff Frost, Vince Gilligan, Diane Mercer, Allyce Ozarski, Gordon Smith, Alison Tatlock, executive producers

“Task” (HBO Max)
Brad Ingelsby, creator; David Crockett, Brad Ingelsby, Paul Lee, Mark Roybal, Mark Ruffalo, Ron Schmidt, Salli Richardson Whitfield, Jeremiah Zagar, executive producers

Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series

“Beef” (Netflix)
Lee Sung Jin, creator; Sam French, Oscar Isaac, Lee Sung Jin, Ethan Kuperberg, Charles Melton, Anna Ouyang Moench, Carey Mulligan, Ravi Nandan, Alli Reich, Kitao Sakurai, Jake Schreier, Cailee Spaeny, Ali Wong, Steven Yeun, executive producers

“Death by Lightning” (Netflix)
Mike Makowsky, creator; David Benioff, Bernadette Caulfield, Mike Makowsky, Matt Ross, D.B. Weiss, executive producers

“DTF St. Louis” (HBO Max)
Steven Conrad, creator; Molly Allen, Jason Bateman, Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Steven Conrad, Michael Costigan, David Harbour, James Lasdun, Michael Nelson, Jennifer Scher, Bruce Terris, Steve Tisch, K.C. Wenson, executive producers

“Half Man” (HBO Max)
Richard Gadd, creator; executive producers to be determined

“Lord of the Flies” (Netflix)
Jack Thorne, creator; Jamie Campbell, Amanda Duthie, Nawfal Faizullah, Marc Munden, Cailah Scobie, Jack Thorne, Joel Wilson, executive producers

Breakthrough Nonfiction Series

“High Horse: The Black Cowboy” (Peacock)
Kadine Anckle, Tom Casciato, Mari Keiko Gonzalez, Sacha Jenkins, Liz Yale Marsh, Keith McQuirter, Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld, Keisha Senter, Jamal M. Watson, executive producers; Jason Perez, director

“Katrina: Come Hell and High Water” (Netflix)
Geeta Gandbhir, Spike Lee, Sam Pollard, executive producers

“Mr. Scorsese” (Apple TV)
Damon Cardasis, Chris Donnelly, Rebecca Miller, Cindy Tolan, Julie Yorn, Rick Yorn, executive producers

“Sean Combs: The Reckoning” (Netflix)
Brad Bernstein, Ariel Brozell, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, David Karabinas, Stacy Scripter, Alexandria Stapleton, executive producers

“The Yogurt Shop Murders” (HBO Max)
Nancy Abraham, Avi Belkin, Margaret Brown, Beth Garrabrant, Lisa Heller, Ali Herting, Dave McCary, Emily Osborne, Sara Rodriguez, Limor Gott Ronen, Mickey Stanley, Emma Stone, Nicole Stott, executive producers

Outstanding Original Film, Broadcast or Streaming

“Color Theories by Julio Torres” (HBO Max)
Julio Torres, director; Matthew Vaughan, producer

“People We Meet on Vacation” (Netflix)
Brett Haley, director; Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner, producers

“Reflection in a Dead Diamond” (Shudder)
Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, directors; Pierre Foulon, producer

“Remarkably Bright Creatures” (Netflix)
Olivia Newman, director; Peter Craig, David Levine, Bryan Unkeless, producers

“#Skyking” (Hulu)
Patricia E. Gillespie, director; Christopher G. Cowan, Patricia E. Gillespie, David Sloan, Claire Weinraub, producers

Outstanding Lead Performance in a Comedy Series

Elle Fanning, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” (Apple TV)
Dan Levy, “Big Mistakes” (Netflix)
Taylor Ortega, “Big Mistakes” (Netflix)
Tim Robinson, “The Chair Company” (HBO Max)
Rachel Sennott, “I Love LA” (HBO Max)

Outstanding Lead Performance in a Drama Series

Malin Åkerman, “The Hunting Wives” (Netflix)
Sydney Chandler, “Alien: Earth” (FX/Hulu)
Peter Claffey, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” (HBO Max)
Chase Infiniti, “The Testaments” (Hulu)
Rhea Seehorn, “Pluribus” (Apple TV)

Outstanding Lead Performance in a Limited or Anthology Series

Riz Ahmed, “Bait” (Amazon Prime Video)
Jamie Bell, “Half Man” (HBO Max)
Matthew Macfadyen, “Death by Lightning” (Netflix)
Carey Mulligan, “Beef” (Netflix)
Sarah Pidgeon, “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette” (FX/Hulu)
Lili Reinhart, “Hal & Harper” (MUBI)
Michael Shannon, “Death by Lightning” (Netflix)

Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Comedy Series

Odessa A’zion, “I Love LA” (HBO Max)
Erika Alexander, “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins” (Peacock)
Laurie Metcalf, “Big Mistakes” (Netflix)
Michelle Pfeiffer, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” (Apple TV)
Daniel Radcliffe, “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins” (Peacock)
Haley Lu Richardson, “Ponies” (Peacock)

Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Drama Series

Dexter Sol Ansell, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” (HBO Max)
Babou Ceesay, “Alien: Earth” (FX/Hulu)
Zach Galifianakis, “The Audacity” (AMC)
Tom Pelphrey, “Task” (HBO Max)
Karolina Wydra, “Pluribus” (Apple TV)

Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Limited or Anthology Series

Linda Cardellini, “DTF St. Louis” (HBO Max)
David Harbour, “DTF St. Louis” (HBO Max)
David McKenna, “Lord of the Flies” (Netflix)
Nick Offerman, “Death by Lightning” (Netflix)
Cailee Spaeny, “Beef” (Netflix)

Outstanding Performance in an Original Film

Sally Field, “Remarkably Bright Creatures” (Netflix)
Allison Janney, “Miss You, Love You” (HBO Max)
Cassandra Naud, “Influencers” (Shudder)
Yannick Renier, “Reflection in a Dead Diamond” (Shudder)
Cory Michael Smith, “Mountainhead” (HBO Max)

April 28, 2026
Bitcoin’s $80k test should be decided by the bond market this week

Everyone watching Bitcoin this week is watching the Federal Reserve, while the more important tell may be sitting in the Treasury market, where the 10-year yield has compressed into one of its tightest ranges of the year just as a dense macro calendar opens.

Bitcoin’s recovery now rests on renewed institutional inflows and the assumption that liquidity conditions will not tighten again. If Treasuries choose a direction before that assumption is tested, the bond market could drive Bitcoin’s next move independently of any crypto-specific catalyst.

The 10-year yield spent Apr. 1 through Apr. 24 inside a band of 4.26% to 4.35%, closing at 4.31% on Apr. 24 per FRED data.

The US 10-year Treasury yield held inside a 4.26%-4.35% band throughout April, its tightest Bollinger Band compression since Jan. 16.

Barron’s reported that the 10-year Bollinger Bands had narrowed to their tightest since Jan. 16, a classic coiled setup, and Reuters’ technical commentary placed the yield inside a larger symmetrical triangle that frequently precedes a sharp directional move.

On Apr. 27, the 10-year had ticked back toward 4.32%, with commodity prices and geopolitical risk feeding inflation expectations, adding inputs to yield direction that run well outside the Fed’s control.

A compressed yield range is a market storing energy before a decision.

The event cluster that could release that energy arrives in rapid succession. The FOMC meets Apr. 28-29, the BEA publishes the advance first quarter GDP estimate alongside March Personal Income and Outlays and the PCE deflator on Apr. 30, while the Employment Cost Index also lands that morning.

That is three macro readings in two days, enough to move Treasuries materially in either direction and enough to change the financial conditions backdrop that Bitcoin is currently relying on.

The key points

Bitcoin is where a Treasury repricing could first show up, as the crypto bid has rebuilt into an already fragile technical area.

CoinShares’ latest weekly report recorded $1.2 billion in crypto investment product inflows, the fourth consecutive positive week and the third straight above $1 billion, with $933 million flowing to Bitcoin, $192 million to Ethereum, and total assets under management climbing to $155 billion.

Farside Investors’ daily ETF data show that US spot Bitcoin ETFs posted nine straight positive sessions from Apr. 14 to Apr. 24, totaling over $2 billion in inflows.

The risk is that buyers return just before Treasuries choose a direction. CoinShares’ Mar. 23 note shows that weekly inflows slowed sharply and crypto products suffered $405 million in post-FOMC outflows once markets read that meeting as a hawkish pause.

The crypto bid at the time was genuine, and a macro repricing overtook it anyway.

That episode is directly relevant now because Bitcoin is approaching its $80,000 test with the same ingredient in place and the same unresolved variable of what the bond market decides to do next.

Bitcoin drew $1.2 billion in weekly institutional inflows across four consecutive positive weeks while pressing into a profit-taking zone at $80,100.

What on-chain data shows

Glassnode’s Apr. 22 report noted that Bitcoin reclaimed the True Market Mean at $78,100, with the short-term holder cost basis at $80,100 as the immediate resistance ceiling.

ETF flows turned modestly positive again, and spot demand showed early recovery, while the short-term holder realized profit spiked to $4.4 million per hour.

Glassnode also noted that Bitcoin’s own implied and realized volatility has compressed, leaving no premium in options pricing. Treasuries and Bitcoin markets are coiled at the same time, and the rates market is the one with more immediate cause to move first, given the macro calendar sitting directly in front of it.

Glassnode’s framework gives the battleground its coordinates, as sustained demand through $80,100 would confirm the institutional bid has enough depth to absorb profit-taking.

A failure there that pushes $BTC back toward $78,100 would leave the True Market Mean as the last meaningful support before Glassnode’s $75,000 downside-acceleration area comes into play.

The bond market’s direction will determine which of those outcomes resolves.

Potential outcomes

The bull case flows from yields moving lower. If the 10-year closes below the April floor near 4.26%, and especially if it breaks through Reuters’ 4.23% technical pivot, Bitcoin gets the cleanest macro environment its current rally could ask for.

Falling yields reduce the discount-rate drag on risk assets, support the liquidity trade, and give the $1.2 billion weekly inflow pace a better chance of forcing $BTC through the $80,100 resistance ceiling, with enough absorption to hold.

In that setup, the nine-session ETF streak and CoinShares’ four consecutive positive weeks would read as early evidence of a durable demand regime, and the rally’s test period would be over.

The October 2025 total AUM peak of $263 billion serves as the relevant benchmark for how far the institutional re-engagement has yet to go.

The bear case flows from yields breaking higher. If the 10-year pushes above 4.35% and starts moving toward Reuters’ 4.6% upside resolution area, financial conditions will tighten at exactly the moment Bitcoin is pressing into a zone where more than 54% of recent buyers are sitting on profit.

$BTC stalls at $80,100, the profit-taking that Glassnode is already flagging at $4.4 million per hour accelerates, and sellers test the True Market Mean at $78,100.

If that level fails, Glassnode’s $75,000 downside-acceleration area comes into play, and markets would reframe the entire inflow streak as institutional capital that arrived before the bond market closed the door.

The March precedent makes that sequence concrete, as even $1 billion-plus weekly demand could not prevent $405 million in post-FOMC outflows once the macro read turned hawkish. The same mechanism is available again.

Bitcoin’s next move may originate in the Treasury market. The institutional bid has returned across enough channels to confirm a broad recovery in demand.

However, the bid has returned before the bond market has signaled if macro conditions will help or work against it.

If Treasuries fall, Bitcoin’s $80,000 test gets materially easier, and the institutional thesis gets its first real macro confirmation. If Treasuries jump, duration repricing becomes the deciding factor and the rally fails on macro grounds alone.

April 28, 2026
Snapchat is rolling out sponsored AI agents

It was only a matter of time before they found a way to use AI agents as corporate shills. On Tuesday, Snapchat rolled out AI Sponsored Snaps, a “new way for brands to show up in Chat through AI agents.” Or, put another way, it’s conversational advertising. (Yay?)

AI Sponsored Snaps will appear in the app’s Chat tab (with a light gray “Ad” notation next to the brand name). After opening the chat, you can ask the agent questions about the brand it represents. Snap showed an example from its first partner for the initiative, Experian. The bot offers to answer your questions on saving money, improving your credit score and — there it is — exploring loans and credit cards.

Whether through credit card offers or other means, the AI agent will presumably try to guide you toward behavior that makes money for the sponsor. So, it isn’t clear why this would be better for consumers than asking a general-purpose chatbot like Gemini or Claude the same questions. Maybe the answer is as simple as, “It isn’t… but they know people will use it anyway.”

Snap

“Conversation is becoming the most valuable real estate in advertising,” Snap’s Chief Business Officer, Ajit Mohan, wrote in a press release. “AI is accelerating that shift, turning chat into the place where people discover products, ask questions, and make decisions in real time. The real opportunity isn’t just putting ads into those environments, it’s designing formats that feel native to how people already talk.”

Snap says more than half a billion people have messaged its My AI feature since it launched three years ago. That was despite a shaky start, where the bot told researchers and journalists posing as young teenagers how to mask the smell of alcohol or cannabis and set the mood for sex.

April 28, 2026