Streaming Ratings: Tom Brady Roast Hits Top 10 Originals After One Night

The Roast of Tom Brady racked up 279 million minutes for the week of April 29-May 5, good for 10th place among original series in Nielsen’s rankings. The special streamed live on May 5, meaning it tallied those viewing minutes in under 12 hours. (With a running time of almost three hours, the 279 million minutes equates to about 1.6 million complete runs of the special.)

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The only certainties at the moment is that ESPN will retain the top package and Turner Sports' 40-year relationship with the league is in jeopardy. Pictured: Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown drives to the basket against the Cleveland Cavaliers during the second half of Game 5 of an NBA basketball second-round playoff series Wednesday, May 15, in Boston. The Celtics advanced to the Eastern Conference finals (Charles Krupa/AP)

The announcement came as news organizations were preparing to end a second day of waiting out jury deliberations with no conclusion. They quickly scrambled when Judge Juan Merchan, instead of saying court was dismissed until Friday, said there was a verdict that would be announced in a half hour. (Michael M. Santiago/Pool Photo via AP)

TikTok and its Chinese owner, ByteDance, continue to have one of the lowest reputation scores across all of the companies measured annually in the Axios Harris Poll 100, thanks to bipartisan concerns around social media safety and security.

TVN’S MANAGING MEDIA BY MARY COLLINS

Broadcast TV Must Come To Terms With Its Maturity

Local TV broadcasters have two options in front of them: wind down or transition. For those that choose the latter, they still have assets they can bring to bear.

Trump Guilty On All Counts In Hush-Money Case

Donald J. Trump, the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee, was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a case stemming from a payment that silenced a porn star.  

TV Networks Vamp For Time During The Wait For Trump Verdict

Jury deliberation meant tense, ultimately boring hours of waiting for lawyers, journalists and others at the Manhattan courtroom where former President Donald Trump's hush money trial is being held. It's the same for TV networks covering the case — except they have hours of time to fill for viewers. Rather than switch to something else, they have largely stuck close to the courthouse. (Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP)

Skydance Sweetens Offer For Paramount Global

David Ellison’s Skydance has sweetened its offer to acquire Paramount Global, in an attempt to make it more palatable to the company’s Class B stockholders.

DTVA was formed on the heels of challenging outcomes with features The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. Initially, DTVA was restricted from using established Disney legacy characters, but nevertheless had huge successes with new shows like The Wiggles and Adventures of the Gummi Bears, both of which became popular in syndication.

AI & THE MEDIA

New Streaming Service Lets Users Create Their Own Shows Using AI

Fable Studio, an Emmy-winning San Francisco startup, on Thursday announced Showrunner, a platform the company says can write, voice and animate episodes of shows it carries. Under the initial release, users will be able to watch AI-generated series and create their own content — complete with the ability to control dialogue, characters and shot types, among other controls.

CTV, Streaming Ad Experiences Face Ongoing Issues

With growing digital channels of video content — streaming, connected TV, and otherwise — advertising quality and ad experience are facing some issues, according to a new report from Comcast’s FreeWheel.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who started talking about more deals shortly after inking a massive merger, irritating Wall Street, has been publicly quiet on that front for a bit. Today, he said he sees opportunities in M&A with the company on a stronger financial footing and rolling out streamer Max globally to achieve necessary scale.

Is ‘Love Is Blind’ A Toxic Workplace?

Reality TV contestants are barely paid, and the experience can feel like abuse. Former cast members of Netflix’s megahit are speaking out — and calling for solidarity.

Siding against Amazon, a federal judge has ruled that the Federal Trade Commission can proceed with charges that the company used “dark patterns” to dupe people into signing up for Prime subscriptions, and also thwarted subscribers' attempts to cancel.

Peltz sold all of his Disney stock at roughly $120 a share, making about $1 billion on the position, according to a person familiar with the matter. The stock currently trades for about $100 per share. The exit comes weeks after Peltz’s Trian Partners lost a proxy battle at Disney in early April as shareholders reelected the company’s full slate of board nominees.

Why Reality TV Is On Life Support

Development and production have been sluggish since the strikes, leaving desperate workers in the lurch: "All of a sudden the faucet just turned off."

Robert De Niro Will Not Receive Service To America Award

Robert De Niro, announced as the winner of the NAB’s Leadership Foundation’s Service to America Leadership Award the day before, will not get the award. The NAB noted that the June 4 awards event is “proudly bipartisan,” and said on Wednesday the actor’s “recent high-profile activities will create a distraction.”

TVN’S MEDIA JOBS

New Jobs Posted To TVNewsCheck

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include an opening for a remote position as a national advertising sales account executive. Existing jobs posted include openings for a vice president-GM, a market manager and director of student media.

TVN Webinar: News, Sports And Remote Production In 2024

Technology leaders from NBC Regional Sports Networks, Sinclair, Gray Television, Hearst Television and Fox Television Stations discuss the benefits and challenges of remote production in an IP environment in a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch webinar on July 16 at 1 p.m. ET. Register here.

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