Wall Street ended higher Wednesday with help from tech and health care stocks. Stocks initially rallied after the Wall Street Journal reported that China’s government could make changes to its “Made in China 2025” economic development plan. That could be one step toward easing dispute between the world’s two largest economies.
In its mandated quadrennial review, the commission seeks comment on local radio and television ownership rules, the dual network rule that prohibits a merger among the Big Four broadcast networks and diversity-related proposals.
Ted Nesi and Dan McGowan pound the City Hall and police beats and more as digital-first reporters at WPRI, Nexstar’s CBS affiliate in Providence, R.I. And while the two news hounds have been watchdogs in target-rich Rhode Island way too long to be called “innovative,” they’re now part of a growing trend: local stations using digital journalists to strengthen their enterprise reporting.
ABC is giving A Million Little Things a big vote of confidence. The Alphabet net on Wednesday unveiled its midseason schedule, and its shifting the promising rookie drama to Thursdays at 9 p.m. following juggernaut Grey’s Anatomy.
KUSA Denver Investigative Reporter Chris Vanderveen says when people spot him in public they call him “the medical bill guy” because he has done so many stories about the outrageous bills that hospitals send to patients. The Tegna-owned NBC affiliate has produced 36 in-depth stories and two hours of primetime specials about medical billing and is not letting up.
NCIS and The Conners both improved in adults 18-49 Tuesday, with the latter tying The Voice for No. 1 in the demographic. The Conners rose a little from last week’s season low to score a 1.4 rating in the 18-49 demo. NCIS had week-to-week gains in both adults 18-49 (1.3, +0.1) and total viewers (12.15 million, up about 100,000).
Netflix led the way among all networks and studios with this year’s SAG nominations, garnering 15 nods thanks to programming like GLOW, Ozark, Grace and Frankie and The Kominsky Method. Ozark was among the select group of titles to snare four nominations, along with A Star Is Born and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
The year-long Project CommUNITY in the group’s 26 markets will spotlight people and efforts across America working to unite communities in order to foster discussions and to explore innovations that help bridge divides.
The Sony Pictures Television executive is chosen to succeed Jean Dietze, who ends her 46-year career at NBCU in January.
With the closing of the $8 million sale of eight stations to Lotus Communications, Scripps has gotten out of the radio station business. Selling all its stations brought in $83.5 million.
While viewing levels have declined as viewers, especially younger ones, spend more time streaming, the broadcast networks remain the No. 1 buy for big-spending national TV advertisers. “The viewership gap between broadcast and everything else is still holding up,” says Zenith Media’s Nick Hartofilis. And many viewers are watching broadcast shows on DVRs and on proliferating digital platforms. The networks challenge is to measure and fully monetize such non-broadcast audiences.
As she prepares to release her first comedy special in 15 years, DeGeneres is considering a much bigger change, retiring from the long-running hit syndicated show that bears her name. She’s been receiving conflicting advice from her wife, the actress Portia de Rossi, and from her older brother, Vance DeGeneres, a comedian, and has changed her mind more than once.
Despite the many advantages of new IP tech for covering news from the field, especially during disasters, savvy broadcasters know it’s also valuable to have some tried-and-true gear in reserve. “If there’s another Superstorm Sandy, I would be very grateful that I still have satellite trucks, and I would be grateful that I still had satellite phones, even if I haven’t fired them up in five years,” says Peter McGowan of WCBS-WLNY New York. (Photo: Jill Altmann)
ASU’s Frank Mungeam: TV stations “can have all kinds of great delivery, and the technology can get better, but it could expose the weakness of our underlying content. We have to start by working backwards from the audience, understanding what this new ecosystem is and the quality of some of the programming that we’re competing with on Netflix and Hulu.” (Photo: Jill Altmann)
CBS News reached a legal settlement with three women who accused the network of not doing enough to stop one of its anchors, Charlie Rose, from sexually harassing them. The three women had worked for CBS when Mr. Rose was a host of CBS This Morning and a correspondent for 60 Minutes.
Disney’s auction of Fox’s chain of local sports TV networks has proven to be such a complicated process that the Mouse House has decided to offer up the networks piecemeal.
Fox’s broadcast of the 2018 MLS Cup final between Atlanta United and the Portland Timbers drew 1.56 million total viewers in primetime Saturday night, making it the most-watched MLS title game since 1997, the U.S. pro soccer league’s second year of existence.
Arrow spiked to season highs on Monday as it aired the middle portion of The CW’s “Elseworlds” crossover. NBC’s The Voice, however, is currently in danger of matching its season low. The middle episode of “Elseworlds” — featuring the debut of Ruby Rose as Batwoman — propelled Arrow to a 0.7 rating among adults 18-49 and 2.04 million viewers. Both are season highs by a wide margin
Noncommercial TV stations want the FCC to let them spend the money on a post-incentive auction repack campaign funded by Congress in the Ray Baum’s FCC reauthorization act. That would include coordinating the campaign for both noncommercial and commercial stations.
The $4 million renovation of Gray’s CBS affiliate in Monroe, La., is the latest milestone in the station’s 65-year history.
Station winners include WFOR Miami, WETA Washington, KNTV San Francisco and WTSP Tampa. The winners will be celebrated on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019, at the 77th annual awards ceremony, hosted by 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl and NPR’s Ailsa Chang, host of All Things Considered.
ABC’s showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas was the most-watched of a handful of holiday specials that aired in primetime last week, reaching 5.3 million viewers. It’s a tradition in many households that was first on television in December 1965. Two other old favorites, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, were both seen by more than 4 million people on CBS Saturday night. Rudolph dates to 1964, while Frosty made his debut in 1969.
The sale of WHDT Stuart, Fla., from Günter Marksteiner to E.W. Scripps Co. tops the latest list of TV station transactions submitted to the FCC for its approval, according to BIA Advisory Services.
The EVP and GM of CBS News Digital may have found an answer to the aging out of typical TV news viewers. On average, users of its CBSN streaming service are 38 years old. Now the unit is turning its attention to delivering more local news with the rollout of CBSN Local later this month. (Photo: Jack Pagano)
Creating more long-form, “nuanced” journalism is a way for local stations to grab younger viewers in an era where there is a growing dissatisfaction with the national news media. (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)
Valari Staab is leading her NBC and Telemundo stations into the future with heavy emphasis on finding the best in new technology and synergies that allow her local journalists to develop more locally produced, original content for the stations on a multitude of platforms. (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)
“You can no longer just be a broadcaster,” says SmithGeiger’s Andrew Finlayson. “You have to go beyond that.” In addition to offering content across digital and social media platforms, broadcasters, particularly TV stations, need to create and promote the usage of mobile apps, both for entertainment content and local news. (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)
The winners of TVNewsCheck’s first Social Media Excellence Awards describe how their stations have been able to monetize various experiments in targeting social media audiences that go beyond just repeating what’s in their news broadcasts. (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)
NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations group, after rolling out a new plant in Philadelphia without an SDI router that uses as much IP as possible, will be creating a virtualized architecture for KLBR, its Telemundo station in Las Vegas, in which most of the back-end equipment used to run the station, including news production, will be located at a data center in Dallas. And then there’s the new facility NBCU is building in Boston, which will include six control rooms and six studios and accommodate four separate NBCU businesses. A big driver is increased support for the 2110 IP standard from the broadcast vendor community. (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)
