Simmering tensions boiled over during a “live blog event” on Tuesday afternoon that gave CBS employees the opportunity to ask tough questions of corporate executives like interim CEO Joe Ianniello and chief people officer Laurie Rosenfield, who had billed the event as “part of our ongoing organization-wide dialogue about CBS’ workplace culture.”
Financial and investment companies surged Wednesday as fourth-quarter reports from Wall Street continued to roll in. Goldman Sachs’ stock had its best day in 10 years, and Bank of America its best in seven.
The centerpiece of Stirr will be a digital channel called Stirr City. It will be tailored to a viewer’s location and carry local news and other programs airing on that city’s station. However, viewers will be free to choose a different city. Broadcasters are typically barred from doing so, particularly with sports, though Sinclair appears to be focusing on high school and other local teams for which rights wouldn’t be an issue.
NBC’s This Is Us returned Tuesday and picked up pretty much where it left off in late November — both in terms of story and in the ratings. The CW, meanwhile, got solid premiere numbers from Roswell, New Mexico, a reboot of the 1999-2002 WB/UPN show Roswell.
The group’s work developing Next Gen TV powered by ATSC 3.0 caps the broadcasting veteran’s 40-year career. Fox’s Richard Friedel will lead the search committee to identify Richer’s successor.
Snap Inc. said Chief Financial Officer Tim Stone is leaving to pursue unspecified opportunities. He had joined Snap just eight months ago after two decades at Amazon.
After an abrupt departure, former ESPN president John Skipper is trying to beat his former employer at its own game with DAZN (pronounced “da zone”), a subscription streaming service with an odd name and big plans to disrupt sports broadcasting.
The presence of several new shows and their talent at NATPE next week should make for a livelier convention and reassure broadcasters about the health of syndication, one of the cornerstones of their business.
The station group extends the contract of its founder, chairman, president and CEO in the wake of its $4.1 billion acquisition of Tribune Media.
Fox won the week in primetime, averaging a hefty 11.35 million viewers. CBS had 6.5 million, NBC had 4.95 million, ABC had 3.84 million, Univision had 1.4 million, Ion Networks had 1.3 million, Telemundo had 1.1 million and the CW averaged 860,000.
The Murdoch family’s new Fox needs Madison Avenue to buy commercials in an abundance of sports broadcasts. Seth Winter will take on the job of selling them. Winter, the former head of NBC Sports ad sales, is joining Fox in a similar role, taking over a critical position at the company as it focuses more intently on live programming and sports content.
Ford Motor Co gave a fourth-quarter earnings forecast on Wednesday that was below analysts’ expectations, sending shares down slightly in U.S. premarket trading.
Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) has been elected chairman of the House Communications Subcommittee. Doyle was the lead legislator on the House attempt to reverse the FCC’s deregulatory Restoring Internet Freedom order repealing regs against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization. He has also pushed the FCC to go through with a hearing over allegations Sinclair may not have been truthful with the FCC about its proposal to buy Tribune.
After raising $6 million, the start-up NewsGuard, co-founded by Steve Brill, has signed Microsoft as its first major client. The main goal: to combat the spread of false stories on the internet.
The former ND of KJRH Tulsa, Okla., is tapped to lead news efforts at Bayou City Broadcasting’s CBS-Fox affiliate in Evansville, Ind.
Viacom has laid off a number of staffers in its entertainment group, with the majority of the affected employees hailing from Paramount Network. A Viacom spokesperson declined to comment. But a source with knowledge of the situation that the number of affected employees was fewer than 20, or less than 2% of the entertainment group’s workforce.
Newspaper circulation is down sharply, and so is employment in the newspaper industry. Financial cutbacks have led to the shutdown of nearly 1,800 daily and weekly newspapers since 2004. Two developments this week brought the issue into further focus. Facebook, whose success has contributed to the news business’ decline, announced Tuesday it would invest $300 million over three years in news initiatives with an emphasis in local coverage. More ominously, the hedge fund-backed Digital First Media, known for sharp cost-cutting strategies, bid to buy Gannett Co. , the publisher of USA Today and several daily newspapers across the country.
In another sign that TiVo/Rovi is prepared to go to the mat in its legal fight with Comcast, the company has fired off another lawsuit against the MSO, alleging that Comcast is infringing on eight patents.
Security executives from Tegna Media, Graham Media, KQED San Francisco and Sinclair Broadcast Group will share their list of the 10 best security practices for broadcasters at TVNewsCheck’s annual Cybersecurity for Broadcasters Retreat next month.
