Stocks ended lower on Wall Street Wednesday, easing back from recent records. The S&P 500 fell 0.5% after shedding a modest gain as the selling picked up in the last hour of trading.
CLOSING BELL
Democrats and Republicans are setting a torrid fundraising pace more than one year out from the midterm elections, stockpiling record-breaking amounts of cash as control of the narrowly divided House and Senate hangs in the balance. Between the tens of millions of dollars that candidates and groups are already collecting and the high stakes at play, political strategists and analysts are projecting that the level of spending on 2022 campaign ads will not only surpass every previous midterm race, but could even approach the last presidential election cycle.
Fox’s broadcast of the World Series opener between the Braves and Astros averaged 10.5 million total viewers and a 2.3 demo rating, up sharply from the preliminary numbers for last year’s shortened-season Dodgers/Rays Game 1 but shy of Nationals/Astros 2019.
BRAND CONNECTIONS
Joe Ianniello hopes to take advantage of M&A shakeups and technological disruption in media as he launches his a media-focused SPAC with a number of fellow CBS Corp. veterans. The former chief operating officer and CEO of CBS sees his next move as partnering with former peers in Big Media to acquire and help manage assets that may no longer be top priority for a large conglomerate, but are still big businesses.
The network is planning a monthlong series, Climate Crisis: Saving Tomorrow, which will kick off with coverage of the conference, and continue throughout November, spanning all 7 continents. The series will examine the causes and risks of climate change, and what steps would need to be taken to limit further damage. In addition, ABC News is creating a new unit focused on climate change, led by Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee, joined by coordinating producer Tracy Wholf and producer Stephanie Ebbs.
Exclusives
Evans, who has been serving as the interim news director at KING Seattle, will start in her new role at Cox Media Group's CBS affiliate on Nov. 8.
“Our substantial free cash flow reflects the continued performance of our business and consistent execution of our long-term strategy,” said Dave Lougee, Tegna president and chief executive officer.
WWE is the latest entertainment company to catch NFT fever. The wrestling entertainment producer inked an exclusive, multiyear deal with Fox Entertainment’s Blockchain Creative Labs to launch an NFT marketplace for licensed digital WWE tokens and collectibles.
FNC will present special live coverage of the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races as well as the New York City mayoral race on Tuesday, Nov. 2.
NBCUniversal appears to be doing everything in its power to keep the most popular personalities on its cable news network. According to Insider, while Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are under contract for another year, they’re reportedly eyeing Rachel Maddow’s recent reported $30 million deal (she was making roughly $8 million per year), and according to Insider, they met with NBC News Group Chairman Cesar Conde last week to discuss next steps.
Kyle Pleva has been named vice president of corporate communications for the U.S. at Vice Media Group. Pleva succeeds Van Scott, who departed last month to take to top communications spot at ABC News after a brief tenure at Vice Media.
David Corn, Washington bureau chief at Mother Jones magazine, is aghast at the omissions in the recently released ABC News documentary on former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who authored the famous dossier on Russia and Donald Trump. “Steele and his dossier have always been a sideshow to the main event: the Kremlin’s clandestine assault that helped Trump win,” writes Corn.
Facebook engineers gave extra value to emoji reactions, including "angry," pushing more emotional and provocative content into users’ news feeds.
QUARTERLY REPORT
Google Ad Gain Fuels Profit For Parent Alphabet
Mountain View, California-based Alphabet Inc. said Tuesday that it earned $18.94 billion, or $27.99 per share, in the July-September period. Revenue rose 41% to $65.12 billion. The advertising business, the core of the company, rose 43% to $53.13 billion. YouTube's ads jumped 43%, to $7.21 billion, and the cloud-computing business climbed 45% to $4.99 billion.
The San Francisco-based company said Tuesday that its net loss was $536.8 million, or 67 cents per share, in the July-September quarter. That's down from a profit of $28.7 million, or 4 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.
MARKET SHARE
CBS Stations To Make ‘EPIC’ Move In 13 Markets
Wendy McMahon, president, co-head of CBS News and Stations at ViacomCBS, announced that the CBS station group will be hiring to fill a number of newly created positions as executive producers impacting communities (EPIC).
Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group said it acquired HBCUGo.TV, a streaming service serving the 105 historically Black colleges and universities from Symonds-Evans Media. The acquisition bolsters the company’s reach into African-American audiences. Allen Media Group recently launched theGrio.TV as an over-the-air network.
NETWORK RATINGS ROUNDUP, OCT. 18-24
‘Ghosts,’ ‘Wonder Years’ Are Long-View Ratings Winners
The winner of last week's network derby was NBC, home to two football games that landed in the top 10. It averaged 5.79 million viewers in primetime, followed by CBS with 5.11 million. Fox had 4 million, ABC had 3 million, Univision had 1.3 million, Telemundo had 1 million and Ion Television had 970,000. With a lift from the baseball playoffs, TBS topped the cable networks in primetime, averaging 3.1 million viewers.
CBS earlier this year mulled selling its sprawling New York-based CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. A source said that the company had “looked at” selling the Broadcast Center — located at 524 West 57th St. between 10th and 11th Avenues. Instead, as ViacomCBS eyed its real estate portfolio for possible sources of cash to fund its streaming ambitions, it settled on selling Black Rock — its granite New York headquarters on 52nd Street — and its CBS Studios Center lot in Los Angeles, dubbed the “Radford Lot.”
On Nov. 2, voters won’t decide who wins the White House or whether Republicans or Democrats gain control of Congress, but NBC's Kristen Welker and Chuck Todd will lead coverage that evening that could prove to be a harbinger for programming to come: a two-hour streaming show, Meet The Press: Election Night Special, on NBC News Now that will examine the ins and outs of important gubernatorial, state-level and local mayoral elections.
“Every comedian who is not doing wife jokes has to thank him for that,” actor-comedian Albert Brooks told The Associated Press in 2007. “He really was the first, even before Lenny Bruce, in terms of talking about stuff, not just doing punch lines.”
WEEK ENDING OCT. 25
Station Trading Roundup: 1 Deal, $500,000
The purchase of WYMP-LD Bruce, Miss., by Gray Television tops the latest list of TV station transactions submitted to the FCC for its approval, according to BIA Advisory Services.
TVNewsCheck’s annual conference exploring the intersections of news and technology will return to the New York Hilton on Dec. 14 in a hybrid event that allows audiences to attend in person or virtually. Register here.
TVN’S MEDIA JOBS
New Jobs Posted To TVNewsCheck
New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for a general sales manager, a digital executive producer and a general manager for Nexstar and Lockwood stations, and an All Things Considered host at Illinois Public Media.
SPONSORED BY THE WEATHER COMPANY
TVN Webinar To Explore The Future Of Digital Weathercasting
As the business of broadcasting continues to add platforms, pressure grows to produce more content more efficiently. The Weather Company, an IBM business, has responded with a major technology announcement, set for Oct 12. TVNewsCheck and The Weather Company will follow up this announcement on Oct. 28 with an in-depth conversation about what the future of digital weather storytelling will look like. Join us.
A TVNewsCheck half-day conference, to be presented live on Zoom on Nov. 4, will gather industry leaders in production, operations and technology to consider how content production is changing after more than a year of remote production. Executives in entertainment, news and sports will compare emerging best practices and the impact of the pandemic on the industry’s transition to IP and cloud workflows. Register here.
