The FCC chairwoman’s penchant for onerous deal conditions and circumventing her fellow commissioners on critical ownership cases has pushed broadcasters to a “break glass” moment.
JESSELL AT LARGE
The U.S. ad market expanded for its 13th consecutive month in April, rising 9.1% over the same month in 2023, according to the latest installment of data from Guideline's U.S. Ad Market Tracker. April also in the first month in quite some time to post an increase on top of a prior year increase, albeit a modest one: April 2023 was up 0.7% over April 2022.
KHRR, KVOA, KOLD, KUAT, KGUN and KMSB are now broadcasting with ATSC 3.0 technology.
BRAND CONNECTIONS
AI & THE MEDIA
OpenAI Forms Safety Committee As It Starts Training Latest Artificial Intelligence Model
The safety committee arrives as debate swirls around AI safety at the company, which was thrust into the spotlight after a researcher, Jan Leike, resigned and leveled criticism at OpenAI for letting safety "take a backseat to shiny products." OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever also resigned, and the company disbanded the "superalignment" team focused on AI risks that they jointly led.
Tom Wills retires from WJXT Jacksonville, Fla., after 49 years. Don Alhart says goodbye to WHAM Rochester, N.Y., after coming onboard in 1966.
Exclusives
The new partnerships feature content-sharing agreements with nonprofit outlets based in California (CalMatters), Hawaii (Honolulu Civil Beat), Montana (Montana Free Press), Nebraska (Nebraska Journalism Trust) and South Dakota (South Dakota News Watch).
Zeev Neumeier, who founded Inscape and was a pioneer in automatic content recognition, is beta-testing his new venture, GraySwan. GraySwan’s artificial intelligence technology plugs into existing connected TV ad tech stacks to eliminate unusual occurrences — so-called gray swans — and make campaigns run more efficiently.
The Hollywood icon will be honored on June 4 in Washington for his “decades-long commitment to his community and the film industry.” (Brigitte Lacombe)
In January 2021, the Washington Post’s Supreme Court reporter and his editors agreed: The upside-down American flag seen flying outside Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia home was not, on its own, a story. Earlier this month, that same story broke in The New York Times, which reported that Alito said his wife had raised the flag — a symbol adopted by supporters of former President Donald Trump who believed the election had been stolen from him — amid a neighborhood dispute.
The right-wing cable channel Newsmax denied Friday that it intentionally destroyed or concealed internal emails in an ongoing defamation case filed by voting technology company Smartmatic over the network’s airing of false claims about the 2020 election.
AI & THE MEDIA
Media Bosses Divided On Deals With AI
As tech companies race to perfect machines that can already produce humanlike text, summarize long documents and describe images and videos, media companies, including Barry Diller's IAC, are struggling to figure out where they fit into the new gold rush.
Ted Sarandos seems to be very good at giving us more of what we want. And after a crackdown on password-sharing, his company has come out on top in the crowded streaming wars (if you set aside YouTube, which Sarandos does not). That doesn’t mean everything is rosy all the time now — the company has had several rounds of layoffs in the past few years — but Sarandos, along with his co-chief executive, Greg Peters, has put Netflix in a dominant position. Has this been good for us? Or for culture?
WWL Louisiana, Tegna’s CBS affiliate in New Orleans, aired a series of reports about Lawrence Hecker, an admitted pedophile priest, detailing some of his actions and the archdiocese's leaders' reactions to them.
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.
Here is a guide to what’s already here, what’s on the way, and what it means for consumers and streamers.
Commercials are here, there — almost everywhere — on streaming services now.
Two years ago, Snapchat started rebuilding its advertising business from the ground up. Following the launch of Snap’s Conversions API (CAPI), the social media company has reported an increase in small business advertisers, CAPI integration partners, and a revenue boost. Now, Snap is providing further advertising updates, including redesigned formats and more.
The Greatest Spectacle in Racing drew more TV spectators this year, despite a nearly four-hour weather delay. NBC Sports said Monday that its coverage of Sunday’s thrilling Indianapolis 500 averaged 5.34 million viewers across NBC, streamer Peacock and NBC Sports digital platforms in preliminary numbers. That’s up by 8% over the 2023 race and by 10% over 2022. Pictured: Josef Newgarden celebrates after winning the Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday, May 26. (Michael Conroy/AP)
AI & THE MEDIA
Elon Musk’s AI Startup Raises $6 Billion
The startup, xAI, says that it has raised the cash from investors including Fidelity, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal.
In less than a decade, Right Side Broadcasting Network has gone from an upstart internet broadcaster to a major player in Trump's MAGA universe, amassing more than 2 million subscribers on its YouTube channel and on Rumble, an alternative video-sharing platform. Pictured: Monitors at Right Side Broadcasting Network in Opelika, Ala., display Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaking at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Saturday, March 2. (Mike Stewart/AP)
Basketball Hall of Fame legend Bill Walton laughs during a practice session for the NBA All-Star basketball game in Cleveland, Feb. 19, 2022. Walton, who starred for John Wooden's UCLA Bruins before becoming a Basketball Hall of Famer and one of the biggest stars of basketball broadcasting, died Monday, May 27. He was 71. (Charles Krupa/AP)
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.
