Digital

E.W. Scripps President and CEO Adam Symson says the company will be very flexible about work from home hybridity after the pandemic abates, seeing multiple advantages to the new way of working on both the station and corporate levels. Read part one here.

In addition, Charlotte Stoudt is hoining the series as showrunner. Stoudt coming on as showrunner is part of a new, multi-year overall deal that she has signed with Apple. Kerry Ehrin, who served as showrunner on the show’s first two seasons, will serve as a consultant on season 3 while also developing new projects for Apple under her overall deal.

E.W. Scripps President and CEO Adam Symson weighs in on the company’s streaming and diginet strategies, ad tech’s performance, Newsy’s overhaul and the ever-present threat of ransomware attacks against broadcasters in part one of a two-part exclusive interview.

Former President Donald Trump’s new social media platform Truth Social is expected to launch on Presidents’ Day, Feb. 21, according to the latest Apple App Store listing. Truth Social, which the 45th president announced in October, is the latest conservative alternative to large social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which the former president has repeatedly slammed for censorship.

Major streaming provider Roku has announced that one of its top execs, platform chief Scott Rosenberg, plans to depart the company in the spring after a nearly 10-year run. In an announcement, company founder and CEO Anthony Wood said Rosenberg is “ready for his next professional challenge.” Rosenberg’s current title is SVP and GM of platform business.

According to Atlantic Equities’ Hamilton Faber, Roku faces too much competition in the OTT platform business from Google, Amazon, Samsung and LG to keep growing in the U.S., where its leading market share hovers around 40%.

The FCC plans to vote this month to expand the online activities that define a candidate, and to square its political file rules with the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. According to a draft of the proposed report and order, it would revise the definition of “legally qualified candidate for public office” to include creating a campaign website and the use of social media to further that campaign.

Filming on Paramount+ drama Star Trek: Picard has been shut down since Monday following a sizable COVID-19 outbreak. Sources say more than 50 members of the large production tested positive on Monday, which was the first day of work after the Christmas break. The Patrick Stewart-led series has one of television’s biggest crews, numbering more than 450 staffers. The infections impacted multiple zones, including cast in zone A.

The final season of Lost in Space drove the Netflix series to the top of the streaming rankings for the second consecutive week. The sci-fi show was the only title in Nielsen’s streaming charts for Dec. 6-12 to top a billion minutes of viewing time. Hawkeye and The Wheel of Time also put up solid numbers.

The New York Times will buy The Athletic for $550 million after months of talks, according to a new report from the Information. Representatives for the storied newspaper and the subscription sports news website did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report, which pointed out that acquiring the smaller site will help the Times move toward its goal of 10 million subscribers by 2025. It currently has about 8.3 million.

Byron Allen Media Group announced that its new Allen Media Digital division is launching Sports.TV, a new free-streaming platform. The Sports.TV app will act as an aggregator for sports, news and entertainment networks, as well as local TV stations for free.

Susan Zirinsky, former CBS News president, is back in a job where she can do one of her favorite things: tell a few stories. Zirinsky heads See It Now Studios, an independent production unit that she expects to launch documentary films and series for a range of ViacomCBS properties as well as outside parties. “I’m not a sliver of the network, or producing just for the inside,” she says. “My mandate is to be a studio.”

Comscore, a longtime rival to Nielsen in the business of measuring media audiences, is vowing to keep pace as advertisers seek new ways of counting viewers who watch their favorite shows in a dizzying array of new formats. Comscore said it would launch “Comscore Everywhere,” a measurement product that aims to count unduplicated audiences across various media and screens. The company, which expects to add new phases to the product throughout 2022, does so as Nielsen is working on a similar initiative, all part of a large-scale move by the media and advertising industries to use new technology to tabulate audience is more precise fashion and with more discrete methods.

NBCUniversal is looking to the 2022 Winter Olympics to give its Peacock streaming platform a boost. The company said Wednesday that it will stream every event live, as well as NBC’s primetime show and studio programming, on Peacock’s premium tier. All paid subscribers (the premium tier costs $4.99 per month with ads) will have access, with no pay TV subscription required.

As marketers are looking to navigate a world without cookies and device IDs, NBCUniversal is creating a first-party roadmap for them. The company is rolling out NBCUnified, its new first-party consumer data and identity platform for marketers. The platform, due to debut in the second quarter, incorporates NBCUniversal’s network of consumer touchpoints across its entire portfolio into a scaled data offering for marketers within its One Platform ad offering.