Digital

Following a seven-month search for an executive to head U.S. originals, Netflix global TV VP Bela Bajaria has opted to promote from within the company for the role. Longtime Netflix exec Peter Friedlander (l) has been promoted for the second time under Bajaria and will serve as head of U.S. and Canada scripted series. With Friedlander taking on added responsibilities, Brian Wright (r) has opted to exit the streamer.

News and sports programming are a significant factor in keeping consumers tethered to cable and satellite subscriptions in an era rife with cord-cutting, said Andy Forssell, general manager of HBO Max, while speaking Thursday at an investor conference hosted by Barclays. But the way those formats are presented will likely have to change for streaming viewers, he said.

Locast has expanded its free streaming service to the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., area, delivering 40 local TV channels to the market’s nearly 3 million residents, which also includes Fayetteville, Chapel Hill and Rocky Mount. Raleigh is Locast’s 33rd market.

The final episode of Mare of Easttown limited series drew four million viewers over the holiday weekend across HBO and HBO Max, with nearly three million viewers Sunday night (all platforms), marking a series high for both linear and digital, according to HBO. The finale also set the record as the most watched episode of an original series on HBO Max during its first 24 hours of availability, besting the finales of recent hits The Undoing and The Flight Attendant over the same period of time.

Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb are, for many, a morning habit. NBC hopes the Today pair will soon become an afternoon or evening one for a different kind of viewer. Starting June 8, the duo will take the network’s nearly seven-decade-old Today show into new territory. The pair will add to their on-screen duties by anchoring a half-hour “highlights” recap meant to bring the most recent Today news to streaming audiences.

CNN’s plans for a new streaming service are coming into focus as the cable network’s parent company prepares to merge with Discovery Inc. The service, known internally by the working title CNN+, is slated to feature new shows from the network’s major anchors, including Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon, according to people familiar with the matter. Those shows would be separate from the programs hosted by Cooper and Lemon on CNN’s cable channel, some of the people said.

Twitter is partnering with veteran climate journalist and meteorologist Eric Holthaus to launch a local weather news service on the platform called “Tomorrow” that will be built using all of Twitter’s new creator products — from paid newsletters to ticketed live audio rooms and more.

On Sunday night at 10 p.m. ET, when HBO’s highly anticipated Mare of Easttown season finale was to have started, social media erupted with reports that the cabler’s streaming service — which only days ago celebrated its first birthday — was down for many subscribers. Some users speculated that HBO Max could not handle the Kate Winslet-led murder mystery’s finale-night traffic.

Radha Subramanyham, chief research and analytics officer at CBS Corp., says AVOD and SVOD streaming options and linear TV can coexist without enmity. “It is our job to understand our customer base and move people seamlessly through our experiences,” she says. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

How big was Friends: The Reunion for HBO Max? Almost superhero-big, according to third-party data. Friends: The Reunion was watched by an estimated 29% of U.S. streaming households on May 27, the first day of its release, as measured by TVision, a connected-TV analytics provider. Viewers of the special on HBO Max were 55.4% female, and more than 50% were in the 35-54 demo. By comparison, DC’s Wonder Woman 1984 reached 32% of U.S. streaming households when it bowed on Christmas Day 2020 on HBO Max, per TVision.

When pandemic lockdowns swept the country in Spring 2020, there were concerns that the booming podcast business might take a pause — the dramatic decline in people commuting meant fewer people listening on the go. Podcast downloads did initially decline, 10% between February 25 and March 25, but instead of that decline accelerating, digital audio rebounded, and 2020 catapulted a new generation of social audio companies into prominence.

In its first full week on Netflix, original series Shadow and Bone captured 1.192 billion minutes of viewing, making it the most watched show on the major U.S. SVOD services for the week of April 26-May 2, according to Nielsen. It was the first time in eight weeks in which any show has surpassed 1 billion viewing minutes.

The former agent, FX exec and Anonymous Content manager will continue to oversee Paramount TV Studios on top of absorbing some of Julie McNamara’s responsibilities.

Google didn’t provide a new subscriber total for YouTube TV in the first quarter but one analyst estimate suggests that it was the slowest period for the virtual MVPD in years. According to MoffettNathanson’s latest Cord Cutting Monitor, YouTube TV added 75,000 subscribers during the first quarter. It’s higher than the 43,000 net adds reported by fuboTV and much better than Hulu + Live TV’s 200,000 and Sling TV’s 100,000 net losses. But, according to the analyst firm’s chart tracking YouTube TV’s growth back to the first quarter of 2017, it’s the slowest growth quarter for the vMVPD since the third quarter of 2018.

The streamier is focused on engagement — and winning back former subscribers.

Innovid and Digiday’s State of CTV Advertising report surveyed brand marketers and agency execs to determine where industry stands in the CTV advertising picture.