Graham Media’s Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV and the Michigan Chronicle announced a new media partnership aimed at elevating local news coverage in the Metro Detroit region. The station said “this collaboration marks a significant step towards bolstering community engagement, fostering inclusivity, and enriching the depth of coverage on issues vital to Detroit and the state of Michigan.”
In the span of a decade, Netflix has helped decimate linear TV, not only gobbling up series that once would have anchored a network lineup but also taking discarded network series — from You to Manifest— and making them hits. That’s left traditional TV clinging to live sports like a life raft: 98 of last year’s top-100 broadcasts were sports (overwhelmingly, NFL). Now Netflix appears to be coming for them, too.
Tubi, Fox’s ad supported streaming service, named veteran ad sales executive Jeff Lucas as chief revenue officer. Lucas replaces Mark Rotblat, who had been CRO since 2018. Rotblat will be focusing on AdRise, another unit in Fox’s Tubi Media Group, a Tubi spokesperson said. AdRise is a large-scale video advertising network that incorporates all of Fox’s video inventory from Tubi, Fox Sports, Fox Entertainment, Fox News Media and Fox Television Stations.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max will join competitors Netflix and Disney+ in cracking down on password sharing. JB Perrette, WBD’s CEO and president of global streaming and games, said the initiative would launch later this year with a broader rollout in 2025.
The ability to cross-measure YouTube ad performance got a boost on Monday with the integration of Comscore Campaign Ratings (CCR) into its platform. Comscore and YouTube on Monday announced the expansion of YouTube’s existing measurement capabilities to include YouTube Shorts and In-Feed inventory, as well as the ability to measure YouTube standard video inventory, YouTube and YouTube TV across connected TV (CTV), desktop, and mobile. The tool also will include the measurement of Masthead inventory in the coming months.
The forthcoming sports streaming venture backed by Disney, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery will reach 5 million subscribers in its first five years, according to a projection shared Monday by Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch. Speaking at a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley, Murdoch cited the forecast in responding to questions about whether the new venture would threaten the company’s existing pay-TV business.
The Law & Order and FBI megaproducer is behind a pair of series, Homicide: New York and Homicide: Los Angeles, at the streamer.
Cox Media Group and Action News Jax today launched Action Sports Jax 24/7, the first streaming sports channel of its kind in the market. Action Sports Jax 24/7 debuted on Action News […]
While the rate of cord cutting predictably continued to accelerate for most operators, Charter became the top dog … and Google seriously started to take over the linear bundling business.
“This is a very important process. We are sticking to our principles, to our guns,” David Gandler told analysts Friday.
Mometu, a free video-on-demand and live TV streaming service, has partnered with OTTera, a leader in FAST linear and OTT application solutions, to enhance its streaming offer. The partnership, the […]
In nearly four hours of arguments Monday, several justices questioned aspects of laws adopted by Republican-dominated legislatures and signed by Republican governors in Florida and Texas in 2021. But they seemed wary of a broad ruling, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett warning of “land mines” she and her colleagues need to avoid in resolving the two cases.
Vice, which filed for bankruptcy last year before being sold for $350 million to a consortium led by the Fortress Investment Group, is also looking to sell its Refinery 29 publishing business, CEO Bruce Dixon said in his memo to staff. It’s the latest sign of financial problems buffeting the media industry.
The tech firm faces increasing competition on the streaming advertising side, as Netflix and Disney grow ad tiers and Pluto and Tubi offer free services, and may get a new rival on the smart TV-manufacturer front.
DirecTV, long known as a satellite company, is launching a new ad campaign that says dishes are for the birds and that they should be streaming their TV. A new commercial entitled The Good Stuff features two pigeons on a rooftop who are surprised to notice a household watching “the good stuff” on DirecTV without a dish. The voices of the pigeons – Bobby and Frank – are supplied by Steve Buscemi and Henry Winkler.
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New Sports Joint Venture Is Too Small
Ted Hearn: The joint venture formed this week by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery promises a massive slate of sports programming ripped from the traditional cable bundle yet deeply discounted from the roughly $200 or so that many pay each month to cable TV giants like Comcast and Charter. the Disney-Fox-WBD venture has a clear defect: It is too small. The market capitalization of the three JV partners is $238 billion combined. Netflix alone is worth $432 billion. Toss in Amazon/Prime at $1.8 trillion, Google/YouTube $1.85 trillion, and Apple/Apple TV at $2.9 trillion and it seems obvious that the streaming world eventually belongs to Big Tech absent a massive rival.
Peacock had an exclusive playoff game this season, which drew 23 million viewers.
The NFL isn’t just the most popular sports league in the U.S., it’s also the most valuable with the highest-rated programming and the priciest ad time. In 2021 the league signed an estimated $110 billion worth of media deals covering 11 years, which reportedly was nearly double the value of its previous contracts. With tech giants Alphabet and Amazon, along with NBCUniversal’s Peacock, snapping up digital rights to NFL games, and with the announcement this week that Disney’s ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery are launching a streaming service tailored to sports fans, it’s clear that streaming is poised to be the NFL’s next frontier, despite some backlash from fans.
Katie Puris, who was the Global Head of Brand & Creative at TikTok, alleged in a lawsuit filed this week in a Manhattan federal court that she was fired in 2022 after making internal complaints about gender and age discrimination linked to what she called a preference among company executives for hiring young people.
Goodway Group, a data-driven and technology-enabled digital media and marketing services firm, announced its first, video-only partnership for premium video ad inventory with FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the television […]
Local broadcast station groups plummeted in value this week after Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox announced they will be launching a new joint venture focused on sports fans. However, according to EW Scripps CEO Adam Symson, says Wall Street is overestimating the new product’s popularity, saying investors appear to be pricing in that local ABC and Fox affiliates wouldn’t be part of the new skinnier bundle. They will be included, he said, citing assurances he’s been given in conversations with Disney executives. “Affiliates are going to be compensated for being carried along,” Symson said.
Dismissing Bally Sports’ big Amazon-fueled restructuring plan, Manfred told MLB owners this week that all he needs are the digital rights to 14 teams to make it happen.
Tucker Carlson released his two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president whose military is deep into its second year of the Ukraine invasion, marking an unprecedented sitdown between an American journalist and adversarial head of state during wartime. The Putin interview in its entirety was offered for free and unedited, Carlson said.
Echo, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest TV show, made its debut on Nielsen’s weekly streaming rankings in 10th place for the week of Jan. 8-14. The series was watched for 731 million minutes in its first six days of availability on Disney+.
The Elon Musk-owned social platform, previously known as Twitter, has signed a two-year deal with the WWE for a new exclusive weekly video series. Called WWE Speed, the concept will feature timed matches meant to be completed in five minutes or less.
In just over two years, Hearst Television’s Very Local streaming service has built a library of dozens of titles and more than 500 original episodes. VP of Programming Laura Ling explains how the streamer makes cable-quality shows at scale and on a lean budget. A full transcript of the conversation is included.
The Super Bowl is not just a big moment for television. With the big game approaching YouTube has a few new tricks in its playbook for advertisers to engage its millions of viewers. YouTube is offering First Position Moments, which ensure that a brand’s ad is the first one seen when audiences watch the platform at the times most relevant to its business.