2017

There’s still plenty of great television to come as 2017 draws to a close, but while TV programming has offered a diverse set of creative content—from shows with ice zombies, to murder mysteries, to real-life quarreling socialites, to shows with plain old regular zombies—the real winners of the year seem to be the viewers, who have a dizzying array of ways to view and programming to choose from right at their fingertips.

Kagan, S&P Global Market Intelligence’s media research unit, says TV stations’ deals announced this past year totaled $5.03 billion versus $5.3 billion in 2016. The biggest deal was Sinclair Broadcast Group’s $3.76 billion agreement to buy Tribune Media in April. The Sinclair-Tribune deal represents 75% of total TV station deal-making last year.

Obsession with politics propelled news viewing, already a sizable portion of live and same-day TV universe, to a 12% gain in 2017 compared with 2016. Sports programming, once thought to be impervious, declined 6% last year even when the Rio Olympics are taken out of the year-to-year comparison. The findings are contained in a new report by Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser.

Decisions made in courtrooms and boardrooms alike are poised to have lasting implications on the long-term direction of the cable industry. Here’s a look back at some of the biggest cable/media stories of 2017 (in no particular order) and their impact heading into 2018.

Broadcast design in 2017 was driven heavily by three letters — LED. Last year, LED video walls and video arrays continued to see monumental growth, with lower prices and greater advantages of flexibility making the technology pop up in even smaller markets. Although seamless LED walls are by no means new, they did see a significant boost last year.

Cord-cutting is not just for millennials anymore. Fed up with high prices and bloated packages, millions of Americans cut the cord on cable TV in 2017, finding refuge with a growing number of streaming services, which deliver lower prices and a competitive channel lineup over the internet.

Two New York Times media reporters analyze why 2017, despite powerful foes like Netflix and the fallout of harassment scandals, was the year TV roared back.

The Dow Jones Industrial Index added a massive 24.7%, but the Dow Jones U.S. Broadcasting & Entertainment index market grew only 7.8%. So-called FANG stocks — big digital media companies including Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google — posted eye-opening 50% improvements.

TVNewsCheck reported the deaths of outstanding men and women who shaped television as actors, lawmakers, producers, business people, journalists and on-air personalities. Here’s a look back at some of those influencers.

Like the DNA test you gave your dog to learn how many noble breeds came together to create one dumb mutt, the spit test on this year’s wide variety of TV controversies seem to all lead back to Donald Trump. Attacks on TV news? NFL ratings slump? Relentless march of powerful TV industry men accused of grabbing, groping, sexual assault and harassment? Trump, Trump, and Trump. Here’s a look at some of the big TV controversies of 2017.

Swisher returns to Recode Media with Peter Kafka to talk about how journalism and tech are doing in the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Only one of the top 10 most-viewed cable nets in primetime this year saw viewership growth relative to 2016. MSNBC was the pleasant outlier, notching a massive 50% YOY increase in primetime viewership with 1.62 mlllion viewers P2+. That was good enough for the cable news net to jump from No 10 in prime last year to No 3 this year. The rest of the top 10 saw primetime viewership decrease to varying degrees.

Several factors have kept the market on an upward grind for most of the year and repeatedly driven stock indexes to all-time highs. The global economy rebounded, while the U.S. economy and job market continued to strengthen, which helped drive strong corporate earnings growth.

It’s been a wild and wearying year in the world of TV, with memorable moments by the dozens. Here are nine signal moments (though a few of them are perhaps best forgotten).

On The IBC Exhibit Floor: Accedo Accedo | Stand 14.E14 | www.accedo.tv Accedo will  be presenting its latest VR capabilities of the newly launched Accedo One platform, together with Nokia OZO.   Accedo […]