Political advertisers are buying more cable TV than ever — on pace to spend $850 million during this election — but not necessarily in primetime or on the networks you’d expect. Channels that haven’t historically seemed like obvious buys for political advertisers, including Food Network and HGTV, have sold more than three times the amount of TV spots to political buyers this election cycle compared to 2012.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two basketball stars and a brainy sitcom actress will be among the judges for TBS’ tech-competition series, “America’s Greatest Makers.” The cable channel said Tuesday […]
Forget The Hype: ESPN Will Be Fine
Cord-shaving is a bigger problem for the network than cord-cutting. If the network can find a way to reduce that churn, it’s not in any long-term trouble. But it must act quickly.
Exclusives
ESPN is negotiating with streaming services to make its channel available over the Web as it does with Sling TV. “A number of people have expressed interest and we’re in discussions with a large number of people,” John Skipper, the network’s president, said.
Discovery’s 4Q Misses On Earnings, Sales
Fox Brings Back ‘TV Everywhere’ Sweepstakes
The Wall Street Journal reports that after placing a premium on big media over cable companies for years, investors are changing their tune. The valuations of companies such as Viacom and Disney are under pressure, as cable operators including Comcast and Cablevision hold steady amid cord-cutting fears. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.
AT&T is phasing out the U-verse TV service as it pushes new customers to newly acquired DirecTV, a sign the company is giving up on once-heralded plans to compete head-on with cable through telephone lines. AT&T has stopped building U-verse set-top boxes and is nudging prospective customers toward its satellite unit, which has lower hardware and programming costs.
Customers of Comcast Corp. lost part of their cable television service for several hours in many major U.S. metropolitan areas Monday, but the company said the problem was fixed […]
TORONTO (AP) — Former All-Star Tracy McGrady is joining ESPN as an analyst and will make regular appearances on its new daily NBA show. McGrady will appear on “The […]
HBO Now Signed 800,000 Subs Since April
The gains in the standalone online service in the eight months since its launch last year didn’t seem to wow investors. Stifel analyst Benjamin Mogil said the 3.2% gain in HBO subscriber revenue came below the 4.7% Wall Street expected.
In releasing their fourth quarter and full-year earnings for 2015, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Charter Communications all posted subscriber gains for the past quarter. While it’s common for cable operators to see a bump in subscribers at the end of the year, both Time Warner Cable and Charter — which are planning to merge — posted full year subscriber gains, ending years of declines.
Lionsgate has made a formal overture to Starz to initiate acquisition talks, a year after the companies were brought together by investor John Malone. Starz said in a regulatory filing Thursday that Lionsgate has advised that it “intends to explore whether there is a potential mutually beneficial combination of the two companies.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Sports Illustrated is turning the unveiling of its 2016 top swimsuit model into a television special. TNT will air a special on Feb. 13 that builds […]
ESPN Deportes may have had just six weeks in which to line up advertisers for its Spanish-language simulcast of Super Bowl 50, but with the Panthers and Broncos set to kick off in Santa Clara, Calif., on Sunday, buyers say el Gran Juego is sold out.
The FCC’s Cynical Set-Top Box Play
The FCC recently announced that it intends to vote this month on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking aimed at creating a competitive retail market for video set-top boxes, a move that gives clear meaning to the biblical proverb “as a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.” There are plenty of technologies and services available today through which consumers can get video programming. So what could be driving Chairman Tom Wheeler to stick his burnt finger back into the fire?
ESPN is joining TV’s morning fray, hoping a new take on offering viewers stats and analysis of games will provide competition in the early hours of the day against Matt Lauer, Norah O’Donnell and Joe Scarborough. The three-hour SportsCenter:AM launches on the Disney-controlled cable network on Feb. 8, the day after the Super Bowl, at 7 a.m. — the earliest ESPN has ever aired an original hour of the program.
Some cable TV networks slowed down commercial clutter in the fourth quarter of 2015; network executives had earlier pledged to do so. Bernstein Research estimates that the number of non-kids primetime advertising commercials — excluding news and sports — declined 1% versus the same period in fourth quarter 2014.
No one will ever accuse Vice of a lack of bravura, but as it readies the launch of its Viceland TV channel next month, it has been wooing advertisers there with the prospect of reinventing the form. Details are still sketchy, but de-cluttering is a key part of the strategy with a low eight-minutes of commercial time per hour and a focus on branded content via its in-house content studio. And incidentally, guarantees are low and the ads won’t be cheap.
Some cable TV networks slowed down commercial clutter in the fourth quarter of 2015; network executives had earlier pledged to do so. Bernstein Research estimates that the number of non-kids prime-time advertising commercials — excluding news and sports — declined 1% versus the same period in fourth quarter 2014.
