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According to BIA estimates, direct mail will account for $33.4 billion in local ad revenue next year. Now is the time for local TV to frame out how NextGen TV can be deployed along similar lines to capture that revenue for itself.

Ty Carver’s “Open Mike” opinion piece, Local TV Faces ‘The Great Resignation’ on TVNewsCheck on Oct. 8 started quite the debate. Here Paul Greeley responds specifically to some of Carver’s observations in his op-ed.

As local newspapers shutter, it has a chilling effect on citizens’ likelihood to vote and remain politically informed, along with fostering conditions for government inefficiency and corruption. Broadcasters can play a proactive role in stemming the problem.

When Reuters, the global news agency, published its two-part investigation last week of OAN, the most startling finding was that AT&T indirectly provided 90% of the channel’s revenue, after letting it be known that it was eager to host a new conservative cable network. But just as noteworthy as AT&T’s involvement was the way Reuters’s John Shiffman pulled back the curtain on how the San Diego-based network operates.

ATSC 3.0, also known as NextGen TV, promises a huge range of exciting possibilities for TV viewers and multiple new revenue streams for broadcasters. By supplementing traditional video entertainment and information service with a new, efficient datacasting platform, broadcasters of all types stand to increase revenues while transforming their existing spectrum into a vibrant new tool for consumers and businesses alike. The road to implementing this new technology, however, is paved with challenges.

Apple said its new iPhone 13 models have better screens, cameras and battery life, but it didn’t announce any major new advances.

The death of local news story much ballyhooed in journalism circles says more about the arrogance of local newspapers than the industry’s actual state. But TV stations need to heed an important lesson in the narrative and cast themselves as trusted local partners, not authoritative gatekeepers of information.

9/11 marked the final gasp of the ministerial anchorman.

After Game of Thrones, many said the blockbuster series was dead. Maybe not — but the future of TV epics may look more like the movies’ recent past.

As we learned at Media Financial Management’s Media Tax Summit earlier this year, those who act as tax leaders within their media companies have a tougher row to hoe than ever. As new challenges such as Big Tech taking local ad dollars away from print, broadcast and other media, tax leaders will need to step up in new ways to watch out for their companies.

What does ATSC 3.0 really mean for broadcast TV? The possibilities are vast and are likely to supercharge the business. Within 15 years of deploying NextGen services, broadcasters could make more money renting their data bits than from the advertising revenue they earn today. Think about that. A broadcaster’s future is not tied to the sole purpose of video distribution, as it is today. Instead, it will involve a myriad of new data businesses that are enabled by this new way of transmitting data.

Although linear TV enjoyed an initial pandemic boost, the effects weren’t long-lasting and didn’t reverse longstanding trends with which the industry must reckon.

Bipartisan support in Congress has gathered for the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, and its supporters believe there’s a decent chance it will be a part of the huge spending bill that Congress is now focusing on. The proposal, which provides a series of tax credits rather than direct grants, is intended to give local newspapers, digital-only publications and other local news organizations a chance to be financially viable as they figure out how to make their way in the new digital world.

The growing broadcast group’s leader, Perry Sook, is spending $130 million on D.C.-based political news operation The Hill in his latest bid to expand into national news. I’m guessing that Sook is not done with his news-empire building. And what he needs (other than a dual revenue stream for The Hill) is a business site.

The media isn’t just parroting both sides. The problem is more complex.

Dave Morgan: “There was a time when the media measurement market was pretty simple. You had Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers for newspaper ad buys, BPA for magazines, Arbitron for radio and Nielsen for TV. No more. Digital disruption, the rise of performance advertising — and, most importantly, massive and accelerating audience fragmentation across an expanding number of media channels, suppliers and devices — are to blame.”

Between confusing copyright laws and the ability to easily lift and use video, audio and photographs for their own purposes, many companies in the media industry either don’t understand or don’t take seriously enough the risks of repurposing creative materials. Here are the top copyright pitfalls you should make sure your company understands, and avoids.

Erik Wemple: “CNN flouted journalistic ethics in spring 2020 when it allowed Chris Cuomo to host his brother about a dozen times in flattering gab sessions — and then, when the governor’s covid-19 and sexual harassment scandals piled up in early 2021, the network somehow tracked down its internal guidelines and banned Chris Cuomo from covering his brother. That switcheroo is what is unprecedented.”

For anyone tuned in to television news, this past week was very emotional. I mean that literally. Tears flowed through the screen and difficult feelings were exposed by prominent personalities, all in very public settings. It hasn’t always been that way. Over many years, audiences have slowly but steadily changed how they react to strong emotions brought into their homes by TV cameras and close-ups. Last week was something of a breakthrough in that transformation.

NBC’s Tokyo Olympics are shaping up to be an echo of the 1998 Nagano disaster at CBS, but aberrations aside, the Games will remain sports’ gold standard.

Slow-paying advertising agencies continue to be an issue for collection teams —  an issue that seemed to worsen with the pandemic. Fortunately, a three-part plan from an industry expert who’s been in the media collections business for 50 years offers a solid structure, sound advice, and actionable insights for the best bet in collecting what’s due.

There’s a welcome place for reasonable regulation of political ads, but the current rules are so cumbersome and fraught with traps that even the most minor mistakes invite ready fines and embarrassment. Hopefully, acting FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel’s forthcoming changes will address that, but there’s reason for skepticism.

Think your SVOD streaming experience is completely ad-free? Non-traditional ads, “sponsored by” positions and dynamic product placement put the lie to that.

At the Supreme Court, today’s lonely dissenting opinion sometimes grows into tomorrow’s constitutional law. So take note of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s 11-page dissent on the last day of the just-completed term, in which he argues that the court should have heard a challenge to its 1964 landmark holding in New York Times v. Sullivan.

Preston Padden: “The Rupert Murdoch I worked for was brilliant, courageous, optimistic and a gentleman. Which makes his bile-filled network all the more confounding.”

Twelve months ago, protests against racist policing and brutality were at their height, and we saw many Hollywood entities make public statements of support for Black Lives Matters. There was enough momentum driving the protests that it felt like programming executives couldn’t ignore this movement altogether. And yet, cop shows still proliferate on the broadcast network schedule. And they will continue to do so in the fall. It’s almost as if the events of the past year never happened.

Check the news lately, and if you come across a story pertaining to the coronavirus, it is likely to be about the Delta variant. Headline after headline, chyron after chyron, push alert after push alert — they’re all seemingly focused these days on the dangers posed by this new variant. Now, to be clear, the Delta variant does deserve to be reported on. But it is also very important for newsrooms — in both stories specifically about the Delta variant and others — to zoom out and show audiences the big picture about the state of the pandemic here in the US. Otherwise, they might walk away with a skewed impression of things.

Millennial employees can present generational challenges to older industry leaders, but great leadership transcends these differences, a trait especially needed as the industry navigates enormous change.

The end is near for television news as we know it. That’s the clear signal coming from an important set of Nielsen company viewership data that seems like good (or at least not-so-bad) news for cable and broadcast — until you take a closer look at the numbers and trends.

Analyst Alan Wolk: While the entertainment offerings on streaming today easily surpass the offerings on cable in terms of both quality and quantity, the same cannot be said for news and sports.

There is much discussion in the broadcasting world around digital ad sales, as evidenced by panel sessions at MFM’s annual conference, Media Finance Focus 2021. While one school of thought is that digital sales is still taking a back seat to traditional ad sales, one very astute ad sales leader is all in on digital ad sales. Here are some of its challenges and opportunities.

Journalism has never been the most admired of professions, and in recent years the rap on its practitioners has only gotten worse. But there are many journalists, both veterans and newbies, who share these admirable attributes: persistence, decency, the ability to be both tough and fair. But are journalists too negative? That’s not the problem. Our role is not to cheerlead for the people we cover. Are our ranks jammed with immoral con artists? Not in my experience. But could we — must we — be much better? I can’t argue with that.

Society expects journalists to fill several important functions: check on government power, community watchdog, reliable source of basic information. But there’s one role we really don’t need from the news business — life coach. And yet, as Americans move out of the pandemic and into more normal lives, reporters, editors and producers are flooding the media universe with a heavy stream of soft stories filled with trite advice on everything from how to hug again to the safest method for dipping back into the habit of gossipy behavior.

Margaret Sullivan: “You may have a hard time understanding how Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head and Tom Hanks are connected, but that probably just means you haven’t been watching nearly enough Fox News recently.”

Technology companies’ blithe disregard for consumer desires is an outgrowth of decades of permissive or nonexistent government oversight. Regulators ought to consider how Big Tech’s monopoly power further empowers the companies to ignore their own customers, in part by gobbling up competitors that offer more consumer-friendly services. Whatever the outcome of the Arizona case, if Google and others are willing to continue offering users choices, they should also be willing to respect them.

Despite all the impassioned pleas to salvage local news coverage, the reality is there’s a demand-side problem.

In just a few shorts years, esports has exploded onto the scene, attracting massive viewership and generating revenue in quite distinct ways. Will its exponential growth continue, or are there unknown risks in its uncharted territory?

TV news began as public service programming that broadcasters had to carry as a condition of getting a license from the FCC. The television news business eventually turned profitable, but it will soon face an existential crisis as to how to remain so.

With the return to pre-pandemic behavior in newsrooms, critic David Zurawik reflects: “Adaptability, resilience, being nimble and the willingness to improvise are some of the lessons TV can teach us from the last 15 months. But there are deeper aspects of our relationships to the screen that bear further thought, such as how important those screens and the stories told on them have become to our lives.”