coronavirus

The CBS program’s longest-serving correspondent, Lesley Stahl, was hospitalized but recovered, others on the staff tested positive and — like many businesses — it has operated remotely for two months. At the same time, 60 Minutes has dove into a breaking news story in ways that it seldom has before.

The increase to $115.4 million is pegged to increases in both political advertising and retransmission consent revenues, but Graham notes that company-wide it was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and warned that the virus is expected to “negatively impact advertising revenue and the operating results at the television broadcasting division for the remainder of 2020.”

In Disney’s fiscal second quarter, broadcasting revenues increased 49% to $2.8 billion, largely due to the consolidation of assets acquired from 21^st Century Fox, but also due to gains at the legacy broadcasting operations. In addition to the previously mentioned ad sales gain, ABC also benefitted from higher affiliate revenue (retrans for the O&O stations and network reverse-comp). But things are much more complicated in this current quarter.

Disney managed to muscle out a fiscal second quarter with total revenue of $18 billion edging Wall Street estimates, but adjusted earnings per share fell far short of the bar, showing the toll of COVID-19. Adjusting for items, earnings came in at 60 cents a share. Analysts had been expecting 88 cents a share and revenue of $17.81 billion, according to Refinitiv. Disney has been among the hardest-hit entertainment companies during the pandemic.

Just a day after Comcast’s NBCUniversal announced a reorganization of its executive ranks, the conglomerate said that senior leaders who comprise the executive committee, reporting directly to CEO Jeff Shell, will be reducing their salaries by 20% amid the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

The makers of the NBC drama, which stars James Spader as dashing antihero Raymond Reddington, decided to add animation to a partially taped season finale episode , prompting a far-flung collaboration that stretched from Los Angeles to London and included the Spader family house as a challenging recording studio.

“Unscripted and as real as it gets, and even shot on their own iPhones,” said Scott Brady, WDRB Louisville’s creative service director. “We wanted the news personalities to drive the content, and share their unique perspective with detail from these past six weeks.”

The COVID-19 pandemic is a threat to news media in the United States and around the world because of the financial impact from the loss of advertising.  But you already knew that, didn’t you?  Did you know though that it is also a threat to press freedom? Various journalism groups say politicians and government officials are using COVID-19 concerns as an excuse to restrict, and in some cases, attack the press.

News anchors, talk show hosts and reality stars now moonlight as their own camera operators and lighting technicians. Producers accustomed to reacting to footage in person must now jump through extra communication hoops. But even with the occasional error or sacrifice in camera quality, programs have largely been able to pull it off.

The multiplatform push to support local businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic kicks off with a call-to-action PSA, launching immersive webpages across all eight stations, and building a community-driven social media activation movement.

This afternoon, the FCC released a brief Order looking toward the day when life in the U.S. hopefully returns to normal, and broadcast stations begin rehiring furloughed workers. In the two-page order, the FCC waived the requirement in its EEO rule that broadcasters and MVPDs engage in “broad outreach” when filling each full-time job position. Making clear that this relief is restricted to the circumstances of COVID-19, the FCC limited application of the waiver to the rehiring of station employees that were laid off due to the pandemic, and only where the employee is then rehired within nine months of being laid off.

The NFL canceled its international games for the upcoming season, announcing Monday that it intends to play all games in the United States. The league made the change as it continues to plan for the 2020 season amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. The NFL said it made the switch “in order for the entire season to be played in NFL teams’ stadia under consistent protocols focused on the well-being of players, personnel and fans.”

Netflix’s Ted Sarandos writes in the Los Angeles Times: “While it’s still in the early days, here’s what we’ve learned so far. For one thing, circumstances vary significantly country by country, and even city by city. So, directors and showrunners need to work with local health authorities to adopt safeguards that take account of the situation on the ground. There is no one size fits all.”

The Walt Disney-owned sports-media giant, scrambling to fill its programming grid as most major U.S. sports leagues have suspended play, said it had struck a deal with Eclat Media Group to show six live 2020 regular-season games per week from the KBO League, South Korea’s baseball organization. One game will air each day, Tuesday through Sunday, generally on ESPN2 and on the ESPN App — but the telecasts will air in wee-morning hours, owing to the time difference between the U.S. and South Korean.

With most people staying home because of coronavirus lockdowns, the nation’s roads and highways have emptied. Instead, they are being taken over by an assortment of speeders, students, skateboarders and birds, leaving traffic reporters little to do.

Television has never looked more like our own lives than it does in this endless lockdown, where work and school and daily existence have all become improvised efforts. Every program that once depended on a studio audience and other forms of frisson (an interview, a rapport, anything resembling the human touch) has reinvented itself to remain relevant, or just to remain on. As hosts and shows adapt to the pandemic, they Zoom between endearing and cringeworthy.

The pandemic puts a new ABC initiative to the test finding stories “hiding in plain sight” using data journalism. “We gather the data, we analyze the data and we put it in the hands of the local stations to go do a uniquely local story,” John Kelly says.

Tens of millions of people are paying for basketball, hockey and baseball that isn’t being played. The Attorney General of New York this week demanded cable and satellite operators stop charging customers for live sports programs. Many of those companies, including Charter and Comcast, have said they would love to provide a refund. There’s just one problem: they are still paying for sports too.

Sad piano chords, somber shots of empty streets and close-ups of people staring out their windows. So prevalent were coronavirus-themed ads that followed a similar template just a few weeks ago, they were parodied in a YouTube compilation video: Every COVID-19 Commercial is Exactly the Same. While the ads were meant to convey solidarity with those sacrificing and suffering, advertisers are finally lightening up.

As TV meteorologists and reporters work from home, pets have become a part of their reports — often by accident, and always to delightful effect.

CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl said Sunday she’s feeling well now, but was “really scared” after fighting pneumonia caused by the coronavirus for two weeks at home before going to the hospital for a week.

Soo Kim took a shot across the bow at Tegna’s management in conceding his loss in a proxy fight last week. But beyond his Tegna stake, he’s backing other broadcast ventures in which a larger strategy is harder to see. Bonus news and commentary: The pandemic could hurt retrans revenue as well as ad revenue; group stock prices can’t get much worse; Nexstar offers a hard plan to soften AE woes; and TV and radio take another step toward full newsgathing equality.

Research firm Magid says advertisers now plan to pull back on their broadcasting buys by 36% this year as they aggressively hoard cash. To curb the crisis, Magid says account executives need to fully understand their advertisers’ business so that they can advise them how to market — and how to use TV — through the pandemic.

Journalist Ray Suarez clung to the middle class as he aged. The pandemic pulled him under.

Cathy Repola, national executive director of the Editor’s Guild, IATSE, Local 700, told her members in a video Friday that “we have a long way to go before agreed upon, standardized protocols can be put in place” and the film and TV production environment would be safe for work again.

Actor Josh Gad has reunited the cast of The Goonies for a streaming watch party. CBS has revived its Sunday movie showcase feature a heavy dollop of chestnuts including the Indiana Jones films. Viewers are flocking to MeTV reruns of The Flinstones and I Love Lucy. Across the TV landscape, anxiety-soothing comfort food now abounds.

The Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, an annual marketing ritual held at L.A.’s Beverly Hilton, has become the latest industry event to be canceled by the coronavirus. In a memo sent Friday to its members, the TCA said it is “working with the networks to explore virtual alternatives both within the original press tour time frame and later in 2020. But, given the current state of television production, as of now, this is a cancellation not a postponement.”

Several TV ad sales execs — who have already weathered billions in lost ad revenue since March as live sports and Hollywood productions remain on lockdown — say they are concerned that the biggest ad sales revenue hits are actually yet to come. That’s because no one knows when regular business operations will be able to resume, and more importantly, whether consumers will return to their pre-pandemic spending habits — particularly the 30 million people who have filed for unemployment since the coronavirus began to shut down the country.

Arvato Systems and Vidispine have announced that they will not be attending IBC 2020 in Amsterdam, which is currently scheduled for Sept. 11-15. In the announcement, there is no specific mention of coronavirus as the reason for withdrawal, although the pandemic was likely a key factor in the decision.

WTVR, WRIC, WWBT and WRLH decided to join together to send one message to Richmond, Va., viewers. The campaign features the main on-air talent from each station in every spot airing on all four stations. The campaign also showcases each station’s logos and news vans in every spot. “This was a true top-to-bottom team effort. It was a pleasure to work so closely with the creatives in this market, and I am extremely pleased with the results,” said Erik Candiani, WWBT’s marketing director.

But after a peak in March, the audience has started to shrink. “There’s only so much content people can consume,” a Nielsen executive says.