coronavirus

If there ever was doubt employees are our strongest assets, that should be gone. Engineers, to cite only one example, have repurposed, reworked and scrounged everything from laptops to boom mikes. And that same creativity and positive attitude has been on display in every other department at TV operations.

Recently, FCC staff dismissed a request by the organization Free Press asking the FCC to investigate the broadcast of the President’s press conferences on the coronavirus and programs where commentators supported the President’s pronouncements. The FCC concluded that, in covering a breaking news story like the pandemic, it would be impossible for a broadcaster to fact check every statement made in a press conference and correct any misstatements in anything approaching real time, as there is so much room for interpretation of any statement made on these ongoing matters.

Demand for advertising space during the NFL draft broadcast has reached unprecedented levels due to the growing popularity of the event and a lack of other live sports opportunities, Disney Advertising Sales said this week. The COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out most of the U.S. sports calendar, but the three-day draft will go forward in a “virtual” format, with players participating from home, and be broadcast on Disney-owned ABC and ESPN starting on Thursday.

CNN’s Jeff Zucker told the network’s workforce on Wednesday that most staffers will not be returning to their offices until early September as precautions remain to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Zucker said that as they look to phase back in “very slowly, we will not be returning to the office in any significant way any time soon.”

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch will forgo his salary amid the novel coronavirus pandemic and 700 employees at the company will see salary reductions, the executive said in an internal memo on Wednesday.

AT&T’s first quarter revenue fell short of Wall Street expectations and the company pulled its annual forecast on Wednesday, as the impact of the coronavirus outbreak overshadowed strong growth in monthly phone subscribers. It also lost 897,000 so-called premium TV subscribers, which includes its satellite TV provider DirecTV and a small number of U-Verse users as more consumers cut cords amid the pandemic.

March, the first month to feel the effects of COVID-19 on the ad economy, saw the U.S. ad marketplace decline 10.8% from March 2019, according to results of the U.S. Ad Market Tracker, a collaboration of MediaPost and Standard Media Index.

Jeopardy is bringing back reruns of Ken Jennings’ 74-game winning streak from 2004. From May 4 to 15, reruns of select Jeopardy episodes will air in syndication in place of regularly scheduled episodes, which stopped production in March. The two-week-long event will start with a re-airing of Jennings’ first game ever, which originally aired June 2, 2004.

This year, there is no pilot production or testing, there actually isn’t much of anything typically associated with pilot season besides the panic, which has been setting in — and growing — as the coronavirus pandemic rages on. Over the past month and a half, pilot season has been suspended, and upfront presentations have been canceled. Yet, we could somehow potentially end up in a quasi-normal situation, with the broadcast networks making new series orders in May.

Representatives for CNN and MSNBC denied a claim made by President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign that the networks are intentionally delaying broadcasts of the president’s daily coronavirus briefings as part of an effort to “silence him.”

Reporter/anchor Chris O’Connell feels a new relevance to his work at Philadelphia’s WTXF as he reports now as a one-man band from the field or his car. But through this “seismic shift,” he misses the camaraderie he used to share with the station’s videographers.

The first quarter spanned the beginning of stay-at-home orders in the U.S. and around the world, a result of the coronavirus pandemic. People appeared to latch on to its vast video library as a source of entertainment and comfort at a time when most had nowhere to be but home.

When surveyed, people’s top news coverage priorities were local health updates and information about local entities that provide critical services.

Many advertisers are pressing for negotiations to take place in September and October, according to eight executives with knowledge of recent discussions, when the networks will have a better idea of their new programming lineups and marketers may have enough knowledge of how their businesses are faring to discuss the purchase of ad time in 2021. If that were to happen, it would undermine the flow of ad dollars to the networks in the fourth quarter, typically a period of robust spending around holiday shopping and NFL football games. Other sponsors are ready to buy ad time now.

The shutdown of sports due to the coronavirus pandemic is propelling a historic decline in U.S. TV advertising: Sales could be down by as much as $10 billion in the first half of the year. The projection, released Monday in a new report by digital research firm EMarketer, illustrates the financial pain facing U.S. broadcasters, particularly ESPN, CBS, Turner and NBC, which rely on live sports to boost their ratings and advertising hauls.

Imagine filming a summer action blockbuster in your basement. Or trying to pull off a heavyweight boxing match with the fighters in two different states. That’s basically the challenge facing the team behind American Idol as the show prepares to switch from taped segments to live shows on Sunday. Of course, they can’t actually go live because of social distancing rules imposed due to the pandemic, so producers have had to get very, very creative this time around to keep season 18 afloat amid the most challenging conditions in show history.

Media companies continue to look for ways to cut cots amid a deepening health and economic crisis due the coronavirus pandemic and a Hollywood production shutdown that is entering its second month. ViacomCBS this week implemented one such measure, eliminating contract positions.

Over half of the members of the House (240) have signed on to a letter to the Trump Administration asking it to direct federal government advertising dollars to local news media. Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Marc Veasey (D-Texas) and Bill Flores (R-Texas) had circulated the letter last week seeking their colleagues’ signatures,

In its annual evaluation of global media freedoms, Reporters Without Borders warned Tuesday that the health crisis could serve as an excuse for governments “to take advantage of the fact that politics are on hold, the public is stunned and protests are out of the question, in order to impose measures that would be impossible in normal times.”

Tamron Hall took her syndicated talk show into pandemic remote production from her kitchen with a brand-new showrunner, a toddler and a squawking parrot in tow. She says even without the studio audience with whom she loves to connect, the show’s intimacy hasn’t been lost in the transition.

Phishing campaigns are increasingly targeting users’ fear and uncertainty over the coronavirus with media brands particularly vulnerable. Employing some basic strategies now can help reduce exposure.

The media company, which originally thought it would avoid cuts, has changed its tune and is now implementing temporary salary cuts company-wide as well as a hiring freeze and employing less freelance employees.