digital

Broadcast advertising will be hit the hardest, down 5% to 6%, with ratings continuing their gradual decline. Digital, of course, is partly to blame.

As the 2014-15 NBA season comes to a close this week — with ABC’s coverage of the Finals drawing their highest ratings in more than a decade — the league is looking at presenting basketball fans with some new viewing options in the fall. Starting with the 2015-16 season that tips off in late October, fans will have the opportunity to purchase  single games, individual-team packages or the traditional package of nearly 1,000 live out-of-market games (featuring all 30 teams) throughout the regular season.

Univision Communications Inc. on Tuesday appointed Sameer Deen senior vice president, Univision Digital. He will be based in Miami and report to Isaac Lee, president of News and Digital for […]

Television networks are offering new data-driven products to help advertisers reach targeted audiences even as they shift to digital and social media.

Traditional television, once seen as the best way to reach a broad audience, is splintering with the rise of digital services like Netflix, YouTube, Snapchat and Vine.

NBC announced Thursday that all 13 episodes of Aquarius, starring David Duchovny, will be available online after the drama’s two-hour NBC premiere. NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt said the unprecedented move acknowledges viewer interest in watching TV episodes at will.

Dan Silver, an Emmy-winning producer who spent eight years at ESPN Films, is joining ABC News as executive producer of digital. At the sport cabler’s documentary and film unit, Silver “has worked on nearly every content format conceivable — short-form, long-form, digital, broadcast and film,” ABC News President James Goldston said today.

In a move that could accelerate the shift toward so-called “viewable” ad impressions, the Association of National Advertisers has issued an advisory to its members, asking them to  transition their digital investment strategies to pay for digital advertisements that are “measurably viewable.” The request was described as a push to move digital ad spending toward a “minimum opportunity to see” standard.

He will lead business affairs, content licensing, operations, as well as strategy and business development for the newly-created digital enterprises organization.

Fox Broadcasting has recruited Ariff Sidi as SVP of digital products and platforms.He  reports to David Wertheimer, Fox’s president of digital, and is responsible for developing programs and products designed to optimize the performance of the network’s programming across nonlinear platforms.

Gannett will partner with video applications provider ViewLift to develop a new service that will focus on streaming unique sports-related content and select movies across multiple devices.

Google’s former head of Hispanic audience sales joins Univision Digital as EVP-GM to continue advancing the company’s digital expansion.

Digital is a tough racket in any of its many manifestations — websites, apps, streaming, marketing services. But that’s where the real upside for broadcasting is, not in spot or retrans. Station groups have got to keep experimenting with digital, keep investing in it, keep trying to get a foothold.

Consumers may tune into TV on a regular basis, but they mentally tune out rather fast in favor of the array of “second screen” options. On average, television holds a consumer’s attention only 39% of the time — a rate that pales in comparison to the attention rates that laptops (70%), tablets (76%) and smartphones (77%) command. That’s according to a new report from Nielsen and YuMe, a digital video ad tech firm.

Digital media futurist Amy Webb says publishers can’t hold to the linear distribution model of their past if they want to hold their news consumers today. Instead, she says, they need better audience audits and data to understand how and when their content is being consumed. Webb also addresses local TV’s dying audience, the need for cybersecurity audits inside every news organization and a wariness about diving headlong into content for wearables. 

The disconnect between the group’s thriving digital business and its stock price peeves CEO David Smith. “If we were just to take out our Web business and compare that to websites that have $2 billion valuation, we’re fundamentally no different than Buzzfeed or Gawker or anything else. We produce news every day on the Internet and we’re not getting credit for it,” he told analysts today. Also on the call, CFO Chris Ripley opened the door to participating in the FCC’s spectrum auction.

As we look ahead to next year, local television and radio are in the most precarious position they’ve been in for a long time, hampered by their slow and deeply unimaginative moves in digital, writes Michael Depp, as he makes 10 predictions for another frighteningly volatile, but exciting year for local media.

21st Century Fox is considering new Web-based initiatives to attract younger viewers and consumers who don’t subscribe to traditional pay TV services. Emerging digital platforms are “the most exciting and important opportunity for future growth,” COO Chase Carey said yesterday on an earnings conference call with analysts.

Roel de Vries, global head of marketing at automaker Nissan, says the word “digital” should disappear from advertising parlance entirely, now that the medium is so intrinsic to what marketers do.

Under the leadership of CEO Rich Boehne and Digital SVP Adam Symson, the E.W. Scripps Co. is engaged in an earnest effort at multifront innovation to do a rare thing in local media — proactively getting in front of its destiny. Here are some lessons that other media companies can learn from.

The Web and mobile NCAA March Madness Live service, managed by Turner Sports, over the first three days of the 2014 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament served 21 million live video streams, up 42% versus last year, and more than 4 million hours of live video (up 18%), according to Turner, citing data from Omniture, Conviva and Bango.

The Gannett-owned NBC affiliate in Boise, Idaho, reports record growth on social and mobile in the past year.

Local media’s efforts to boost digital revenue — which BIA/Kelsey last month said will rise faster than previously forecast — will be in the spotlight at the firm’s annual end-of-year Interactive Local Media conference. “Our goal with this conference is to look at how the impact of digital will be higher and faster and ways that it will beat this forecast,” says BIA/Kelsey’s Peter Krasilovsky.

WideOrbit Inc., a provider of advertising management software for media companies, today appointed Jean Callahan as product development manager for digital. An industry veteran with more than 14 years of […]

TV is being disrupted  — but that doesn’t mean the incumbent players aren’t trying to adapt to the digital world. TV’s revenues are holding up far better than newspaper companies’, and TV is better positioned to survive the great digital disruption.