Hearst Television

Existing Internet Broadcasting clients extend full-service agreements and expand mobile, social, video and development platform services

Bill Fine, GM of WCVB Boston and chairman of TVB, discusses TVB’s “report card,” the outlook of national spot and political advertising, progress in getting credit for DVR viewing, the loss of exclusivity to network programming and more.

Content management systems serving the local media industry have taken a quantum leap forward, and choosing the right CMS has become more complicated than ever. Media companies have some difficult choices: select a system from a vendor, build one in-house or use an open-source system. Ron Stitt, VP of digital media at Fox Television Stations: “The pace of development is still constantly accelerating, and the landscape is incredibly complex when you factor in not just the front end but also the underlying platforms, devices, operating systems, display formats, distribution schemes and advertising/tracking requirements.” Part one of a three-part special report. Read the full report here.

TVB analysis of Nielsen data for June 2013 indicates average-quarter-hour Live+SD ratings were within 6% of C3 ratings for the month. Said Jordan Wertlieb, president of Hearst Television: “Clearly our business must be given better credit for viewership in the new landscape.”

The former Belo sales executive will share oversight responsibilities for sales activities at the company’s 29 television stations along with Kathleen Keefe beginning early next year.

Online video company Aereo says the new copyright lawsuit filed against it by Hearst in Boston should be transferred to New York, where the startup has been battling the major TV broadcasters since last year.

Hearst’s stations are the latest to reup the daytime talker from Sony Pictures Television, extending its run through the 2016-17 season.

For the past several months, all 29 Hearst stations have used a cloud-based advertising spot delivery system powered by Signiant’s Managers+Agents platform. Currently, the station group is using the new system for national ads, with a plan to do a local ad rollout throughout the summer.

Hayes comes from WTAE, Hearst’s ABC affiliate in Pittsburgh, where he has been president and general manager since 2011. Before that, he spent eight years as general manager of WYFF, Hearst’s NBC affiliate in Greenville, S.C.

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In addition to re-upping with the fact-checking website of the Tampa Bay Times, Hearst Television is also launching a series of issues-discussion town halls throughout New Hampshire. “Conventional wisdom may hold that television stations relax political news coverage during non-election years, but the reality is different,” says David Barrett, Hearst Television CEO. “Increasingly, politics never sleeps.”

Hearst Television signed an exclusive deal to deploy TVUPack bonded cellular solutions across its 29 stations. Hearst’s market covers 22 states, one of the farthest-reaching station groups in the country. […]

Station winners include KUSA Denver, KARE Minneapolis-St. Paul, KMGH Denver, Hearst Television and Belo Corp. The awards from the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism  will be presented at the National Press Club in Washington on April 19.

The company’s VP, news, Barbara Maushard, is tapped to succeed Brian Bracco in overseeing the company’s news product — on-air, online and on mobile platforms.

David Barrett becomes chairman and CEO, while relinguishing the president title to Jordan Wertlieb, who moves up from executive vice president.

Brian Bracco is giving up his job as group VP of news at Hearst to become GM of Scripps’ ABC-Indie duopoly in Kansas City, KSHB-KMCI. In the corporate post, Bracco has been based in Kansas City and he earlier worked in the market as news director of Hearst’s KMBC.

The Broadcasters Foundation of America has chosen the Hearst Television CEO to receive its top honor at a black-tie fundraising gala that will benefit the foundation’s mission of helping broadcasters in need.

Available at no charge from the iTunes Store and the Google Play Store, Election 2012 features up-to-the-minute and in-depth election-related national content as well as local content from the group’s 25 markets, many of which are in key presidential swing states.

The diginet will now be carried on subchannels of WCVB Boston, KCRA Sacramento, WBAL Baltimore, KOCO Oklahoma City and WXII Greensboro, N.C. The group owner also extended affiliation deals with Me-TV in nine additional markets.

The group broadcaster and Time Warner Cable come to terms on retransmission consent agreements in 14 markets.

Teh broadcaster and the trade association say the cable MSO is dragging its heels on retransmission consent negotiations on purpose, in hopes that Congress will get involved.

Maine U.S. senator Olympia Snowe has written a rather benign letter to the heads of Time Warner Cable and the Hearst station group encouraging them to reach an agreement on their carriage dispute swiftly. The standoff has left the Hearst-owned ABC station in Maine’s largest city, Portland, off the air since last week.

Broadcasters don’t have to apologize for demanding big retrans hikes or, like Hearst, be reticent about talking about them. They just have to justify them. It can be done. The numbers are on their side.They account for about 35% of all TV viewership, yet they received only 6.7% of the $30.9 billion that MVPDs will pay to all ad-supported programmers this year.

The retrans standoff between Hearst Television and Time Warner Cable is about to become a three-way fight over the out-of-market TV stations TWC is importing to replace some of the Hearst stations it was forced to black out. TWC picked up three stations owned by Nexstar Broadcasting and Nexstar doesn’t like it.

The breakdown over retrans price affects 13 stations and 2 million Time Warner Cable customers, as well as Bright House subscribers in Orlando and Tampa. Hearst’s contract expired on June 30, but it agreed to let Time Warner Cable continue to carry its stations through the July 4 holiday.

The retransmission dispute between Hearst Broadcasting and Time Warner Cable is facing a July 9 deadline. If no agreement is reached by then, ABC affiliate WISN MIlwaukee is among the Hearst stations that would no longer be available on TWC.

WCVB Boston and KCCI Des Moines, Iowa, are honored for overall excellence. The are among the 67 news organizations cited by the Radio Television Digital News Association in its annual awards competition.

The TV group executive will leave next February, capping a 40-year television career. He will serve as an adviser to the company in the interim. Jordan Wertlieb, EVP, and Frank Biancuzzo, SVP, will assume management oversight of the 10 stations currently in Stolz’s supervisory portfolio.

Twenty-five Hearst-owned stations are now delivering short-form content, including news stories, to all mobile devices using a cloud service from Yospace, which distributes video content to multiple platforms. The Yospace […]

The fact-checking service is lining up relationships with all 25 of Hearst’s news-producing stations and has even broader ambitions. Other broadcasters with PolitiFact deals include Cox and Gannett.

Those who deliver the news are raising their voices. The Pittsburgh ABC affiliate’s on-air staff has launched a social media campaign to protest what it says is unfair treatment by Hearst Television management.

The group’s stations will air a minimum of 12 minutes of political news daily for 150 hours total in the month prior to the primary and general elections. It also launches an election app, a new Commitment 2012 Investigates series and is partnering with PolitiFact.

With its retransmission-consent agreements with several cable MSOs set to expire on Dec. 31, TV stations owned by Hearst Television are beginning to warn viewers in the Sacramento, Calif., area that they could soon lose local programming.

The partnership will offer a “second screen” app in early 2012, allowing viewers to tap into related content and swap comments with friends watching the same broadcast TV show at the same time. Broadcasters hope the app with lead to increased revenue, greater engagement and better tune-in promotion. Participating station groups include those of Pearl, the joint venture formed last year to pursue the mobile DTV business. They include Belo, Cox, Scripps, Gannett, Hearst Television, Media General, Meredith, Post-Newsweek and Raycom.

And in addition to all 22 Gannett stations, the second installment of the three-part The Cutting Edge series will also air on certain CBS and Hearst Television stations at different times throughout October.

The head of sales for the 31-station TV group says 2011’s uptick in auto advertising will continue into next year. And while 2012 will also see local TV reaping political campaign money, perhaps in record amounts, Hearst’s take will be more modest since its markets will be light on Senate and gubernatorial races.

Hearst moves the head of its KETV Omaha, Neb., to run its Kansas City ABC-CW duo, succeeding the retiring Wayne Godsey.

Leaving nothing to chance after the 2005 trauma of Hurricane Katrina, WDSU and WWL have beefed up their studios and transmitter sites, put together worst-case scenario strategies and made off-site arrangements for when the next disaster strikes the Crescent City. This is the fourth in a series of articles appearing this week that collectively constitute a TVNewsCheck Special Report on Severe Weather News. The other stories in the series are below.

Debora Palmer today was named sales manager of The Arkansas CW, Hearst Television’s multicast CW affiliate broadcast by its KHBS-KHOG Fort Smith-Fayetteville, Ark. (DMA 100). Most recently, Palmer led the local sales team at […]

McGraw-Hill has begun shopping its four-station group and is said to be drawing interest from the likes of Nexstar, Meredith and Belo. Based on its financials for 2010 and 2011, the group is worth between $150 million and $200 million, although bidding and the expection of big revenue gains from political advertising in 2012 could push the number higher.