NBC Sports will be winding down the Olympic Channel, which is home to Team USA, on Sept. 30, an NBC Sports spokesperson confirmed. The move comes after the company sunset NBCSN, a long-running sports cable destination, to close out 2021.
TV networks continue to fare better than expected in the current “upfront” market as they harness streaming video and sports — and a willingness to accept lower rates — in order to keep Madison Avenue’s money flowing. NBCUniversal said it wrapped its negotiations in the annual upfront, and could see advance advertising commitments for NBC’s primetime schedule rise by as much as 20%. Variety estimates that upfront commitments for NBC primetime could total between $3.2 billion and $3.4 billion, compared to between $2.68 billion and $2.98 billion for its primetime broadcast inventory in 2021. In 2020, NBC secured between $2.68 billion and $2.84 billion.
The former Oxygen exec will oversee development of documentary and lifestyle programming across NBCU’s portfolio.
Can NBCU Really Measure Ads’ Emotional Impact?
NBCUniversal’s ambitions to reinvent measurement have now extended to embrace emotion and ad quality, but can some factors be too abstract to quantify?
Executives from NBCUniversal, Disney Advertising, UM Worldwide and ICON International will look at the increasing use of data to target and track customers and to assess the impact of campaigns in a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch Webinar at 1 p.m. on July 28. Register here.
Exclusives
The streaming company is seeking to sell ads around its programming to boost revenue. Partnerships could help it move faster to bring an ad-supported version of its service to market.
NBCUniversal and Apple News offer marketers new content options and scale within new markets.
NBCUniversal says that 30% to 40% of TV ad campaign’s impressions should come from over-the-top streaming in order to optimize results, based on its recent test with advertisers using data from iSpot.tv.
NBCU Upfront Nearly Done, Claims ‘High-Single Digit’ Price Hikes
Despite weakness in the current scatter market, NBCUniversal is pretty much finished with its upfront ad-market deals, with total volume near that of a year ago, according to Jeff Shell, chief executive officer of NBCUniversal. “So we’re pretty much done, just a smattering of things still finishing up,” said Shell, speaking at the Credit Suisse media conference. “High single digits [percentage increase] was our pricing … we had expected kind of mid-single digits coming into the upfront. So I’m thrilled with that.”
Comcast Has Been Awfully Quiet. Are Brian Roberts And Jeff Shell Itching To Make A Deal?
Is Comcast poised to make a big move? The cable and media giant has missed out on some snazzy acquisitions in recent years, failing to outmaneuver Disney to buy the bulk of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets and falling just short of nabbing WarnerMedia. Losing out on the latter stunned Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, who were enmeshed in planning how WarnerMedia would be integrated into their operations until Discovery landed their prize.
Shell Says TV Is All One Business For NBCUniversal
NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell told a Credit Suisse conference Tuesday that he doesn’t see — or manage — the company’s Peacock streaming service as a separate business. “The goal is to have our TV business grow sooner and more rapidly despite linear declines — and we think we’re well on the way,” he said.
NBCU’s long-term lease with Gray will include a full suite of facilities needed to support television and film production. The new facilities will include multiple soundstages, production office space, warehouses and mill space, as well as parking and other necessary amenities.
In Monday’s traditional doubleheader opening of the upfronts in New York, Fox and NBCUniversal executives took shots at the “paywall” strategy of Netflix and Disney, in the first of many salvos expected this week.
From the metaverse to the Attention Lab, new ad products and formats aim to merge technology and creativity.
Comcast’s NBCUniversal said Monday that its streaming service Peacock will become the streaming home for its Bravo cable network. Bravo shows will be available on Peacock‘s premium tier on a next-day basis starting in September.
The strategic partnership is designed to expand self-service buying and attribution to millions of marketers of all sizes.
Comcast Execs Proud As A Peacock
“Media revenues increased 36% to $6.9 billion, including Peacock revenue, which grew more than five times year-over-year to $472 million in the quarter,” said Comcast Corp. CFO Mike Cavanagh.
Jeff Shell, CEO of Comcast-owned NBCUniversal, saw his total compensation climb to $21.6 million last year, up 30% over the year prior — the biggest pay bump among Comcast’s top execs in 2021. Comcast Chairman-CEO Brian Roberts’ pay package rose 3.7% in 2021, to $34 million. The disclosures came in the cable and entertainment giant’s proxy statement filing with the SEC Friday.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Atlanta says Leakes, who is Black, complained to executives about years of racist remarks from fellow housewife Kim Zolciak-Biermann, who is White, but that only Leakes suffered consequences. It names as defendants NBCUniversal, Bravo, production companies True Entertainment and Truly Original, executives from the companies and Housewives executive producer Andy Cohen, but not Zolciak-Biermann.
NBCU’s Kelly Abcarian Is Ushering In A New Measurement Era
Kelly Abcarian, EVP of measurement and impact at NBCUniversal and one of this year’s TVNewsCheck Women in Technology Futurist Award winners, sees measurement as a “team sport” that will be “all about collaboration” that her work is helping to realize.
Karamo, a new daily talk show from NBCUniversal starring Queer Eye’s Karamo Brown, is on track to debut nationally in syndication this fall with the show sold in 90% of the country. The new series, which replaces NBCU’s long-running Maury in many timeslots across the country, has been sold to station groups including Nexstar, Weigel, Sinclair, Tegna, Sunbeam, Hearst, Scripps, Capital, Bahakel, Block, CW Plus and Mission Broadcasting.
Executives from ABC News, NBCUniversal Local, ABS-CBN and Avid told a TVNewsCheck webinar last week that they’re not reversing steps to build distributed production environments, regardless of how many people are returning to the office. But the road still has its bumps, such as persistent issues with latency and intercom and confidence monitoring.
In addition, Josh Noval is promoted to senior vice president, Olympics & Paralympics.
NBCUniversal says iSpot.tv will be this upfront ad market’s cross-platform “currency” partner for marketers for the 2022-23 TV season. NBC has added eight other certifications, beyond the previously announced iSpot.tv. It has also added seven new “certified” measurement partners. “As we head into the upfront season, we wanted to make it clear that, at this moment in time, we will be transacting against our certified cross-platform partner, iSpot.tv,” Kelly Abcarian, EVP of measurement & impact, advertising and partnerships, NBCUniversal, said Tuesday.
NBCUniversal has elevated Peter Lazarus to EVP of sports ad sales, making him responsible for a lineup that includes Sunday Night Football, Premier League soccer, the PGA Tour and the USFL. The company also said that Maureen Murphy was promoted to SVP of clients partnerships, taking over Lazarus’ role as head of sales for NBC Entertainment properties.
The partnership will let Dentsu’s clients access NBCUniversal’s network of consumer contact across movies, entertainment, news, sports, ecommerce, subscriptions, theme parks and more.
NBCU Launch, the umbrella brand that houses the comprehensive diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across NBCU’s television portfolio, has forged a new partnership with Telemundo to increase the number of Hispanic female directors in scripted television. This partnership is an extension of the Hispanic network’s award-winning corporate initiative Mujeres Imparables (Unstoppable Women).
By integrating with the Audience Insights Hub, Omnicom Media Group will be able to run permissioned measurement queries across NBCUniversal’s first-party data and data sets from within Omni — Omnicom’s open marketing operating system — without exposing any underlying personally identifiable information.
NBCUniversal launched two campaign marking Women’s History Month in the U.S. and International Women’s Day Globally. One campaign, Women’s History: The Next Chapter, stars actress, producer and equal rights activist Laverne Cox in a public service announcement that started running Tuesday across NBCU networks and social platforms.
A programming agreement that gives the Walt Disney Co.’s streaming service Hulu access to popular programming from Comcast’s NBCUniversal has been terminated, according to a source familiar with the situation. Insead of appearing on Hulu the day after they air on NBC, shows like This is Us, The Voice and Saturday Night Live will be available on Peacock, the Comcast streaming platform that competes with Hulu.
Veteran communications and marketing executive Curt King, who has worked at NBC, Universal Television and Universal Studio Group for over 25 years, will depart NBCUniversal at the end of March. King, who plans to spend some time figuring out his next act, is one of the last PR executives at NBCU with institutional knowledge that goes back to NBC’s heyday of Must See TV, in which he played an integral part.
The company’s new hires Neil Ripley and Margaux Fleuranges will focus on measurement, data and ad technology.
NBCUniversal’s clients will be able to run non-intrusive, in-game ads across Anzu’s cross-platform gaming inventory — which spans mobile, PC and consoles — and use interactive, data driven, contextual, and programmatic in-game advertising solutions.
February Ushers In Big Changes To TV Measurement World
NBCU provided advertising data from the Olympics and Super Bowl and Nielsen integrated broadband-only homes into a local universe sample in a month that marked a turning point in the fraught universe of TV metrics. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.
TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp, Paige Albiniak and Michael Stahl discuss an eventful February for TV measurement with Nielsen’s introduction of BBO homes and NBCUniversal’s granular new metrics with iSpot.tv, plus how newsrooms’ assignment desks are weaning off police scanners and toward a more collaborative role.
NBCUniversal’s airing of the 2022 Beijing Olympics suffered a 42% decline in average primetime viewers across its TV network and streaming platform versus the 2018 Winter Games. Preliminary total audience delivery — for the NBC Television Network, USA Network, CNBC and the streamer Peacock — averaged 11.4 million viewers for the 18-day event, according to data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.
Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal is finalizing a plan that would drastically change its partnership with Hulu, shifting high-profile programming to its own Peacock streaming platform, according to people familiar with the matter. Starting this fall, new episodes of shows like The Voice, Saturday Night Live and American Auto would no longer be available on Hulu soon after they air as a result of that plan, they said.
The Super Bowl is the biggest U.S. TV broadcast of the year — and this coming Sunday, NBCUniversal hopes that the NFL championship game gets a massive streaming turnout, too. The hope is that cord-cutters will sign up for Peacock to catch the Rams-Bengals in the Super Bowl — and stay for the thousands of hours of TV shows and movies on the service. “We want to get them to the game, but also talk about all the other things happening on Peacock as well,” said EVP Jim Denney.
NBC Sports says 16 million viewers tuned in to watch the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony across multiple platforms last Friday, a new record-low for the event since NBCUniversal began broadcasting the Olympics in 1988. The total audience delivery (TAD) of 16 million viewers is down 43% compared to the 28.3 million viewers that watched the PyeongChang Winter Olympics opening ceremony in February 2018.
