NBCUniversal

NBCUniversal News Group launches Inspiring America as a multiplatform franchise that starts with a primetime television event honoring extraordinary individuals who have made an impact during these difficult times.

The virtual event will premiere May 17, highlighting the company’s programming, scale and aggregation by taking marketers inside iconic shows across one platform.

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp talks with Brian Weiss, president and GM of Tegna’s multicast networks, about diginets’ younger skewing audience, and with Evan Moore, VP of commerce partnerships at NBCUniversal, about the growing phenomenon of shoppable TV.

NBCUniversal and Facebook unveiled a new partnership that will put e-commerce pitches from the TV company’s clients on Facebook and Instagram, part of an ongoing bid by the Comcast media conglomerate to cultivate a new set of advertising clients. Under the new pact, NBCUniversal e-commerce clients will be able to make outreach to users on Facebook and Instagram, utilizing content related to NBCUniversal’s shows and stars.

NBCUniversal on Monday showed off how its technology can help marketers that want to sell products to the people watching its content. At its One21 event — NBCU unveiled relationships with a variety of industry players including Facebook, FreeWheel and the Trade Desk — and additional ways to take advantage of NBCU’s data, automation and commerce capabilities.

In what will likely be one of the fiercest haggles in the recent history of TV, NBCU will seek primetime TV rates for ads that run on its Peacock streaming-video service, says Laura Molen, president of advertising sales and partnerships, in an interview.  NBCU has invested heavily in Peacock, believes it gives advertisers the broad reach they need and has worked to make sure commercials on the service stand out, says Molen, noting Peacock runs only five minutes of ads per hour and features a host of special commercial formats.

NBCUniversal’s Access Hollywood companion series All Access has been canceled after a year-and-a-half run. The half-hour entertainment news program, which featured Access Hollywood hosts Mario Lopez, Kit Hoover, Scott Evans and correspondent Sibley Scoles, debuted in September 2019.

Comcast’s new streaming service Peacock lost $914 million in 2020, including intra-company charges, the company disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday. Peacock, which launched on April 15, generated $118 million for the year, according to the filing. Comcast made the filing because it is changing the way it is accounting for some of its businesses.

Once an icon of cable TV’s money-minting powers, USA Network today symbolizes the industry’s long slide in the face of relentless cord cutting. Now, it’s becoming a crucial test of how much more cash can be wrung from the declining pay TV business.

A new partnership with Charter Communications adds nearly 40% more households and expands inventory for marketers.

Content management systems are the workhorses of local stations’ digital operations. Executives from Tegna, NBCU, CBS, Gray, Nexstar and Fox have discovered that user simplicity and integrations for multiplatform distribution have become essential attributes. 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.

As Netflix and Disney cement their leads over an array of rivals in the video streaming market, top executives at Comcast and its NBCUniversal arm are in a quandary. Only 11.3 million households regularly watch NBCU’s Peacock service, far fewer than use competing services, according to recent internal data. NBCU wants to ramp up Peacock’s growth, particularly among paying users, but without spending a lot of money. Its solution is to strike deals with other entertainment companies to broaden either Peacock’s programming or its distribution.

The March 22 virtual event will convene creative professionals, marketers, developers, technologists, and entrepreneurs to focus on consumers, content and connection. It will offer insights, partnership opportunities, technology roadmap, commerce vision across Comcast NBCUniversal and Sky.

Susan Rovner has finalized her Entertainment Content executive team on Tuesday, a few months after she joined NBCUniversal to lead its newly formed development unit. As part of today’s restructure, roughly 50 people will be leaving the company, with the majority coming from inside the division. There were additional cuts in scheduling, acquisitions and marketing.

NBCUniversal said Friday that actors with disabilities will be included in auditions for all new productions by the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, Universal Studio Group, NBC network and Peacock streaming service. Above, actress Eileen Grubba in a scene from New Amsterdam.

NBCUniversal is shutting down its sports cable channel NBCSN at the end of the year and migrating much of its programming to its sister general entertainment network USA, the company says.

As streaming TV becomes the default viewing option for Americans, the makers of streaming devices are taking the place of cable operators as gatekeepers, deciding what streaming services will be available to viewers. Increasingly the gatekeepers include not only Roku and Amazon but smart TV makers such as Samsung. NBCUniversal is learning that the hard way as it battles to get its Peacock service onto Samsung TVs.

As Hollywood tries to make sense of 2020’s sweeping changes in TV’s C-suites, streaming’s priority is the only constant.

Heather Olander, executive vice president of alternative development and programming for NBCUniversal’s USA Network, Syfy and Peacock, is exiting the company after nine years as part of the greater corporate restructuring of the last few months.

The executive, who spearheaded numerous streaming deals for the company during her two-decade tenure, becomes the latest to depart as a result of the conglomerate’s restructuring.

When NBCUniversal brings The Office to Peacock next month, it could be a major test of whether users are willing to pay for the ad-supported streaming service. The company is considering putting most seasons of the sitcom behind a paywall, according to people familiar with the matter, a bet that the move will increase subscriber revenue.

Trends driven by the pandemic are likely to persist into 2021 and beyond, while transitions to IP infrastructures will accelerate and aging on-prem infrastructure will give way to increased reliance on the cloud. NextGen TV will also likely pick up speed after COVID’s cooling effect on its rollout this year.

It unifies all digital and streaming inventory to give local customers more targeted reach and scale. Premium opportunities across Peacock and Apple News are now open to all marketers.

NBCUniversal is using FreeWheel’s AutoScheduler technology to automate and optimize linear ad decisioning across all NBCU properties.

NBCUniversal is boosting its customer relationship management data efforts across all its media platforms through an expansion of its deal with Salesforce. Salesforce will help “democratize resources” — including insights and product knowledge — by investing in new technologies for NBCU’s client and media agencies, which will gain efficiency and transparency.

“It is time for both AT&T and Comcast to abandon the fool’s gold of vertical integration of content and distribution and merge NBCUniversal with WarnerMedia,” LightShedPartners analyst Richard Greenfield argued last week. Will this vision actually become reality? “We doubt it,” he adds.

Sources say fewer than 5% of the total employees in Frances Berwick’s recently reorganized division will be affected. The cutbacks, which had been expected, will impact staffers that are VP level or below PR, marketing, acquisitions and finance. Another round of layoffs is expected to come early next year in Susan Rovner’s recently unveiled entertainment content unit.

Lisa Katz, Rod Aissa, Jenny Groom, Katie Hockmeyer, Tracie Wilson and Jen Neal will each oversee a wide swath of original content for Peacock, NBC, Syfy, USA Network, Oxygen, Bravo, E! and Universal Kids as part of the company’s consolidation. Layoffs will be next.

The bulk of the projected layoffs stemming from NBCUniversal’s recent restructuring are starting next month, sources say. Nov. 12 is penciled in as the target date as company brass are eying mid-next month for the second wave of staff reductions to begin. The cuts will likely come in two waves, one in mid-November and one in late December, with as many as 150-300 employees affected.

John Pollak, who oversaw sales of Universal Television Alternative Studios programming to buyers outside of NBC, is leaving the company. Pollak, who was EVP, creative affairs, Universal Television Alternative Studios, is leaving as part of two restructures within NBCUniversal.

NBCLX is NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations’ multiplatform lab for storytelling innovation, iterating across digital, diginets and OTT. It’s turning news conventions on their head in a bid to build loyal younger audiences. Above, LXNews hosts Ashley Holt and Nik Zecevic at its studio at KXAS Dallas.

NBCUniversal continued to consolidate its management by naming Linda Yaccarino chairman, global advertising and partnerships. Yaccarino, who had headed national and global advertising sales for all of NBCU’s platforms, will now oversee local ad sales, including the company’s TV stations and regional sports networks.

Former Warner Bros. TV President Susan Rovner is joining NBCUniversal in a new role in which she will oversee entertainment programming for a portfolio that includes NBC, Peacock and a suite of cable networks.

Comcast may be under pressure to split up its cable and media businesses and one analyst says that such a move could unlock value for both assets. Trian Fund Management has taken a stake in Comcast and begun conversations with executives under the assumption that the company’s stock is undervalued.

NBCUniversal has promoted Janine Jones-Clark to executive vice president, inclusion – talent and content, NBCUniversal Film, Television and Streaming, the company announced on Tuesday. Jones-Clark will retain oversight of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group’s diversity, inclusion and equity strategies, and will add NBCUniversal’s entertainment, streaming and television studio teams to her purview.

With channels like E!, Oxygen and Syfy on borrowed time, the media company pushes deep cuts and centralizes program decisions.

NBCUniversal is quietly looking to replace top reality TV executive Meredith Ahr who was accused of cultivating a toxic workplace in a bombshell report in late July.