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At Peacock’s NewFront presentation Tuesday, NBCUniversal rolled out new commercial formats aimed at giving sponsors more attention and a better opportunity to interact with viewers. One of the new formats enables an advertiser to be everywhere NBCU’s. Called Spotlight Plus, the advertiser’s message shows up no matter what a viewer is watching, like a cross-platform roadblock, whether it’s an original film on Peacock, a drama on a linear network or a content on a third-party digital platform.

Ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson is seen on newly revealed video bashing the network’s streaming service, which he produced a bevy of content for during his tenure at the company.

Netflix on Monday renewed the Keri Russell-led political drama for a second season, presumably to launch in 2024. The Diplomat‘s inaugural eight-episode season bowed just 10 days ago — on April 20 — and immediately shot to No. 1 on Netflix’s consumer-facing Top 10 list, with 57.48 million hours viewed in its first weekend.

Deal covers 122 TV stations, including MyNetworkTV affiliates and four independents. The agreement also renews carriage of the company’s NewsNation cable news network.

Trying to forecast when ESPN will go entirely online is one of the great guessing games of the media industry.

Walmart+, the retail giant’s paid subscription membership service, is now offering access to Paramount’s Pluto TV. Interestingly, select Pluto TV programming will be available ad-free. Starting this week, Walmart+ subscribers can use the member portal to create a free Pluto account, which will allow them to watch a lineup of curated content. According to Walmart+, members can watch up to six TV shows (one season each) ad-free.

Tucker Carlson hasn’t left Fox Corp. quite yet. The company’s Fox News Media unit has hours and hours of various specials and original programming the controversial anchor developed for the subscription-based streaming service Fox Nation, and doesn’t appear poised to take any of that content down. The Carlson-created options currently available on the service are manifold.

Mina Lefevre, who was head of development and programming at Meta, is leaving Facebook’s parent company. Lefevre, who was formerly EVP and head of scripted at MTV, is exiting as part of the latest round of layoffs at the Mark Zuckerberg-run company, which has seen more than 20,000 employees leave. None of the remaining FB Watch Originals, most notably Red Table Talk, are coming back for new seasons as the company is getting out of that business, shifting its focus on creating VR experiences in Meta Horizon Worlds that can also be deployed across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

Roku shares traded higher after-hours on Wednesday after the company posted a smaller-than-expected loss for its first quarter on 2023 and beat Wall Street expectations on revenue. The streamer reported revenue of $741 million Wednesday, up 1% from the same period a year ago, following a warning by company leaders that sales would be wobbly heading into 2023. Platform revenue for the quarter, which is largely based on advertising sales and a subscription revenues split with partners, was $635 million, down 1% year-over-year, while device revenue was $106 million, up 18% year over year.

Paul Cheesbrough is tapped to lead the new business unit as CEO, while Farhad Massoudi is out. A new CEO of Tubi Streaming will be announced later.

Hulu has expanded the duties for Barrie Gruner, the EVP of marketing. She will assume oversight of brand marketing, while continuing to shepherd content marketing. Gruner first joined the streamer in 2013 as a VP, originals marketing and publicity. As part of the Hulu reorganization, Scott Donaton will leave his post as SVP marketing. Donaton joined the streamer in 2019 from ad agency Digitas, where he was chief content and creative officer.

Amazon is staying in the Team Palladino business, handing a two-season, 16-episode order to a new ballet-themed series from Marvelous Mrs. Maisel auteurs Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. Titled Étoile, the show — which features Maisel vets Luke Kirby and Gideon Glick as part of the full-time ensemble — will be set in New York City and Paris, and follow the dancers and artistic staff of two world-renowned ballet companies, as they embark on an ambitious gambit to save their storied institutions by swapping their most talented stars.

Jerrell Jimerson, Disney Streaming’s chief product officer and one of the architects of Disney+, has been let go as part of the media conglomerate’s latest round of layoffs. Jimerson on Wednesday sent a note to his team at Disney Streaming telling them that “after five incredible years at Disney, I will be leaving the company at the end of June.” Disney is laying off some 4,000 employees across the company this week, part of its previously announced target of cutting 7,000 jobs to reduce costs.

Tubi founder and CEO Farhad Massoudi is stepping down as Fox Corp. is forming the Tubi Media Group led by Paul Cheesbrough. Massoudi will remain with Tubi through a transition period until the end of June. A new CEO of Tubi Streaming will be announced at a later date.

The world’s biggest free ad-supported streaming service saw ad revenue decline for a third straight quarter, with Alphabet reporting a 2.6% year-over-year ad sales drop for YouTube in 1Q to $6.69 billion. YouTube still narrowly outperformed equity analysts forecasts of $6.6 billion. It reported a 7.8% year-over-year revenue drop in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 and a 1.9% decline in 3Q.

Comcast has natively integrated 21 FAST (free, ad-supported TV) channels into its Xfinity Stream app. Stream users now have free access to NBC News Now, Sky News and 19 Xumo-branded channels spanning comedy, crime TV, black cinema, lifestyle, reality TV, game shows, kids and more. These channels are now integrated natively into the Stream UX and are available to all Comcast subscribers, regardless of whether they pay for Xfinity TV.

Roz is back! Peri Gilpin is returning to Frasier-verse as a guest star on the Paramount+ sequel series. In the original series set in Seattle, Roz Doyle was the titular character’s producer on his Dr. Frasier Crane Show on KACL-AM. When viewers last saw the character in the series finale, she becomes station manager. Her role in the new series is as yet unknown. The return of Gilpin follows the reveal that Bebe Neuwirth would return as Lilith Sternin in the sequel.

Allen Media Group’s African American-focused news, sports, lifestyle and entertainment multi-platform media outlet, theGrio, will honor CBS News journalist Gayle King with theGrio’s “Journalist Icon Award” in a ceremony in Washington on April 29 that will run on the network May 1.

Shell’s surprising exit leaves NBCU without a permanent chief at the helm as the company navigates an increasingly complex set of circumstances, with TV viewers moving to on-demand streaming in such numbers that the economics of the business are eroding faster than executives can work to find new sources of revenue.

Have you cut the cord and don’t really want a live TV streaming service but want access to a ton of news networks? Recently a new news streaming service called Level News has launched, offering 10 live news channels for just $5.99. With Level News, you get access to CSPAN, CSPAN2, CSPAN 3, NewsNation, Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Quicktake, NHK World Japan, France 24, Euro News and Law & Crime Trial Network.

In this repeat of the Talking TV episode from Nov. 18, 2022, Andrew Craft, senior digital journalist with Fox’s LiveNOW streaming channel, shows TVNewsCheck’s Michael Depp how to multitask as producer, director and anchor while on the air for hours at a time.

Grand Knighthawk: Infiltrating the KKK, produced by George Stephanopoulos Productions and ABC News Studios, premieres on Hulu Thursday, April 27.

Not long ago, some were predicting more and more films would be diverted from theaters and sent straight into homes. Moviegoing was destined to die, they said. Not only has that forecast fallen flat, the opposite is happening in some cases. Companies like Amazon and Apple are sprinting into multiplexes, taking a distinctly different approach to the staunchly streaming-focused Netflix. Pictured: Poster art for the Amazon Studios film Air is displayed on the marquee of the Los Feliz Theater in Los Angeles. Amazon Studios plans to release 12 to 15 movies theatrically every year, and Apple is set to spend $1 billion a year on movies that will land in cinemas before streaming. (Chris Pizzello/AP)

Netflix’s Bling Empire has fallen. Both the original series and its spinoff, Bling Empire: New York, have been canceled. Inspired by the big-screen success of Crazy Rich Asians, the first series focused on a group of Asian-American socialites in Los Angeles. Bling Empire‘s first season premiered in January 2021, followed by a second in May 2022.

Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters revealed what exactly went wrong with the live Love Is Blind Season 4 reunion special on Sunday — and how they plan to fix the problem with other live broadcasts moving forward. According to Peters, 6.5 million people watched the reunion special hosted by Nick and Vanessa Lachey, which was set to stream live at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET on Sunday night.

Black viewers are viewing free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) and subscription video-on-demand services in numbers well above the overall consumer average, according to a new Horowitz Research study.