A mix of live sports, original sports programming and ancillary sports content will start appearing on TruTV next Monday, March 11, under the banner TNT Sports on TruTV. The block will start at 6 p.m. ET and run through latenight. The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship, aka March Madness, gets under way the following week. WBD, which shares in March Madness rights with Paramount, often makes use of TruTV as a home for early-round tournament games.
Cautious Ad Spenders Open Their Wallets For March Madness
March Madness is expected to rake in more than $1 billion for TV partners CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery as it plays out from March 14 until the winning team is crowned on April 3. “March Madness gives advertisers audience levels they cannot find anywhere else,” says one buyer.
Adrienne O’Riain is leaving the Turner networks after 11 years, most recently as SVP, original programming for TNT, TBS and truTV, serving as co-head of scripted development for the TNets. O’Riain is the latest senior programming executive to leave the TNets following the Discovery-WarnerMedia merger as WarnerMedia’s ad-supported entertainment linear networks became one of the first cost-saving targets for the new regime.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s U.S. Networks Group will be reorganized under Kathleen Finch, chairman and chief content officer, with long-time Discovery executive Nancy Daniels adding responsibility for TBS, TNT and truTV. Those former Turner networks had been overseen by Brett Weitz, who is leaving WBD, the company confirmed.
The exec had been with the so-called “TNets” for 14 years, with the linear networks now under the oversight of Discovery’s Kathleen Finch.
Exclusives
TruTV is laying off a portion of its marketing and programming staffers, who will receive severance packages as part of exit deals similar to those at other units of WarnerMedia.
Kevin Reilly has signed a new four-year deal with WarnerMedia that will keep him at the company through 2022 and expand his oversight of its basic cable networks. Reilly will now oversee the TruTV cabler in addition to running TNT and TBS, and serving as chief content officer of direct-to-consumer for WarnerMedia.
Monday night’s NCAA championship game, which saw Villanova crush Michigan 79-62, drew the lowest overnight rating in the history of the tournament. Across TBS, TNT and TruTV, the tournament’s championship game earned a 10.3 overnight rating. The previous low for a NCAA championship game was the 11.2 for the 2004 contest between UConn and Georgia Tech.
After becoming the first network to cut its ad load on new programming by almost 50 percent, truTV is going all-in on smaller, less cluttered ad pods and will transition its entire schedule to the format in the next three years.
The CBS and Sinclair station groups are the latest set to launch the weekday strip for the 2017-18 broadcast season.
The 2017 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament has brought in slightly more in national TV advertising dollars through the early rounds leading up to the Final Four this weekend. So far, it has pulled in $748.6 million for CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV, according to iSpot.tv — up 2% versus a year ago. There have been some 224 brands with 514 spots, airing 8,168 times.
Other big events have taken hits in 2017. But the NCAA men’s tourney is off to its best start in more than two decades. Credit close games on Sunday in part.
There’s nothing wrong with obsessing over the Big Dance. But maybe don’t stream games at work, the Defense Department tells employees, warning the department’s network could be overwhelmed.
Games on CBS and Turner Sports will feature breathtaking finishes and surprising winners as the field is culled to 32 teams over the next 48 hours. Get your bracket ready.
The tournament generated a record $1.24 billion in national ads in 2016, up 5% and a new record. Meanwhile, audiences for the final rounds have shrunk since moving to cable.
Kantar Media says “March Madness” generated $1.24 billion in national TV advertising spending in 2016 airings on CBS and Turner networks (TBS, TNT and truTV), up 4.7% versus 2015. Kantar says these gains are in line with 2% to 5% annual gains — keeping pace with annual TV rights fees increases.
TruTV Beefs Up Programming, Reduces Ads
Villanova’s last-second win over North Carolina on Monday night averaged a 10.6 rating across TBS, TNT and truTV in the first title game to air on cable. The 17.8 million viewers were down 37% from the 28.3 million for last season’s Duke-Wisconsin matchup on CBS, which drew the largest audience in 18 years. Viewership was down 16% from the 21.3 million for UConn-Kentucky in 2014.
Advertising space is going to pull a vanishing act on truTV next fall, when the network plans to reduce its ad load by as much as 47%. Beginning in late 2016, the Turner cable network will significantly reduce its original programming advertising, going from 18-19 minutes of nonprogramming time each hour — including national ads, local ads and promos — to just 10-11 minutes an hour. The network says it will have the lowest average commercial and promo time in all of television.
Watch First Episode of Docu-Soap About TV News
Some Question Mixing Reality TV, TV News
Breaking Greenville, is an eight-episode “character-driven docu-soap” scheduled to debut in December on Turner’s TruTV. It follows the people reporting and producing the news at co-owned ABC affiliate WABG and CBS affiliate WXVT in the country’s 190th market, Greenville, Miss. While some observers are critical of the concept, producer Adam Paul says: “These are real people who value their jobs and go after them, and care about the people they’re serving.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Sketch-comedy shows are like frozen-yogurt shops: While there are probably way too many, most are good enough to stay afloat. Still, it takes a special breed […]
