Business

If upfront advertisers are looking for reach, Nexstar Media Group believes its base of local stations gives it a unique way to achieve that goal. Michael Strober, Nexstar chief revenue officer, says that even advertisers interested in the sports programming that Nexstar has added to The CW Network, can benefit from a national-local approach. “If you care about college football, we have ACC football and you can buy that on The CW,” Strober said. “Then you can extend that reach across all of the Nexstar affiliates on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, who all carry college football every week,” he said.

Talking with analysts, the Fox CEO described the still-unnamed joint venture with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery that’s now in beta as “an incredibly exciting product.” The company’s operating results showed a decline in revenue from last year’s third quarter, but affiliate fees rose, from about $1.86 billion in last year’s comparable quarter to $1.94 billion.

Fox Corp. said it swung to a profit in its fiscal third quarter despite slumps in advertising revenue, largely due to the absence of charges associated with a massive legal setback tied to Fox News Channel and a boost in affiliate fees. The owner of Fox News Channel and the Fox broadcasting network said overall revenue fell to about $3.45 billion, compared to approximately $4.08 billion in the year-earlier period.

The decrease to $714 million is attributed to lower subscription revenue and advertising and marketing services revenue.

Englewood, Colo.-based cable operator WideOpenWest (WOW!) canceled the Q&A portion of its first-quarter earnings report Tuesday, as a specially convened WOW! board committee considers an unsolicited takeover offer from private equity. DigitalBridge Investments and “various Crestview entities” have made a cash offer to purchase all outstanding WOW! shares not already owned by Crestview for $4.80 a share.

Worldwide fraud rates for optimized ad campaign meant to protect brands fell to all-time lows in the second half of 2023, but those unprotected rose 14 times higher, according to data released Tuesday by media measurement and optimization platform Integral Ad Science. Rates for optimized campaigns fell to 0.6% from 0.9% the two prior years. The year-over-year rate in the Americas dropped to 0.1 point.

Advertisers are looking to reach the right audiences and tell their stories inside compelling content, Karen Kovacs, president of client partnerships at NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships, says. NBCU is set up to respond to both of those needs during the upfront, Kovacs says.

Measurement company Comscore’s net loss was $5.2 million, or $1.08 a share in the quarter, compared to a loss of $12.5 million, or $2.66 a share, a year ago. Revenue dipped 5% to $86.8 million cross-platform solution revenue was down 9.7% because of lower national TV revenue. For the full year 2024, Comscore expects revenue to be between $375 million and $390 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of between 12% and 15%.

The purchase of WZPK-LD Monticello, N.Y., by Hudson TV tops the latest list of TV station transactions submitted to the FCC for its approval, according to BIA Advisory Services.

Tegna promotes the news director to oversee operations at its NBC affiliate in Oregon and southwest Washington.

Wall Street drifted to a mixed finish in a quiet day of trading on Tuesday.

Growing digital ad biz, political revenue, local ads and FAST revenue touted to analysts.

The social media company and its Chinese parent, ByteDance, sued to challenge the new law, saying it violated users’ First Amendment rights.

eBay Ads leads the company’s organization that runs the machine learning (ML) and the AI recommender systems, a data-filtering tool that uses AI and ML to suggest items to users. They are commonly used by ecommerce and social media sites. It also powers eBay’s $1.4 billion business, which helps sellers reach customers with ads and organic recommendations.

Audiences may not be the only thing about TV that continues to shrink. Advertisers are expected to once again press for “rollbacks,” or declines in the rates they pay for reaching streaming and TV viewers, in early Upfront talks with TV networks, according to five media buying executives and other people familiar with these annual discussions in which U.S. media companies try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory ahead of their next cycle of programming.

Many bosses of entertainment giants saw their pay packages increase during a tumultuous 2023 that included dual strikes, a production slowdown and cost-cutting across the industry.

Syncbak, which provides stations with streaming capabilities, said it is rebranding as Zeam Media. The new name is designed to move Zeam from a tech company to a media and advertising company. Gray Television, the National Association of Broadcasters, Morgan Murphy Media and Northwest Broadcasting CEO Brian Brady are investors in the company.

In its fiscal second quarter, Disney+ core subscribers were up more than 6 million subs, and its average revenue per user increased sequentially by 44 cents. Meanwhile, Disney’s linear networks experienced an 8% decline in revenue to about $2.8 billion, compared with the same quarter last year. But linear is helping to drive the growth of the burgeoning direct-to-consumer unit.

She currently is director of philanthropic strategies for the Scripps Howard Fund, a public charity that supports philanthropic and journalism causes important to Scripps. Delaney succeeds Liz Carter, whose retirement was announced in January.

Wounded and limping, doubting its own future, American journalism seems to be losing a quality that carried it through a century and a half of trials: its swagger. Swagger is the conformity-killing practice of journalism, often done in defiance of authority and custom, to tell a true story in its completeness, no matter whom it might offend. It causes some people to subscribe and others to cancel their subscriptions, and gives journalists the necessary courage and direction to do their best work. Swagger was once journalism’s calling card, but in recent decades it’s been sidelined.

Revenue for the quarter ended March 30 increased to $22.1 billion from $21.8 billion in the year-earlier period. Excluding items, diluted earnings per share for the quarter increased to $1.21 from 93 cents. Analysts had been expecting revenue of $20.53 billion and earnings per share of $1.02.

The increase to $823 million was pegged to higher core advertising as well as higher driven by the 2024 Super Bowl.

Meta Platforms is urging a federal appellate court to reconsider a recent 2-1 decision allowing Facebook and Instagram advertisers to proceed with a class-action fraud lawsuit over inflated metrics. In papers filed with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Meta says the panel ruling doesn’t “make any sense in a case like this,” given that the class of affected advertisers includes entities ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses to government agencies. Meta adds that the ruling will make it “virtually impossible” for defendants in other lawsuits to oppose class-action certification.

Wall Street rose Monday to add to last week’s gains. Tech stocks were at the forefront, with familiar ringleaders Nvidia and Super Micro Computer again pulling the market higher.

Radziul adds oversight of a portion of the company’s portfolio of stations, joining Executive Vice Presidents Ashley Gold and Eric Meyrowitz, and Vice President, New England, Kyle Grimes, managing operations of the group.  He will continue to supervise the company’s government affairs and its distribution relationships.