Business

Stocks slipped Friday as rate worries overshadowed big bank profits. The S&P lost 0.2%, the Dow Industrial average dipped 0.4% while the Nasdaq sank 0.4%.

Disney CEO Bob Iger has offered to talk about his company’s dispute with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). “I do not view this as a going-to-mattresses situation for us,” Iger said. “If the governor of Florida wants to meet with me to discuss all of this, of course, I would be glad to do that.”

Darryll Green, president and general manager of WFOR-WBFS Miami, will retire as of April 28. He took on the position at the CBS-owned stations in DMA 18 in March 2021, after Adam Levy stepped down.

SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have agreed to begin formal contract negotiations on June 7. The guild’s current contract expires June 30. In a joint statement, they said that they are “approaching this process as an opportunity to engage in thoughtful and interactive conversations that result in a mutually-beneficial deal.”

NBC earlier this week picked up all six Wolf Entertainment series — Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Chicago Med, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: Organized Crime — for next season. The renewals came with an asterisk as casts were told that they will appear in fewer episodes next year. The development comes on the heels of CBS recently renewing veteran drama Blue Bloods for a 14th season after the cast agreed to a 25% pay cut. And, the actors on another recently renewed CBS series, comedy Bob ❤️ Abishola, also had to agree to a substantial, double-digit salary reduction for the show to get a Season 5 renewal. (According to sources, it was less than 25%). Blue Bloods comes from CBS sibling CBS Studios, Bob ❤️ Abishola from an outside supplier, Warner Bros. TV.

Dan Snyder is nearing a $6 billion sale to a group that includes private equity founder Josh Harris, billionaire titan Mitchell Rales plus NBA legend Magic Johnson, according to multiple reports. The finalization of a sale would mark the end of a beleaguered tenure for Snyder, who purchased the team in 1999, and has presided over a franchise that in aggregate performed poorly on the field and had one scandal after another within the organization.

With traditional pay TV experiencing industry declines some service providers are forgoing video and related advertising businesses to focus on high-speed internet customers, however it’s a move that Viamedia CEO and President David Solomon categorizes as a “massive mistake.”

After a record-breaking 35% gain in 2021, internet advertising revenue’s growth slowed to 10.8% in 2022, to reach $209.7 billion, according to the latest annual report on internet revenue from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), conducted by PwC. The first two quarters saw 21.1% and 11.8% growth, respectively, but growth slowed to 8.4% and 4.4% in Q3 and Q4.

After about 60 years as “Eyewitness News,” Philadelphia CBS owned station KYW has debuted a new brand without the ’60s era moniker. While Eyewitness News described the station’s news style, the new brand, Finding Heart in Every Beat, speaks more to the station’s connection to the community it serves.

Negotiations for a new WGA contract have made “a little bit of progress” on feature films, but otherwise the two sides remain “far away” from a deal. That’s the word coming out of tonight’s WGA strike authorization meeting, which was “very persuasive if you needed persuading,” said a member who attended.

Workers at Facebook’s parent have been increasingly alarmed by job cuts and the company’s direction.

The multi-year deal includes local TV stations, national networks and a regional cable channel.

Major League Baseball has asked a federal court overseeing the bankruptcy case involving Sinclair Inc.’s Diamond Sports Group to terminate the broadcaster’s rights to games played by the Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins if it does not make an immediate payment connected to licensing rights.

Free ad-supported television channels offer media companies a new potential source of revenue, a streaming destination for reclaimed library content and a relatively frictionless pathway to execution.

The purchase of WBBH Fort Myers Fla., by Hearst Television tops the latest list of TV station transactions submitted to the FCC for its approval, according to BIA Advisory Services.

Wall Street drifted through a muted day on Wednesday ahead of inflation data news. The biggest immediate question for Wall Street has been whether the Federal Reserve will keep hiking interest rates in its attempt to get high inflation under control.

ABC News President Kim Godwin has created a “culture of fear” after chopping several veteran staffers in an alleged bid to plug leaks about her mismanagement at the Disney-owned network, insiders tell the New York Post. Godwin — who drew widespread criticism from many at the network as news spread of the salacious affair between GMA3 hosts TJ Holmes and Amy Robach — huddled with a coterie of her close-knit aides before firing a slew of workers as part of a phased rollout of 50 job cuts last month, sources say.

Private equity firm KKR & Co. has agreed to buy a significant stake in FGS Global in a deal that values the financial communications group at about $1.4 billion. As part of the deal, KKR will buy up a 30% stake from senior employees at FGS Global and its largest investors, including London-based advertising giant WPP. WPP, which was founded by Martin Sorrell, will retain a majority stake in FGS Global.

A ranked-choice voting process allowed media companies and some participating vendors to agree on a list of the top 10 security priorities for the technology vendors serving the media industry. Key concerns included securing the media supply chain and complying with new insurance company rules requiring companies to regularly audit their security vendors.

Stocks ended mixed on Wall Street Monday amid rate hike expectations. Higher rates tend to hit tech and other high-growth stocks the hardest, and Apple and Microsoft were the two heaviest drags on the S&P 500. Apple fell 1.6%, and Microsoft slipped 0.8.%.

Major League Baseball filed a motion last week to the Texas bankruptcy court overseeing the restructuring of Diamond Sports Group, the Sinclair subsidiary that manages the Bally Sports regional sports network channels, demanding that the Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins be paid for their TV rights or released from their Bally Sports contracts. Meanwhile, baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, who haven’t received their Bally Sports rights payment either, filed a separate but similar motion on their own behalf.

A lawsuit filed against the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, which claimed that changes to eligibility for benefits “illegally discriminated” against older members, has been settled. The suit was filed in federal court in December 2020 by former SAG President Ed Asner and nine other SAG-AFTRA members. The Health Plan, which had been facing staggering deficits, said that the changes were necessary to keep it from going broke. Asner died in 2021, but a federal judge allowed the case to continue.

Advertising-technology company Hoppr has named Joe Prusz CEO. He previously was chief revenue officer for Magnite. He succeeds Cyril Daoud in running the Perth, Australia-based company whose technology automates and integrates programmatic advertising across connected TV, mobile devices and other digital-native engagement environments.

Despite cord-cutting eroding the number of pay TV subscribers, station revenue from retransmission and carriage fees from distributors rose 3% to $14.46 billion in 2022, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. S&P sees rate hikes in deals renewed in 2023 slightly outpacing the cord-cutting trend, resulting in a 3% gain in gross retransmission and subscriber fee revenues to $14.83 billion.