Comcast Advertising’s AudienceXpress unit said it reached an agreement to work with iSpot and evaluate how iSpot’s syndicated national TV ratings can best be incorporated into the AudienceXpress platform. The companies said they were looking to bring new data sets to TV ad measurement, enhance performance TV marketing solutions and provide attribution reporting.
It’s Time For A Reset On NextGen TV
AWARN’s John Lawson: The ATSC 3.0 transition is stalled. A new public-private partnership could jump start it.
New Jobs Posted To TVNewsCheck
New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for a reporter in coastal California and a media salesperson to work remotely.
SAG-AFTRA members on Friday ratified the 2023 Television Animation Agreement and the 2023 Basic Cable Animation Agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The new three-year contracts were overwhelmingly approved by a vote of 95.52% to 4.48%.
In August 1993, Angelos led a group of investors that bought the Orioles. The group included writer Tom Clancy, filmmaker Barry Levinson and tennis star Pam Shriver. The price tag of $173 million — at the time the highest for a sports franchise — came in a sale forced by the bankruptcy of then-owner Eli Jacobs. Angelos assumed a hands-on approach to running his hometown team. His reputation for not spending millions on high-priced free agents belied his net worth, which in 2017 was estimated at $2.1 billion. He was 94.
Dow Drops 305, Nasdaq Rises 27, S&P Slips 7
Wall Street closed its best week of the year on Friday with a quiet finish.
The share price of Digital World Access Corp. began trending downward following a shareholder vote Friday morning to merge with Donald Trump’s social media company: Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the Truth Social digital platform. The deal, which personally gives Trump billions of dollars in potential equity value, includes contractual requirements barring him from selling shares for six months.
The odds of a seismic M&A event seem to be increasing: Private-equity firm Apollo Global has reportedly offered $11 billion for Paramount’s Hollywood studios. Short of carving up the “mountain of entertainment,” as the Paramount+ tagline boasts, analysts say the overture could drive up bidding for the entirety of Paramount Global — which is what Shari Redstone, who owns a controlling stake in the media conglomerate, is understood to prefer.
Disney and its current CEO, Bob Iger, have secured the backing of Iger’s onetime boss, former Chairman-CEO Michael Eisner. In a statement posted to social media, Eisner didn’t name Nelson Peltz, whose Trian Fund Management is mounting an offensive to win two seats on Disney’s board at the April 3 annual shareholder meeting. But the longtime media exec wrote that “bringing in someone who doesn’t have experience in the company or the industry to disrupt Bob and his eventual successor is playing not only with fire but earthquakes and hurricanes as well.”
Disney’s ESPN is at a crossroads. For more than 40 years, the world’s largest all-sports network has grown annual revenue by increasing cable subscription fees. ESPN first charged pay-TV distributors less than $1 per month per subscriber in the 1980s. In 2023, ESPN’s monthly carriage fee was $9.42 per subscriber, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. That business model is eroding.
Over the past few months, the streaming giant has aired exhibition events in golf and tennis. It is also slated to air the July 20 bout between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. Beginning next year, Netflix will start carrying World Wrestling Entertainment’s flagship show, Raw. So there’s been speculation about whether Netflix’s recent forays into live sports are a precursor to becoming a major player for live sports rights. While having another competitor for rights would certainly be welcomed, it is unlikely to happen soon.
He succeeds Mike Neale who’s retiring after 27 years at the station. Also, Stu Swaziek is promoted to sales manager
The FCC has hit Nexstar Media Group and its business partner Mission Broadcasting with a $1.2 million fine and an order to sell WPIX New York or other stations to come into compliance with longstanding station ownership limits. The commission on Thursday issued a 42-page decision in its probe of Nexstar’s ties to Mission Broadcasting and whether their business agreement violated the FCC’s reach limit on TV station ownership.
Nearly every commercial that runs on TV is backed by a guarantee of how big an audience will watch it. Late last year, Fox and Netflix decided to throw out that rule, one of the oldest in media economics.
Shari Redstone looks like she remains firmly opposed to breaking up Paramount Global. Redstone, president of National Amusements Inc. — the controlling shareholder of Paramount Global — was “unconvinced” by Apollo Global Management’s $11 billion offer to buy Paramount’s film and TV studio, the Financial Times reported, citing anonymous sources. Instead, per the FT report, Redstone is continuing to negotiate a deal with Skydance’s David Ellison, in partnership with RedBird Capital and Tencent, to sell NAI (and then merge Skydance with Paramount Global).
ISS, which recommends how institutional shareholders should vote, says that Disney’s failed succession processes are key to its recommendation.
Marketers agree that CTV advertising is the most effective digital channel in their media mix and 23.6% plan to increase their spending on connected TV (CTV) campaigns, according to a […]
She will serve as a spokesperson for the association and will help develop and execute messaging strategies to advance broadcasters’ policy agenda before Congress and the FCC.
Political spending in 2024 is forecast to be $11.1 billion; increasing $2.2 billion (+24%) over 2022, and $1.5 billion (+15.5%) over 2020 political ad spending. Political will be the top spending vertical category in 2024 for many of the media channels in BIA’s forecast, including TV OTA, TV digital, Cable TV, Radio OTA and CTV/OTT. While local ad spending on digital is growing, traditional advertising is forecast to account for 70.2% of political ad spend in 2024, down from 77.9% in 2020. As with past presidential elections, in 2024 over-the-air TV will get the largest share of political ad dollars in local with an estimated $4.6 billion in forecast spending
Grass Valley, a provider of live production solutions, and a portfolio company of private equity firm Black Dragon Capital, have completed a $220 million strategic refinancing led by certain investment […]
Reddit, the 19-year-old website that hosts millions of online forums, priced its IPO on Wednesday at $34 a share, the top of the expected range. The offering brought in $519 million, according to Reddit, and values the company at close to $6.5 billion. Reddit had planned to price the deal at $31 to $34 a share.
Focusing its measurement efforts on the upcoming TV and video upfront market, NBCUniversal will be integrating its first-party identity data with that of VideoAmp for NBCU’s One Platform Total Audience. The expanded deal with VideoAmp for One Platform will offer audience-based cross-platform planning and measurement — looking for the overlap of viewing usage of linear and streaming audiences.
Shares in Paramount Global soared on Wednesday after details of an $11 billion acquisition proposal by the private equity firm Apollo became public. Paramount stock closed at $12.51 per share Wednesday, up nearly 12 percent for the day.
A federal judge in New York on Wednesday tossed out DirecTV’s price-fixing case against three TV station owners – including Nexstar Media Group – on the basis that the satellite TV provider lacked antitrust standing to wage the court battle. DirecTV “has failed to show that it suffered ‘a special kind of antitrust injury,’ and therefore lacks antitrust standing to bring this suit,” U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel said in a 17-page opinion.