Business

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp talks with David Chu, co-founder and CEO of Digital Media Rights, about the viability of niche-oriented AVOD options on streaming.

Thursday turned out to be another up and down day on Wall Street with indexes closing mixed. The S&P 500 managed a 0.1% gain after having been down 0.7% in the early going.

The veteran Chicago broadcaster most recently led the creation and launch of NewsNation, Nexstar Media Group’s Chicago-based national cable news channel.

The station group promotes Ronna Corrente to lead WAVE Louisville, Ky., and Mikel Schaefer to oversee WVUE New Orleans.

Graham Media is moving him from GM of WJXT Jacksonville, Fla. to succeed the retiring Marla Drutz as head of its Michigan NBC affiliate.

Tech company TopDevz and diversity recruiting company Noirefy have beefed up a class-action complaint against LinkedIn over inflated ad metrics, in hopes of convincing a judge to allow the lawsuit to proceed.

U.S. stocks took a late turn lower Wednesday. The S&P 500 fell 1.1%, its second straight loss coming off a five-day winning streak. The selling accelerated in the final hour of trading, with the S&P 500’s technology, health care, financial and industrial companies weighing down the index the most.

The association’s Chris Brown said today that NAB “will require all attendees and participants to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination. We think this is a positive step in reducing the spread of COVID-19 and will provide further details on implementation as well as other safety measures under consideration.”

Those who take 1 gig or higher now account for 10.5% of the market, OpenVault says.

U.S. political advertising spending in the 2022 midterm elections will near record totals of the U.S. presidential race — getting to $8.9 billion, according to estimates from AdImpact — with CTV political ads making big gains. The media researcher estimates the 2020 presidential election period witnessed $9.02 billion in ad spend. Presidential election years are the biggest in terms of political spending.

On the heels of a joint report estimating advertisers place $2.6 billion annually in digital media buys on publishers of misinformation, Comscore and NewsGuard are launching a new service to help thwart it. Comscore said it will integrate NewsGuard’s data into its pre-bid contextual targeting options for the demand-side platforms (DSPs) it works with, enabling advertisers and agencies to select custom NewsGuard segments that exclude publishers of misinformation from their ad buys.

Robert Allbritton, the owner of Politico, is weighing a lucrative payday against maintaining full control over a widely read Washington news site.

As part of a broader shift of video advertising from “in-home” to “out-of-home,” independent out-of-home media-services agency Talon has unveiled a new “connected video” service unifying over-the-top TV and digital out-of-home video advertising. The goal, says Talon America CEO Jim Wilson, is to deliver “measurable incremental” audience reach tied to explicit “campaign spending business results.”

The purchase of KQHO-LD Houston by Word Broadcasting Networks tops the latest list of TV station transactions submitted to the FCC for its approval, according to BIA Advisory Services.

Wall Street slipped Tuesday as retail sales posted a steep drop in July. The benchmark S&P 500 index fell 0.7%, its biggest decline in four weeks. Technology stocks and a mix of companies that rely on consumer spending were the biggest weights on the market as traders become more concerned about the pace and breadth of economic growth amid a resurgent COVID-19.

He succeeds the retiring Dan Mellon in overseeing the company’s data and technology integration into the sales process.

A new deal ends the impasse that kept the cable operator’s OTT app from being downloaded on Roku.

The new organization’s inaugural reception to be held in Las Vegas at the NAB Show on Oct. 10.

NBCU’s Kelly Abcarian, Tubi’s Mark Rotblat and Philo’s Reed Barker are among 23 high-profile executives now consulting the new advanced advertising consortium.

On Monday, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Dish Network agreed to a short-term extension of their carriage agreement hours before it was set to expire. David Gibber, Sinclair SVP and general counsel, said: “We have agreed to a short-term extension with Dish to continue conversations. We will continue to update our viewers as this develops. Sinclair stands willing to continue to negotiate in good faith and to enter into a longer extension to allow for the continued carriage of our channels to Dish subscribers.”

On Monday, the S&P 500 hit a new record amid rising concerns about the pandemic. Technology and health care stocks accounted for much of the gain. Sectors traditionally considered lower risk, including utilities and companies that make food and personal goods also helped lift the market.

ViacomCBS has clinched a sale of the CBS Building known as Black Rock for $760 million to real estate investment firm Harbor Group International. It’s the first sale of the landmark building at 51 West 52^nd Street in midtown Manhattan since it opened in 1964. The media giant put the building on the block in 2019 as it looked to shed noncore assets, but a sale was delayed by the pandemic. As the former owner-occupier, ViacomCBS will lease back its space on a short term basis.

More than 140 Sinclair-owned stations are set to go dark today because of a carriage dispute between Sinclair and Dish Network. The latest disagreement over retransmission fees will affect 3.5 million Dish subscribers in 38% of the country.

The media executive with nearly 20 years of local broadcast experience will oversee Nexstar’s WQRF, mystateline.com and Mission Broadcasting’s WTVO.

Red Ventures, which started as a digital marketing company, has attracted serious investments from private equity firms. Its location has helped obscure what is perhaps the biggest digital publisher in America, a 4,500-employee juggernaut that says it has roughly $2 billion in annual revenues, a conservative valuation earlier this year of more than $11 billion, and more readers, as measured by Comscore, than any media brand you’ve ever heard of — an average of 751 million visits a month.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for an account executive, a director of streaming TV, a Microsoft Full Stack engineer, a social media/digital content manager, a digital sales manager, a news producer and a broadcast maintenance technician.