Business

Non-political spot advertising, retrans money and digital drove the station group total to $200.5 million.

Nexstar Media Group announced today that its board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.70 per share of its Class A common stock. The dividend is payable on Friday, May 28, to shareholders of record on Friday, May 14.

NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock had 42 million signups in the first quarter — up from the 33 million it reported three months ago — benefiting from the recent addition of exclusive domestic streaming rights to WWE Network and The Office. Parent Comcast also posted a huge earnings beat with EPS of $0.71 — up 54% from the year earlier, on revenue of $27.5 billion, up 2.5%.

A panel at TVNewsCheck’s June 9 virtual conference, Streaming News 2021, will explore strategies for OTT audience development with executives from Gray Television, CBS News Digital, Fox Television Stations and KSL Salt Lake City. Register here.

Verizon is exploring a sale of its media assets, including potentially parts of Yahoo and AOL businesses, people familiar with the matter say. Private-equity firms including Apollo are among the possible bidders.

Stock indexes slipped Wednesday after the Federal Reserve left rates alone. The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% after wavering between small gains and losses. Gains in communication services, energy and financial companies outweighed declines in technology and health care stocks.

Apple sped right past Wall Street’s expectations for its second fiscal quarter of 2021. For the three months ending on March 27, Apple reported $89.6 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $1.40. That was above the Wall Street expectations of $77.35 million in revenue and 99 cents per share. Apple hit a new high in revenue from its services and Mac sales in the quarter, with more than $9 billion in Mac sales. Services revenue totaled nearly $17 billion the quarter. International sales accounted for 67% of the quarter’s revenue.

Facebook hit 2.85 billion monthly active users, or MAUs, last quarter (up 10%) and 1.88 billion daily users (up 8%) as ad-driven revenue surged 48% to $26.2 billion, crushing forecasts. Earnings per share of $3.30 — up 93% – were also a beat as the social media giant’s advertising muscle powers through the cloud of antitrust lawsuits, Congressional critics and heat from Apple CEO Tim Cook — as the tech giants report dueling quarterly earnings Wednesday afternoon.

The unions representing actors and crews are in talks with the studios about extending — and possibly changing — the safety protocols they agreed on in September.

The technology behind the distribution of television has evolved with time, from the antenna to cable to satellite, and most recently to streaming. Now, according to E.W. Scripps Chief Executive Officer Adam Symson, the time has arrived for the next frontier of TV viewing: The antenna.

National U.S. TV publishers adopt OpenID, laying the foundation for new cross-platform measurement capabilities set to launch in broadcast year 2022. Dentsu Media, GroupM, Haworth Marketing + Media, Horizon Media and Omnicom Media Group will integrate with and activate all advanced TV campaigns as OpenID audiences, offering brands cross-screen and person-level insights across TV advertising.

Discovery Inc. missed the first-quarter earnings forecasts by quite a bit. Q1 was the launch quarter of streaming service Discovery+. Wall Street had forecast earnings per share of 65 cents on revenue of $2.77 billion, according to a consensus estimate compiled by Yahoo Finance. A smaller compilation by Zacks was a penny lower on the EPS prediction, but concurred with the sales figure. Discovery actually reported diluted EPS of 21 cents on $2.792 billion in revenue. While the revenue was up 4%, the per-share earnings were down 62% (from 55 cents).

WPP is merging the specialist data units of GroupM and Wunderman Thompson to form a new global data consultancy called Choreograph. The holding company said the new entity is designed to provide data advisory services focusing on strategy, implementation and privacy issues as well as optimizing first-party databases.

Tokyo-based Sony’s quarterly sales rose 27% from 1.7 trillion yen to 2.2 trillion yen ($20 billion). Sony had reported a January-March profit of 12.6 billion yen last year.

Wells Fargo media analyst Steven Cahall told clients Tuesday that he believes Sinclair Broadcast Group’s regional sports networks could face a “tumultuous” period over the next few months, as uncertainty mounts concerning its upcoming carriage renewal with Dish Network and its ongoing battle with streamers YouTube TV and Hulu Live.

The purchase of KJYY-LD Portland, Ore., by Roseland Broadcasting tops the latest list of TV station transactions submitted to the FCC for its approval, according to BIA Advisory Services.

Stocks ended Tuesday mixed with the S&P 500 still near its record. The benchmark index slipped less than 0.1% after wavering between small gains and losses for much of the day. Losses in technology, health care, communication services and other sectors in the index outweighed gains in banks, industrial stocks and energy companies.

The robust first quarter advertising growth announced Tuesday provides the latest sign that advertisers are expecting the economy to roar back to life as more people get vaccinated against COVID-19 and burst out of their pandemic cocoons.

Denney will start at NBCU next month. He will be based in New York and report to Gidon Katz, NBCU’s president of direct-to-consumer. In addition to Peacock, Denney will be responsible for product strategy for other customer-facing NBCUniversal digital platforms, including broadcast and cable entertainment apps, NBC Sports and reality-TV streaming service Hayu.

With a channel said to be not financially viable, the company will focus on producing streaming video content. David Rhodes will leave his consultant role at News UK, but keep advising the parent company.

Nexstar CEO Perry Sook shares context on the decision to convert WGN America to NewsNation, including details on how 198 Nexstar TV stations and 5,500 journalists feed, support and promote the fledgling news network.

For the second consecutive year, the readers of the Radio+Television Business Report have spoken. And, with their input, the latest rankings include new names near the top of the list, and many shifts. In a year that saw a great pause and, for some, a shift thanks to a pandemic, it’s perhaps fitting.

The new contract extends ViacomCBS’s portfolio rights for linear television currency.