Business

In an effort to help brands get the attention of as many viewers as possible, YouTube is launching a “Select Shorts” ad offering, to give advertisers the ability to engage audiences across a variety of content genres by placing their ads alongside best-performing Shorts. According to the Google-owned social platform, YouTube Select Shorts will allow advertisers to choose to place their ad alongside the app’s top Shorts across five categories including entertainment, beauty, fashion and lifestyle, food and recipes, gaming and automotive.

Armstrong Williams: Depression-era regulations won’t protect local journalism in the digital age.

Fox Sports has appointed Jen Durda and Kathy Lydon both named VPs. Durda previously was a VP with Warner Bros. Discovery and Turner Sports. She will work from Fox’s Detroit office. Lydon was with ESPN/Disney leading a multimedia sales team. At Fox, she will lead sales for the Big Ten Network.

Comcast on Thursday surprised with a suite of prepaid products that includes wireless, fixed broadband, Wi-Fi and streaming TV, all under the new Comcast “NOW” brand. Wireless has offered prepaid mobile plans for years. These plans have typically been targeted to lower-income people; they don’t require good credit scores (since they’re prepaid); and they can easily be switched on and off. But prepaid has not been widely offered in the fixed broadband world.

The company and Apollo Global Management are discussing a joint effort, even as Paramount conducts exclusive merger negotiations with Skydance.

U.S. stock indexes drifted to a mixed finish on Thursday in a quiet day of trading.

Netflix added 9.3 million subscribers in the quarter ended March 31, reaching 269.6 million worldwide, and outperformed expectations in other key areas in its latest strong financial report. Revenue and earnings per share both handily exceeded Wall Street forecasts at $9.37 billion and $5.28, respectively. The top line was up 15% from the same quarter in 2023, while EPS came in at nearly double the year-ago period’s $2.88. In its quarterly letter to shareholders, Netflix said it planned to stop reporting subscriber totals and average revenue per subscriber starting with its first quarter results in 2025.

With a judge approving the company’s disclosure agreement and setting up a June confirmation hearing, Diamond lawyer says the company is poised to exit Chapter 11, while insisting a just-approved November deadline extension is merely a “prophylactic motion.”

The Broadcasters Foundation of America held its annual breakfast Wednesday during the NAB Show in Las Vegas. The Foundation honored several industry leaders. Six honorees received the Leadership Award, and Erica Farber received the Lowry Mays Excellence in Broadcasting Award. L-r: Mike McVay, president, McVay Media Consulting; Kathleen Kirby, partner, Wiley; Don Bouloukos, CBS and ABC Radio executive; Erica Farber, president-CEO, Radio Advertising Bureau; Frank Comerford, chief revenue officer/president, commercial operations NBCU Local;  John Rouse, EVP, ABC Affiliate Relations, Disney Platform Distribution; and Traug Keller, president ABC Radio Network/SVP, ESPN Radio.

The transaction will create one of the largest multicultural media platforms in the U.S.

Paramount Global’s exclusive talks with Skydance Media are not likely to result in a deal, according to a report. Paramount, home of Paramount Pictures, MTV and CBS, entered into a 30-day period of exclusive talks with Skydance, which has produced blockbusters for Paramount like Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning and Top Gun: Maverick. The two companies will not likely strike a deal by May 3, which is when the exclusive window expires, CNBC’s David Faber said Wednesday.

IPG Mediabrands has unveiled plans to step up its efforts to safeguard clients from the negative impact of misinformation in media — especially on social media — prioritizing political, climate, health care, AI-generated and brand-specific content. The initiative, which was announced along with a new spate of research revealing how consumers feel about brand advertising in misinformation environments, includes an expansion of an ongoing research relationship between IPG Mediabrand’s Magna and brand content safety platform Zefr, as well as new technology developed by IPG Mediabrands’ Kinesso unit.

The Tennis Channel is lining up to play on multiple distribution courts in 2024 as it looks to serve its hard-core viewers wherever and whenever they want to see live tennis and Pickleball action, according to Tennis Channel president Ken Solomon. The Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned service is planning to launch a direct-to-consumer offering in 2024 to complement its lineup of the Tennis Channel linear service, its Pickleballtv and T2 FAST Channels and its Tennis Channel Plus SVOD service.

DirecTV has confirmed that it will appeal a federal judge in New York’s decision to throw out its antitrust lawsuit against Nexstar Media Group. The pay TV company has accused Nexstar of conspiring to fix broadcast retransmission license fees through management services agreements with smaller station groups Mission Broadcasting and White Knight.

Wall Street dipped Wednesday to send the S&P 500 to its longest losing streak since January. Tech stocks slumped after ASML, a Dutch company that’s a major supplier to the semiconductor industry, reported weaker orders for the start of 2024 than analysts expected.

Netflix’s plan to maintain subscriber growth after two quarters of blockbuster increases will be in focus when it reports earnings on Thursday, with some analysts warning that gains from a crackdown on password sharing are set to ease. The streaming pioneer saw its strongest growth since the pandemic in the second half of 2023, with about 22 million people signing up for the service after the company curbed the sharing of passwords globally.

Last fall, Charter Communications went to the mat with Disney over program licensing renewal, trying to, among other things, gain more flexibility in terms of how it bundles channels. And the fruits of the cable operator’s hard-won battle are apparent with its introduction Tuesday of Spectrum TV Stream, a virtual, ESPN-less skinny bundle, that includes more than 90 entertainment and news-themed channels for $39.99 a month.

In a letter sent Tuesday to the CEOs of the three companies, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) requested answers about the competitive implications of the proposed sports streaming JV. “As programmers, your companies exert tremendous influence over pricing across the live sports TV ecosystem,” Nadler and Castro wrote in the letter to Disney’s Bob Iger, Fox’s Lachlan Murdoch and Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav.

A group of actors filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday against Casting Networks, one of a handful of websites that connects actors to commercial auditions, alleging that the platform functions as an illegal pay-for-play system. Casting Networks offers actors a free tier and two premium tiers. The paid options allow actors to upload more video to their profile and to submit for unlimited roles.

Billionaire Jeff Skoll told his staff of 100 in a memo shared with The Associated Press Tuesday that they were winding down company operations. “This is not a step I am taking lightly,” Skoll wrote in the memo. “But after 20 years of groundbreaking content and world-changing impact campaigns, it is the right time for me to evaluate my next chapter and approach to tackling the pressing issues of our time.”

The purchase of WJMN-TV Escanaba, Mich., by Sullivans Landing tops the latest list of TV station transactions submitted to the FCC for its approval, according to BIA Advisory Services.

Most of Wall Street slipped Tuesday as expectations rose for rates to stay high.

Writers at the Sesame Workshop have voted unanimously to authorize a strike against the non-profit organization, the Writers Guild of American announced Tuesday. The guild says that there was 100% participation in the strike authorization vote from the 35-member bargaining unit. The writers are prepared to walk the picket line if a tentative deal isn’t reached by Friday, which is when the current contract expires. The strike would include any and all work for Sesame Street.

David Porter, an ad industry veteran and former Turner exec, is joining Warner Bros. Discovery as head of ad sales research, data and insights. Porter reports to Jon Steinlauf, Warner Bros. Discovery’s chief of U.S. advertising sales, and will split his time between WBD’s New York City and Atlanta offices. The announcement of Porter’s hiring comes a month ahead of the sale org’s May 15 Upfront presentation in New York City. Porter replaces Andrea Zapata, who exited WBD at the end of 2023 and is now T-Mobile’s VP of advertising data, measurement and partnerships.