Digital

As Inventing Anna continues to rank in Netflix’s top 10, Shondaland has set another scripted original series at the streaming giant. Shonda Rhimes and her longtime Shondaland partner Betsy Beers will executive produce The Residence, a mystery drama that has been ordered straight to series. The drama will use Kate Anderson Brower’s book, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, as a jumping off point to tell a new murder-mystery story.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings in digital, news, marketing and promotions, sales, engineering and operations at local TV stations, Hearst Media Production and The Weather Channel.

Netflix suspended its service in Russia on Sunday, becoming the latest tech company to halt or restrict its offerings in Russia amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “Given the circumstances on the ground, we have decided to suspend our service in Russia,” a Netflix spokesperson said. TikTok announced earlier in the day that it was blocking users in Russia from posting videos on the platform.

David Eilenberg, most recently chief creative officer at ITV America, will become head of Roku Originals for the company, overseeing the creative vision and go-to-market strategy for all of Roku’s original content. Colin Davis, Roku’s head of scripted originals, and Brian Tannenbaum, the head of alternative originals, will now report to Eilenberg. Eilenberg will report to Roku VP Programming Rob Holmes.

A programming agreement that gives the Walt Disney Co.’s streaming service Hulu access to popular programming from Comcast’s NBCUniversal has been terminated, according to a source familiar with the situation. Insead of appearing on Hulu the day after they air on NBC, shows like This is Us, The Voice and Saturday Night Live will be available on Peacock, the  Comcast streaming platform that competes with Hulu.

The streamer announced the news on Friday, noting it would launch in late 2022. Price and exact launch date will be announced later in the year.

The move came after a Russian regulator demanded that the company stop showing ads with what the regulator claimed was false information about the invasion of Ukraine.

DoubleVerify says that several of its programmatic targeting services have been accredited by the Media Rating Council. The products include fraud avoidance for connected TV, desktop, mobile web and mobile app ads, including invalid traffic avoidances and ID display and video viewability targeting for desktop, mobile web and mobile apps.

Disney Advertising’s previously announced “clean room” effort — which enables advertisers to match their first-party data with that of Disney audience segments — has signed on media agency Horizon Media as its first partner to determine how ads can yield specific business outcomes for marketers. Disney Advertising is the ad sales division of the Walt Disney Co. In addition, Disney is working on a clean room deal with demand-side platform the Trade Desk.

The hope is that CNN+ will serve as a gateway to a post-pay TV world, connecting the brand’s familiar red and white letters to a generation of viewers who are growing up without cable. CNN also has plans to eventually offer a lower priced version of CNN+ that will be advertiser-supported. CNN+ will also be available in a package deal with HBO Max, just as Disney offers its flagship streaming service Disney+ with ESPN+ and Hulu.

The company is undertaking a far-reaching effort to change how it works. For some, it is an echo of their early idealism and a vision for what the internet could have been.

Google, Meta, Twitter, Telegram and others are levers in the conflict, caught between demands from Ukraine, Russia, the European Union and the U.S.

NBC News was tied for 11th in Edison Research’s list of top podcast networks by reach, the only company that is known primarily as a television news broadcaster in the company’s top 18. NBC News said the audience for its podcasts in 2021 grew by 19% over the year before.

MLB and NBC Sports have had serious talks about the network broadcasting games this season. If a deal comes to fruition, most of the games are expected to be on NBC’s streaming platform, Peacock.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is forcing big tech companies to decide how to handle state-controlled media outlets that spread propaganda and misinformation on behalf of the invaders.

Justin Smith, the former head of Bloomberg Media, and Ben Smith, the former New York Times media columnist, have approached some of the biggest names in media in an effort to raise $20 million-$30 million to launch a news organization by fall of 2022, according to people they’ve pitched. The Smiths, who tell investors they’ll burn through $50 million in cash before breaking even, have approached Bob Iger, Michael Bloomberg and Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, sources say.

TiVo has launched Xtend, a group of new advertising solutions using the company’s first-party deterministic TV viewership data. The platform will offer deterministic data to identify who has or has not tuned into programming or seen a message from a brand or its competitors; programmatic audience segments, scaled and tested for targeting on connected TV, PC, tablet and mobile; connected TV inventory layered with Xtend or custom audiences to add incremental reach and frequency to linear across 40 million households; and clickable ads placed within native TiVo Guides.

WVLT’s live streaming news coverage of two men trapped in a collapsed trench and a 6-year-old boy lost in the woods earned an award from its owner, Gray Television.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include a dozen openings in news, marketing, sales, engineering and digital.

MLB.TV’s 2021 season plan included an auto-renewal feature, which means you will automatically be renewed for the 2022 season this Tuesday, March 1, at the 2021 regular season price of $129.99. That’s just two days from now. If you don’t cancel by then, you’re on the hook for the 2022 season even though we don’t know if there will be one. So whether you decide to renew or not, your decision will be made for you on Tuesday. There are no cancellations after that point.

He joins from Disney/ABC to oversee day-to-day and long-term strategic vision for the programming, production, editorial and operational functions at CBS News and Stations’ 13 local streaming channels.

Netflix’s Ozark hit a rarely seen mark in the U.S. streaming rankings for the week of Jan. 24-30. The drama, whose fourth season debuted on Jan. 21, topped 4 billion minutes of viewing — 4.095 billion, to be precise. That’s the best for any streaming title in nearly two years, and only the fourth time any show has topped the 4 billion minute mark.