Digital

The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a group including the BBC, New York Times, Microsoft and Adobe, is working toward a common technical standard for media provenance to push back against the deluge of disinformation and deepfakes assaulting news. Their work on content authentication is swinging into high gear this winter.

Peacock has won rights to the American version of the hit British series in what it calls a “highly competitive situation.” The NBCUniversal-owned streaming platform has picked up two seasons of Love Island, with the first set to air in the summer. The show, produced by ITV America’s ITV Entertainment, had aired on CBS for the past three seasons.

Sinclair Broadcast Group said it plans to launch its direct-to-consumer product in the five markets where it has rights to stream baseball teams in the first half of 2022. Sinclair said that following rights renewals with the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, its Bally Sports regional sports networks have rights to launch DTC products with a total of 33 teams.

The media measurement giant is expected as soon as Wednesday to announce it will issue streaming data from connected TV sets, according to two people familiar with the matter. The information, Nielsen is expected to tell clients, will give advertisers, media buyers and media companies more information in their efforts to understand how audiences are behaving across a range of different screens.

The FCC is launching an inquiry into how it can “prevent internet providers from engaging in digital discrimination.” The agency was under a directive from Congress related to the tens of billions of dollars being handed out for broadband deployment and adoption in the Biden administration‘s infrastructure package. “Your ZIP code shouldn’t determine your access to broadband,“ FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in outlining the agenda for the agency‘s March meeting, when there will be a vote on launching the notice of inquiry.

Smart TVs may be growing their own ad-supported channels, but streaming viewers are flocking to better-entrenched AVOD and SVOD apps. Smart marketers must assemble a diverse media plan incorporating not only CTV, but third-party streaming platforms to capture enough eyeballs.

After growing its audience in 2021, Fox Soul has ambitious plans to expand its programming and generate revenue. The two-year-old, ad-supported streaming service operates under the wing of the Fox Television Stations group. Fox Soul said its viewership climbed 131% to 61 million viewers and minutes viewed jumped 191% to 700 million in 2021.

The former president’s Truth Social app was offered for download beginning Monday from the Apple App Store to a limited number of subscribers who had preordered. Others who were added to a waiting list are to be given access over the next 10 days. The site encountered technical glitches shortly after launch, with reports that subscribers were shut out for hours. Others had trouble signing on. The site is not expected to be open to anyone who wants to download it until next month.

New jobs posted to TVNewscheck’s Media Job Center include openings in news, weather, engineering, digital, and sales for stations owned by Nexstar, Hearst and Fox.

Truth Social, the former president’s hard-right alternative to Twitter, could open its doors next month. But as businesses go, outrage may not be the best moneymaker.

TVNewsCheck.com/Video, easily accessible from the main news website, spotlights regular series like Talking TV and How To while organizing a large library of videos into playlists such as Media Company Management, Optimizing Revenue, Electronic Journalism and Media Technology.

Along with revealing the premiere date for its much-delayed fourth season on Thursday, Netflix announced that Stranger Things — the sci-fi horror series that premiered in 2016, and became a phenomenon — has been renewed for a fifth and final season.

Ahead of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Season 4 premiere, the Emmy-winning comedy series has been renewed by Prime Video for a fifth season which will be its last. Production is currently underway in New York City. Season 4 of the period comedy premieres Feb. 18 exclusively on the streamer with two new episodes dropping every Friday for four weeks.

The FTC should monitor tech companies’ use of virtual reality with an eye toward protecting children, a trio of Democratic lawmakers is urging.

TelevisaUnivision said it will launch a new streaming platform, with a free ViX ad-supported service and Vix+ subscription service available through a single app. CEO Wade Davis said the company has made a capital commitment of billions of dollars, “multiple of what any other platform is spending in the language.

Shares of ViacomCBS are down more than 20% in early trading as Wall Street digests the company’s streaming strategy, outlook and financials announced after the market closed Tuesday, and clearly has some issues.  MoffettNathanson said: “Despite the big announcement of ViacomCBS changing its name … we are left with a similar question as we had last year: will the company be able to grow EBITDA and FCF again to match prior levels? In short, unfortunately, we still did not learn anything to help us believe the answer will be yes, at least for the foreseeable future.”

In their last outings as leaders of ViacomCBS, the executive team led by Shari Redstone and Bob Bakish finally started to sound like they have a solid plan to compete in streaming. On the day ViacomCBS unveiled its corporate rebrand to Paramount, starting today, the company put on a nearly three-hour virtual presentation for investors that demonstrated how much its operations have been turned inside out to focus on streaming growth opportunities. (Thomas Woo photo)

South Park, which will continue to air new episodes on Comedy Central, will see its vast library make the move from HBO Max to Paramount+ in 2025. Internationally, the long-running animated comedy will be available on Paramount+ next year. New episodes will launch on the streamer in the U.S. and globally starting with season 27 in 2024. Beavis and Butt-Head, meanwhile, will return with new episodes this year and forgo its debut on Comedy Central in favor of Paramount+.