Digital

Second-place WRC (NBC O&O) increased its total engagement by 44.7% in the last 30 days, which helped it  increase its overall share by 28.8% and make the race for first in the nation’s capital much closer. WTTG (Fox O&O) held on to first place in the market with a 33.9 overall share, while WRC had a 30.1 overall share, WUSA (Tegna-owned CBS affiliate) had a 20.0 overall share, and WJLA had a 15.0 overall share.

With Facebook’s much-anticipated announcement of its Watch product, the social media giant is moving into TV-like content with the creation of a video tab that it hopes will become a habit for its users. With Watch, Facebook essentially creates a video hub to make it easier for consumers to discover and organize videos on its platform.

Sony has announced that it has signed on seven more CBS affiliate stations for its virtual MVPD service, PlayStation Vue. With the deals, Vue users in Houston, New Orleans, Washington and San Antonio now have live streaming access to their local CBS stations. Other regions gaining CBS local access: Greensboro, N.C., as well as Tampa and Orlando, Fla.

NEW YORK (AP) — Ousted Fox News Channel star Bill O’Reilly has launched an experimental video comeback with a daily online show. The initial half-hour was posted on his website Wednesday for premium subscribers, originating from what he called a “new prototype studio.” He requested input from viewers for what he characterized as a “sneak […]

Former Mashable executive Adam Ostrow will oversee Tegna’s digital vision and strategy.

An emerging debate about whether elected officials violate people’s free speech rights by blocking them on social media is spreading across the U.S. as groups sue or warn politicians to stop the practice.

Young people are happy to shell out for online TV: Nearly 80% of Millennials said they watch or have access to streaming services, according to eMarketer, a digital research firm. But if other media companies follow the lead of Disney (and HBO and CBS), we could be up to our eyeballs in streaming subscriptions. That could get really expensive really fast.

The Walt Disney Co. finally unveiled its plan to offer an over-the-top video streaming edition of ESPN for the growing number of fans who want live sports — but not the big cable bill that a previous generation paid. Now the question is whether the revenue generated by the new service to be launched in 2018 will be enough to offset the subscriber dollars that go away every time a household decides it can do without cable.

Tribune stations have found success in using Facebook’s Instant Articles publishing tool. Facebook says the station group’s strategy to post stories as Instant Articles, fast-loading stories that show up in viewers’ Facebook feeds, has boosted engagement.

In the wake of layoffs and the departure of its top executive, the company announced Wednesday on Facebook, “We’re writing to let you know that later this year, Seeso will be shutting its comedy doors.”

Google plans to change the options it gives advertisers for excluding site categories for the Display Network in AdWords. Several site categories are being eliminated, while a few are being added. Others are rolling up into a more concise name. To streamline the AdWords interface and improve serving, Google says it is merging some site category options and removing others.

Fox did not follow Disney’s lead last night in announcing new subscription streaming services for its content. But CEO James Murdoch told analysts Wednesday that he’s “very open minded about an independently priced, direct to consumer offering and we’re certainly mindful of what we see in the marketplace and how these things are progressing for other firms out there.”

Facebook continues to ramp up its original content with Watch, a platform introduced Wednesday for shows — a new type of shortform video on the social media juggernaut. Mark Zuckerberg’s company calls it a platform for all creators and publishers to find an audience, build a community of fans and earn money for their work.

“I want the humans to be able to hold their own against the strength of the machines.” That was perhaps the most ominous line spoken from the stage at the summer Television Critics Association press tour, and it came not from an actor or showrunner but FX Networks chief John Landgraf. He wasn’t describing the plot of a new scripted drama. He turned to the classic science fiction trope as a metaphor for the situation that he and other cable programming executives now find themselves in as Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple engage in a “titanic struggle” — Landgraf’s words — for domination in the video entertainment marketplace.

Recently suspended Fox News host Eric Bolling is suing journalist Yashar Ali for defamation and is seeking $50 million in damages after Ali’s HuffPost story claimed that Bolling sent “an unsolicited photo of male genitalia via text message to at least two colleagues at Fox Business and one colleague at Fox News.”

Walt Disney Co’s shares fell 5% on Wednesday to their lowest in eight months as investors doubted whether the world’s biggest entertainment company can succeed with its plan to launch its own streaming services rather than rely on Netflix Inc to reach online viewers.

Mozilla, the creators of the popular Firefox web browser, are launching a new program to counter fake news stories. The Mozilla Information Trust Initiative (MITI) will increase funding for research on misinformation, the first findings to be released later this year. The company hopes to leverage Firefox’s size and reach to get data about news browsing habits.

Facebook says it is intensifying its efforts to control scams and fake news by taking a harder line on “cloaking,” a tactic that bad actors use across the web to avoid detection. “We’ve recently been ramping up our enforcement,” says Rob Leathern, Facebook product management director. “We are making it clear: We don’t tolerate cloaking.”

Highlighting the steep cost of the original programming arms race currently unfolding in the SVOD market, Hulu’s losses through the first six months of 2017 have spiked 81% to $353 million. The data comes courtesy of BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield, who looked at SEC data filed by Hulu parents Fox, Walt Disney, Comcast and Time Warner.

Disney’s creating its own streaming service for its central Disney and Pixar brands and another for live sports. That would allow it to bypass the cable companies it relies on — and Netflix — to charge consumers directly for access to its popular movies and sporting events. “They’re bringing the future forward. What they talked about were things that looked inevitable, at some point,” said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Weiser. (AP photo / Richard Drew)

The pursuit of digital readership broke the New Republic — and an entire industry. Data have turned journalism into a commodity, something to be marketed, tested, calibrated. Perhaps people in the media have always thought this way. But if that impulse existed, it was at least buffered. Journalism’s leaders were vigilant about separating the church of editorial from the secular concerns of business. We can now see the cause for fanaticism about building such a thick wall between the two.

The Bing Ads platform will remove non-performing keywords and/or ads that have not shown any performance during an undefined “significant” length of time.

David Letterman is returning to a regular TV gig, setting a deal with Netflix for a show that will combine long-form interviews with reports from the field. Netflix has ordered six episodes of the hourlong series, to be produced by New York-based RadicalMedia and Letterman’s Worldwide Pants banner. The untitled show is targeted to debut next year.

Raycom’s CBS affiliate dominates social media actions in Savannah over the last six months according to data from audience insight firm Shareablee. WTOC has almost four times the number of actions than its nearest competitor. Sarah Smith, WTOC’s digital content manager: “We make sure that we’re hitting our audiences on all platforms, everywhere we can reach them digitally. We share as much on Facebook as we would anywhere else, as much as we would on the air.”

Hearst is out in front of a recent $133 million funding round for SVOD service iflix that is fending off the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video in emerging markets. Along with Hearst, Singapore-based EDBI and clients of DBS private bank are new investors in iflix, and are joined by existing investors Evolution Media, Sky PLC, Catcha Group, Liberty Global, Jungle Ventures and PLDT Inc.