Business

Wall Street ended higher on Tuesday, sending the Nasdaq to a record high.

The turmoil in TV and advertising has been reflected in a high level of turnover among top TV ad sales executives, so media buyers will be doing business with a number of new faces in this year’s upfront advertising sales market.

Despite strikes that wiped out original programming last season and a narrative about viewers streaming more and watching less linear TV, the big broadcast networks largest retained their reach, according to a report from measurement and analytics company iSpot.tv.

Nielsen released a new ranking of companies in the media distribution business, including broadcast, cable and streaming, and The Walt Disney Co. was at the top of that list. At a time when it appears that streaming is taking over the television business, the new ranking has YouTube as No. 2 followed by traditional media companies NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Among the headlines were Shakira announcing that her song Punteria will be the official song of TelevisaUnivison’s coverage of the 2024 Copa America soccer tournament. Univision also announced the creation of “Sistema Uforia,” offering advertisers a way to take advantage of all of Univison’s Latin music assets and new festivals tied to some of its award shows.

As streamer bundling accelerates, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said today the  company will introduce a combo of Peacock , Netflix and Apple TV+ this month “at a vastly reduced price to anything that is in the market now.”

Lionsgate Studios began trading as a single class of stock under the Nasdaq ticker symbol LION on Tuesday. This news comes as the company continues its split from the premium cable network Starz. Lionsgate Studios encompasses both Lionsgate’s Motion Picture Group and the Television Studio segment as well as the company’s 20,000-plus title film and television library. This transaction is a major step in Lionsgate’s plan to fully separate its studio and Starz businesses. Lionsgate Studios currently has an enterprise value of $4.6 billion.

Marketers expect economic uncertainty, making the tenor of advertising deals difficult to predict — much like last year.

Tokyo-based Sony Corp.’s quarterly profit totaled 189 billion yen ($1.2 billion), up from 141 billion yen the year before. Quarterly sales for the maker of the PlayStation game machines rose 14% to 3.48 trillion yen ($22 billion).

Broadcasters’ most recent round of quarterly earnings reports fell under the shadow of a prospective Paramount sale, which brought M&A back into earnings call narratives. Streaming and sports also continued to shape growth trajectories.

Programming leaders from Gray, E.W. Scripps, Graham and Sinclair discuss a future for syndication with more groups selling to each other and a growing role for FAST channels in this in this panel at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference. Click here to register as a TVN subscriber and get access to all videos from this exclusive event.

Wall Street barely budged Monday as the S&P 500 remained just shy of its record.

She was the first woman to own and run a major national advertising agency. Her company, Wells Rich Greene, was best known for the “I ♥ NY” campaign.

The media giant closed its upfront presentation with the statistic and other findings detailed for the first time by Mark Marshall, chairman, global aAdvertising & partnerships, at the NBCU upfront Monday. Marshall laid out first-quarter results from One Platform Total Audience, a cross-platform tool introduced at CES last January that helps advertisers find strategic audiences across linear and digital on a single media plan.

Television companies expect this year’s upfront to be stronger than last year’s. “We’re in a much better place than we were a year ago going into this upfront presentation,” Rita Ferro, president of global advertising sales at The Walt Disney Co., says. “It’s not 100% back, but it’s most definitely better than it was when we were going into the upfronts a year ago.”

Nexstar brings the former head of WTIC and WTTC in Hartford, Conn., to oversee its CW affiliate in Texas.

As television executives prepare lavish stage presentations in New York this week to dazzle advertisers during the annual TV upfront sales season, a harsh economic reality looms offstage — digital video advertising now eclipses spending on traditional television ads. The shift in spending and competition from tech players like Amazon has taken a toll on media companies’ financial results, raising the stakes for the annual showcase of TV content to attract spending commitments from advertisers.

Forget MJ, Tiger or Serena. When it comes to boosting TV audiences, the former Iowa star — who plays her first WNBA game Tuesday — is in a league of her own. (Darren Cummings/AP)

Brands turn to retailers, Google, Meta and TikTok for additional reach.

Some of broadcasters’ diginets have greater reach than many cable networks and are attracting general market advertising as well as original, first-run and off-network syndicated programs.

Wall Street coasted to the finish line of another winning week on Friday.

The station group has increased its political estimates for the election cycle based on expectations for a very strong back half of the year. That’s not only because of general election races, but also ballot measures related to reproductive rights, which could be substantial.

Comcast said its Now Internet and Now Mobile prepaid services are now available nationwide across the cable operator’s footprint. The Now brand is designed to be a low-cost option for consumers looking for reliable digital connectivity services.