Business

The former GM of WHO Des Moines will succeed the retired Doreen Wade as head of Meredith’s NBC affiliate.

The former Media General and LIN executive will oversee KOVR and KMAX following Kevin Walsh’s move to San Francisco.

Nexstar Media’s and Sinclair’s ATSC 3.0 spectrum consortium — which has recruited Univision and Northwest Broadcasting as members — is looking for a CEO to run the venture full-time. Nexstar CEO Perry Sook says the companies have hired a firm to find a CEO who can focus full-time on finding new members and orchestrating future revenue opportunities for the soon-to-be-available spectrum.

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.

After shopping her Judge Judy library around the industry for as much as $200 million, Judy Sheindlin’s stable of more than 5,200 episodes has landed back at CBS. The deal also includes several more seasons of future episodes of the No. 1 syndicated series.

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.”

Montgomery, Ala.-based Raycom Media is shifting some of its digital production to Atlanta, taking 14 jobs out of Montgomery. The new digital content hub is set to launch in Atlanta on Jan. 1, said Susana Schuler, EVP for content and operations.

To dig into out-of-home (OOH) viewing, Nielsen analyzed data to see what content Americans are consuming beyond the comfort of their own couches. The analysis, which looked into total day out-of-home TV viewership from the beginning of 2017 to the end of May, uncovered a bevy of trends — some intuitive, and some surprising — that begin to scratch the surface of this new horizon in measured behavior.

The rise to $227 million is driven by increases in local and national advertising as well as retransmission consent money.

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.

The record boost to $626 million is driven by increased advertising and retransmission revenue and contributions from the former Media General stations..

In a swaggering five-minute video from “Mr. Smith” to HBO CEO Richard Plepler, the hackers used white text scrolling on a black background to deliver an ultimatum. In short: Pay up within three days or see the group, which claims to have stolen 1.5 terabytes of HBO shows and confidential corporate data, upload entire series and sensitive proprietary files.

Despite widespread speculation to the contrary, AT&T will not sell CNN after its acquisition of parent Time Warner closes, according to AT&T Entertainment Group chief John Stankey. In his first interview since being named to oversee assets such as Warner Bros. and HBO when AT&T’s acquisition of the media company is closed, Stankey also expresses support for Warner’s CEO Kevin Tsujihara: “He’s a talented guy.”

And CEO Les Moonves likes not having to rely heavily on advertising. “Ten years ago, it was greater than 70%. We love advertising, but diversifying our revenue leads to more certainty in our earnings,” he told analysts on Monday. It also says an OTT sports streaming service is in the works.

OTA Broadcasting had sold the spectrum of the Providence, R.I., CW affiliate in the FCC’s incentive auction.

The increase is helped by a higher retransmission consent and reverse comp revenue.

A coalition of TV and media industry entities is urging the FCC to reject Sinclair Broadcast Group’s proposed $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media, arguing that the combination would “produce a TV station behemoth that is unprecedented in both local and national size and power.”

A new  BIA/Kelsey study says that enhancing station ratings with third-party “Big Data” about viewers’ buying interests “adds substantially to the local TV value proposition” by permitting targeted advertising that would mean local TV broadcasters could become “more competitive with digital pure-play platforms and would see greater revenue growth in better monetizing their broadcast audiences.”

The new agreement deal will bring CBS-owned TV stations, Showtime, the CW and Pop to the DirecTV Now streaming service. Financial terms of the pact were not disclosed.

It is not exactly a secret that Dish Network has all but given up on its DBS service, choosing instead to concentrate on Sling TV while trying to squeeze out every last penny of profit from the satellite TV business. But the company’s income was way down in the second quarter, even taking into account the $280 million fine in the telemarketing case the company booked in the quarter. And all other key financial indicators declined in the quarter, except for slightly better churn.

There are rumblings at the highest executive levels that AT&T’s top executives are considering divesting some Time Warner assets — including news organization CNN and celebrity gossip site TMZ — after they merge.

The reports of TV’s death are greatly exaggerated, and some people have blamed the ratings messenger — Nielsen. The data put out by the audience measurement company for what it calls “linear viewing” — which counts number of people who watch a program the day it airs — has been on a steady decline across broadcast and many cable networks in recent years. The company says it has answered the call by networks and ad agencies to provide “total audience data” that includes viewing on Internet-connected TV sets, digital devices and on screens seen outside the home.

Characters like Flo, star of 140 Progressive Insurance commercials, can deliver a brand message in a potent way. But they’re not great at evolving.

U.S. ad tech company Tremor Video is selling its “demand-side platform” to Israel-based mobile advertising firm Taptica for an enterprise value of $50 million continuing a raft of consolidation in a sector facing stiff online competition from Google and Facebook.