Business

The purchase of WZPK-LD Monticello, N.Y., by Hudson TV tops the latest list of TV station transactions submitted to the FCC for its approval, according to BIA Advisory Services.

Tegna promotes the news director to oversee operations at its NBC affiliate in Oregon and southwest Washington.

Wall Street drifted to a mixed finish in a quiet day of trading on Tuesday.

Growing digital ad biz, political revenue, local ads and FAST revenue touted to analysts.

The social media company and its Chinese parent, ByteDance, sued to challenge the new law, saying it violated users’ First Amendment rights.

eBay Ads leads the company’s organization that runs the machine learning (ML) and the AI recommender systems, a data-filtering tool that uses AI and ML to suggest items to users. They are commonly used by ecommerce and social media sites. It also powers eBay’s $1.4 billion business, which helps sellers reach customers with ads and organic recommendations.

Audiences may not be the only thing about TV that continues to shrink. Advertisers are expected to once again press for “rollbacks,” or declines in the rates they pay for reaching streaming and TV viewers, in early Upfront talks with TV networks, according to five media buying executives and other people familiar with these annual discussions in which U.S. media companies try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory ahead of their next cycle of programming.

Many bosses of entertainment giants saw their pay packages increase during a tumultuous 2023 that included dual strikes, a production slowdown and cost-cutting across the industry.

Syncbak, which provides stations with streaming capabilities, said it is rebranding as Zeam Media. The new name is designed to move Zeam from a tech company to a media and advertising company. Gray Television, the National Association of Broadcasters, Morgan Murphy Media and Northwest Broadcasting CEO Brian Brady are investors in the company.

In its fiscal second quarter, Disney+ core subscribers were up more than 6 million subs, and its average revenue per user increased sequentially by 44 cents. Meanwhile, Disney’s linear networks experienced an 8% decline in revenue to about $2.8 billion, compared with the same quarter last year. But linear is helping to drive the growth of the burgeoning direct-to-consumer unit.

She currently is director of philanthropic strategies for the Scripps Howard Fund, a public charity that supports philanthropic and journalism causes important to Scripps. Delaney succeeds Liz Carter, whose retirement was announced in January.

Wounded and limping, doubting its own future, American journalism seems to be losing a quality that carried it through a century and a half of trials: its swagger. Swagger is the conformity-killing practice of journalism, often done in defiance of authority and custom, to tell a true story in its completeness, no matter whom it might offend. It causes some people to subscribe and others to cancel their subscriptions, and gives journalists the necessary courage and direction to do their best work. Swagger was once journalism’s calling card, but in recent decades it’s been sidelined.

Revenue for the quarter ended March 30 increased to $22.1 billion from $21.8 billion in the year-earlier period. Excluding items, diluted earnings per share for the quarter increased to $1.21 from 93 cents. Analysts had been expecting revenue of $20.53 billion and earnings per share of $1.02.

The increase to $823 million was pegged to higher core advertising as well as higher driven by the 2024 Super Bowl.

Meta Platforms is urging a federal appellate court to reconsider a recent 2-1 decision allowing Facebook and Instagram advertisers to proceed with a class-action fraud lawsuit over inflated metrics. In papers filed with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Meta says the panel ruling doesn’t “make any sense in a case like this,” given that the class of affected advertisers includes entities ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses to government agencies. Meta adds that the ruling will make it “virtually impossible” for defendants in other lawsuits to oppose class-action certification.

Wall Street rose Monday to add to last week’s gains. Tech stocks were at the forefront, with familiar ringleaders Nvidia and Super Micro Computer again pulling the market higher.

Radziul adds oversight of a portion of the company’s portfolio of stations, joining Executive Vice Presidents Ashley Gold and Eric Meyrowitz, and Vice President, New England, Kyle Grimes, managing operations of the group.  He will continue to supervise the company’s government affairs and its distribution relationships.

Reporting to Shawn Donilon, she will provide strategic public policy counsel to assist NAB in developing policy positions and formulating advocacy strategies to address critical issues affecting the broadcast industry.

85% of Amazon’s Prime Video subs are now in the ad-supported tier, more than any other streaming service, according to Hub’s quarterly TV Churn Tracker.

Looking to ramp up performance-based advertising efforts for better business outcomes, NBCUniversal has started a new retail media partnership with Instacart to help consumer packaged goods advertisers with their campaigns. The grocery-delivery company will look to provide new first-party purchase data from CPG brands connected to advertising exposure on NBCUniversal’s streaming content in order to measure the impact of brand campaigns.

The owner of Detroit station WADL is urging Mission Broadcasting to close its $75 million acquisition of WADL before a June 30 deadline. In an earlier interview, Adell Broadcasting CEO Kevin Adell suggested that a local marketing agreement would enable Mission to operate WADL while appealing conditions put on the sale by the FCC. But Adell now says an LMA is off the table. The FCC approved the agreement to transfer WADL’s license to Mission, but attached significant conditions to the approval.

A group of Google users who are suing the company over alleged privacy violations are now battling with it over a key issue in the case — whether the company adequately disclosed how it collects analytics data. The legal fight, which dates to 2000, focuses on Google Analytics for Firebase — a tool that can collect data about smartphone users’ app usage.

Programming fees have become so onerous as to threaten the future viability of affiliates. Networks need to remember: If stations go under, they take the network owners with them.

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