Business

Overall, revenue of $9.958 billion was down from the year before and shy of Wall Street expectations, of over $10 billion. Ditto with net loss per share of 40 cents. TV numbers felt the impact of strikes with fewer episodes delivered. Streaming was a bright spot, where WBD added 2 million subs to 99.6 million and had a profit of $86 million, up from $50 million the year before. Revenue firmed, including a 70% jump in ad sales.

The total of $1.284 billion was attributed to increased distribution revenue and higher political revenue of $39 million.

CBS and other well-known properties would be sold if Sony and Apollo were able to buy Paramount. But the new owners would keep the movie studio.

In discussing Q1 performance, Lucy Rutishauser, Sinclair’s CFO, reported that “as compared to last year, consolidated media revenues increased to $792 million during the quarter, primarily on the higher political revenues and an increase in distribution revenue.” CEO Chris Ripley highlighted the company’s Broadspan, which is offering a new content distribution service that combines OTT and OTA distribution of live streaming events.

Wall Street’s lull stretched to a second day as indexes finish mixed Wednesday.

The increase to $798 million was driven by the Local Media segment, which grew to $792 million from $766 million in the same quarter a year ago as well as higher distribution revenue.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has ordered his lieutenants to find additional opportunities for cost-cutting in order to hit financial targets for the next couple years, people with knowledge of the matter said. They include the possibility of more layoffs at the company, which has eliminated more than 2,000 positions over the past year, said the people, who asked not to be identified. The streaming operation alone could bear hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts, mostly in marketing and technology, the people said.

Dave Lougee, president-CEO, said Tegna stations cover six of the seven swing states that are likely to impact the presidential race. In addition, the company is starting to capture political dollars beyond its stations’ footprint through Premion, the company’s connected TV ad platform.

EchoStar lost about 348,000 net pay TV subscribers in the first quarter, compared with a drop of 552,000 in the year-ago period, the company said on Wednesday. The company disclosed in a regulatory filing on Wednesday that it lost around 135,000 net Sling TV subscribers in the latest quarter, compared with a year-ago loss of 234,000. It ended March with 1.92 million Sling TV subs.

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into advertising, Meta is introducing new ways marketers can use generative AI (GAI) to focus less on “mundane tasks” and more on creative strategy. At a press event on Tuesday, the tech giant announced the rollout of full image and text generation. For the first time, advertisers will be able to create full image variations based on their original ad creative with text overlay capabilities that generate new backgrounds around product images and alter images to better fit multiple surfaces.

If upfront advertisers are looking for reach, Nexstar Media Group believes its base of local stations gives it a unique way to achieve that goal. Michael Strober, Nexstar chief revenue officer, says that even advertisers interested in the sports programming that Nexstar has added to The CW Network, can benefit from a national-local approach. “If you care about college football, we have ACC football and you can buy that on The CW,” Strober said. “Then you can extend that reach across all of the Nexstar affiliates on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, who all carry college football every week,” he said.

Talking with analysts, the Fox CEO described the still-unnamed joint venture with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery that’s now in beta as “an incredibly exciting product.” The company’s operating results showed a decline in revenue from last year’s third quarter, but affiliate fees rose, from about $1.86 billion in last year’s comparable quarter to $1.94 billion.

Fox Corp. said it swung to a profit in its fiscal third quarter despite slumps in advertising revenue, largely due to the absence of charges associated with a massive legal setback tied to Fox News Channel and a boost in affiliate fees. The owner of Fox News Channel and the Fox broadcasting network said overall revenue fell to about $3.45 billion, compared to approximately $4.08 billion in the year-earlier period.

The decrease to $714 million is attributed to lower subscription revenue and advertising and marketing services revenue.

Englewood, Colo.-based cable operator WideOpenWest (WOW!) canceled the Q&A portion of its first-quarter earnings report Tuesday, as a specially convened WOW! board committee considers an unsolicited takeover offer from private equity. DigitalBridge Investments and “various Crestview entities” have made a cash offer to purchase all outstanding WOW! shares not already owned by Crestview for $4.80 a share.

Worldwide fraud rates for optimized ad campaign meant to protect brands fell to all-time lows in the second half of 2023, but those unprotected rose 14 times higher, according to data released Tuesday by media measurement and optimization platform Integral Ad Science. Rates for optimized campaigns fell to 0.6% from 0.9% the two prior years. The year-over-year rate in the Americas dropped to 0.1 point.

Advertisers are looking to reach the right audiences and tell their stories inside compelling content, Karen Kovacs, president of client partnerships at NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships, says. NBCU is set up to respond to both of those needs during the upfront, Kovacs says.

Measurement company Comscore’s net loss was $5.2 million, or $1.08 a share in the quarter, compared to a loss of $12.5 million, or $2.66 a share, a year ago. Revenue dipped 5% to $86.8 million cross-platform solution revenue was down 9.7% because of lower national TV revenue. For the full year 2024, Comscore expects revenue to be between $375 million and $390 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of between 12% and 15%.

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.