The Tennis Channel is lining up to play on multiple distribution courts in 2024 as it looks to serve its hard-core viewers wherever and whenever they want to see live tennis and Pickleball action, according to Tennis Channel president Ken Solomon. The Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned service is planning to launch a direct-to-consumer offering in 2024 to complement its lineup of the Tennis Channel linear service, its Pickleballtv and T2 FAST Channels and its Tennis Channel Plus SVOD service.
DirecTV has confirmed that it will appeal a federal judge in New York’s decision to throw out its antitrust lawsuit against Nexstar Media Group. The pay TV company has accused Nexstar of conspiring to fix broadcast retransmission license fees through management services agreements with smaller station groups Mission Broadcasting and White Knight.
Les Moonves has settled his debts with the City of Los Angeles, at least financially. In a meeting of L.A.’s Ethics Commission Wednesday afternoon, the body voted for a second time on a payout from the multi-millionaire former CBS boss. Unlike the Feb. 21 meeting, this time the proposed settlement passed.
Wall Street dipped Wednesday to send the S&P 500 to its longest losing streak since January. Tech stocks slumped after ASML, a Dutch company that's a major supplier to the semiconductor industry, reported weaker orders for the start of 2024 than analysts expected.
The former Scripps exec will be responsible for developing and implementing newsgathering, storytelling and distribution models strategy across all platforms.
Global digital rights advocates are watching to see if Congress acts, worried that other countries could follow suit with app bans of their own.
Uri Berliner, who has worked at NPR for 25 years, said in an essay last week that the nonprofit had allowed progressive bias to taint its coverage.
At a time when daytime talk shows are on a relative decline in viewership Live seems to have found the secret sauce to retaining its audience. This season, it is one of just two syndicated talk shows to improve on its average total viewership from the previous year. Live remained the No. 1 entertainment talker on television over the past year, growing 3% in average total viewers to 2.23 million per episode. According to Nielsen data, the show has been the most-watched syndicated talk show in every week since Ripa and Consuelos teamed up.
Dua Lipa and Fantasia Barrino are set to perform at the event, with Michael J. Fox receiving the Time Impact Award.
Bob Hearts Abishola will premiere in broadcast syndication this fall on station groups including Nexstar, Sinclair, Hearst, Tegna, Scripps, Weigel, Sunbeam, Gray, Mission, Lockwood and Bahakel, Warner Bros. Discovery Content Sales confirmed Wednesday. The Warner Bros. Television sitcom, which is concluding its five-season run on CBS, is joining its Chuck Lorre-produced siblings – The Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon and Two and a Half Men – in syndication.
Frndly TV, the low-priced, family-friendly streaming service, said it launched a channel store where users can sign up for subscription streaming services. Lifetime Movie Club, History Vault, A&E Crime Central, from A+E Networks, and Great American Pure Flix will be added to the channel store.
Netflix's plan to maintain subscriber growth after two quarters of blockbuster increases will be in focus when it reports earnings on Thursday, with some analysts warning that gains from a crackdown on password sharing are set to ease. The streaming pioneer saw its strongest growth since the pandemic in the second half of 2023, with about 22 million people signing up for the service after the company curbed the sharing of passwords globally.
Adam Buckman: "Robert MacNeil, who died last week at age 93, may have been the last of his generation of broadcast journalists who set standards for quality and reliability that one could argue have largely disappeared. In an era before 24-hour, all-news, all-blathering cable news, and instant news of 280 characters or less on social media, the MacNeil/Lehrer newscasts stood at the pinnacle of TV news for their ethics, accuracy and credibility." (Stephen Chernin/AP)
Last fall, Charter Communications went to the mat with Disney over program licensing renewal, trying to, among other things, gain more flexibility in terms of how it bundles channels. And the fruits of the cable operator's hard-won battle are apparent with its introduction Tuesday of Spectrum TV Stream, a virtual, ESPN-less skinny bundle, that includes more than 90 entertainment and news-themed channels for $39.99 a month.
Alicia Montgomery: Yes, the broadcaster is a mess. But “wokeness” isn’t the issue.
CBS's NCIS was Monday’s most-watched program and landed in a four-way tie for the nightly demo win with 6.7 million viewers/0.4.
The college basketball season may be over, but Caitlin Clark helped lead ESPN to one more audience record before going pro. The Iowa Hawkeyes superstar was the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft on Monday, and 2.45 million viewers tuned in to ESPN to watch her be selected by the Indiana Fever, according to Nielsen. This is a record-smashing audience for the WNBA draft, marking the first time that the event has ever tallied over a million viewers. The former record holder was the 2004 draft, which this year’s beat by 304%. Pictured: Clark with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert (Adam Hunger/AP).
In a letter sent Tuesday to the CEOs of the three companies, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) requested answers about the competitive implications of the proposed sports streaming JV. “As programmers, your companies exert tremendous influence over pricing across the live sports TV ecosystem,” Nadler and Castro wrote in the letter to Disney’s Bob Iger, Fox’s Lachlan Murdoch and Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav.
A group of actors filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday against Casting Networks, one of a handful of websites that connects actors to commercial auditions, alleging that the platform functions as an illegal pay-for-play system. Casting Networks offers actors a free tier and two premium tiers. The paid options allow actors to upload more video to their profile and to submit for unlimited roles.
Bill Schultz claims he was fired in retaliation for pushing back against executives at Al Roker Entertainment, who allegedly undercut a PBS-mandated diversity program.
The financial securities regulator has approved a registration statement for a proposed business combination to close and Lionsgate Studios in early May to start trading as a separate company on NASDAQ.
Billionaire Jeff Skoll told his staff of 100 in a memo shared with The Associated Press Tuesday that they were winding down company operations. "This is not a step I am taking lightly," Skoll wrote in the memo. "But after 20 years of groundbreaking content and world-changing impact campaigns, it is the right time for me to evaluate my next chapter and approach to tackling the pressing issues of our time."
The purchase of WJMN-TV Escanaba, Mich., by Sullivans Landing tops the latest list of TV station transactions submitted to the FCC for its approval, according to BIA Advisory Services.
Winners were selected by a panel of industry experts in 19 categories. To be eligible, nominated products must be from companies exhibiting at the 2024 NAB Show and available for delivery within the 2024 calendar year.
New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include an opening for an account executive – trainee/new business development and existing jobs include 13 openings in news, sales, digital and engineering.
Streaming sales leaders from Gray Television, E.W. Scripps, Hearst Television, Ticker and Megaphone TV will share the latest developments in technology and strategy for OTT and FAST channels. Learn more about this critically important revenue source for broadcasters in a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch Webinar on May 16. Register here.
16 May 2024
23 May 2024
