The venture, titled Bite, will include original digital food programs, with plans to expand into products and live events.
Spinoffs have existed almost as long as TV, but executives are now leaning more heavily into familiar franchises — crowding out original ideas.
In Demand CEO Dale Hopkins in a Friday memo to staffers said the company, owned by Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications, will close at the end of 2025 and transition services to its owner companies over the next 18 months. The pay-per-view content aggregator served as liaison between event distributors and MVPDs.
BRAND CONNECTIONS
He has served as the station’s assistant news director since 2022 and now will oversee journalism at the Tegna CBS affiliate in Arkansas.
EARNINGS CALL
Scripps Sees Political Heating Up After Slow-ish Start
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.
Exclusives
The music talent format has been renewed for its eighth season at ABC and 23rd season overall. The renewal comes ahead of its Season 22 Grand Finale, which takes place on Sunday, May 19. In February, Katy Perry revealed that she was leaving the show after this season. The show is now looking for her replacement to sit alongside Lionel Richie and Luke Bryant on the judging panel.
The network announced Friday that it’s long-running reality dating series has been renewed for Season 29. No word yet on a premiere date, though the show typically debuts in the winter.
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.
OpenAI plans to announce its artificial intelligence-powered search product on Monday, according to two sources familiar with the matter, raising the stakes in its competition with search king Google. The announcement date, though subject to change, has not been previously reported. Bloomberg and the Information have reported that Microsoft-backed OpenAI is working on a search product to potentially compete with Alphabet's Google and with Perplexity, a well-funded AI search startup.
The docuseries Full Court Press closely tracked college stars like Clark and Kamilla Cardoso. Fans who want to follow elite WNBA rookies could have a tougher time. Pictured: The women’s basketball players Caitlin Clark, Kiki Rice and Kamilla Cardoso were followed for the ESPN+ docuseries Full Court Press. (Darron Cummings/AP)
TikTok will start labeling artificial intelligence-generated content uploaded from other platforms as part of a push to tackle misinformation, the company said Thursday. TikTok is partnering with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a project that supplies resources necessary to identify AI-generated content.
Vice Media said Thursday it will create a joint venture with Nashville-based Savage Ventures to relaunch its digital properties, including Vice.com, Munchies, Motherboard and Noisey. The deal will see Savage Ventures investing "tens of millions of dollars" into the joint venture, a Vice spokesperson said.
COMMENTARY
Why Doesn’t YouTube TV Carry C-SPAN?
Tom Wheeler: "Over the past four decades, we have come to take C-SPAN for granted. But this important public service is now threatened by a new technology — online streaming — as consumers increasingly 'cut the cord' of their cable subscription."
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on Thursday signed a privacy law that imposes tough new restrictions on online data collection and ad targeting. Major ad industry groups had urged Moore to veto the measure, which the groups said includes “the most onerous and restrictive approach to data privacy in the United States to date.”
WEDNESDAY OVERNIGHTS
‘Chicago Fire,’ ‘Survivor’ Led Wednesday; CW Dramas Go Low
NBC’s Chicago Fire was Wednesday’s most-watched program (5.7 million total viewers and a 0.4 rating), while CBS’s Survivor dominated in the coveted 18-49 demo (4.7 million/0.8).
Filmmakers are warning that a recent ruling in a copyright suit against Netflix over its Tiger King docuseries could restrict the use of video clips in documentaries, and upset a long-held understanding of what constitutes “fair use.”
Fallout recorded 2.9 billion minutes of viewing time in the U.S. over its first five days, according to Nielsen’s streaming ratings for April 8-14. That’s far and away the best opening for a series on the Amazon-owned Prime Video, beating Reacher’s series premiere week in early 2022 (1.84 billion minutes) by more than a billion minutes.
KXAS Dallas-Fort Worth and WTVF Nashville have won 2024 Peabody Awards. Given out by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, 34 winners were named. They represent “the most compelling and empowering stories released in broadcasting and streaming media” in 2023.
Executives from CBS News & Stations, CBC, Cox Media Group and NBCUniversal Local share experiments in news programming beyond the newscast format including FAST-native explainers, hyperlocal reporting and multiplatform, long-tail shows in this video from TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference. Click here to register as a TVN subscriber and get access to all videos from this exclusive event.
QUARTERLY REPORT
Scripps Q1 Station Revenue Climbs 13%
The increase to $353 million was driven by increased political advertising and distribution revenue. For the company as a whole, total Q1 revenue was $561 million, a decrease of 6.4%, or $33.7 million.
Tegna moves him from GM of WOI-KCWI Des Moines, Iowa, to oversee its Texas CBS-Quest duopoly.
TVN’S MEDIA JOBS
New Jobs Posted To TVNewsCheck
New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include an opening for a director of student media and a national operations director. Existing openings include a digital platform specialist, an account executive and a sales director.
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.
