The expanded agreement positions Sinclair’s networks Comet and Charge! in CBS’s channel slots in several of the country’s top-10 markets.

Comet, featuring sci-fi and fantasy entertainment franchises, is now available on:

• New York — WCBS, ch. 2.5
• San Francisco — KPIX, ch. 5.5

Charge!, with a lineup of police procedural dramas, is now available on:

• Los Angeles — KCAL, ch. 9.3
• Chicago — WBBM, ch. 2.5
• Philadelphia — KYW, ch. 3.5

Additionally, TBD and The Nest receive significant distribution upgrades in several top-20 DMAs.

TBD, with a lineup of funny franchises, is now available on:

• Miami — WBFS, ch. 33.6
• Philadelphia — WPSG, ch. 57.2
• San Francisco — KPYX, ch. 44.2

The Nest, Sinclair’s newest network, offers “‘comfort food” programming comprising home improvement, true crime, factual reality series and celebrity-driven family shows. It is available on:

• Los Angeles — KCAL, ch. 9.2
• San Francisco — KPYX, ch. 44.4

Lee Schlazer, Sinclair SVP, distribution, says: “We are thrilled to announce the expansion of our networks’ distribution and the strengthening of our impactful partnership with CBS, showcasing our commitment to delivering compelling content to a broader audience across the US.”

The post Sinclair Expands Multicast Network Footprint In Top 10 DMAs appeared first on TV News Check.

Several groups have undertaken large-scale digitization efforts to tackle the problem, with some exploring new AI and ML (machine learning) tools to more efficiently tag and index video. Regardless of the method, generating accurate metadata is key to any archive efforts, both for old content and fresh material being created today, said broadcasters last week at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum in New York City.

Metadata’s Critical Role

“Before we can actually monetize the archives in a reasonable way, we have to have metadata on it,” said Mike Palmer, AVP, advanced technology/media management for Sinclair. “And in many cases, most cases, we have not been putting good metadata on it.”

Palmer, speaking on the panel “Harvesting the Archive for New Content and Opportunities” moderated by this reporter, said archive metadata must not only include enough information to find content using a media asset management (MAM) system. It also needs to have information about the rights attached to the content, since most call-letter stations have a mix of content they shot themselves, and fully own the rights to, and derivative content originally sourced from a network news service.

There isn’t any technical means today to tell whether a station owns a piece of content or not, Palmer said. That question can usually be answered only by calling and (hopefully) finding an employee who was there when it first aired.

“How long have we been talking about archives and metadata, but we’re not bringing back basic information about ownership, what camera it was shot on, the date, the geolocation, all this metadata that is in the cameras that we should be carrying forward,” Palmer said. “And we’re recreating the same problem that we’re trying to solve today with AI and ML because we’re simply not putting the right metadata on that content as it moves into the archive.”

Palmer said the culprit for lost camera metadata is often nonlinear editing systems that strip it out during the production process. To combat the problem going forward he sees a solution in the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) standard, as promoted by the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI). C2PA specifies provenance metadata that survives all the way from camera to distribution. C2PA not only addresses content ownership, but also content authenticity, an issue of growing importance in the age of AI-generated fake images.

‘A Wildly Human Process’

To improve accessibility of content for its journalists and producers, Hearst Television began digitizing the archives across its stations in 2021. To date it has digitized about 20%-25% of its archive material, representing roughly 45,000 hours of video.

“We parachute into a couple of stations at a time and help them digitize their archives in a systematic way,” said Devon Armijo, director, digital news integration for Hearst Television. “We bring in archival staff that handles not only the physical media but also the paper data that associates with it. Not only do we focus on digitization, but they also are not only tagging. They are looking at it in a discovery way. making sure they’re telling about the editorial opportunities, the promotional opportunities and sometimes the sales opportunities that are there in the archives — things that are sealed in the tapes that folks may know or not know that they have.”

While Hearst makes some use of automation, Armijo said that digitization remains “a wildly human process,” particularly when dealing with physical media that is beyond its end of life, such as 40-50 year-old tapes. That is where Hearst’s archivists serve as “the first line of defense.”

“They’re putting tapes through on a daily basis and making so many human decisions, up front at the beginning of digitization, that helps you with any sort of automation that rolls through afterwards,” Armijo said. “We had some automation processes throughout, like black [frame] detection. But that stuff is all secondary to the human decisions, the conversations, and understanding the history of not only the station but the content that’s there in your archive.”

Hearst licenses archive content to third parties, Armijo said, but the group itself remains “our first customer.” So far this year, Hearst has used its archive to produce over 370 pieces of digital original content along with a handful of linear specials and some local streaming content, including the popular true crime series Hometown Tragedy.

Fox is digitizing the archives across its station group as well as Fox News and Fox Business and bringing them into cloud storage. It has taken a different approach than Hearst by outsourcing the work, which encompasses tens of thousands of U-matic, one-inch and two-inch tapes, 16mm and 35mm film and various digital tape formats.

“We have tractor trailers come and pick up the entire library and it goes off to one of our five digitizing vendors, and then it works through their process,” said Ben Ramos, VP, Fox Archive, field and emerging tech, Fox News. “They have around 35 metadata enhancers who watch every frame of it, and kind of tag it as they’re going through it. It’s very manual, we haven’t gotten to too many AI/ML tools yet.”

Fox’s first goal was to preserve “at-risk” content like one-inch, two-inch and U-matic libraries, with the second objective being to generate ROI by licensing content to third-party documentary filmmakers. The initial effort was aimed at 5,000 U-matic tapes.

“What do we have in there, what’s the failure rate, and can we find ROI?” Ramos said. “We found ROI within six months, so that kind of supercharged the process, and then we got to do the rest of the 70,000 U-matic, two-inch and one-inch, and then we started dipping into the more expensive 16mm.”

Fox has experienced a failure rate of 3%-5% on that older content, and those impaired assets are now sitting on two pallets “awaiting further remediation,” Ramos said. That could involve baking them for several weeks to remove moisture, or even cracking tapes open to clean them and rehouse them.

Overall, it is a slow process, and so far, Fox has only digitized about 8% or 9% of its total physical media assets. One of the surprising findings is that newer formats like Beta, DV and DVCPRO tapes are also experiencing similar 3%-5% failure rates during the digitization process, and some of the older one-inch and U-matic tapes are actually playing better depending on how and where they were stored.

“Now everything feels a little bit at risk,” Ramos said.

Finding Answers With AI, ML

Sinclair was early in archiving some of its content in the public cloud, and last year struck a deal with producer Anthony Zuiker to mine its news archives to create original content that can be licensed to third parties. The group has around 23 million assets that were “born digital,” Palmer said, which means they been archived from a newsroom computer system with a script attached to it. Those assets have accurate metadata, allowing one to search that content across the entire enterprise and access it. Sinclair also has another roughly 10 million assets sitting on shelves on varied physical media.

“The question at this point is what do we want to invest in to bring this back?” Palmer said. “We look at news content, and it’s a fact that most news content has no value in the archive. It is the rare jewel that justifies the expense of all the rest of the work that you put into that. So, we’re focused right now in trying to determine, to the best of our knowledge, which portions of the archive have the highest probability for containing those jewels, and then go mining in that direction. And we may not — I say may, because there are no hard decisions at this point — but we may not want to go back to those 10 million assets and actually digitize them all. It depends on what we find.”

Sinclair has worked with archiving vendor Memnon to digitize cutsheets and tape labels on stored media at a few stations. It plans to use AI tools like optical character recognition (OCR) to analyze them and hopefully generate good descriptions that it can then use to determine what is worth digitizing.

Fox Sports has spent several years on its own complex archive project with Google to create a system that allows producers to quickly call up old footage, such as to enhance a halftime package. Ramos said he has been given access to it and “playing with it for about six months.” The system uses two kinds of metadata: metadata created by human loggers, as well as metadata created by the same ML algorithms that form the basis of YouTube search. A user has a choice of searching by either type.

“It’s definitely working,” Ramos said. “It’s a massive, massive archive, it’s huge. They’ve got a lot of content in there, so it would be really hard to search otherwise.”

Ramos’ own budget for AI/ML tools is more modest, so his team has focused on the least expensive AI tools, speech-to-text and OCR, and runs content through the AI tools themselves.

“Usually when there’s an anchor or a reporter talking about something, it relates to the video that’s covering that,” Ramos said. “So that’s been a really good way for us to inexpensively find most of what we need. But it’s not 100% of the way there.”

Finding Affordability

French company Newsbridge wants to make indexing archive content and searching through it more affordable. The company has developed a cloud-based AI engine called MXT-1 that can quickly sift through archive video and generate human-like descriptions, and do it more affordably than conventional AI systems, said Newsbridge CEO Phillippe Petitpont. Its indexing technology can also be applied to ingesting live content.

“With 1,000 hours of archive, there might be three hours that are hidden gems that have a lot of value,” Petitpont said. “So, you need to analyze 1,000 hours but there are maybe only three or four that are relevant. The problem is that current AI, monomodal indexing technology is very expensive. You don’t want to spend $10 million to index something that might be valuable for just two or three hours. So, we took this problem and have been working on it for a few years. We need AI with video understanding that is able to be very efficient, so that it can meet business realities in terms of pricing.”

Petitpont said a key differentiator for Newsbridge’s AI that it is multimodal, which means that it doesn’t just analyze speech or recognize text but considers multiple types of data within video as a human would. And instead of analyzing each individual frame of video, MXT-1 employs “smart subsampling” and only looks at a few key relevant frames. This cuts down on the use of expensive graphics processing units (GPUs) on public cloud compute and avoids wasting money by “overindexing” content.

“We only process a frame that will really best illustrate the content,” Petitpont said. “So then we’ve reduced by an order of magnitude a lot of traditional sampling.”

Sinclair is not currently a customer of Newsbridge, but Palmer said when he spoke with them he was impressed by their smart subsampling approach. The company obviously had arrived earlier at the same conclusion that his team at Sinclair had reached.

“That was, that you don’t need to look at every frame of video,” Palmer said. “You don’t need to do some of these massive tagging things for every frame of video. Some of these AI models will create pages and pages of metadata for each frame of video, and that is not appropriate for news. Less in some cases, and probably this case, is better.”

Read more coverage of NewsTECHForum 2023 here. Watch this session and all the NewsTECHForum 2023 videos here.

The post Metadata Is Key To Archive Monetization appeared first on TV News Check.

Big Changes At CNBC

Glen Dickson

CNBC unveiled its first graphics redesign in a decade this week, with a new logo and an updated ticker. But the new look builds on changes the financial news network has been gradually making to its studio presentation over the past three years, said Steve Fastook, SVP of technical and commercial operations for CNBC. Since 2020, the network has integrated high-pixel-density, movable LCD displays with scenery and AR graphics in studios at its Englewood Cliffs, N.J., headquarters and at both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ in Manhattan.

The LED displays can be easily configured to accommodate interviews with both studio and remote guests, allowing traders to speak from their trading floors while still appearing to be on-set. And AR graphics such a 3D representation of a stock chart give talent a more dynamic way to present information, said Fastook, speaking on the panel “Agility in News Production,” moderated by this reporter.

“It’s all about presenting data in an elegant and beautiful fashion,” Fastook said. “And this is where AR and high-quality LCD screens are everything; it’s revolutionized everything we do. I don’t think I’ll ever put a brand on a set again. Right now, I have one brand and one desk left, and it’s the CNBC Peacock. Everything else is completely electronic. Because the screens are affordable, they’re configurable, because the form factor is small. So, I can curve them, I can make strips, I can make them vertical or horizontal. It’s really amazing stuff.”

Fox Television Stations Create Options

WTTG Washington and WAGA Atlanta are taking the lead for Fox Television Stations in experimenting with AR and XR graphics, said Erik Smith, VP of news operations and technology, Fox Television Stations (FTS), as the group seeks new options for the abundant content its stations produce each day for both linear and digital distribution.

Erik Smith (LinkedIn)

“We are a live-based company; WTTG is doing over 15 hours of live linear content a day,” Smith said. “Clearly, we’re trying to support Fox Local and other initiatives for our company in the digital space, so we need flexibility in our studios. We want to create compelling storytelling opportunities across all of those platforms.”

FTS uses a hub-and-spoke approach for its graphics operations, with Chyron as the base technology. WTTG has invested in the Chyron VSAR virtual graphics product, which is based on the Unreal platform and already works with its existing Chyron infrastructure. WAGA has taken a different approach and is focused on augmented reality using The Weather Company’s MaxReality product. Neither station has those systems up and running yet and they are both currently in the setup phase.

Smith said that call-letter stations can be rightly viewed as “the last frontier” for AR and XR graphics, which have been widely adopted for sports coverage as well as by several national newscasts. The biggest challenge is in personnel. While Fox’s graphics hub has “phenomenal artists” and there is also a local artist at each station, that doesn’t mean they have specific expertise in 3D modeling and Unreal Engine rendering, which is what most AR/XR systems today run on. There are plenty of freelance artists with Unreal expertise, Smith noted. But most of them approach it from a gaming perspective and not a broadcast background, and they don’t have expertise with NRCS integration or MOS.

“It’s really about getting the right human resources to support the content,” Smith said. “Because you don’t want to farm it all out, you want to be able to build it in-house and keep it close. So, that’s a challenge that we continue to work through. It will continue to grow and there will be more opportunities and more people to support it, but it’s a challenge right now.”

Remote News Producers At Gray

On the other hand, new IP-based production tools are helping to solve personnel challenges for Gray Television, which like other groups has found it difficult to attract and retain quality employees, said Clint Moore, director of broadcast operations for Gray Television. After most employees shifted to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gray found that many wanted to continue to work from home after the pandemic eased and it was safe to return to stations.

While there was a “big debate” about whether Gray should allow that or not, Moore said, a couple of stations fully embraced the work-from-home model.

Clint Moore

“They’ve got producers that work for them that turn shows daily that don’t even live in the same city, in some situations they’re states or even time zones away,” he said. “We looked at that on a corporate level, too, and said how can we help these stations? A lot of stations are struggling, they’re always recruiting, and they need help on a corporate level.”

So, Gray formed a new group of a dozen corporate employees called “Remote News Producers” that fully work from home in different time zones and provide an additional resource that stations can tap to produce daily newscasts. Each remote news producer has a group of stations in the time zone in which they live, and they pitch in to help stations by filling in for employees who are sick, on maternity leave or on vacation. Some days they might produce an entire newscast, while on other days they simply help out as an associate producer.

Each remote news producer is responsible for having a “certain footprint of equipment” at their home, Moore said, with a station providing the rest so they can efficiently connect to do their work. The move has been a big success for Gray, with one remote news producer even winning an Emmy for her work.

“It’s been really helpful for us, and the stations have really appreciated it,” Moore said. “And it allows us to attract a higher caliber of employee, because you can get someone who’s highly qualified who can live where they want to live and still produce news.”

Gray has also extended at-home work to directing through the use of production automation systems like Ross OverDrive. That is a workflow that also started during the pandemic and persisted at a few stations, sometimes in combination with a remote news producer.

“In a situation where in an automated control room we [would] have anywhere from two to four people in there for a newscast, now you can just have one person at the station watching everything, making sure everything is doing everything it’s supposed to,” Moore said. “And everybody else is working remotely to direct and produce from home.”

Sinclair’s Camera-To-Cloud Workflows

For its part, Sinclair is looking to take its news production into the public cloud. The group has been working over the past year with Sony and other vendors on a “camera-to-cloud workflow” where video captured by a field camera is ingested directly into the cloud and then immediately available for editing through a cloud-based editor.

Ernie Ensign

“The idea there is having access to content as quickly as possible, and moving us into this mindset of gather, report, gather, report,” said Ernie Ensign, AVP, news technology and operations for Sinclair. “With all of the content consumption that happens every day, we can’t wait for a story to be produced, to have a photographer edit in the field and send it back in. So, the mindset is to get content in as fast as possible, with metadata.”

Sinclair has an “assignment queue” within its newsroom computer system that’s linked to the camera, so a producer can attach a label to a story that will stay with the video captured in the field. Ensign said that stations have embraced the new workflow and that Sinclair plans to expand it further next year.

There still are some challenges with the camera-to-cloud system, including workflow overlaps with existing bonded cellular devices, which send some content quickly to the cloud, but not everything. But the bigger issue is the overall reliability of cellular coverage.

“You can’t build a workflow and it only works some of the time,” Ensign said. “It’s got to be fairly resilient. And I think each of the cellular providers have a different strategy, in whether they’re trying to target bandwidth or a more blanketed coverage across the country.”

Sinclair has had numerous conversations with cellular providers about making their coverage more robust and is also experimenting with a new compact Live U bonded device that promises to transmit content more quickly.

“It’s a work in progress, but I think as the codecs in the cameras get better, we can increase the quality and reduce the bitrate,” Ensign said. “I think that’s going to further improve those workflows.”

The other area Sinclair is exploring is using cloud-based switchers to support a full production control room (PCR) in the cloud. That effort is not aimed at live daily newscasts at this point, but instead for remote productions of events like political debates, parades and town halls.

“I’m not sure that [the] cloud is completely ready for 16 hours of live news a day, and that the business models completely work,” Ensign said. “But certainly, all these other types of productions where we roll a production truck, the set up and tear down take a lot of time and effort and energy and engineering resources. And we think there’s some better ways and better tools out there to turn those into more cloud-related productions. Those so far have been very successful, and we’ve gotten good engagement and good endorsement from our newsrooms.”

Wider Cloud Adoption

Smith said Fox is also working with LiveU on a cloud-based ingest system where metadata flows from the NRCS at a station, through the LiveU ecosystem, and then back into the Bitcentral MAM. Fox is also evaluating cloud-based production switchers as control room replacements but is currently focused on productions for digital properties or linear coverage of “pop up events” where it doesn’t want to use an entire control room.

“Some of those cloud production tools you can spin up and use on an as-needed basis really fit that model for us,” Smith said. “We’ve looked at multiple vendors on that.”

In that vein, Fox’s digital team is currently using TVU Networks’ Channel playout system and Producer production system, and FTS has also tested LiveU Studio and Grabyo.

CNBC is also using cloud production tools today, not for its primary broadcast but for coverage of special events, which the network organizes and offers as a subscription service. Remote coverage is typically accomplished by sending a producer equipped with a PC and a few cameras.

“Our events business is almost completely through cloud control,” Fastook said.

Gray is looking at cloud-based production but definitely in more of a hybrid approach, Moore said, particularly given the vulnerability of some stations to severe weather events.

“We’re not going to jump all-in on the cloud right away, it’s too risky,” Moore said. “We have a lot of stations in the footprint of along the Gulf and along the coast, and for those stations it’s not if you lose connectivity, it’s when.”

When it comes to improved connectivity, both Fox and Sinclair are interested in using 5G network slicing with dedicated bandwidth if and when that becomes available from carriers. And both groups have recently been making use of low-earth-orbit [LEO] satellites like Starlink as a new connectivity option, with Fox gradually adding Starlink gear to its news trucks to go along with existing bonded equipment.

While both Smith and Ensign view Starlink as another “tool in the toolbox,” Ensign said it has already proved invaluable for Sinclair for remote coverage.

“Starlink did save us at an Ohio State football game a couple of months ago,” Ensign said. “We had very limited bandwidth from where we were, and Starlink was the difference in still getting on the air.”

Read more coverage of NewsTECHForum 2023 here.

Watch this session and all the NewsTECHForum 2023 videos here.

The post From Remote News Producers To Camera-To-Cloud Workflows, Broadcasters Chase Agility In Studio And Field appeared first on TV News Check.

Based on the same fundamental technology as the internet and digital apps, NextGen TV can support a wide range of features that are currently in development, per a press release. Broadcasters can reach viewers with advanced emergency alerts with NextGen TV; it also features “stunning video with brilliant color, sharper images and deeper contrast to create a more life-like experience,” the release noted.

“NextGen TV adds a new dimension to TV viewing, with vibrant video and new Voice+ dialogue enhancement that brings voices to the foreground,” the release continued. “Movie theater-quality sound lets viewers hear every voice clearly and keeps volume consistent across channels. NextGen TV can also be enhanced with Internet content to enable viewers to get the most out of live sports, live news, and live events in real-time, without looking away from TV screens.”

Powered by ATSC 3.0, NextGen TV is touted as “the most significant broadcast technology upgrade in history.” Features available on NextGen TV will vary by device and station as broadcasters roll out service across the country.

The launch in El Paso follows a decade of development and months of planning and preparation by the local stations. KFOX-TV, which is owned by Sinclair, has converted to ATSC 3.0 transmissions. KFOX-TV will broadcast its own programming, as well as the programming of the other participating stations, in NextGen TV format. All programming of all participating stations will continue to be available in the existing DTV format, which can be received on all modern television sets.

BitPath, which is developing new data broadcasting services, led the planning process and coordinated efforts across the five television stations.

From New York to Honolulu and from Miami to Seattle, NextGen TV service is already on the air in more than 70 cities across the country, per the release, and will reach 75% coverage in 2024. El Paso viewers can learn more about NextGen TV by visiting www.WatchNextGenTV.com, which offers a guide listing cities currently carrying the service, as well as links to available NextGen TV set models.

Antenna viewers without NextGen TV sets can simply rescan their TV sets to ensure uninterrupted service. Rescan instructions are available at fcc.gov/rescan. Cable and satellite subscribers do not need to take any action.

The post Series Of El Paso Stations Begin Broadcasting With NextGen TV appeared first on TV News Check.

Broadcasters are continuing to adopt cloud technology and IP networking while maintaining a strong defense against cybersecurity threats. And they are also exploring the potential benefits — and hazards — of artificial intelligence (AI) to their operations.

Those were some of the key takeaways from Technology Leaders on Trends in 2024, a TVNewsCheck webinar moderated by this reporter that gathered top broadcasters and vendors to examine the current state of media workflows and forecast key technology trends for the new year and beyond. “Hybrid” was a theme that came up repeatedly, both in the context of business models and broadcasters’ technology architectures. (To watch the video of the full webinar, click here.)

Tackling Hybridity

Paul Cheesbrough, CEO of Tubi Media Group for Fox Corp., noted the “key milestone” when Nielsen Gauge data in July 2023 showed broadcast and cable TV linear viewing fell below 50% of overall TV consumption for the first time as streaming viewing continued to grow (to 38.7% over the same month).

“That key tipping point is pretty material, and it kind of summarizes nicely where we are as a business, which in terms of consumer distribution of our content is very hybrid with the traditional platforms but also the new emerging platforms like streaming,” Cheesbrough said. “As a technology organization, supporting that hybrid of platforms where the consumer exists is really central to how we’ve invested and how we structure ourselves. Now, the big focus on ’24 is obviously to keep those platforms running, but really lean in to making sure streaming is a good long-term business for us, that it monetizes well, and that the economics of it really start to pull through.”

Fox has already created a cloud-first technology infrastructure based around its Tempe, Ariz., content hub to support this hybrid distribution model of linear TV and streaming, and there are other broadcasters like Sinclair that are also aggressively shifting their workflows to the public cloud. But Bryan Bedford, head of IoT and verticals for Cisco Systems, said that most customers are looking to implement hybrid technology infrastructures that combine cloud compute with a healthy dose of private cloud or on-premise hardware. That is largely due to the cost of running broadcast workflows on public cloud platforms.

“Now people are coming to us and asking, how can we look at a hybrid environment?” Bedford said. “Not to discredit that [the cloud], there are a lot of great uses cases for public cloud, it’s awesome. But they’re looking at cost innovation and what can we do in our own data center, to maybe alleviate some of that opex sourcing.”

Bedford added that investment in 2110 IP routing infrastructures continues to grow. He said the industry has moved out of the “bleeding-edge adoption phase” as workflows have solidified and integration expertise has grown, and that Cisco has seen a “steady increase across all major areas” for 2110 including studios, production control rooms, master control rooms, stadiums and mobile production units. The company now has several hundred live 2110 deployments around the world.

“We don’t see it slowing down for some time,” Bedford said.

Lawo is also seeing interest in hybrid architectures, said Jeremy Courtney, senior director in the company’s CTO office. He estimated that most Lawo customers are still using on-premise hardware for 70%-80% of their technical infrastructures.

“There are some customers that have absolutely embraced the cloud and have gone all in, but we’re seeing more who favor the hybrid approach,” Courtney said. “If you are going to use the cloud 24/7, there are some costs that come with that. And I think it’s not unreasonable to say if you are using functionality on a 24/7 basis there’s no advantage to having that all in the cloud, by egress costs, ingress costs, etc. Then to be honest, run it on premise.”

Courtney said many broadcasters used to equate “agility” with working in the cloud, but that the industry has learned that is not necessarily true. While public cloud can help at peak times, he said, “you can absolutely have a level of agility in your data center on premise.”

As it looks to help its customers support live production, Lawo is busy developing a three-layered “dynamic media facility” with IP as the key enabler, Courtney said. The bottom layer is connectivity and edge compute, with the ability to take in and pump out signals from legacy standards like SDI, as well as “tactile” surface like pushbuttons and consoles that operators “can feel and be creative with.”

The middle layer is the local network, where broadcast technology is transitioning from “FPGA purpose-built devices with fixed functionality” to standard servers with “agile functionality, the ability to spin things up and spin them down as and when you need it.” The top layer is the public cloud, used in combination with low-bandwidth transport technologies like SRT to help manage the unpredictable nature of the internet.

“We’re bringing this all together in one package, and underpinning this package you need a cloud-native software platform that allows you to discover devices, to control those devices, and coming back to that agile piece, that platform needs to enable you to spin things up and spin them down as you see fit,” Courtney said. “And we very much believe that as our customers learn to leverage this, they’ll absolutely see much better utilization in how they consume products and services.”

NextGen TV Developments

Along with its cloud initiatives, Sinclair continues to march ahead with the rollout of the ATSC 3.0, or NextGen TV, standard, said Mark Aitken, president of ONE Media and SVP of advanced technology for Sinclair. Close to 75% of the country is now reached by a 3.0 signal, he said, and an important development in 2024 will be adding second and even third 3.0 stations in markets where 3.0 is already on-air to enable new businesses like data distribution.

“[ATSC] 3.0 is headed into the picking-upsteam phase,” Aitken said. “We’re doubling up in major markets we’re already deployed in. What’s important about that is having additional capacity. The ability to bring more stations in the same market leads to additional capacity to do things other than simply television programming.”

Given the capacity crunch, 3.0 stations are also looking to use guide data broadcast in the over-the-air signal to steer consumers to “virtual channels” and interactive applications like betting and gaming that can be delivered to smart TVs through a broadband connection. Aitken said that functionality will be demonstrated at CES in Las Vegas next month.

“It’s enabling the broadcast equivalent on the internet, that’s tied directly into the ‘store’ that a station represents,” he said.

AI’s Prospects And Pitfalls

Not surprisingly, the opportunities and pitfalls of AI dominated much of the discussion. Cisco has just published an “AI readiness index” polling 8,000 businesses across 30 different markets, said Bedford, which indicated that plans are already in place for many companies, but actual rollouts are lagging behind.

“AI is the number one topic in both C-suites right now,” Bedford said. “Our data says that 95% of CEOs have an AI strategy documented, and they’re trying to figure out how they implement it.”

Tegna is still in the exploratory phase with most AI applications, said Kurt Rao, Tegna SVP and CTO. However, he noted that Tegna, like many other large broadcasters, has already been using AI-based closed captioning systems for years.

“What’s really new in the last 12 months is generative AI, the large language models,” Rao said. “We’re very bullish on what we think it could do on a number of fronts. On the content side of the house, we think there are opportunities there to create better products and/or improve the production workflow internally. That’s one vertical use case.”

Gen AI could also be used to automate back-office functions like invoice processing or T&E, he said, as well as in IT applications like monitoring network or device logs for cybersecurity purposes.

“We’re at the very beginnings of experimenting with this, so I don’t want to say we’ve proven anything out,” Rao said. “But in pilot mode or experimentation mode, we’re certainly seeing signals that it could be very helpful.”

Aitken said that Sinclair is collaborating with Korean broadcasters on using AI to add sign language functionality as an assistive service in ATSC 3.0 broadcasts. He also thinks AI could be helpful in optimizing data flows for data distribution applications that use 3.0 in combination with other wireless delivery networks like 4G or 5G, such as delivering software updates or infotainment to automobiles.

Fox appears to be farther ahead than most broadcasters in addressing AI. Cheesbrough described how Fox has already trained AI algorithms to produce catch-up highlights for streaming viewers who are joining a game already in progress, something it first did for FIFA World Cup coverage last year and is now providing with NFL coverage this fall.

Fox has worked with OpenAI to develop search and discovery functionality for its Tubi streaming app, which allows a viewer to type in a generic theme like “romantic Christmas movies from the ’80s” instead of having to search for a specific title. And Cheesbrough said Fox is also experimenting with “caution” on various production applications for news and sports coverage, including assistive tools for journalists and AI-generated match commentary.

“In the last year we’ve seen a lot of organic adoption, which is both a blessing and a curse, given some of the security rails you need to put around some of the public large language models,” said Cheesbrough of the rapid rise of AI in general.

On that note, Fox has created a method to protect its content as it is being “crunched up and spat out on the other end” by large language models from AI companies, Cheesbrough said. He described the system, which Fox aims to open-source in 2024, as “modern-day digital rights management.” Every piece of content that Fox publishes digitally is now fingerprinted using blockchain technology, with commercial terms of trade attached to it. That becomes the integration point for companies like OpenAI and Google to start working with Fox’s content.

“It’s very early days on that, but one of the biggest things it does is it allows attribution,” Cheesbrough said. “So, if you’re in ChatGPT and you search for something and some of our content has helped produce that result, we get attribution back for the generation of that result, and ultimately, we’d like to get paid for that as well. So those rails that we’re starting to build are super-strategic and critical from a distribution point of view.

“We’re pretty cautious about [AI],” he continued. “You know, the first wave of the internet, a lot of IP and content was harvested, and media companies and publishers didn’t get fair payment for that. We’re making sure that we go into this with optimism, but also some level of caution and control.”

To watch the video of the full webinar, click here.

The post Hybridity, AI Top Tech Trends For ’24 appeared first on TV News Check.

Offering Tennis Channel to the tens of millions of households that do not subscribe to a pay TV provider has been a longstanding priority for the network, it said. The company expects that, under Graham’s leadership, next year anyone in the United States will be able to watch — a first for the sport’s 20-year-old on-air home.

Simon said: “Matt’s decades of experience in the worlds of traditional and evolving media make him unique to guide Tennis Channel’s availability in every American – and then who knows from there? He’s created successful streaming platforms, programmed them to grow their subscriber base and expanded them into new marketplaces. For years fans have been asking us if there’s a way for them to just buy Tennis Channel, and Matt’s here to make that happen.”

Graham joins Tennis Channel from AMC Networks, where he was general manager of its streaming platforms Acorn TV and Sundance Now. Under his watch, Acorn TV won numerous awards — including two Emmys — expanded to more than two-dozen countries and increased its audience 20-fold, becoming North America’s largest streamer specializing in premium British and international television.

Previously he spent six years at PBS Digital, where he founded and led PBS Digital Studios, a web-original programming division aimed at reaching young, diverse audiences through online video content. While there, Graham oversaw the development of more than 30 original digital series. Winning five Webby awards and a Mashie for best YouTube Brand channel, PBS Digital Studios has gone on to build an audience of more than 25 million subscribers and two billion views.

Graham began his career in advertising as a commercial editor, working for Fortune 500 clients such as Sprint, Chevron, Virgin and Electronic Arts before co-founding Umlaut Films, a San Francisco film editorial facility.

After receiving his Bachelor of English from the University of Virginia, Graham went on to earn his MBA from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

The post Tennis Channel Names Matt Graham SVP, Direct-To-Consumer And Streaming Business Development appeared first on TV News Check.

Speakers are Devon Armijo, director of digital news integration, Hearst Television; Mike Palmer, AVP advanced technology/media management, Sinclair; Philippe Petitpont, CEO, Newsbridge; Ben Ramos, VP, Fox archive, field and emerging tech, Fox News. TVNewsCheck Contributing Editor Glen Dickson will moderate the discussion.

“AI has fundamentally changed the process of metatagging archives and making them more thoroughly searchable, which in turn has offered pathways to new content creation and licensing opportunities drawing from those archives,” said Michael Depp, chief content officer, NewsCheckMedia and editor, TVNewsCheck. “This session will look closely at how a well-organized, easy-to-retrieve-from archive can have numerous benefits for newsrooms under pressure.

“The panel will also look at the emerging challenge of how media companies can authenticate their deep trove of archival content and determine rights ownership,” he added.

NewsTECHForum, now in its 10^th year, is co-located with the Sports Video Group Summit. The conference’s theme for 2023 is Adapting to a Culture of Continuous Crisis.

Featured sessions are:

• Keynote: Democracy, Technology, TV Journalism and the 2024 Election
• Reassessing the Streaming News Content Strategy
• Chasing AI: Threatening or Enhancing the News?
• Adapting to a Culture of Continuous Crisis
• Agility in News Production
• Building the Architecture of More Collaborative Content Creation

Register here.

The post NewsTECHForum: Harvesting Archives For New Content And Opportunities appeared first on TV News Check.

Nobody’s sitting on their hands, waiting for the election deluge. Media companies are picking up an increasing number of sports licensing rights to magnetize viewers and advertisers. They’re also deepening their connected TV forays. And while some streaming platforms have been bleeding cash, some executives are giving a clearer view on when profitability will be achieved.

Those are some of the most notable trends that came up during 10 quarterly earnings reports tracked by TVNewsCheck over the last couple of weeks.

The “big swings” that media companies are taking don’t always follow the sports and streaming patterns. For example, Gray TV’s brand new Assembly Studios reached a major milestone in September when it completed and delivered soundstages and various other assets to an anchor tenant, NBCUniversal. In the coming year, “Assembly Studios will no longer require significant capital investments by us,” said the company’s chairman-CEO, Hilton Howell, during Gray’s earnings call.

At the same time that Gray works to make the Atlanta-area studio complex a huge success, it’s also pursuing local broadcasting packages for professional basketball, hockey and baseball. And it’s already airing Phoenix Suns games across its Arizona footprint.

Tegna is on the prowl as well. “With the existing RSN and cable model in the final innings, the move of local sports from cable to broadcast is in the first inning of a new era,” said Dave Lougee, Tegna president-CEO.

The company’s San Antonio, Texas, CBS affiliate, KENS, has an exclusive deal to air San Antonio Spurs games. “As the current RSN bankruptcy proceeding plays out, look for more announcements to come,” Lougee added.

Sports is also a key part of Nexstar Media Group’s strategy as it gives The CW a programming makeover. “Demand for broadcast television [by sports-rights holders] has allowed us to enter into exclusive agreements with a number of major sports organizations, including our just-announced deal for WWE NXT in 2024; LIV Golf, which will return in 2024; ACC football and basketball, and NASCAR starting in 2025,” said Michael Biard, president and COO.

Over 15 new advertising partners came on board for the first full season of the ACC, including Verizon as the presenting sponsor and Subaru as the halftime sponsor, Biard added.

E.W. Scripps is playing the sports “card” in a slightly different way. It struck agreements with two National Hockey League teams: the Vegas Golden Knights and the Arizona Coyotes. To achieve the maximum benefit, Scripps transformed an Ion affiliate in Las Vegas to an independent, and it runs the Golden Knights games as anchor programming. That, in turn, impacted the MVPD carriage revenue.

“The new station, Vegas 34 [KMCC], joined our ABC affiliate there, expanding our advertising opportunity and distribution fees significantly. So, despite erosion in the nation’s pay TV landscape, Scripps is now getting higher rates and getting paid on more stations than before,” said Adam Symson, Scripps president and CEO.

While TV companies are all fired up by sports, they are also aflame with visions of big profits from streaming initiatives. FAST channels abound. And while the streaming platforms with big-ticket programming have been very costly, the breakeven point can now be seen by some, and they are attracting substantial audiences.

TelevisaUnivision said that its direct-to-consumer losses improved by 60% in the quarter, and its ViX streaming service surpassed 40 million monthly active users globally.

The Walt Disney Co. now expects that its Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ streamers to reach the breakeven point in next year’s fourth quarter.

Comcast’s Peacock service is still posting losses, but its driving toward profitability with a hefty slate of sports. “With Peacock now, we have the most live sports of any of the streaming services,” said Comcast Chairman-CEO Brian Roberts. “I believe that’s a surprise to many people when they learn that.”

At Paramount Global, total revenue in the DTC division improved 38% over the same quarter last year. And advertising revenue for Paramount+ and the FAST platform PlutoTV increased 18%.

“We now believe 2022 was our peak year of streaming investment,” said Robert Bakish, Paramount’s president-CEO. “We’re clearly on the path to streaming profitability. And this continued DTC improvement will be a key driver of the total company earnings growth we expect next year.”

While Fox didn’t disclose a profitability scenario for its Tubi streamer, the company’s executive chairman-CEO, Lachlan Murdoch, said that revenue was up 30% in the quarter, driven by a 65% lift in total view time. “Tubi logged nearly 4 billion streaming hours in the first half of the calendar year,” he said. “It remains the No. 1 AVOD player, and the most watched free, ad-supported streaming service in the United States.”

When it comes to total revenue, units of the media companies that include TV stations (along with other assets) were almost entirely down. Comparing the quarter recently ended with the same period last year, the results mostly hovered around minus 10%.

The cyclical low tide for political revenue is a glaring reason why, although the ad category hasn’t disappeared completely. “We are seeing current political revenues trend above both 2021 and 2019 levels so far this year,” said Chris Ripley, Sinclair president-CEO.

“We expect strong growth of issue-oriented political advertising. And what appears to be several close Senate and House races in our footprint will accelerate this growth significantly as we get closer to next year’s election,” Ripley added.

When singling out core advertising (which excludes election spending), most companies reported low-single-digit gains.

The all-important automotive category was up substantially for several companies. At Tegna, for example, auto revenue rose for the fifth consecutive quarter. And in the third quarter, it was up double digits versus the same period last year.

Of all the ad categories, automotive was the only sector that showed widespread, positive reports from TV companies, although gains in home improvement, financial services, retail, consumer packaged goods and alcohol were all mentioned by at least one company.

The ad category that seemed to be consistently down for just about everyone was sports gambling. That was expected, explained Gray’s COO Sandy Breland. “That category cycled through heavy market-share spending at launch, and then stepped down to maintenance-level spending,” she said.

Media and entertainment ad spending also suffered, at least partially due to the Hollywood strikes and delayed release schedules for some movies.

On the retransmission front, several executives heralded the recent deal between Charter and Disney as an extremely positive sign — particularly because the MVPD can now add Disney’s streaming platforms to its offerings and drop weaker-performing Disney channels.

There’s a related trend at play: streaming platform prices are on the rise. Buying them on an a la carte basis is less cost-effective for consumers. So the perceived value of cable video packages could benefit when the streaming services are part of the MVPD bundles.

“It’s somewhat ironic that we’ve unbundled to re-bundle to unbundle to re-bundle,” said Comcast’s Roberts.

“We think that’s a very positive trend,” said Sinclair’s Ripley. “We’re seeing a right-sizing of the alternatives that people choose for their entertainment.”

The post Sports, FAST Channels Are Bright Spots For Broadcasters In A Down Quarter appeared first on TV News Check.

Panelists are Ernie Ensign, AVP, news technology and operations, Sinclair; Steve Fastook, SVP of technical and commercial operations, CNBC; Clint Moore, director of broadcast operations, Gray Television; and Erik Smith, VP of news operations and technology, Fox Television Stations. Glen Dickson, contributing editor, TVNewsCheck, will moderate the session.

“There’s no doubt that news production has become extraordinarily more agile, and this panel will tackle that fact holistically by looking at how that’s happening both inside the studio and out in the field,” said Michael Depp, chief content officer, NewsCheckMedia, and editor, TVNewsCheck. “Steve, Ernie, Clint and Erik are right on the edge of this, pioneering the innovations that the rest of the industry will follow.”

NewsTECHForum, now in its 10^th year, is co-located with the Sports Video Group Summit. The conference’s theme for 2023 is Adapting to a Culture of Continuous Crisis.

Featured sessions are:

• Keynote: Democracy, Technology, TV Journalism and the 2024 Election
• Building the Architecture of More Collaborative Content Creation
• Harvesting the Archive for New Content and Opportunities
• Reassessing the Streaming News Content Strategy
• Adapting to a Culture of Continuous Crisis
• Chasing AI: Threatening or Enhancing the News?

Register here.

The post NewsTECHForum: Building Agility In News Production appeared first on TV News Check.

Jason Wildenstein

Jason Wildenstein has been named VP-GM of CBS affiliate WHP Harrisburg, where he began his media career. Wildenstein was most recently the VP-GM of NBC affiliate WJAC Johnstown-Altoona-State College.

Jason Chavis, who was previously the general sales manager at WJAC, working alongside Wildenstein, has been promoted to VP-GM there.

In making the announcement, Rob Weisbord, Sinclair’s chief operating officer and president of local media, said: “Jason Wildenstein and Jason Chavis were an unbeatable team at WJAC. As Jason Wildenstein shifts to Harrisburg to lead the station and returns home to WHP, Jason Chavis will move into the VP/GM position at WJAC where he has spent the last several years growing his responsibilities. Both are strong, innovative, strategic thinkers and we’re excited to have them at the helm of these stations.”

Jason Chavis

Wildenstein joined Sinclair in 2019, after serving as the VP-GM of WTXL Tallahassee, Fla. Wildenstein first joined WTXL in 2004 where he held many different leadership positions, including director of operations and production, director of news and director of interactive media.

Wildenstein grew up outside Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and attended Lock Haven University where he graduated with a BA focused on broadcast/journalism and mass communications.

Chavis joined Sinclair and WJAC in 2018 as the local sales manager, later becoming the linear and digital sales manager before being elevated to general sales manager in 2021. Prior to joining WJAC, he spent 14 years as an Account Executive at WTAE Pittsburgh. Chavis holds a degree in communications from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was a scholar athlete and Pitt Football Team Captain in 1996.

The post Sinclair Names Two General Managers In Pennsylvania appeared first on TV News Check.

Sinclair Emphasizes Change Management

Sinclair began laying the technical foundation for its local stations to playout their programming from the cloud two years ago, in the wake of a ransomware attack that crippled legacy on-premise hardware across the station group. The company first created a centralized ingest and content distribution system in the AWS cloud — the “cloud media pipeline” — to handle all commercials and syndicated programming. It then evaluated different vendors of cloud playout and automation software before tapping Amagi in April.

Over the next six months, Sinclair set about tackling the myriad details of moving playout from on-premise gear to cloud instances, including significantly upgrading its networking capabilities and creating multiple redundancy plans. The group launched its first market with cloud playout, Raleigh, N.C., last month with CW affiliate WLFL and MNT affiliate WRDC. Birmingham, Ala., is next up, followed shortly by Nashville, as the group plans to take a new market to the cloud every two or three weeks for the next two to the three years.

Mike Kralec

But change management across Sinclair, including educating operators and other staff about the new systems, was just as important as refining the technical architecture, said Sinclair SVP-CTO Mike Kralec.

“It’s not just cloud, and it’s not just technology,” Kralec said. “This is workforce, this is finance, this is communications — this is every piece of the organization coming together to really think about how do we operate the most effective company for ourselves moving forward?”

Reckoning With Resistance To Change

Janet Gardner, president of consulting firm Perspective Media Group, agreed that change management was just as vital in making the switch to cloud as an organization’s software design. She said failures in cloud implementations sometimes come from technology not living up to its promise. But more often they are due to a resistance to change from personnel, particularly those in middle management who may be most threatened by the shift.

Janet Gardner

“The biggest reasons we see failure is not because of technology, it’s because the organization is not willing to adopt the change,” Gardner said.

She said successful cloud transitions require both “top-down” pressure from upper management, by emphasizing and explaining the business and operational drivers for the move, as well as “bottom-up” champions of the work including those directly implementing the technical changes.

Building A Foundational Layer At Allen Media Group

Allen Media Group hasn’t experimented with moving broadcast over-the-air workflows at its 25 stations to the cloud yet. But the media conglomerate is nonetheless in the midst of a significant cloud migration, as it is moving OTT streams and other operations from AWS to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as part of an exclusive enterprise-wide deal the company signed with Google in January 2022.

Shilpi Ganguly

Shilpi Ganguly, AMG VP, IT and cybersecurity, said the initial plan was to transition all of the company’s businesses including the station group, cable networks, syndication and Entertainment Motion Pictures to GCP within a year. But that timeline has since extended to the end of this year, due to both internal training that was needed to work with AMG’s new technology infrastructure and some changes to the company’s foundational software that it made to set it up for long haul.

“Our team did not have the skillsets that were required to architect in GCP,” Ganguly said. “So, upskill your team, and make sure you have a partnership with your CSP [cloud service provider]. We did, and we used some of that, upskilling within the team, training them up, and that took a little bit.

“We also did not want to do what we’d done in AWS, which was build as we go. We wanted to set up a foundational [layer] that went from nomenclature to load balancing, architecture and make those foundational decisions first, before you start putting in your CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous deployment) pipeline, for instance. We used infrastructure as code so we could scale a lot more effectively; we had not done that in AWS.”

Looking ahead to broadcast operations, Ganguly is hoping to do it “one piece at a time” by moving individual workflows to the cloud instead of building out the whole ecosystem at once.

Partnering With Finance

Marcy Lefkovitz

Marcy Lefkovitz, industry consultant and former VP of technology and workflow strategy for Disney Media Entertainment & Distribution, said it is critical for engineering and IT teams to partner with the finance department in making the cloud shift. Finance teams can no longer be traditional “bean counters,” simply managing capital expenditures and operating expenses and tracking budgets, in the new world of the cloud. Instead, they need to develop a nuanced understanding of how the cloud works and its associated costs.

“There needs to be a team that actually understands those bills, and not just this is how much compute costs and this is how much storage costs,” she said. “But operationally, what are you doing with that compute, and what lives on that storage? So, they need to be more operationally aware than they have been in the past, so they can actually be an advocate for you with the cloud partners.”

Lefkovitz acknowledges that the value proposition of the cloud varies for different broadcasters based on the complexities of their individual capital cycles.

“You have to [ask] where do I have pain points and can moving workflows into the cloud alleviate those pain points for where you are right now,” Lefkovitz said. “What’s up for refresh? It’s a simple as, if I’m up for a refresh cycle, am I going to buy more hardware? Or am I going to see if this is already a mature cloud workflow and see if I can move it at this point?”

For some broadcasters, she added, real estate is a “very expensive part of their ecosystem,” so the opportunity to consolidate their footprint by moving from on-premise hardware to the cloud for functions like master control and archive can be reason enough.

Gardner agreed that real estate is a “very significant driver” for cloud, particularly with the recent wave of big media mergers.

“We have a lot of replication of playout facilities, of libraries, all of that area,” she said.

The Nuts And Bolts Of Cloud Playout

Real estate wasn’t the big driver for Sincalir, but instead the need to replace aging playout servers and automation systems at its stations. Kralec didn’t want to do it by buying new on-premise hardware and locking the stations into another depreciation cycle of five to seven years, with technology that couldn’t adapt to a rapidly changing business.

“This is about flexibility in the face of uncertainty,” he said. “If you want to design a system that’s going to work for you in the future and going to work for your business in terms of pivoting to innovation and other processes, you need to consider the toolsets that are available to us in the cloud.”

The foundational elements of the move were built through the cloud media pipeline, which met the need of getting “content to the stations in the right format at the right time,” Kralec said. Solving those early problems paved the way for the local cloud playout launches occurring now.

“The integration with AWS, that message bus that’s created by the cloud media pipeline about what’s happening in the pipeline, is what Amagi now leverages to find out what content is available off of the traffic integration,” Kralec explained. “So, the traffic integration, the playlist, has become one ecosystem. But not built at once, but built over time to evolve, and to continue to evolve for our company. It is never intended to stay static. It can continue to deliver more value for the business because it can change.”

In that vein, what Sinclair did to launch cloud playout in Raleigh will not be exactly what it does in Birmingham, or in Nashville, as it will continue to improve the software-based system instead of doing a simple “rinse and repeat.” But the company does have a playbook now for each local launch, which takes about two months in total, and has already started conversations with stations in its seventh and eighth markets.

Working with Amagi, Sinclair first does architecture development at each station, followed by a systems integration testing process and user acceptance testing process. That rolls into testing onsite, followed by a training program. The next stop is using the cloud for shadow operations of the existing hardware-based playout, which then rolls into a “reverse shadow” after the station officially launches from the cloud.

Resiliency was a key focus for Sinclair, and its AWS architecture uses multiple availability zones, so in a single AWS region there are multiple systems that fail to each other. Sinclair also has multiregion redundancy, with all of its content synchronized between different AWS regions. Sinclair’s IT group has also developed “performance hubs” with improved network capability to connect its stations to AWS.

“The key part of this is still going to be the network,” Kralec said. “It’s always been the network. We still have to get the signal back to the station.”

Another key piece of the redundancy strategy is a “survivability box” that Sinclair developed with Amagi, in the case of a catastrophic connectivity failure such as the dreaded “backhoe fade.” The device is a single server that synchronizes content and could handle playout of stored content for day or two, until Sinclair can find alternative connectivity.

“It is not intended to be a full automation and playout system, it is just really intended to keep us alive for a period of time,” Kralec said. “Because we knew from our news contribution workflows that LiveU or another type of satellite — it could be low-earth-orbit satellite — we can provision connectivity to our stations in many different ways. And we only need to survive for a brief period of time.”

There is still hardware that is also used in an everyday capacity at the stations, but it occupies a much smaller footprint and is “much more flexible than anything we could have built even five years ago,” Kralec said. That includes small encode/decode systems, which Sinclair calls “ground to cloud” and “cloud to ground environments,” that send content back and forth from the station to the cloud using the RIST [Reliable Internet Stream Transport] or SRT [Secure Reliable Transport] protocols. There are also some small switchers to allow for local flexibility, such as occasional-use channels to the cloud.

The encoding/decoding capability is a necessity to handle network feeds that are still distributed to individual stations via C-band satellite. Kralec’s long-term hope is for the major networks to eventually distribute their programming through terrestrial IP, which would allow Sinclair to take a network feed directly from the cloud. In the interim, Sinclair is still receiving traditional satellite feeds of network programming and then re-encoding them to send them to the cloud.

“Right now, we’re just focused on enabling the existing workflow, which is take it from the station, and then get into the automation and playout system from there,” he said.

Read more coverage of TV2025 here.

The post Cloud Migration Needs Enterprise-Wide Effort appeared first on TV News Check.

The issue remains marrying linear with digital to provide a complete measurement picture to both buyers and sellers, said panelists at TVNewsCheck’s TV2025 conference at the NAB Show New York last week.

“We’re at an inflection point,” said Justin Lewis, corporate research director, Sinclair. “We’re to the point where the stresses on the current systems are really, really, really starting to show and everybody involved is starting to adapt and adjust what they offer.”

A big part of the problem remains the challenges with Nielsen’s local panel, which has grown increasingly inaccurate as audiences have fragmented.

“If you’ve got 400, 600, 800, 900 households in the panel, and all of a sudden, you’ve got to make that be 40% to 50% broadband-only homes, that means the people who are traditional viewers in the panel are making up less and less of the sample size,” Lewis said.

“When you talk about 40,000 to 41,000 homes in the panel and then you break that down to a local market where you have only 400 homes in that panel, how do you then start to divide? As you get deeper and deeper [into demographics and personalization], you end up with only one or two homes in the local sample,” said Hanna Gryncwajg, Nexstar’s VP, measurement innovation.

The two major local measurement providers, Nielsen and Comscore, are both working on solving the local panel problem, as are other vendors — and that’s a good thing, Gryncwajg said.

“I think there’s a huge benefit to competition because it raises awareness that there is a problem, a severe problem, in measuring local,” she said. “And now because of the awareness, the vendors are starting to work to solve for some of these issues. And one of those is panel size, and whether there’s any statistical stability in the data.”

While measurement is far easier on the digital side where buyers and sellers can rely on ACR and set-top data, the challenges with linear measurement still represent a problem that station executives across the board want to see fixed.

“The value of what we do at a local level is changing dramatically,” said Michael Page, SVP, digital sales, Fox Television Stations. “Yes, we’re seeing declines in overall viewership on the linear side. But how can we add that to the mix of what we are seeing on the streaming digital side? I still think the power of local television is in news and sports. There’s a tremendous amount of value there. How can we put the two pieces together to understand total incremental reach in that market?”

The struggle is less one of technology and more one of communication, diplomacy and agreement, the panelists said.

“Let’s not go to perfection. Let’s go to much better,” said Gryncwajg. “The technology exists already to holistically measure your linear and your digital [and] be able to stitch it together. I think that part of it is getting agreement between the buy side and the sell side on what is better, so that we can transact on that today, as opposed to waiting for some miracle to happen where a company comes together, and they can measure across all 210 DMAs with scale to census.”

Part of that conversation needs to be getting everyone to see the total picture instead of just their own platform of interest.

“There’s a digital and a streaming division, and there are linear buyers,” Lewis said. “They all speak different languages. When we’re talking, we prefer the buyer that’s kind of straddling both streaming and linear because they get the picture the best. They understand the differences in currency are the challenges, while the digital folks put stuff into a black box and the pure linear buyers tend to just completely want to depend on what they’ve known forever. Almost every large agency has different ways to look at the convergence of the two areas.”

In fact, that consensus between agency buyers and TV station sellers is the change the panelists would most like to see happen in the next year.

Page said: “[I’d like to see] the buy side truly letting linear buyers and digital buyers come together into a group [that looks like] the streaming buyers, because [those buyers] get the power of big-screen video along with some of the granularity and targeting. To me, the struggle of the larger agencies is that they still want to stay siloed into one or the other.”

“As our CEO has said more than once, linear still keeps the lights on,” Lewis said. “But it’s important that that gets done right. I’m eager to see where Nielsen’s big data initiative goes with Nielsen locally. I’d like to see an increase in that effective size locally. Because right now in some markets, the number of viewing options far exceeds the number of people on the panel, which is a disastrous place to be. If that effective panel size does go up, and passes our data scientists’ sniff test, that would be a good place to be a year from now.”

Read more coverage of TV2025 here.

The post On Measurement, Local Linear Still Lags Behind Digital appeared first on TV News Check.

During the earnings call with analysts Wednesday, top executives at the company said they are anticipating a gangbuster year for political advertising in 2024. And nearly all the company’s agreements with MVPDs for retransmission consent revenue are up for renewal over the next year. Sinclair expects low single-digit growth in that area over the three-year, 2022-2025 period.

“We expect to see record-breaking political advertising revenue in 2024,” said Chris Ripley, president-CEO. “We are seeing current political revenues trend above both 2021 and 2019 levels so far this year. We expect the strong growth of issue-oriented political advertising. And what appears to be several close Senate and House races in our footprint will accelerate this growth significantly as we get closer to next year’s election.”

Some $11 million in political advertising was raked in during the quarter just ended, which was above the $7 million to $9 million guidance range. And $25 million to $30 million is now anticipated for the fourth quarter. That would be a record for a non-election year, said Rob Weisbord, COO-president of broadcast. For the full year, $46 million to $51 million in political spend is now expected.

Twenty-three of the 34 Senate races in 2024 will take place in states that include Sinclair stations, as will seven of the 11 gubernatorial races. What’s more, Sinclair stations are in 10 of the 12 presidential battleground states, according to the company.

Pro-forma core advertising, excluding political, was up about 3% during the third quarter. “Our current outlook for the advertising environment is relatively stable,” Weisbord added. “National is slightly positive, year over year in the quarter, which was welcome news.”

Among the ad categories trending upwards in the quarter, versus same time last year, were home services (including home repair and builders), which rose 18%; automotive, +7%; home products, +18%; and legal, +1%. The insurance category is beginning to lap previously weak results; companies in the sector reduced their budgets last year.

The company expects core trends to be largely the same in the fourth quarter.

Sinclair signed two network affiliate agreements in recent months. A new agreement for the CW allows Sinclair to expand its ability to negotiate carriage agreements directly with vMVPDs. This is a major accomplishment, as station groups have taken issue with broadcast networks’ contention that they should be striking deals with the virtual platforms on behalf of themselves as well as the stations.

Sinclair also inked a deal with Paramount for 21 CBS network affiliations. In addition, Sinclair has renewed an agreement with Comcast for its TV stations, Tennis Channel, Marquee Sports Network and YES Network.

“With virtually all our Big 4 traditional subscribers up for renewal by the end of 2024, we remain confident in our guidance for a net retrans low-single-digit CAGR growth through our renegotiation cycle from 2022 through 2025,” Weisbord said.

Ripley said the recent distribution deal between The Walt Disney Co. and Charter is an indicator that the pay TV bundle is strengthening. Among the key takeaways: “premium content got paid, and non-premium content — like the dozen or so Disney channels that ended up getting dropped from Charter — does not get paid. We think that’s significant. Our programming is, pound-for-pound, the most premium programming available to a pay TV distributor. So we definitely see that being a validation of our pricing power.”

Ripley went on to say that the inclusion of Disney+ and ESPN+ into the Charter packages “is a significant value proposition for the consumer.” He noted that a la carte streaming options are going up in price, so the relative cost to consumers is “skyrocketing.” On the flip side, the relative value of cable is increasing. “We think that’s a very positive trend. That wasn’t the case a few years ago. But over the last couple of years we’re seeing a right-sizing of the alternatives that people choose for their entertainment.”

Sinclair’s adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter exceeded the high end of its guidance, to $141 million. That marked a decrease of 29% over the prior year period. Lucy Rutishauser, Sinclair’s EVP-CFO, said that the company has been focused on reducing expenses all year. “It is coming across all our large spending categories and departments. You can’t point to just one area.”

“We expect these changes are permanent,” Ripley said, referring to the expense reductions. “We’ll continue to improve all the investments that we’re making this year.”

The post Sinclair Expects Boost From Retrans And Political In ’24 appeared first on TV News Check.

Media revenues also decreased 9% to $758 million versus $836 million a year ago.

Total advertising revenues of $304 million decreased 19% versus $374 million in the prior year period.

Core advertising revenues, which exclude political revenues, were up 2% in the quarter to $293 million versus $286 million in the prior year period.

Distribution revenues of $414 million decreased versus $425 million in the prior year period.

Operating income was $37 million, down from $154 million in the prior year period, due to non-recurring transaction and transition services, implementation, COVID, legal, litigation and regulatory costs of $25 million. Operating income, when excluding the adjustments, was $72 million compared to an operating income, excluding the adjustments, of $158 million in the prior year period.

Net loss attributable to the company was $46 million versus net income of $21 million in the prior year period. Excluding adjustments, the company had net loss of $19 million.

The above results that reflect the “deconsolidation” of the Local Sports segment comprised of the regional sports networks (RSNs), which are owned and operated by Diamond Sports Group and its direct and indirect subsidiaries, from the company’s financial statements and accounted for under equity method of accounting, effective March 1, 2022. As such, the quarter-to-date and year-to-date 2023 consolidated financial results do not include any results of operations of the Local Sports segment, while the consolidated financial results for the comparable year-to-date 2022 period include two months results of operations of the Local Sports segment.

Chris Ripley, president-CEO, said: “Sinclair reported a strong third quarter with revenues exceeding the high-end of our guidance ranges and Adjusted EBITDA exceeding the mid-point of our guidance for the quarter by 40%. In addition, we have repurchased $64 million in face value of our debt through open-market repurchases since the beginning of June at a 24% average discount to par. Our priority remains to strengthen our balance sheet while acting opportunistically when market conditions permit.

“Year-to-date, political advertising is at record levels for a non-election year, and we expect that trend to continue in the fourth quarter as well as the 2024 presidential election year. And while we continue to deal with elevated linear subscriber churn levels, Sinclair is well-positioned for the near- and long-term with nearly all of our Big 4 network traditional subscribers up for renewals by the end of 2024.”

Read the company’s report here.

Also Wednesday, Sinclair declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.25 per share on the company’s Class A and Class B common stock. The dividend is payable on Dec. 15 to the holders of record at the close of business on Dec. 1.

The post Sinclair Q3 Revenue Down 9% appeared first on TV News Check.

Beginning today, Sinclair Cares will be raising funds to support the delivery of emergency medical aid, ambulances, and blood bank services.

Sinclair will make a corporate donation of $50,000. In addition, the company will match employee donations through Sinclair’s Matching Gifts Program.

“The work MDA is doing to provide medical assistance in the region is urgently needed, and we are proud to lend our support to their humanitarian relief efforts to provide emergency aid,” said Rob Weisbord, Sinclair chief operating officer and president of local media.

The post Sinclair To Donate $50,000 To Relief Efforts To Provide Emergency Aid & Medical Supplies In Israel appeared first on TV News Check.

The Sinclair/ONE Media leadership team will participate in the following panels and presentations (all times ET):

October 24
4:00-5:00 PM — Technical Challenges and Best Practices for Delivering Live Video Events | Walid Hamri, AVP, Media Systems Engineering, Sinclair Broadcast Group

October 25
10:15-11:00 AM — Ad Sales 2024: Audience Measurement, Data and Technology | Justin Lewis, Corporate Research Director, Sinclair Broadcast Group

11:15 AM – Noon — Station Group Leaders on the State of the Industry | Chris Ripley, President & CEO

1:00-1:55 PM — Collaboration and the Future of Content Creation & Monetization | Scott Livingston, SVP of News, Sinclair Broadcast Group

1:55-2:25 PM — Fireside Chat: All Things 3.0: From Deployments to 5G Broadcast to Patents | Jerry Fritz, EVP Strategic and Legal Affairs, ONE Media; Mark Aitken, President, ONE Media and SVP Advanced Technology, Sinclair Broadcast Group

3:30-4:15 PM — Cloud Strategies for TV Station Groups | Mike Kralec, SVP, Chief Technology Officer, Sinclair Broadcast Group

October 26
1:30-2:15 PM — Securing Network and Cloud Operations | Mike Palmer, AVP, Advanced Technology/Media Management, Sinclair Broadcast Group

2:30-3:15 PM — Supply Chain Security | Brian Bark, EVP, CIO, Sinclair Inc.

The post NAB Show New York: Sinclair and ONE Media Technologies to Will Focus on Latest ATSC 3.0 Developments, Content Creation, Monetization, Cloud Strategies, Audience Measurement appeared first on TV News Check.

Launching on Oct. 30, The Nest will include a variety of family-friendly programming. The mix of programming in daytime includes classic episodes of Flipping Boston, Flipping San Diego, Sell This House, American Justice and Cold Case Files. Then, in primetime, The Nest will feature “fun, celebrity-family dramas such as Growing up Gotti, Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour, Steven Segal: Lawman, Ice Road Truckers, Dog the Bounty Hunter and Wahlburgers.”

The Nest joins Sinclair’s lineup of national broadcast networks, Comet, Charge!, and TBD.

The Nest replaces Stadium network on broadcast stations across the country. At launch the network will be available in more than 50% of all U.S. over-the-air television households including the major markets of New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Boston, San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose and Seattle-Tacoma with more affiliate additions in the coming months.

Scott Ehrlich, Sinclair chief innovation officer, said: “We’re excited to bring this breadth of hit library series to add another layer to The Stack, Sinclair’s portfolio of linear networks featuring Comet, Charge! and TBD. The Nest couples the power and growth of free-to-consumer, over-the-air distribution with great content that viewers love. We’re confident the combination will deliver a premium experience for audiences and a great environment for advertisers.”

The post Sinclair To Launch The Nest Broadcast Network appeared first on TV News Check.

Chris Ripley, president and CEO, Sinclair; Catherine Badalamente, president and CEO, Graham Media Group; and Princell Hair, president of Allen Media Broadcasting, will join TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp for the 11 a.m. panel, part of the NAB Show New York on Oct. 25 at the Javits Center.

The executives will speak to persistent challenges in the spot TV market, growing tensions between networks and affiliates, the ongoing evolution of their streaming strategies and the profound opportunities and fears ushered in by AI, among numerous other topics.

“Every year, our station group leaders panel is a highlight of TV2025, and this year has marked a dramatic crossroads for these executives to address” Depp said. “All of them face a crucial moment of transition, having to push well beyond broadcast into platforms like streaming, addressing content challenges and reimagining their news operations for new generations.

“Our conversation will wend through all these issues and how they’re leading their respective groups through one of the most difficult, but revolutionary, moments in this industry’s history,” he added.

Other TV2025 sessions include:

• A C-Suiter’s Guide to AI: Cutting Costs & Finding New Revenue
• Go FAST, Go AVOD: Charting a Streaming Revenue Strategy for Local Media
• Collaboration and the Future of Content Creation & Monetization
• Building a Breakout Hit in a Multiplatform World
• Ad Sales 2024: Audience Measurement, Data and Technology
• Cloud Strategies for TV Station Groups

Register here.

The post TV2025: Station Group Leaders On The Industry’s Pressing Issues appeared first on TV News Check.

The 60-minute panel, hosted by Armstrong Williams at WOAI-KABB San Antonio, will stream on YouTube and across Sinclair’s Texas stations on Thursday, Sept., 28 at 8 p.m. CT. In addition to WOAI and KABB, Sinclair’s footprint in Texas includes KVII Amarillo, KTXS Abilene, KEYE Austin, KFOX-KDBC El Paso and KFDM-KBTV Beaumont.

The panel discussion is the latest installment in Sinclair’s Crisis in the Classroom franchise, part of Sinclair’s ongoing commitment to addressing the vital issues in education that resonate with families. Other installments can be seen on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and CrisisInTheClassroom.org.

“Crisis in the Classroom: Texas School Choice” panelists, experts in the field of education policy and advocacy, will include Staci Childs, attorney and member of the Texas State Board of Education; Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; Mandy Drogin, campaign director for Next Generation Texas; and Jaime Puente, director of Economic Opportunity for Every Texan.

The post WOAI San Antonio To Host ‘Crisis In The Classroom: Texas School Choice’ Panel Discussion appeared first on TV News Check.

Panelists are Dean Littleton, SVP, local media, E.W. Scripps; Scott Livingston, SVP of news, Sinclair; Emily Stone, VP of digital content and Live NOW, Fox Television Stations; John Kelly, director of data journalism, ABC Owned Television Stations; Jerry Walsh, SVP of local content development, Nexstar Media Group; and Ray Thompson, senior director, partners and alliances, Avid. NewsCheckMedia Chief Content Officer and TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp will moderate the session.

“We’ve rapidly entered an era of complex, cross-group collaborations, and it has major ramifications on corporate structures, streaming strategies, content decisions and boosting efficiencies,” Depp said. “Dean, Scott, Emily, John, Jerry and Ray come to this issue from very vantage points, and each will illuminate the ways in which collaborations have prompted new thinking on company organization, multiplatform content strategy and, ultimately, new opportunities for revenue generation.”

Other TV2025 sessions include:

• Station Group Leaders on the State of the Industry
• Go FAST, Go AVOD: Charting a Streaming Revenue Strategy for Local Media
• Cloud Strategies for Media Groups
• A C-Suiter’s Guide to AI: Cutting Costs & Finding New Revenue
• Ad Sales 2024: Audience Measurement, Data and Technology
• Building a Breakout Hit in a Multiplatform World

Register here.

The post TV2025: Collaboration And The Future Of Content Creation And Monetization appeared first on TV News Check.

Speakers will be Brian Bark, EVP and CIO, Sinclair; Marina Khainson, head of security architecture at Fox Corp.; John Naylor, director, product security at Ross Video; and Dan Turow, SVP, media distribution and chief information officer at Evertz. TVNewsCheck Contributing Editor Glen Dickson will moderate the conversation.

“Creation of a media supply chain requires interoperability, security and trusted protocols,” said TVNewsCheck Publisher and Co-Founder Kathy Haley. “Industry leaders must work together to agree on security priorities, ensure safe and automated access for updating software and to define the questions that must be answered during the annual security audits required by insurance companies.”

Set for Thursday, Oct. 26, TVNewsCheck’s Cybersecurity for Broadcasters Retreat will take place at NAB Show New York in the Javits Center.

Other CBR sessions are

• Breakfast Workshop: CEOs and Cybersecurity
• Convergent Digital Disruptors and Media Industry Security
• How Not to Get Run Over by New Security Regulations
• The Future of Cyber Insurance: Navigating the Complex Digital Landscape
• View from the Trenches: Crisis Management in 2023
• Securing Network and Cloud Operations
• Creating a Culture of Security

Attendees from media and broadcast technology companies will also once again be able to retreat for an hour to a highly private, large conference room to share their experiences and ask questions during a Private Information Exchange.

CBR insists on a private, confidential environment throughout the day. Chatham House Rules are strictly enforced.

See the full agenda here and from there, link to register for NAB Show New York and select the Cybersecurity for Broadcasters Retreat as your conference.

The post Cybersecurity In The Supply Chain To Get In-Depth Look At CBR appeared first on TV News Check.

Panelists are Mike Kralec, SVP and CTO, Sinclair; Shilpi Ganguli, VP, IT and Cybersecurity, Allen Media Group; Janet Gardner, president, Perspective Media Group; and consultant Marcy Lefkovitz, a former Disney technology executive. TVNewsCheck Contributing Editor Glen Dickson will moderate the discussion.

“Mike, Shilpi, Janet and Marcy can share firsthand how leading technology thinkers are designing and implementing cloud workflows for TV station groups and other media companies,” said TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp. “They’ll speak to key questions surrounding cloud implementation, such as whether solutions can be applied to small organizations as well as large and if the cloud can loosen the pressure on the cost of producing local news.”

Other TV2025 sessions include:

• Station Group Leaders on the State of the Industry
• Go FAST, Go AVOD: Charting a Streaming Revenue Strategy for Local Media
• Collaboration and the Future of Content Creation & Monetization
• A C-Suiter’s Guide to AI: Cutting Costs & Finding New Revenue
• Ad Sales 2024: Audience Measurement, Data and Technology
• Building a Breakout Hit in a Multiplatform World

Register here.

The post TV2025: Cloud Strategies For Media Groups appeared first on TV News Check.

The 30-minute, weekly program airs on Sinclair television stations nationwide on Sunday mornings or live online, with topics ranging from immigration to government waste, national security concerns and whistleblower reports on government abuse and misdeeds.

Season 9 will launch this Sunday with Attkisson and the team reporting on the long-term health effects of Covid, the science, and the physicians and patients seeking solutions.

In addition, Attkisson will host Full Measure Town Hall with Sharyl Attkisson – The Covid Clots special on Tuesday, September 12^th, which will air across Sinclair television station websites and on YouTube.

Full Measure has seen consistent year-to-year audience growth, reaching over 1 million viewers weekly, and 282,00 in the key demographic of P25-54, per a company press release.

Attkisson, a five-time Emmy Award winner and recipient of the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative reporting, said in the release, “Full Measure brings fearless, long-form journalism to audiences seeking fact-based, straightforward reporting. Our show covers topics that are ignored or missed by other news organizations, and we are proud ‘Full Measure’ continues to grow and attract new audiences.”

“Each week, Full Measure delivers impactful, accountability reporting, while challenging the status quo. The show’s mission is to provide context and perspective on major issues impacting our viewers, and we are pleased it has continued to resonate,” said Scott Livingston, SVP of news at the Sinclair Broadcast Group.

“Nine seasons we’re still driven by the stories we tell, and we’re starting this season with one of the most important stories of the thousands we’ve brought to our audience,” said Batt Humphreys, the program’s EP.

Full Measure airs on Sinclair television stations on Sunday mornings. Viewers can also watch the show live online.

The post Sharyl Attkisson Fronting Nationwide Sinclair Investigative News Program Upon Its Return, COVID-Focused Town Hall Special appeared first on TV News Check.

“With The CW’s first-ever ACC college football game featuring the Pittsburgh Panthers and the Cincinnati Bearcats in primetime on September 9, we are pleased to be adding WPNT-TV in Pittsburgh and KOMOTV in Seattle to our affiliate group,” said Dennis Miller, president of The CW Network, in a press release. “We appreciate that Sinclair values their partnership with The CW as we remake the network with our significant investment in sports, combined with a smart entertainment programming strategy that will further expand viewership on a local and national level.”

“We are pleased to be continuing our long relationship with The CW Network and look forward to bringing our stations in Seattle and Pittsburgh into the CW family,” said Rob Weisbord, Sinclair’s COO and president of local media, also in the release. “We thank our distribution team for securing the renewal of our affiliate agreement, which includes rights that allow us to negotiate with virtual MVPDs for CW-affiliated stations.”

The post CW, Sinclair Expand And Extend Affiliation Partnership appeared first on TV News Check.

This fall, there are eight strips premiering in syndication, but it feels like there’s nothing new out there because none of these offerings come with a movie-star name in the title or a robust marketing campaign behind it. Instead of attention-grabbing launches, low-cost repeats have begun to prevail across TV-station schedules.

Moreover, many of syndication’s biggest producers — and particularly Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount/CBS — have pulled back on syndication in the past year, with several major shows bowing out.

In February, Warner Bros. Discovery canceled its two long-running court shows — People’s Court and Judge Mathis — and saw Mike Darnell, president, unscripted and alternative television at Warner Bros., and David McGuire, EVP of programming and development at Warner Bros.’ Telepictures, both exit the company. That left Warner Bros. Discovery, which previously produced such syndicated hits as Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres, with only two shows left in first-run production: Jennifer Hudson and Extra.

Similarly, CBS Media Ventures, which has been the top provider of syndicated shows to TV stations for decades, has seen many of its major shows conclude: Judge Judy, which was the top-rated show in daytime by a long shot, went out of original production in 2021 while Dr. Phil, which was the No. 1 or 2 rated talk show throughout its 21-season run, and Rachael Ray both ended this year. And in August, Steven LoCascio, president of CBS Media Ventures, retired, with Wendy McMahon named president and chief executive officer of CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures, assuming LoCascio’s duties.

Finally, Disney CEO Bob Iger signaled earlier this summer that Disney is looking to exit the linear TV business. Disney/ABC hasn’t produced a new first-run syndicated show since it launched Tamron Hall in 2019. The company’s only other first-run syndicated offering is Live with Kelly and Mark, and that show has been running largely on its own steam since it entered national syndication in 1988.

Byron Allen

“At the end of the day, broadcast TV stations are in big trouble,” says Byron Allen, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group. “The suppliers on whom they have depended for content for decades have abandoned them. They are taking their capital, their resources and their content and they are putting it on streaming platforms to go directly to consumers.”

What this seismic shift in the syndication business is forcing stations to realize is that while they’ve kicked around the idea for years, they may finally have no choice but to produce their own programming. And news cannot fill every empty space on a station’s schedule.

“Stations cannot keep adding more and more news because they are going to trigger news fatigue and significant diminishment of returns,” Allen says.

That said, new content is coming to TV stations this fall. There are three new game shows: Debmar-Mercury’s People Puzzler, which comes off of GSN and is hosted by Leah Remini; Fox’s Person Place or Thing, hosted by Reba’s Melissa Peterman; and TMZ’s Who the Bleep Is That?, which Fox tested in several markets earlier this year. All of those shows will join game blocks on Fox stations across the country; going away is You Bet Your Life with Jay Leno, which Fox couldn’t keep in production once the writers strike started.

There are four new court shows. Three come from Allen Media Group: Justice for the People with Judge Milian, Mathis Court with Judge Mathis and Equal Justice with Judge Eboni K. Williams. Allen signed People’s Court’s Judge Marilyn Milian and Judge Mathis’ Judge Greg Mathis after Warner Bros. canceled their shows. AMG bundles its court shows together in blocks on TV stations and cumes the advertising revenue across those blocks.

Allen says his company is now the biggest provider of first-run programming to TV stations: “TV stations got ghosted by the studios. They got new girlfriends and [stations] didn’t even get a text.”

A new entry to syndication, Crazy Legs Production, has Cutlers Court. The show is hosted by married judges Keith and Dana Cutler who previously starred on MGM’s Couples Court with the Cutlers, which is no longer in production. Finally, CBS is taking a note from NBC and bringing a repackaged and true-crime-focused version of news magazine 48 Hours to TV stations.

All of these shows have a few things in common. They are sold on an all-barter basis, meaning that no cash changes hands. They can be produced in batches, making them much cheaper than a talk show, for example, which needs to be produced on an almost-daily basis. And in the case of 48 Hours, producers have some 600 episodes from which to draw.

But these shows on their own are not enough to fill all of the time periods that TV stations have available. That’s why repeats have begun to prevail across the syndicated landscape, with such shows as Judge Judy, Maury, Jerry Springer, Judge Jerry and more filling empty slots. CBS Media Ventures also hopes to bring repeats of Dr. Phil to TV stations, although non-conflict talk historically does not repeat well. While programming repeats makes economic sense, it’s nearly impossible to build viewership with them.

Stephen Brown

“[I]f you start programming repeats into your schedule, you are just adding to the doom spiral,” says Stephen Brown, EVP, programming, Fox Television Stations and Fox First Run.

While Fox airs repeats of such shows as Judge Judy, People’s Court and Judge Mathis in some markets, the station group tries to avoid it if it can. But sometimes choices are limited.

To combat the lure of cheap and easy reruns, stations are turning inward. Fox has been doing this for years, producing shows on its own such as Divorce Court and Dish Nation, and in partnership with others, such as Pictionary with CBS. Fox also acquired TMZ in September 2021, with programs TMZ, TMZ Live, primetime specials and now Who the Bleep is That?

“We’ve figured out how to produce programs in a cost-effective way that allows us to still air originals and that gets people to stay with us for the shows,” Brown says. “We reward viewers with play-at-home games and behind-the-scenes footage. We’re really doubling down on the effort to keep the dwindling audience. There are still loyal linear viewers and those are the people we need to pay attention to and reward. If you’re producing a $40 million talk show that’s a tough row to hoe. I don’t know how you make up that money.”

Sinclair has a development deal with CSI creator Anthony Zuiker that is expected to yield new shows next fall — and potentially, primetime shows down the road

This phenomenon of stations turning into programmers is not new — TV stations have been producing their own shows since TV began. Some of daytime’s most successful shows, such as The Oprah Winfrey Show and Live with Regis and Kathie Lee (now Live with Kelly and Mark) were first produced at the local level and then taken national. That said, station groups tend to resist buying programming from other groups.

There are exceptions, although recent examples have not had the success of an Oprah or a Live. Tegna’s Daily Blast Live has been airing since 2017. It can be found on stations in approximately 80 markets as well as on YouTube and streaming live on Tegna station apps and on its website, dailyblastlive.com. But Daily Blast Live airs mostly on Tegna-owned stations and platforms and hasn’t been able to gain national clearance.

Another show, viral video series Right This Minute, was created and produced by a coalition of station groups: Cox, Gray and E.W. Scripps in collaboration with Magic Dust Television. It aired from 2011 until 2022 and found national distribution during that 11-year run.

Fox has been working on a model of clearing shows regionally. For example, KMSP Minneapolis’ The Jason Show works well in that market, but it did not perform when Fox tried it in a larger test in 2016. Since then, Fox has begun airing the show in markets beyond Minneapolis, including Chicago, Seattle, Orlando and Sioux Falls, S.D. It’s a model the group would like to draw from when appropriate.

Frank Cicha

“We’ve always started with the idea that the goal wasn’t national syndication. The goal was a show that worked in one’s own market and if it went anywhere else, terrific,” says Frank Cicha, EVP, programming, Fox Television Stations. “We’ve been using some creative ways to fill holes around the group that I think are going to lead to innovation.”

Station groups are still willing to pay cash license fees for shows that they deem worth it — it’s just that there are far less of those being produced.

“The station groups realize that some people are going to need money in order to produce programming,” Cicha says. “It’s not always about getting the best deals you can get. If you have a show and you want it to continue, you are going to have to pay. I would rather be paying for Sherri Shepherd and Jennifer Hudson than not right now.”

Ira Bernstein

And many still remain bullish on the local TV station business: “Local TV stations are still incredibly profitable,” says Ira Bernstein, co-president of Debmar-Mercury. “The two things that they are going to continue to do that make them unique are local news and first-run syndication. Those are things that you don’t see in other places.”

Making sure that stations can continue to offer that unique programming at an affordable price is the problem that the industry is looking to solve.

Scott Ehrlich

“I’m quoting John Cleese when I say the most creative solutions come from letting yourself be uncomfortable for longer,” says Scott Ehrlich, Sinclair’s chief innovation officer.

“Everyone wants to have the solution by the end of the sentence,”he adds. “I’m uncomfortable with this problem, but I’m prepared to live with the discomfort until we find more creative answers.”

The post With Major Studios Cooling On Syndication, Stations Seek Program Alternatives appeared first on TV News Check.

He joins Sinclair from WJZ Baltimore, where he was the director of local, regional and national sales.

Rob Weisbord, Sinclair’s chief operating officer, and president of local media, said: “Rocky is an accomplished leader with a strong background in developing effective sales strategies and driving revenue growth. We are excited to have him at the helm of WVTV in Milwaukee.”

Prior to his role at WJZ, Wagonhurst held several leadership positions, including director of sales at Comcast Spotlight and general sales manager of WUTB Baltimore.

Earlier in his career he held sales positions at Harrington, Righter & Parsons; Blair; KDVR Denver, and KOVR Sacramento, Calif.

Wagonhurst holds a Bachelor of Arts from UCLA.

The post Rocky Wagonhurst Named VP-GM Of WVTV Milwaukee appeared first on TV News Check.

In third quarter guidance, Sinclair is expecting total media revenue to be down 10% to 12% to a range of $733 million to $752 million, compared to a pro forma $832 million for the third quarter of 2022. “The primary reason for the decline is due to the absence of political advertising revenues in a non-political year. For the third quarter of last year, we booked $89 million of political revenues, versus $7 million to $9 million expected in this year’s third quarter,” EVP-CFO Lucy Rutishauser told Wall Street analysts.

In addition, the year-to-year decline in distribution revenues is estimated to contribute $15 million of the decline at the mid-point of our guidance range, which is partially offset by a slight increase in core advertising revenues year-over-year,” she said.

Although Sinclair is not yet providing fourth quarter guidance overall, Rutishauser provided what she called an “early call” on fourth quarter political advertising. That projection is $25 million.

“Auto continues to be a strong performer for us, with that category up 6.5% year-over-year,” COO and President of Local Media Robert Weisbord said in the conference call.

“Overall, legal services continued to perform well for the quarter, but most other service categories, led by insurance, continued to record year-over-year declines,” he added.

“As we begin to look at early third quarter trends, core advertising trends appear to be largely unchanged from second quarter trends, with a notable exception of national advertising, which is improving over the last month,” Weisbord said. Noting that political advertising is already running ahead of the previous presidential election cycle, Weisbord displayed a chart of Sinclair’s footprint for Senate, gubernatorial and hot presidential battleground states, pointing to a record political advertising take this cycle.

Asked for more color on ad trends in the Q&A, Weisbord said “it’s still a month-to-month basis, but we’re encouraged that we’re not seeing any significant cancellations.”

He downplayed the impact of the dual writers and actors strikes, saying all of the networks have contingency plans.

“Dollars have shifted from prime over the last several years into sports, so we’re fully loaded with sports in fourth quarter,” the COO noted.

Having separated Sinclair from the regional sports networks business, Sinclair President-CEO Chris Ripley told an analyst that his company and its broadcasting peers are seeing a resurgence of interest from the major sports leagues in over-the-air broadcasting.

“There’s a big push from owners to go for more reach — and there’s no better reach vehicle than free, over-the-air broadcast. The NFL is a great example of a league that has maximally benefitted from being on free, over-the-air broadcast. And I think the rest of the leagues see that and realize that that’s been a great outcome for the NFL. And looking forward I think that the right answer is that some portion of games for every major sport should have a home on free, over-the-air broadcast to keep exposure maximized and keep interest maximized,” Ripley said.

The CEO spent a good portion of his time on the call going over how the company’s new organization structure lays out the value of the non-TV station assets of Sinclair. The Sinclair Ventures investments were pitched as having a fair market value of nearly $2.3 billion, added to the fair market value of $5.7 billion for the TV station portfolio. Sinclair’s stock, however, trades at a deep discount to the $64.72 per share value implied by the fair market value calculation. The stock closed Wednesday at $13.35.

The post Sinclair Ad Revenues Soft Ahead Of 2024 Political Bonanza appeared first on TV News Check.

Media revenues also decreased 8% to $761 million versus $831 million a year ago.

Total advertising revenues of $309 million decreased 16% versus $366 million in the prior year period.

Core advertising revenues, which exclude political revenues, were down 3% in the second quarter to $303 million versus $312 million in the prior year period.

Distribution revenues of $418 million decreased versus $430 million in the prior year period.

The company reported an operating loss of $3 million, including non-recurring transaction and transition services, implementation, COVID, legal, and regulatory costs of $24 million, declined versus an operating income of $107 million in the prior year period, which included adjustments of $13 million. Operating income, when excluding the adjustments, was $21 million compared to an operating income, excluding the Adjustments, of $120 million in the prior year period.

Net loss attributable to the company was $89 million versus net loss of $11 million in the prior year period. Excluding adjustments, the company had net loss of $70 million.

The above results that reflect the “deconsolidation” of the Local Sports segment comprised of the regional sports networks (RSNs), which are owned and operated by Diamond Sports Group and its direct and indirect subsidiaries, from the company’s financial statements and accounted for under equity method of accounting, effective March 1, 2022. As such, the quarter-to-date and year-to-date 2023 consolidated financial results do not include any results of operations of the Local Sports segment, while the consolidated financial results for the comparable year-to-date 2022 period include two months results of operations of the Local Sports segment.

Chris Ripley, president-CEO, said: “Sinclair is continuing to see a solid start to 2023, meeting or beating guidance on all key financial metrics. As we continue our evolution from a traditional broadcast company to a diversified content and data distributor, we have finalized the process of reorganizing our company structure to increase transactional flexibility and transparency around the value of assets being held in each business unit, Sinclair Broadcast Group and its subsidiaries and Sinclair Ventures and its subsidiaries. SBG holds the pure-play local media assets, while Ventures holds the company’s non-local media assets. Our end goal is to create an even more effective company, designed to use the breadth of our assets to identify and accelerate growth.”

Read the company’s report here.

Also Wednesday, Sinclair declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.25 per share on the company’s Class A and Class B common stock. The dividend is payable on Sept. 15 to the holders of record at the close of business on Sept. 1.

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“It’s still so manual,” said Jane Meyerson, SVP, director of local broadcast, Icon International. “Our buyers and our associates are buried in manual stuff, and they shouldn’t be in 2023.”

“It’s a legacy model,” said Joe Cerone, EVP, local investment, Magna. “When a bigger advertiser comes in with higher costs, they blow you out. We need to get away from the model that it is OK to preempt.”

While rearranging ad schedules is something local TV stations have long done, it doesn’t mean advertisers and agencies have to like it, and it’s something they are growing less tolerant of as systems evolve. Broadcasters are trying to work with them to improve the model, but it’s slow going.

“If we take a piece of business, we should run it,” said Rob Weisbord, Sinclair COO and president of broadcast, which is working with artificial intelligence and machine-learning solutions to help it manage advertising inventory and schedules. “I would say the majority [or make goods] that I see on our ledger is more due to network changes than really an oversold situation. But if we sell something, we have a fiduciary responsibility to run it.”

Agencies also hate it when they base media buys on a plan and then see their ads moved into less desirable time slots, such as out of the late news and into the middle of the night. A certain number of viewers may still be seeing the spot, but it’s not the viewer that they intended.

“You’re paying a premium, for example, for an NFL spot. And then if it’s running in nothing against the late news, that is not an apples-to-apples eyeball, for sure,” Meyerson said.

That said, the 2024 presidential campaign is already ramping up and ads will start flooding battleground markets early next year during the primaries, creating many more makegood situations. While political advertising doesn’t affect all local markets, in the markets where it does it comes in hot and heavy, disrupting the schedules of many other advertisers. That creates a great deal of extra work — and revenue — for broadcasters in those markets.

“In the markets that are hot, I’m going to get a 24-hour record and manage expectations every 24 hours because that’s the fair thing to do,” Weisbord said.

Agency buyers, meanwhile, need to set client expectations accordingly and think about other ways they can get messages out during tight times.

“It’s always about having a contingency plan going into those battleground markets. You have to have like plan A, B, C and D, frankly,” Meyerson said.

“We try to educate our agencies and stations … on where there’s some of these key states or markets that will be hit very, very hard when it comes to political,” said Ray Karzcewski, EVP, broadcast sales at local TV solutions provider Locality. “You know, that’s typically not a 52-week-a-year advertiser, even in 2024. There are windows there that you have to be concerned about how deep, how far outside those windows they could go and that depends on each of the races and on how much money they have.”

One way advertisers are trying to eliminate makegoods and discrepancies is through pay-for-performance campaigns, which, in theory, should match agencies’ expenditures to their results. That said, not everyone is sold on that model.

Magna’s Cerone is a big proponent of the idea, which is still in its early stages. “Pay for performance is not 100% in the landscape yet. I’d say it might be 55%,” he said. “I’m trying to get the industry to go 100%. I don’t know if I’ll get there in my lifetime. But I think it has worked out fabulously.”

Icon’s Meyerson, however, is less excited about the idea: “I’m not a believer in pay per performance. I don’t want money. I feel like it’s a cash-back scenario and I don’t want that. I want to book a schedule and I want it to run.”

Sinclair’s Weisbord supports the idea theoretically but says continuing problems with local TV measurement and currency methodology make it difficult for TV stations to commit to pay-for-performance deals.

“The zero-cell phenomenon and other issues that occur with Nielsen scare the crap out of me [when it comes to pay for performance],” Weisbord said, noting that if agencies are booking schedules based on rates of return, then everyone has to be sure those targets are being hit.

While the industry is working to install automation and other technologies to speed things along, relationships remain key even as all areas of the business are being disrupted, and especially when it comes to issues such as makegoods, discrepancies, political ad placements, disrupted schedules and so forth.

“At the end of the day, nothing beats a dedicated full-service team,” Karzcewski said. “It’s my job to get my people to go out and talk to the agencies about selling the value of the clients that we have, regardless of whether it’s streaming, or if it’s linear TV.”

Keeping those relationships intact will be necessary as the industry pushes towards the next phase of its development.

“We don’t have time to have a legacy mentality,” Weisbord said. “We have to be dealing with the modern world. Once upon a time, the dinosaur was the most feared species on the planet. And then there was an environmental change and now you find dinosaurs in museums. We are in a time of much bigger environmental change. If we don’t do things better with modern-day technology, down the road we don’t exist.”

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Paramount Global wants to move playout of all of its programming to the public cloud. The media giant already has over 130 networks originating in the cloud including the new CBS Sports Golazo Network, which features a mix of live soccer games and studio programming with prerecorded elements. And Sinclair, which has been playing its diginets from the cloud for several years, is now starting to move playout of its local stations to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. The first station should go live next month.

Improvements in playout software designed for the cloud are enabling these wholesale shifts in networks’ and stations’ architecture, said broadcast engineers and vendors who gathered last week for the TVNewsCheck webinar, Live Playout in the Cloud: Advances for 2023, moderated by this reporter. But technical challenges remain in playing out broadcast programming from the cloud, particularly for stations with a hefty slate of live local news content. And getting an accurate idea of how much the cloud will actually cost is still difficult, though early adopters point to long-term benefits that can be gained by reducing duplicative functions across multiple sites, cutting down real estate costs and hiring remote workers.

Graham Media’s On-Prem OTT Playout Launching Soon

Graham Media Group wanted to use the public cloud as a new playout system for OTT programming from several of its local stations and began doing proofs of concept (POCs) late last fall. But by March the station group still hadn’t found a solution that it felt could comfortably handle linear playback as well as live local news, said Anthony Plosz, VP and CTO, Graham Media Group.

“The biggest obstacle is really moving in and out of unscheduled live events with ease,” Plosz said.

He explained that Graham often uses its OTT platform for breaking news that it can’t do on its over-the-air broadcasts, either because it doesn’t want to preempt network programming or needs to go live but doesn’t have a control room available. But many of the cloud platforms “don’t handle these situations with grace,” Plosz said. Graham also found difficulties with the SCTE 35 messaging standard used widely for digital ad insertion and content replacement.

“In the short term, the true live is really not quite there yet for us,” said Plosz of the cloud playout options.

So, Graham pivoted and went to Plan B, working internally to develop an on-premise playout platform for OTT that it will launch this summer, some months after its initial goal of this past spring. Plosz said that Graham is continuing to talk to cloud platforms about AI tools that could potentially curate archive programming for OTT channels in the future.

Steady Progress For Sinclair

Sinclair, which centralized its content ingest, preparation and distribution functions in the cloud over the past two years, is more optimistic about the near-term potential of the cloud for playout. The company has seen major improvements in cloud playout tools over the same time period, said Walid Hamri, AVP, media systems engineering for Sinclair. That applies to both latency and the core architecture of the solutions themselves, as vendors have moved from a “lift and shift” microcontainer on the cloud to true microservices.

Sinclair has actually been doing POCs of linear playout at a few stations for more than six months. It strategically picked several stations that have less complexity than a hub with multiple newsrooms, such as a big Fox affiliate. Instead, a few CW outlets are serving as pilot stations for cloud playout.

“We had to start somewhere, so we’re now moving forward,” Hamri said. “We probably should have the first station up and running in the next month or so.”

Hybrid Model Reliability

Broadcast customers often express uncertainty about whether they should run playout on-prem or in the cloud, said Ian Fletcher, SVP enterprise product strategy for Grass Valley’s media business unit. But he said it “shouldn’t be a binary choice,” as Grass Valley’s AMPP was built as an edge compute platform that could run on-prem, in a private data center or on the public cloud, or on some combination of the three.

Fletcher said the “control plane” for AMPP, including the database, messaging architecture and other back-end function, should usually run in the cloud. But the “data plane,” where the actual pixel processing occurs, can run anywhere. That means that customers can easily employ a hybrid model with some channels playing out of the cloud and others running on-prem.

Fletcher said that with various vendors already offering cloud playout software, Grass Valley decided to differentiate by focusing on supporting live production and playout in the cloud for “difficult use cases” like breaking news and live sports.

“How would you do live breaking news, how do you join back in-progress?” Fletcher said. “How does an operator who might be working at home or somewhere else remote from where playout is actually happening, how do they get confidence that when they press ‘Take’ that they’re going to see the result straight away?”

A good example of a live use case is Golazo, which launched in April using Grass Valley software running on the AWS cloud. There are no physical facilities at all for Golazo, except for its studio, and all of its master control operators are remote.

“So, you can now change your recruitment policy,” Fletcher said. “You can recruit where the talent is, instead of forcing everyone to come into a New York center just to sit and press some buttons on a master control switcher. If you think differently as to how you’re going to use these technologies to redesign your business, that’s how you’re going to get some real significant cost savings.”

Cloud-ifying Paramount

Paramount Global actually doesn’t recruit on a geographic basis for any of its video engineering positions today. That is just one of the big changes the company has made since it started moving its broadcast workflows to the cloud back in 2019, when it launched its first domestic channel with the “Cloud Playout 1.0” platform.

Now it has 131 networks originating on the cloud and has moved to “Cloud Playout 2.0,” based on Grass Valley’s AMPP software, said Stuart Baillie, SVP media engineering and distribution, Paramount Global. Paramount’s second-generation cloud platform is more scalable, has more agility in software deployment, uses more automation and provides richer data for reporting purposes, he said.

Paramount started with thematic channels before moving the Showtime networks to the cloud, where it started to do live production in a hybrid model leveraging both the cloud and on-premise 2110 hardware. Paramount has also moved its entire Amsterdam facility to the cloud, which involved a high volume of live channels, and created a “Cloud Control Center” in Hauppauge, N.Y., to help manage its global cloud operations.

“We’re slowly going to be moving forward with some extra complexity looking at the CBS channels as well, with lots of live sports and news,” Baillie said. “For us it’s really been a steady progression, but certainly an aggressive rollout to the cloud.”

Moving To The Public Cloud

New broadcast technology player swXtch.io is looking to expand broadcasters’ existing on-premise routing workflows into the public cloud with CloudSwitch. The product is a virtual switch that behaves like a physical Juniper, Arista or Cisco switch that would typically run in an on-prem data center but is in fact just software which runs on all of the major public cloud platforms.

CloudSwitch allows broadcasters to build contribution workloads in the cloud, such as for playout or master control, using the same tools and exhibiting the same behavior as an on-prem network, said Geeter Kyrazis, chief strategy officer for swXtch.io.

“The notion is to extend broadcast networks into the cloud, to enable hybrid and multicloud workflows that have similar features,” Kyrazis said. “If you build an on-prem network and you have a 2110 workflow, where you implement [SMPTE 2202]-07, so you have to have multicast and PTP and multiple geographic routes, and you want to move all or part of that workflow into the cloud, obviously the cloud networks may or may not support all of the network features that those workflows require. So, what our cloud switch does is implement those features on the cloud networks, such that they are an extension of the broadcast network. And features like high-performance multicast are available on all four clouds.”

Kyrazis said that CloudSwitch was successfully used earlier this month as part of a POC done by the NBA, where live coverage of NBA Summer League games was played out from the cloud; technology partners in that trial included Microsoft, Evertz and Cinefilm. He said swXtch.io is also in POCs with several large broadcasters to explore similar live playout applications from the cloud.

One common observation from the panelists was that moving playout to the cloud generally won’t save money unless it is part of a broader overhaul of workflows and infrastructure. And the panelists all said that predicting the costs of launching playout in the cloud is very difficult, though vendors do work closely with customers to try to provide predictive models of their cloud spend.

“Going into the cloud for us, one of the challenges we’ve seen is it’s really hard to get a decent estimation of your costs on the cloud from Day One,” Hamri said. “We’ve done it, and we end up with massive Excel spreadsheets that we have to keep maintaining. So, this is something that overall, I think we have to do a better job, for all the vendors and partners that we’re working with, in being able to more precisely predict the costs of running a global solution.”

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Tennis Channel, the only television-based multiplatform destination dedicated to both the professional sport and tennis lifestyle and T2, Tennis Channel’s first free ad-supported TV (FAST) channel, are scheduled to debut on Hulu + Live TV in January 2024. These additions will give Hulu + Live TV subscribers a means to watch Tennis Channel’s exclusive, live coverage of more than 93% of the professional tennis events each year.

Sinclair’s Comet, featuring sci-fi and fantasy entertainment franchises, and Charge!, with a lineup of high-profile police procedural dramas, are also scheduled to launch on Hulu + Live TV in January 2024.

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The company said in this role James will report to Kevin Cotlove, chief digital officer, and will be instrumental in shaping and executing Sinclair’s growth and engagement strategy for social media and digital content initiatives.

An Emmy, Webby, Clio and Muse award-winning digital creator, James joins Sinclair from HBO Max, where he was director of social, leading the creative campaigns for more than 65 Max Original series including And Just Like That and Gossip Girl, while also managing the brand’s audience-focused editorial channels including MaxPop and MaxMade.

“Nick brings a wealth of experience creating audience passion around talent, brands and content,” Cotlove said. “We’re excited to have him help shape the future of our digital storytelling and engagement strategy.”

James began his career as a development executive at E! where he was part of the team responsible for hit series including Keeping Up with The Kardashians, Chelsea Lately and Fashion Police. He later joined Condé Nast Entertainment, overseeing the development and production of digital video series and franchises, and launched viral productions including Vogue’s 73 Questions, Glamour’s You Sang My Song and W’s ASMR Interview.

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Richardson joins Sinclair from KERO Bakersfield, Calif., where he was the senior director of sales, local and digital sales.

In making the announcement, Rob Weisbord, Sinclair’s chief operating officer and president of broadcast, said: “Robert is a proven leader, with over 20 years of experience developing sales strategies and driving revenue for broadcast and digital media. We are excited to have him at the helm in Champaign, Springfield, and Decatur.”

Richardson has held several executive leadership positions throughout his career, including general manager/director of sales at KABZ, KKPT and KHLR in Little Rock, Ark.; vice president of sales at WFLA-WTTA Tampa, Fla.; and director of sales at KARK, KARZ, KRLT and KASN Little Rock.

Richardson holds a Bachelor of Arts in mass communication from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock where he graduated magna cum laude. The former vice president of communications at the University’s Mass Communication Department Alumni Association, he currently sits on the professional advisory board of directors of UALR’s Mass Communication Department.

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