There’s good reason for TV stations to be focused on free ad-supported television (FAST) channels and other digital platforms — they have become a rapidly growing business.

“In the aggregate, FAST channels have generated $7.3 billion this year and that’s projected to grow to $34 billion in 2027 amidst a rising tide of consumer usage and a rising tide of monetization that’s complementary to local,” said Greg Morrow, GM of ViewNexa by BitCentral.

“The numbers for FAST for news content are off the charts,” said Rick Young, SVP, head of global products, LTN. “The numbers show that half the FAST channels out there are news and half of the viewing time [on those channels] is news. That’s massive. And the more real-time, the more live the content is on those channels, the more demographics that you want will find them, whether they are male or younger.”

While CBS started implementing FAST and digital streaming in 2014, it’s only been within the last three-to-five years that most local station groups have gotten their live-streaming operations off the ground with services such as Fox’s LiveNow, Gray’s Local News Live and CBS’ local news apps. The relative newness of these services means that they are still in experimental and iterative phases.

“We look at the minute-by-minute concurrence when we’re evaluating the success of the streams,” said Sahand Sepehrina, SVP, streaming, CBS News & Stations. “We see that the local audience comes in about one to one half hours earlier than the national audience. Because of that, we have invested heavily in mornings. Now we have nearly 100 hours of live newscasts that are streaming exclusively in the mornings. We’ve seen that drive new audiences so as we’re starting to look at other day parts, we’re getting a lot smarter about what content we invest in.”

Viewers tend to turn to live streaming news when big events are happening. The longer the events go on, the more viewers tune in and stick around, stations are finding.

“We have found that live events really start to pick up an audience after the first hour. When we invested in live events that ran an hour to two hours, the ROI wasn’t nearly as strong as live events that were much longer,” Sepehrina said.

Gray launched its Local News Live product out of Omaha, Neb., in 2020 and then moved it to Washington, D.C. The group quickly realized that it needed to be live and streaming as much as possible and that there’s an appetite for local news coverage, even for people who don’t live in that market.

“We always want to be live. Our research and traffic have shown that engagement was so high when we were live that we really never want to go dark,” said Mike Braun, SVP, digital media, Gray Television.

In addition, viewers are more interested in watching stories from other markets than Gray expected: “It’s not only where you are, it’s where you’ve been and where you are going,” Braun said.

Three live-streaming strategies that BitCentral’s Morrow has found to be successful for local stations are first, to put up weather and traffic cameras that viewers return to often.

Second, stations are seeing success programming “hyperlocal” sports, such as high school, junior college and local second-tier professional leagues.

“The most successful thing we’ve seen on that front is working with the state associations on state championships, which are concentrated tournaments that take place over a period of days in sports like hockey and football,” Morrow said. “These get huge amounts of traffic and there are sponsorship opportunities. We are talking live content with huge tune-in times. People tune in all day long to watch, and it draws audiences outside of the local community.”

Third is programming a host-driven, vlogging style of content, like viewers find on TikTok or YouTube Shorts, which is something the Fox Television Stations have done both on their local-news streams and on their streaming news service, LiveNow. LiveNow has digital journalists, or DJs, who create their own content on the fly, although they are supported by producers.

“They choose the shots, they talk about the content as it’s happening, they are just constantly just managing everything,” said Jeff Zellmer, SVP, digital operations, Fox Television Stations. “They have to have that passion, they have to have that stamina, but they also feel really empowered.”

Allowing talent to stay in constant touch with the audience creates a relationship that keeps viewers coming back.

“This is about having a dialogue with the audience about local issues,” Morrow said. “We saw when a station added that component to their local broadcast, they saw lift, engagement and recurring tune-in.”

That tune-in extends past the typical local news audience of older adults to younger millennial and Gen-Z consumers.

“What we are finding in the digital or FAST world is that the audience is younger and more male-skewing than we might have imagined,” said LTN’s Young.

Another advantage of live streaming is that journalists can spend as much or as little time as they want on certain topics.

“There’s the freedom to talk for 10 minutes if there’s a reason to do that. Journalists are eager to talk about things they didn’t cover in a one-minute package,” Zellmer said. “We are watching the data constantly. We absolutely pay attention to the viewer. We wouldn’t be doing what we are doing if we didn’t see that it was growing over time.”

Fox is not only watching the data closely — it’s allowing viewers to watch closely as well. LiveNow includes a graphic in the left corner that tracks how many people are watching at any given time. “It gives the DJ immediate feedback of whether people are interested in what he or she is doing,” Zellmer said.

It’s all leading to a time in the not-too-distant future, where TV stations’ linear and digital offerings are all just one part of a larger content offering and aren’t considered to be distinct products, Young said.

“It’s no longer a world of traditional versus digital,” he added. “The audience is everywhere. The numbers are equal in terms of engagement and new opportunities on old and new platforms. It’s a ‘yes and’ strategy for everybody now going forward.”

Read more coverage of NewsTECHForum 2023 here.

Watch this session and all the NewsTECHForum 2023 videos here.

The post Stations’ Streaming News Strategies Are Literally Evolving By The Minute 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.

In making the announcement, Paolini said: “In an ever-present political cycle, which is kicking into high gear with the 2024 Presidential Election, it is critical to assemble a talented team that best suits the future of the rapidly evolving advertising marketplace. I have no doubt that with Ben and Walt’s combined expertise and transformative vision, we will continue to reinvent and innovate the sales business.”

Ben Stecker

Stecker has been named vice president of political, issue, and advocacy for FTS Ad Sales. Most recently, he was political sales director for Strategus. Prior to that, Stecker was an account executive and political specialist for broadcast media at Cox and Tegna after working as an account executive at Sandler-Innocenzi.

Previously, he spent four years as a campaign manager, political director and policy director for various Senate, congressional, and gubernatorial political campaigns. Stecker began his career as a legislative aide in the U.S. House and Senate while also serving in the Idaho Air National Guard. A graduate of Northwest Nazarene University, Stecker holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.

Walt Lopko

Lopko has been promoted to vice president of political and regional sales manager for FTS Ad Sales. He has been with Fox since 2003, first as regional manager of Fox Stations Sales (FSS), then as vice president and regional sales manager for FSS since 2012.

Earlier in his career, Lopko was Director of Sales for CBS Radio/Infinity in Philadelphia and sales manager for Katz Media Group. A graduate of Temple University, he holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications.

FTS owns and operates 29 full power broadcast television stations in the U.S.

The post Fox Television Stations Creates New Political Ad Sales Unit 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.

“From the very beginning, our concept was sort of like a reality show before there were reality shows where we were revealing ourselves as people to the audience in a way that wasn’t being done on television at the time,” said Michael Gelman, executive producer, Live with Kelly and Mark. Gelman started on Live as a freelance production assistant and quickly worked his way up to executive producer, a role he has held since 1987.

The difference today is that viewers connect with that talent across many different platforms at all times of day or night. While those constant connections are great in terms of building a brand, producers are now trying to figure out how to monetize them across digital and social media platforms, panelists said during TVNewsCheck’s TV2025 conference at the NAB Show New York last week.

Relating authentically to the audience is a lesson that’s been taken to heart by CBS’s The Drew Barrymore Show. Now entering season four — the show’s second in its half-hour format — Barrymore has adopted an up-close-and-personal interview style. That’s exemplified by her recent interview with actor John Stamos, in which she sat cross-legged on her studio couch, facing Stamos and looking into his eyes as they spoke about his new memoir.

“Drew is unfiltered. She interviews celebrities unlike any other host. It’s very raw. And those are the moments that travel,” said Jason Kurtz, executive producer of The Drew Barrymore Show. “She is truly herself and exactly what you’re watching every day is exactly who she is. Once you have that, it’s just about creating an ecosystem — which comprises broadcast and digital — that highlights all of the amazing things about the talent.”

Barrymore boasted some 15 million followers on Instagram when The Drew Barrymore Show launched during the pandemic in September 2020. There, she talks about everything from the show to her personal life to her beauty and lifestyle brands.

“We try not to make a big distinction between the show’s handles and her handles,” Kurtz said. “We try to create a conversation between the viewers and Drew. Her interaction is best captured in person. A lot of the pieces that go viral are when she’s just in a commercial break talking to an audience member. Just this week she connected with someone over divorce. They had a beautiful conversation and it got picked up and got a lot of love online. Last week, I think, we had almost 2 billion impressions between just four and five clips that we released between both celebrity guests and real viewers that she connects with.”

Gathering almost 2 billion impressions is impressive, but directly monetizing that is a different story. “Honestly, that’s the next phase,” Kurtz said. “That’s really what we’re looking to do.”

While that’s a huge number, making money against that on social media is not so easy to do, said Stephen Brown, EVP, programming and development, Fox Television Stations and Fox First Run.

“I think it’s rare,” Brown said. “You’ve got to have many millions of followers and then engage brands. When we do integrations and brand deals, [social media] is an add on, it’s an ‘oh by the way, we’ve got this,’ to sweeten the pot. When you’re doing social, you always have to think about the [return on investment] and how we are getting someone to come back to whatever platform to watch the show, that’s where we make the money. We don’t make it on social.”

“It’s hard to make money on digital platforms,” Gelman agreed. “Broadcast is still the main driver, but we’re always looking for opportunities. Integration is a huge value-add and some people are coming to us just for that. It’s something that’s growing but really the focus remains broadcast right now.”

Gelman remembers when interactivity meant playing trivia on the show and having people call in via a 1-800 number. “For so many years, broadcast TV was really a one-way medium — we put the signal out there and millions of people saw it,” he said. “With the advent of digital platforms, we’ve really embraced that, so every day we have people reacting to what we’re doing in real time.”

Even game shows like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune — produced by Sony Pictures Television, distributed by CBS Media Ventures and airing in major markets on ABC-owned television stations — rely on audiences’ relationship with the shows’ hosts to encourage viewers to keep coming back to play.

“We’re having a lot of success there with our advertisers and integration partners because that’s where we can offer more exposure and interaction,” said Suzanne Prete, EVP, head of games, Sony Pictures Television. “I think we have to, especially in today’s economic climate, offer our advertisers additional incentives.”

Wheel of Fortune has 4 million subscribers to its online Wheel Watchers club, which allows people to watch the show and win prizes from home. Jeopardy has evolved quite a bit since iconic host Alex Trebek passed away in November 2020. Jeopardy GOAT Ken Jennings was finally named sole host prior to this season after sharing duties with Mayim Bialik in 2021 and 2022.

“Our social strategy is very strong on Jeopardy,” Prete said. “We’re intentionally producing new content that’s not just clips from the show. We’re really doubling down on that strategy for our fans who love to engage.”

For Sony, that brand expansion includes Celebrity Jeopardy and Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, both of which air on ABC on Wednesday nights along with a resurrection of The $100,000 Pyramid — all shows that Sony produces. On the talent front, Jeopardy has leaned into its super champions — such as James Holzhauer, Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio and more — to bring viewers back to watch their favorites play. Wheel of Fortune’s longtime host Pat Sajak will retire after this season and Ryan Seacrest will take over as the show’s host.

“Half of America watches these two shows. It adds up to something like 2.4 billion hours of watching a year,” Prete said. “Everything we do is intentional. We don’t realize every opportunity that comes our way even though it seems like a short-term gain.”

Using online engagement to tie viewers more closely to shows is a strategy Fox has been employing for a while, Brown said.

“We kind of took a page from what Gelman does,” he said. Fox First Run produces such syndicated games as 25 Words or Less, hosted and executive produced by Meredith Vieira, and Person, Place or Thing, starring Melissa Peterman. It also partnered with CBS Media Ventures on Pictionary, hosted by Jerry O’Connell.

“On all of our game shows, we have a watch-win-play element,” Brown said. “We do something for superfans where we interview them and if one of our teams win, they win money as well. And we are doing a lot of QR code activation where you can watch behind-the-scenes content. So, when we go to a commercial, we keep the cameras rolling to reward the audience. We have to reward audiences by saying ‘thank you for being with us, here’s more of what you like’. We are doubling down on those viewers and saying, ‘please stick with us.’”

While linear ratings continue to decline as viewers’ attention is drawn to on-demand viewing, streaming and other platforms, there’s still a great deal of power in broadcast’s reach and repetition, the panelists said.

“I’m very bullish on syndication,” Brown said. “As long as there are TV stations with space to fill, there’s always going to be a need, and they can’t fill it all with news. They are going to do it with our content, and we have to provide it at a price point that’s reasonable to them, but as long as there are local stations, there is going to be syndication.”

Read more coverage of TV2025 here.

The post Syndies Lean On Social To Strengthen Audience Connection appeared first on TV News Check.

“Centralizing that very difficult and time-consuming discipline of data analysis makes good business sense, from an investigative journalist standpoint,” said John Kelly, director of data journalism, ABC Owned Television Stations. In addition to the contamination investigation, his group has delved into the numbers to uncover revelations about other thorny topics, such as police stop-and-search records and COVID testing.

Kelly made his remarks at a TVNewsCheck TV2025 conference panel session on joint news efforts between local station journalists and national news enterprises. During the session, which took place last Wednesday, the panelists revealed other examples of what they’ve accomplished, along with insights into the collaborative process and their learning curves.

The E.W. Scripps Co. has been undergoing a massive overhaul of its news operation, evolving a national news unit that works in tandem with local stations. “One of the end results of that is a significantly larger group of journalists on the street than we’ve had,” said Dean Littleton, SVP, local media at Scripps.

In Lafayette, La., Scripps is in the middle of the transition right now, moving from four reporters to more than a dozen, Littleton noted.

To handle the much more bountiful array of stories and ideas, Scripps has a tool in place that allows Scripps newsrooms to see what everyone is producing and planning. And there is greater communication between people locally and nationally, which has allowed Scripps to plan more effectively for coverage of hot issues — like the elimination of Title 42, which had held back immigration at the southern border during COVID.

“If there are six reporters involved, each one has a different angle. As a viewer at home, your experience is much more rich and robust than before,” Littleton said.

Fox focused on ease and simplicity when building up a collaborative effort between its Live Now streaming news service and local outlets, said Jeff Zellmer, SVP, digital operations at Fox Television Stations. The effort involved visiting stations to understand what tools they were using and making the approach more organized.

“Then, it’s all about ‘How do we make sure they care?’” Zellmer said, speaking of the local reporters. “At each station we have what we call our Live Now champions. There’s one person at a news station who communicates with our EPs.”

Sinclair’s The National Desk, which airs on about 70 of the company’s stations in two- and five-hour blocks, was built from the ground up. “We work with Avid to create a content bank, so all our assets are in one spot,” said Scott Livingston, SVP of news. “So, if I’m in Seattle or Washington or Baltimore, I can take a look at all my content that exists across Sinclair. We’ve also created a plug-in with Masstech that allows us to archive material.”

Ray Thompson, Avid’s senior director, partners and alliances, described a number of tools that allow news operations to work more quickly and collaboratively. One that’s grown out of the demand is called, appropriately, Collaborate. When stories are assigned, “it allows you to aggregate all the content that goes along with that story, and then track it as the story evolves,” Thompson said. “That allows everyone to be much more efficient.”

Nexstar Media Group is able to more deeply tap into what’s going on in Washington, D.C., through two of the company’s acquisitions: The Hill, and the Media General stations, which gave the company a D.C. bureau.

In addition to calling on journalists at The Hill to provide insights for station news reports, Nexstar also does some polls with the outlet. Last year there were about 45 of them.

Since absorbing Media General, the Nexstar D.C. bureau has doubled in size to nearly 20 people. It typically brings in 40-45 feeds, which are then spun back out to the TV stations, said Jerry Walsh, the company’s SVP of local content development. “We’re now set up so that [government] hearings can be streamed live on all our platforms if digital producers want them.” And stations also have the opportunity to localize the content.

Needless to say, there have been lessons learned as all of the collaborations have gathered momentum. Sinclair’s Livingston explained that the company’s newsrooms understood the reasons why The National Desk was rolling out. “But the breakdown was in the training,” he said. “We realized that the workforce needed to be really comfortable, not just with the concept, but we assumed some things— [for example] that people would know how to use Avid or Masstech. So, we added a couple of positions to train the workforce.”

At Nexstar, there was a realization that the company needed to make sure there was a proper support structure for the teams, and that they took the time to build up the procedures, Walsh said. What’s more, there’s a greater focus on understanding the unique strengths of different journalists and what they can bring to the table.

“Change management is hard for anybody,” noted Scripps’ Littleton. “I’ve been blown away with the employees’ ability to understand the ‘why.’ The issue has been more about connecting the ‘why’ to what they do and how it changes what their job looks like and their responsibilities.”

After working with people at a station, those in charge of the training can’t just move on to the next station and assume everything will be OK. “As [station personnel] advance, they run into speed bumps. So, you have to listen and adjust based on where they are,” Littleton said.

Read more coverage of TV2025 here.

The post Station Groups Notch Lessons As Collaborations Proliferate appeared first on TV News Check.

The 1:30 p.m. session at the Javits Center features speakers Paul Capizzi, CIO and SVP, technology, Fox Corp.; Tim Joyce, SVP engineering, operations and technology, Fox Television Stations; and Marina Khainson, head of security architecture, Fox Corp. Moderating the conversation will be TVNewsCheck Contributing Editor Glen Dickson.

“Paul, Tim and Marina will discuss the expansive work Fox’s engineering, IT and security teams have done to recent years to create IP and cloud operations that are not only more efficient but also more secure,” said TVNewsCheck Publisher and Co-Founder Kathy Haley. “They’ll also speak more broadly as to how the need to consistently improve cybersecurity is influencing the development of broadcast technology and the challenges and priorities they’re facing for 2024.”

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 Landscap
• View from the Trenches: Crisis Management in 2023
• Supply Chain Security
• 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 CBR To Spotlight Fox Corp.’s Modernization Of Broadcast Environment 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.

A panel of industry legends at TVNewsCheck’s TV2025: Monetizing the Future conference at the NAB Show New York on Oct. 25 will explain how they’ve spent their careers bucking that trend.

Building a Breakout Hit in a Multiplatform World, which will close out the conference at the Javits Center at 4 p.m., features panelists Michael Gelman, executive producer and showrunner of Live with Kelly and Mark; Jason Kurtz, executive producer and showrunner of The Drew Barrymore Show; Suzanne Prete, EVP, game shows, Sony Pictures Television; and Stephen Brown, EVP of programming and development, Fox First Run and Fox Television Stations. TVNewsCheck Contributing Editor Paige Albiniak will moderate the conversation.

“These syndication superstars will discuss how they keep their shows fresh in a challenging environment, how they use digital and social platforms to keep their talent connected to viewers and what sorts of brand extensions they are working on,” said TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp. “They will also look toward the future and consider how syndication needs to evolve to remain relevant.”

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
• Cloud Strategies for TV Station Groups

Register here.

The post TV2025: How To Build And Maintain A Breakout Hit In A Multiplatform World 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.

Patrick Paolini (Courtesy FTS)

Fox Television Stations (FTS) is restructuring its Advertising Sales division, merging its local, national and digital sales efforts into one streamlined unit, the company said in a press release. The approach is, the release said, “designed to leverage the power of Fox’s strong news content, live sports and digital/streaming platforms.”

FTS Chief Executive Officer Jack Abernethy has named Patrick Paolini the new EVP of ad sales. He will assume this position immediately, reporting directly to Abernethy.

Abernethy said in the release, “Patrick’s unique ability to execute, developed from years in both news and sales, makes him ideally suited to lead the FTS sales organization. I am confident that this newly elevated dynamic team will move quickly and decisively given their depth of knowledge and proven track record, including the successful creation of FLX, our CTV/OTT ad platform.”

Most recently, Paolini served as SVP and GM of WTTG and WDCA, the FOX-owned duopoly in Washington, D.C. During his 10-year tenure, Paolini led the duopoly to #1 in the market with several innovative news expansions, FTS said. Prior to that, Paolini was SVP of Fox Stations sales; earlier, he was VP and GM for WTXF in Philadelphia. Among other positions throughout his career, he was also VP and director of sales at WNYW and WWOR, the Fox owned-and-operated duopoly in New York and VP and general sales manager for WTTG. A graduate of Western Connecticut State University, Paolini holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing.

Sheila Bruce (Courtesy FTS)

Three ad sales executives, Sheila Bruce, Tom Fleming and Michael Page, have also been elevated to new roles: SVP of Fox ad sales for FTS, in which they will share the responsibility for overseeing the FTS O&Os overall sales efforts. (Fleming will now also be responsible for overseeing local and national station sales.)

Bruce joined WJBK, in Detroit, in 1994 and spent two years as an account executive before she was elevated to local sales manager. Since 2001, Bruce has served as VP and general sales manager for the station. Throughout her tenure, she has led the most senior sales team in the history of Detroit to grow the most successful FLX sales on both linear and digital, across the entire FTS group, the company said, adding that for the last three years in a row the station has doubled its FLX revenue from the year prior.

Tom Fleming (Courtesy FTS)

Fleming has been part of the Fox Stations Sales (FSS) team since its inception and, in 2019, was named SVP of FSS. Since assuming that position, Fleming successfully launched FLX with Page, and led FSS to record presidential political revenue performance in 2020 and record midterm political revenue performance in 2022, as well as record Super Bowl revenue in 2020 and 2023, the company said. Before this role, he spent 15 years as the VP and director of sales for FSS. Prior to that, he held the position of VP and general sales manager at FSS and, before that, sales manager. Previously, Fleming was the VP in charge of managing the sales team for FTS. Earlier in his career, he served as an account executive and team sales manager for Petry Television.

Michael Page (Courtesy FTS)

Page joined FTS as VP of digital sales in 2019 and was promoted to SVP in 2021. During his tenure, Page successfully launched FLX alongside Fleming, and increased digital/streaming revenue by nearly eight times over the past four years, the company said. Prior to joining FTS, Page served as VP of digital sales for Tribune Media, increasing the group’s revenue by 45%, according to the press release.  Previously, he led Tegna Digital in the $2.5 billion acquisition of Cars.com as VP of digital automotive. Prior to that, Page was the head of product marketing for Amazon Media Group. For over a decade, he held various sales roles at Cars.com, including VP of advertiser solutions and VP of advertiser pricing and analytics.

Bruce, Fleming and Page will begin their new duties immediately and will report to Paolini.

Paolini stated, “I am excited to have Sheila, Tom and Michael join me as we transform FTS’s ad sales strategy during this pivotal time of growth. Each of them is a talented executive who challenges the status-quo and will continue to create and redefine solutions in this ever-evolving new advertising landscape. I can’t wait to get started.”

The post Fox Television Stations Announces Newly Restructured Advertising Sales Division appeared first on TV News Check.

Jack Abernethy, chief executive officer of Fox Television Stations, said: “I am delighted to welcome Amber, one of our strongest news directors, to the general manager team. Her knowledge of the market and extensive local news experience will certainly be an asset in continuing to grow and lead the Seattle stations.”

Most recently, Eikel was VP-news director of KTVU-KICU, Fox’s duopoly in San Francisco, since 2017. Prior to that, she was the duopoly’s assistant news director.

Previously, Eikel was executive producer at KIRO Seattle, and before that, KTNV Las Vegas. Earlier in her career, she was a senior producer for WTMJ Milwaukee.

Eikel began her career as a producer, executive producer, and interim news director for KMIR Palm Springs, Calif.

The post Amber Eikel Named GM Of Fox Duopoly In Seattle appeared first on TV News Check.

Jack Abernethy, CEO of Fox Television Stations, said: “In Jeff’s 25+ years at KDFW/KDFI he has demonstrated a superior work ethic and a skill for delivering consistent and high-quality results. He is an excellent choice to continue leading a stellar station.”

Gurley has been with KDFW-KDFI since 1997. Most recently, he has spent the last 13 years as VP-director of sales for the duopoly. Gurley began at the stations as the national sales manager, and was promoted to local sales manager and, later, vice president and general sales manager.

Before joining the duopoly, he was a team manager for Seltel Television in Dallas, TX, a national account executive at Petry Television in Dallas, a regional sales manager at KOTV Tulsa, Okla., and a local account executive at KDAF Dallas.

Gurley began his career as a local account executive at KFDM Beaumont, Tex.

A graduate of Louisiana State University, he holds a Bachelor of Science degree in marketing.

The post Jeff Gurley Named GM Of Fox Duopoly In Dallas appeared first on TV News Check.

Chuck Steinmetz

Jack Abernethy, FTS chief executive officer, said: “We would like to thank Chuck for his dedication to Fox 6 and congratulate him on a seasoned career of consistent success. Over the past 20 years with FTS, Glenn has proven himself to be a valuable asset to the FTS sales team. He is a great example of the depth of our bench and promoting talented people from within our group. I know that his experience and drive will ensure the continued success of this important television station.”

Steinmetz has been with WITI since 1996. He has been SVP-GM since 2001, after his promotion from vice president and general sales manager, and before that, local sales manager. Previously, Steinmetz was national sales manager for KTVX Salt Lake City.

Prior to that, he spent over six years as an Account Executive and Regional Sales Manager for KMSP, the FOX-owned station in Minneapolis. Steinmetz began his career as an Account Executive for WCGV Television in Milwaukee.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, he holds a bachelor’s degree in communications, business, accounting and marketing.

Steinmetz said: “Over the last 36 years I have worked with some of the best and most talented people this industry has to offer. Many of them at WITI Fox 6. My sincere thank you to everyone at the station who work so hard every day to make a difference. I couldn’t be more pleased to pass the baton to Glenn, who will continue the growth of Fox 6 and take the team to new heights.”

Berk has been with the Fox Television Stations for more than 20 years. He has spent the last nine years as vice president and general sales manager for the FTS duopoly in Chicago, WFLD-WPWR. Prior to that, he was vice president and general sales manager of WHBQ Memphis, when it was owned by Fox.

Previously, he was national sales manager for WTXF Philadelphia. And before that, he was an account executive for Fox Stations Sales in New York where he began as a sales trainee in 2002.

Berk began his career as a program analyst for HRP in New York. A graduate of the University of Missouri, Berk holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.

The post Glenn Berk Named GM Of WITI Milwaukee appeared first on TV News Check.

Jack Abernethy, chief executive officer of Fox Television Stations, said: “Sheila is a Fox Television Stations veteran of both news and sales who leads with her Midwestern charm so she is the perfect choice to elevate Fox Chicago to the next level.”

Oliver has been with FTS since 2002. Most recently, she has spent two years as the senior vice president-GM of KCPQ-KZJO Seattle. Prior to that, Oliver spent six years as the SVP-GM of KMSP-WFTC Minneapolis, and before that, was the duopoly’s VP of sales for more than 10 years.

Previously, she was the VP-general sales manager for KSAZ Phoenix. Earlier in her career, Oliver was GM of WTVR Richmond, Va., and WCGV-WVTV Milwaukee. She began her career in broadcasting at WUPW Toledo, Ohio, WJLB-FM Detroit.

She holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in both French and telecommunications from Michigan State University.

The post Sheila Oliver New GM Of WFLD-WPWR Chicago appeared first on TV News Check.

He said: “After 43 years in local broadcast sales, 32 of which have been with Fox Television Stations, I have decided to retire. My time here at FTS has been rewarding and working with such a talented group of people has been a true privilege. I’m thankful to Jack Abernethy for all his support over the years and although I look forward to this next chapter, I will sincerely miss all of the incredible relationships I have made during my tenure.”

Jack Abernethy, chief executive officer of Fox Television Stations, said: “Over the past 32 years, Jim Burke has been responsible for billions of dollars of local sales, probably more than anyone else in the history of local TV. During his extraordinary career here at Fox, Jim has earned the trust and admiration of his colleagues and led a meritocracy with a training program that has produced countless general managers and sales executives.”

Prior to Burke’s becoming FTS president of sales in 1997, he was VP-GM of the Fox-owned duopoly in Los Angeles, KTTV and KCOP, helping drive it to No. 1 in news weekday mornings at 7-9 and evenings at 10-11 for the first time in the station’s history.

Before that, he was general sales manager at Fox’s WTTG-WDCA Washington where he was quickly promoted to VP-GM. Previously, Burke held the roles of local sales manager, general sales manager and director of sales for KCBS Los Angeles and CBS National Sales in New York. He began his career in broadcasting working for Blair TV NYC in research and as an account executive.

Throughout his career, Burke has led numerous sales teams that generated billions of local sales advertising dollars. In October 2002, he created the Fox Stations Sales training program with Joe Oulvey and Liz Pritchard resulting in more than 80 people moving into permanent sales roles with Fox, many into senior leadership positions. In February 2021, Burke launched Fox Local Extension (FLX) with Michael Page and Tom Fleming to jumpstart Fox Local digital sales efforts.

The post Jim Burke, Retiring As Head Of FTS Ad Sales appeared first on TV News Check.

The discussion will examine station groups’ progress in moving live news to the cloud along with the differences in cloud adoption between networks and local stations. It will also consider how to leverage the cloud for both network and local station operations.

“Given the current state of technology, the key question is what makes sense to keep on prem and what broadcast functions make sense to move to public or private cloud,” said TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp. “This panel will confront those questions directly drawing from their immediate experience.”

Register here.

Speakers:

Tim Joyce, SVP of Engineering, Operations and Technology, Fox Television Stations — Prior to joining FTS, Joyce spent nearly three years as the SVP of media and broadcast engineering for Fox Corp. Previously, he was the SVP of technology business relations for Fox Networks Group in Los Angeles, and before that, as VP of broadcast operations for Fox Networks Group in Europe and Africa.

Joyce spent six years as VP of operations and production services for National Geographic Channels International. He began his career as a senior editor for Fox Latin American Channels. A graduate of the University of Southern California, Joyce holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations and Spanish.

Mike Palmer, Senior Director, Media Management, Sinclair Broadcast Group — Prior to his current role at Sinclair, Palmer was CTO of Masstech, where he was responsible for defining and overseeing the company’s technical strategies for developing new technologies that allow it to grow its position in existing and new markets.

Palmer is an active contributor to SMPTE standards and is also spokesperson emeritus of the MOS Protocol Group, an organization which he led for nearly 15 years which was awarded a 2017 Technology and Engineering Emmy. Palmer is also a recipient of Broadcasting + Cable’s Technology Leadership Award. Both awards recognize the impact of technical standards and highly integrated systems on the work done every day by thousands of journalists around the world.

Prior to Masstech, Palmer worked for the Associated Press, where he was director of ENPS design and integration strategy.  Earlier, Palmer held both editorial and technical management positions at the local, group and national levels in the U.S.

Sam Peterson, Chief Operating Officer, Bitcentral — As chief operating officer, Peterson has direct control of the organization’s operations in accordance with Bitcentral’s strategic objectives and business plans. Peterson is a career broadcast professional with more than 32 years of experience including over 20 years in various leadership roles at large, industry-leading corporations.

He has held positions spanning product management, marketing, direct sales and sales engineering. His broad experience spans all aspects of media production and distribution including automation, master control and playout, news gathering and production, post-production, signal management and live production. He has successfully overseen the integration of several products from international acquisitions into the North American market.

On the OTT side, Peterson has extensive networking expertise in contribution and distribution networks for live streaming and video on demand. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Austin College.

Matt Varney, VP of Technology & Operations, NBCUniversal Local — He is focused on helping harness technology, develop leaders and equip teams in their mission to engage viewers with the people, places and events that matter most. Varney believes in challenging the status quo and getting people excited about where new technical possibilities intersect with business opportunities and challenges. And of course, building cool new things.

Over 16 years with NBCU, Varney has worked with some of the best teams in the industry designing and implementing state of the art technologies for modern news and production workflows. His projects include the design and buildout of The Studios at DFW, a 75,000 square-foot news facility that is home to KXAS (NBC), KXTX (Telemundo) and LX, the division’s TV and OTT network for millennials and Gen Z-ers. Varney also oversaw the implementation of the division’s ST-2110 based, virtualized “Production Cloud” infrastructure in DFW, which remotely hosts live local news production for multiple stations across the county.

Varney knows that while progress is made at the bleeding edge, it’s the teams you cultivate that can turn the bleeding into leading.

He is a reformed music school graduate living in a video world and holds a BA in production and engineering from Berklee College of Music.

Andy Warman, SVP Product, Imagine Communications — He oversees playout, infrastructure and networking solutions. These solutions encompass video processing, routing, video server, storage, automation and media workflows for broadcast and OTT applications and leverage cloud computing, on premises systems and the internet to enable linear services that will scale as customer needs evolve.

Before joining Imagine Communications, Warman was director of product management for live linear services — Comcast Technology Solutions’ self-service channel delivery, live linear processing, virtual hannel and linear rights metadata management solutions for content providers, MVPDs and vMVPDs.

Warman spent seven years at Harmonic as director of playout solutions for its VOS360 cloud-based channel origination and distribution solution and product manager for the Spectrum media server and shared storage solutions. He also served on the board of directors of the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) and chaired the trade association’s marketing working group, which promotes the adoption of media over IP solutions to replace legacy SDI uncompressed video workflows.

He also spent 11 years at Harris Broadcast (now Imagine Communications) where he drove Harris’ channel-in-a-box strategy, video server platform, storage, editing and graphics product lines. He has a wealth of domain experience in the production and playout arena, as well as automation, news production, content creation and infrastructure common to broadcast workflows.

Glen Dickson, Contributing Editor, TVNewsCheck (Moderator)

The post TVN Webinar: Developing The Best Hybrid Cloud Strategies appeared first on TV News Check.

Steve Levi

Fox Television Stations on Wednesday promoted Steve Levi to vice president and news director of its Phoenix duopoly of KSAZ (Fox) and KUTP (MNT) effective next week.

He has been with the stations since 1994, most recently as assistant news director, and succeeds Doug Bannard, who has been with the Fox Television Stations for 33 years, and who announced his retirement today.

Michael Lewis, KSAZ-KUTP SVP-GM, said: “We thank Doug for being a force of innovation, dedication, and leadership at KSAZ for over 33 years. His career will leave an indelible mark at the station and his contributions will resonate within the company for many years to come.

“Steve is a 28-year veteran of the KSAZ newsroom. He has been an integral part of our success over the years and his promotion will provide a seamless transition for the entire news team.”

Doug Bannard

Bannard joined the Fox-owned Phoenix duopoly in 1990. He has spent the last 26 years as its vice president and news director, during which he oversaw the launch of the station’s website and social media platforms, created partnerships with key entities including newspapers, radio stations, and universities, and increased the station’s news production from 37.5 to 78.5 hours a week while maintaining its dominant position as market leader. In addition, he spearheaded the launch of the Fox TV national streaming news service now known as LiveNOW from Fox. He began at the station as a producer, then an executive producer, and later an assistant news director. Prior to joining the duopoly, he spent six years holding various roles at KVOA Tucson. A graduate of the University of Arizona, Bannard holds a Bachelor of Art degree in Political Science.

Bannard said: “I am grateful to Fox Television Stations for the constant support which allowed me to build and maintain the market’s best news organization, and for embracing the creation of LiveNOW from Fox. None of my success would have been possible without the dedication and hard work of my amazing colleagues throughout the years. I have been fortunate to work alongside Steve and know he is ready to take the reins in the newsroom.”

Levi has been with the Fox Television Stations since 1994. He started as an intern, and was promoted to assignment editor, associate producer, producer and executive producer before being named assistant news director, his role for the last eight years. In this position, Levi has helped oversee news coverage for both daily newscasts and high-profile events, as well as played a key role in helping create and launch new newscasts and digital initiatives.

A graduate of Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Levi holds a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism.

The post Steve Levi Upped To News Director At KSAZ-KUTP Phoenix appeared first on TV News Check.

Jack Abernethy, chief executive officer of FTS, said: “Susie has done a stellar job in leading our Houston sales team. Her extensive knowledge of the broadcast industry and strategic approach to our business make her the ideal choice as we look to maintain and grow KTBC’s position in the Austin market. It is fortunate when succession planning allows for the best candidates to come from within and I am confident that she is up to the challenge of being a FOX general manager.”

Doucette-Pyle has been with FTS for 25 years. She has spent the last 21 years at its duopoly in Houston, KRIV (Fox) and KTXH (MNT), where she started as local sales manager and was promoted to vice president and general sales manager in 2012.

Prior to that, Doucette-Pyle began her career in sales at Petry Television as a sales assistant before becoming an account executive for FTS, and later an account executive for Fox Station Sales.

She began her career in the media industry as an intern and weekend writer for ABC-owned KTRK Houston.

A graduate of the University of Houston, Doucette-Pyle holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in radio and television. She is also a graduate of the NAB’s Broadcast Leadership Training Program and True North Leadership Development Program.

The post Susie Doucette-Pyle Named GM Of KTBC Austin appeared first on TV News Check.

“It has been my honor and privilege to manage Fox Television Stations from ‘fledgling’ network status to the dynamic broadcasting company it is today. Working for Jack Abernethy was never dull. He is a true leader in the industry who pushes his managers to work and think outside of their comfort zone to produce creative results. I have loved watching the Dallas-Fort Worth market grow over the years, along with KDFW Fox 4 and KDFI 27. Overseeing the development of this group of broadcast professionals has definitely been the highlight of my career. I will miss this wonderful team, but look forward to the next chapter.”

Jack Abernethy, Fox Television Stations CEO, said: “We would like to thank Kathy for the tremendous job she has done in Dallas for the past 26 years, and as an invaluable veteran of both news and sales for FTS for 28 years. A truly great leader, she leaves a talented team, and decisive as ever, we laughed when she gave us four days’ notice. We will miss her. We wish Kathy nothing but the best in her retirement.”

Saunders has spent 26 years as SVP-GM of KDFW-KDFI. Prior to this, she joined the Fox Television Stations as VP-GM of WFXT Boston. Previously, Saunders was VP-general sales manager at KDAF Dallas before being promoted to VP-GM.

Before that, she began as national sales manager for WPGH Pittsburgh and was later promoted to general sales manager. Saunders began her career in broadcasting as an account executive for KCTV Kansas City, Mo. She holds a B.S. in journalism from the University of Kansas.

Saunders was named Texas Association of Broadcasters’ Pioneer Broadcaster of the Year in 2022 and Broadcasting & Cable’s General Manager of the Year in 2019. She is chairman of the board of directors for the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association, a member of the North Texas Final Four Local Organizing Committee Board of Directors, and member of the Texas Association of Broadcasters. She is on the board of directors and vice president of resource development for Girl’s Inc., and has held various roles and received many awards from the Alliance for Women in Media (AWM) throughout her career.

The post Kathy Saunders Retiring As GM Of KDFW-KDFI Dallas appeared first on TV News Check.

The free, user-friendly app is available across key platforms highlighting news, weather and programming from the Fox-owned stations in Washington, Atlanta and Detroit, with all stations set to launch this summer.

In making the announcement, Zellmer said: “Fox Local is the crucial next step in our overall streaming strategy, which is focused on providing viewers the easiest and fastest ways to watch their most trusted local news and programming.”

The Fox Local streaming app is immediately accessible on Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and Android TV devices, expanding into additional platforms soon. FTS will be rolling out local experiences for each of its 17 markets in the coming months, starting now with WTTG Washington, WAGA Atlanta and WJBK Detroit. Upon logging into the Fox Local app, users choose their market so they can stream local, live newscasts, get breaking news and weather, and find local programming from the Fox station most relevant to them. The app also provides access to national live streaming coverage from “LiveNOW from Fox,” Fox Soul and Fox Weather. Viewers can visit “foxlocal.com” to learn more.

Patrick Paolini, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the WTTG-WDCA Washington, said: “With this easy-to-use app, FTS is demonstrating its commitment to finding new ways to keep our loyal viewers up to date on all the news and local programs they trust.”

The post Fox Television Stations Debuts Fox Local Streaming App appeared first on TV News Check.

Mort Marcus

“Network primetime was down 17% in November, while from 9 to 5 o’clock, we’re only down 2%,” said Mort Marcus, co-president, with Ira Bernstein, of Lionsgate-owned Debmar-Mercury. “So, the areas that we’re playing in are not nearly as damaged as others, but I think every single area that you operate in television is kind of under attack.”

“It can’t be [doomed] because we have too much shelf space to fill,” said Frank Cicha, EVP, programming, Fox Television Stations. “Syndication isn’t the highest thing on the list that people care about as far as [retransmission consent fees], but that’s sort of freeing because you’re not beholden to try and duplicate what happened before. What matters is what kind of product people want to watch, putting that on the air and growing it.”

In the past two years, several major programs have ended, including Warner Bros.’ Ellen, Judge Mathis and People’s Court, Sony Pictures Television’s Dr. Oz, and CBS Media Ventures Dr. Phil and Rachael Ray. Franchise shows such as CBS’s Judge Judy and NBCUniversal’s Maury and Jerry Springer have ended original production and now air on stations only in repeats. And it’s increasingly hard to get a well-produced [read: expensive] show on the air and making money, which means the big studios are producing only product that they feel relatively confident they can get on the air.

“You need to make sure you are producing for a daypart where they have need for quality,” said Zack Hernandez, SVP-GM, U.S. syndication sales, Sony Pictures Entertainment. Sony has a new show in the market this year called Channel Surf, starring Craig Ferguson, that will be produced in the U.K.

“We need to develop for the need as opposed to what we think stations don’t already have,” Hernandez said. “You could only do it the other way when you anticipated a bidding war. And those days are sort of done. And we also need people to be upfront financially and not just say ‘we’d like the show,’ but ‘this is how much we’re willing to pay for it.’ A lot of times, there’s only one customer, so the ‘how much’ matters a lot.”

Debmar-Mercury’s Sherri, starring Sherri Shepherd, is a show that fits that description. Sherri premiered this year after Shepherd and many other guest hosts filled in for an ailing Wendy Williams the prior season. After Wendy Williams ended its run, Debmar-Mercury set up Sherri to fill the space on Fox Television Stations and many other stations across the country.

Earlier this year, stations renewed Sherri for two more seasons, giving that show a good opportunity to grow from the 0.7 live-plus-same-day national Nielsen household rating it’s currently averaging. According to Marcus, Sherri costs $35 million, all in, to produce, and is turning a profit.

“I think the way syndication could get doomed is if all we do is make $5 million or $6 million shows, because at some point the quality is not going to surface. So, I think the business has to support at least reasonable investment,” Marcus said.

In January, syndicators and station groups met at the Fox lot in Culver City, Calif., to discuss the industry’s challenges, and one topic that emerged from that meeting is the need for closer and more honest collaboration.

Debmar-Mercury and the Fox Television Stations have long partnered to develop, test and launch shows, including Wendy Williams and others. But now, other syndicators — that once approached all competitors as mortal enemies — are taking a page from that book to produce and distribute shows, like Fox and CBS are doing on Pictionary, starring Jerry O’Connell. It also includes station groups, that have worked together in the past to produce shows — such as Right This Minute, which ran for 12 years — but which need to be willing to run shows produced by other groups in order to maintain a healthy ecosystem.

Dave Howitt

“I think we need to have more cooperation within the station groups,” said Dave Howitt, SVP of programing, Sinclair Inc. “In the past, there’s been a hesitancy to take that on, but I think you’ll see station groups do more cooperative ventures going forward because we need to get to a national platform to make the show successful.”

In a unique partnership, Sinclair is working with CSI creator Anthony Zuiker to develop a slate of shows that Sinclair expects to sell in national syndication for a fall 2024 debut.

One way stations are managing having less programming from which to choose is by adding more news. In many cases, they prefer this, because they get to keep the ad inventory, but there’s a limit to how much ad inventory the market can support.

“There’s a cost-benefit analysis we do when a show is canceled or if we have a show where it’s getting a little cost-prohibitive to keep renewing it,” said Tom Zappala, SVP, content and programming, E.W. Scripps. “We look at other opportunities in the marketplace and at our competitors. It’s really a strategy issue.”

Frank Cicha

“What you never want to do is make those kinds of impulse expansions and then have to pull them back later,” Cicha said. “Political drives so much of what we do, and there’ll be plenty of news expansions out there. But we’d like to look at new formats as well.”

Station groups, like Scripps, also are starting to produce original content, such as Bounce’s Act Your Age, to feed their diginets and FAST (free ad-supported television) channels. Some of that content could feasibly end up in broadcast syndication.

That said, some shows that stations produce are specifically designed to serve their local markets and perhaps that’s where they fit best.

“We don’t really look at national as being the endgame,” Cicha said. “I think that leads to rushing it a little bit. When you get in this rush to be everything for everybody, you end up being sort of nothing for nobody, so we want those original local programs to work within those markets.”

Looking ahead, expect more big names to try their hands at syndication because it’s a platform where they can define, own and expand their brands — on the air, on digital and on social.

“The one thing that’s awesome about syndication is that big talent can come in,” Marcus said. “Right now, if the talent goes to a network or streaming services, they get their weekly license fee and their producer fee, but they don’t own the show. We believe that syndication is one thing that is still left for them. We’re seeing it in some of the deals we’re going to announce later with some big names. Talent is attracted to the fact that they can actually own the show with us and if the show becomes a hit, they can really make money.”

Read more from Programming Everywhere here.

The post Syndication, While Challenged, Remains Essential To TV Stations appeared first on TV News Check.

“This important collaboration with Amazon further solidifies our commitment to bring FTS’s powerhouse local news content to as many people as possible,” said Jeff Zellmer, FTS senior vice president, digital operations. “We know that choice and accessibility matter to our viewers and this launch is another key step in our overall strategy and goal of giving our viewers the live and on-demand content from the stations they love.”

This collaboration began in March 2022 with the initial distribution of LiveNOW from Fox and Fox Soul FAST channels. In December 2022, FTS’s local news content debuted across Amazon products with the distribution of the first five stations: WTXF Philadelphia, KTVU San Francisco, KSAZ Phoenix, WJBK Detroit and KMSP Minneapolis.

The remaining 12 — WNYW New York, KTTV Los Angeles, WFLD Chicago, KDFW Dallas, WAGA Atlanta, KRIV Houston, WTTG Washington, KCPQ Seattle, WTVT Tampa Bay, WOFL Orlando, KTBC Austin and WITI Milwaukee — are now available across Amazon products, such as Fire TV and Echo Show devices. In addition to live content, FTS is also distributing local news video on demand (VOD) clips.

Amazon’s News app on Fire TV is a free and customizable news aggregator that is supported with advertising. The app comes built into the Fire TV experience on all Fire TV streaming media players and smart TVs in the U.S. When viewers open the News app on the Fire TV home screen for the first time, they can select the news that matters most to them from national and local sources.

Customers in the U.S. can also watch local news channels in 250 cities from more than 300 local news providers on Echo Show devices.

The post Fox Television Stations And Amazon Announce New Content Distribution Deal appeared first on TV News Check.

The awards will be presented at the NAB Show in Las Vegas on April 18 at 6 p.m.

“Nadia Khan’s development of a strategic marketing and communications plan, including digital, social media and demand-generation programs, drove sales while positioning LTN as an increasingly important technology provider to the media industry,” said TVNewsCheck Publisher and Co-Founder Kathy Haley. “Her brand integration of new verticals after LTN made four rapid-fire acquisitions sped up the company’s momentum, while she also developed a new market proposition and marketing strategy.”

Of Emily Stone, Haley said: “Her oversight of a complete overhaul of the Fox TV websites and apps resulted in a better user experience, while adding new features, such as the ability to watch live news from of the Fox markets on each station’s website. The integral role developing and expanding the streaming service LiveNOW from Fox, created an unfiltered look at live news breaking across the U.S.”

Of Hannah Barnhardt, Haley said: “Her development of a production and operational strategy for bringing to market a cloud-native, technology-agnostic operational management platform for media supply chain operational users created an important new option for content creators and distributors competing in a multimedia environment. Her earlier work, at Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, helped to transform the company from a services business to a product and technology driven organization.”

TVNewsCheck’s Women in Technology Leadership Award recognizes women who have contributed substantially toward advancing their industry technologically. It supports the National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation’s Technology Apprenticeship Program, which trains, informs and recruits a diverse workforce that meets the emerging technology and engineering needs within the broadcast community.

Register here to attend the 13th annual Women in Technology Awards Presentation Ceremony and Reception at NAB Show in Las Vegas.

Previous Technology Women to Watch Award honorees include:

• Kylee Peňa, manager, creative technologies program management, Netflix
• Diane Strutner, CEO and co-founder, Datazoom
• Rose Adkins Hulse, founder and CEO of ScreenHits TV
• Yushi Xu, senior architect, FreeWheel
• Sally Hattori, executive director, product development at Walt Disney Studio’s StudioLAB
• Kate Ketcham, director, Media Composer product management, Avid
• Deb Grivois, director of engineering, WLWT Cincinnati
• Katy Noland, senior R&D technologist, BBC
• Larissa Goerner, director of advanced live solutions, Grass Valley
• Deborah Adeogba, now senior media experience manager, Microsoft
• Jennifer Leung, now senior director at AppD Labs and Emerging Tech
• Anne Marie Rohaly, director of accessibility policy and standards, Microsoft
• Tania Paz, VP of digital media operations and technology, Telemundo
• Yvonne Thomas, now strategic technologist, Digital TV Group
• Sara Kudrle, now marketing director, PESA and VP education, SMPTE
• Alison Neplokh, now VP innovation and strategy, NAB

The post Nadia Khan, Emily Stone, Hannah Barnhardt Named TVN’s Technology Women To Watch appeared first on TV News Check.

Panelists include Frank Cicha, EVP programming, Fox Television Stations; Mort Marcus, co-president, Debmar-Mercury; Dave Howitt, SVP of programming, Sinclair Broadcast Group; Jeffrey Wolf, chief distribution officer, The E.W. Scripps Co.; and Zack Hernandez, SVP & general sales manager, U.S. Syndication Sales, Sony Pictures Television TVNewsCheck Contributing Editor Paige Albiniak will moderate the 11 a.m. PT panel at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas.

“The syndication business has seen tectonic changes, and there’s no one better to chart what they mean and what’s likely to come next than Frank, Mort, Dave, Jeffrey and Zack,” said Michael Depp, NewsCheckMedia chief content officer and TVNewsCheck editor. “This discussion will burrow right into where streaming has dramatically disrupted syndication but also opened up new opportunities, and where content providers should be calibrating their offerings to rapidly evolving station group needs.”

Programming Everywhere gathers industry leaders to talk about the evolving business of content creation and distribution, with a focus on new development, reinventing local and national news and extending media brands on streaming.

TV station group senior executives will join programming, news and marketing leaders, syndicated programming executives and streaming media and technology leaders to take on issues such as the changing economics of syndicated programming, the relationship between FAST channels and the evolution of broadcasting, transforming television news and strategies for creating a programming everywhere business.

Participants will also consider their No. 1 challenge: creating more content for a multimedia audience, and how technologies like artificial intelligence, the cloud and IP production platforms can free up creative talent while streamlining costs.

Register here for Programming Everywhere.

The post Explore Syndication’s Changing Business Model At Programming Everywhere appeared first on TV News Check.

David Keneipp

In making the announcement, Abernethy said: “During his 30-year tenure at Fox, David made significant contributions and was an invaluable and dedicated member of the FTS executive team. We will miss him greatly. We are excited to welcome Chris to FTS as he is known as a strategic executive with strong legal acumen, and we are all looking forward to working with him in his new role.”

Reed said: “As someone with a decades-long passion for broadcast media, I am honored and grateful to be joining one of the largest and most respected O&O groups in the country. My predecessor David Keneipp leaves big shoes to fill, but has equipped me with a powerhouse team that is well positioned to serve FTS as it navigates the challenges ahead.”

Reed has been with Fox Corp. since March 2019. Most recently, he was senior vice president of intellectual property, content protection, and litigation, and prior to that was vice president of corporate legal. Previously, Reed joined 21st Century Fox in 2014 as Senior Counsel of Content Protection Policy before his promotion to vice president of global content protection in 2017.

Before that, he held various roles at the U.S. Copyright Office, including acting chief of information and record division, senior advisor for policy and special projects, and special advisor to the Register of Copyrights.

Earlier in his career, Reed was a trial attorney in the media, entertainment, and communications section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division.

He writes frequently about legal issues in media and entertainment. Reed’s most recent book, Digital Media Law: A Practical Guide for the Media and Entertainment Industries was released last year by Routledge.

A graduate of Lehigh University, he holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business and economics. Reed earned his Juris Doctor and Master of Laws in intellectual property, commerce, and technology from the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law.

The post Chris Reed Named Legal Affairs EVP Of Fox Television Stations appeared first on TV News Check.

The idea for the summit emerged shortly after the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last October, postponing for the third straight year its annual January conference where distributors met with stations to discuss and sell their syndicated programming.

Fox Television Stations executives organized and hosted the event, hoping to put a focus on the working relationship between syndicated program suppliers and the companies that buy shows from them. Motivating them, in part, was the fact that NATPE’s conference had over the years expanded its audience and agenda to the point at which domestic syndication represented about only 20% of its program and attendance base, according to numerous conference attendees contacted for this story.

The TV Station and Syndication Summit limited attendance to TV program creators and distributors and station groups, and there were no sales pitches, just discussions on how syndicated programmers can become more meaningful to TV stations by producing quality programming at affordable prices. It was more an exchange of ideas than competitors trying to sell and buy programming already created.

Beyond that, discussions addressed how the studios and stations could cooperate more during the development process by sharing ideas about how to create more affordable programming, particularly for smaller stations.

“At this conference, we were talking about how to produce more affordable shows for the stations rather than trying to sell them shows,” says Mort Marcus, co-president of Debmar-Mercury. “We discussed the process.”

Ira Bernstein and Mort Marcus, co-presidents of Debmar-Mercury.

“In order for our business to succeed, we need to change how we see each other and deal with each other and how we come up with solutions together that the syndication industry faces,” says Stephen Brown, EVP of programming and development for Fox First Run and Fox Television Stations.

“We need to examine how we look at our industry and look at issues we have not looked at before,” Brown says. Among them, he says, is the impact of streaming on linear syndication.

“The idea was to hold a conference without all the usual NATPE pomp and trimmings that at NATPE is usually spread over four days or more, and that costs large amounts of money to attend,” says Frank Cicha, EVP, programming at Fox Television Stations. “We stripped away all the tinsel and held a conference without excesses that ran only two days.”

The idea for the summit originally came from Bob Cook, head of distribution and sales, Fox First Run, and both Brown and Cicha, who worked on putting the program together.

The task was a formidable one as the company had only a little over two months to organize everything from the conference program to inviting attendees and making arrangements with hotels near the Fox lot that would accommodate the attendees.

Competitor Cooperation

In the spirit of industry cooperation, Fox officials contacted CBS on the syndication side and Sinclair Broadcast Group on the station group side to work with them in the planning. Steve LoCascio, president of CBS Media Ventures, and Arthur Hasson, head of programming at Sinclair stations, both assisted in putting together various aspects of the summit, Fox officials said.

About 120 studio and station executives attended the inaugural summit and Brown says another unique aspect was that all the attendees, including competing syndicators, ate breakfast and lunch together during each of the two days of the conference. And in some instances, competitors sat with each other.

“We need to be a community that works together going forward,” Brown says. “We’re all on the same ship.”

The first day of the conference included a series of speakers who addressed issues that all the attendees face, like reaching the changing types of viewers, streaming opportunities for syndicators and TV stations, different types of data usage and the possibilities of using digital.

No Media Coverage Permitted

Organizers convened the summit without media coverage to foster a more candid atmosphere. “We really did have some open and frank discussions that we normally can’t have when the press is there,” Brown says.

Cicha adds: “Everyone attending didn’t come to the same unified conclusions during our discussions. There was healthy debate. But that doesn’t mean that moving forward we can’t all work together.”

Attendees Impressed

Greg Conklin, VP of corporate programming at Gray Television, gave the summit high marks. “The speakers were informative and well-received and when you took breaks in between sessions, everyone you wanted to — and needed to — speak with in our business was right there.”

Fox’s Cicha says that was an advantage of having it in one main theater on the Fox lot.

“It was time for us to do something different and this worked,” Conklin says. “Unlike at NATPE, where we were only a small part of the overall attendance, at this conference it was just like all family. We saw people we haven’t seen in a while, even when we were going to NATPE, because it was so spread out with so many people and so many unrelated events at so many locations. This was all the same site.”

Conklin adds, “We need to do things together, moving forward, to talk even with our competitors about solving common problems.”

Debmar-Mercury’s Marcus, who was also a panelist at one of the sessions, says, “I thought it was great. It wasn’t the typical NATPE sales conference. We did on the second day have some syndicator and station meetings but even in those it was more about discussing industry issues rather than trying to sell the stations any programming.”

Ira Bernstein, Debmar-Mercury co-president, stresses that the discussions were about “how do we make the TV stations more comfortable working with us” and “how we can make shows for the stations going forward.”

No Deals Done

While no deals were done during the summit, Sony Pictures Television did announce prior to the opening night cocktail party that it is planning to launch a new 30-minute late night syndicated talk show this fall called Channel Surf with Craig Ferguson.

Ferguson hosted The Late Late Show on CBS from 2005 until 2014.

The new syndicated show is being produced by Whisper North, a division of SPT production company Whisper.

Future Of The Summit

While nothing for certain has been locked, the Fox executives and those execs from the stations and studios who attended this year’s inaugural summit say it will more than likely become a regular January conference, could be held a week later next year and could also be given a new official name.

“I did not come across one station group or distributor attendee who felt we shouldn’t be doing this summit again next year,” Fox’s Cicha says.

Fox’s Jack Abernethy (l) and Frank Cicha with Jennifer Hudson (Fox Television Stations photo)

Cicha adds that some future possibilities include other studios sponsoring it or also holding it on their own lots as a cost-saving method.

Debmar-Mercury’s Marcus said the organizers will have to figure out who will attend going forward outside of the syndicators and stations. But plans would be to open the summit to the smaller distributors who did not attend this year.

Companies represented at the summit included Fox, Sinclair, CBS, NBC, Cox, Nexstar, E.W. Scripps, Tegna, Gray, Hearst, Weigel, Allen Media Group, Sunbeam, American Spirit Media, Mission Broadcasting, Lockwood and Patriot.

On the programming side were Fox First Run Production, CBS Media Ventures, Debmar-Mercury, Sony Pictures Television, MGM Studios, Entertainment Studios, Trifecta Entertainment & Media and PPI Releasing.

What About NATPE?

The TV Station and Syndication Strategy Summit organizers say while they are planning to hold the conference again next January, they do not know how it will fit in with a revived NATPE conference.

Canadian publishing company Brunico Communications recently acquired the assets of NATPE from a bankruptcy court but has not released any details on reviving the annual NATPE January conference in 2024. And while some syndicators on the NATPE board have had some preliminary conversations with Brunico officials, nothing definitive has been discussed.

“We did have conversations with the new NATPE owners about the summit,” says Fox’s Brown. “They told us they hope to restore the NATPE conference, but the stations may believe attending the annual summit would be a better way to use their money.”

Programming Everywhere At NAB Show

Syndicated programming will also be a key topic addressed at a new TVNewsCheck conference to be presented at the NAB Show in Las Vegas.

Programming Everywhere, set for April 15 at the Encore, will tackle TV station groups’ need for more programming with sessions focused on how FAST Channels are forging NextGen TV programming strategies; rethinking genres like games, travel and talk; fresh approaches to the news franchise; syndication’s changing business model and strategies for building a content everywhere business.

“There is a pressing need for broadcasters and program suppliers to put their heads together and have frank, constructive discussions about how they’re going to program more intelligently and efficiently,” said Michael Depp, chief content officer at NewsCheckMedia LLC. “Syndicated program buyers and sellers are a big part of that conversation, but it must also include innovators in news, streaming, digital and marketing as well as content creators.

“Programming Everywhere will foster conversation as well as showcase the programming innovations that are bubbling up in a multimedia world.”

Find more information about Programming Everywhere here.

The post Station Groups Look To Fill A NATPE-Sized Hole With Summit appeared first on TV News Check.

Hearst Television, along with other station partners, also renewed the show for season two, which covers more than 60% of the country together with Fox.

David Decker, Warner Bros. Discovery president of content sales, said: “From Day 1, we’ve had the best of the best here — a great host in Jennifer, amazing producers, terrific guests, and some of the best television station partners in America. When all that comes together – it’s a hit.”

Franks Cicha, executive vice president of programming for Fox Television Stations, added: “Given what we’ve seen so far, this program absolutely deserves a second year. Thanks to Jennifer Hudson and her fantastic production team.”

Hosted by Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner Jennifer Hudson, The Jennifer Hudson Show debuted as the 2022-23 season’s No. 1 new first-run series for the premiere week of Sept. 12 with households and total viewers and is the No. 1 new first-run strip this 2022-23 season in average weekly reach, reaching a 5.2 million total P2+ weekly viewers on average.

The series was the only new program nominated for a 2022 People’s Choice Award in the Daytime Talk Show category. During the show’s freshman season, Hudson was also honored as one of People Magazine’s “People of the Year” and one of Glamour’s “Women of the Year.”

Hudson said: “Working on this show alongside my incredible team and our amazing partners has been one of the greatest joys of my career. We have been on this journey together from day one and I am so thrilled to take it to the next level. I could not be more grateful to audiences across America for letting me into their homes everyday as we empower and inspire one another. I can’t wait to show you what we have up our sleeves in season two!”

Mike Darnell, president, Warner Bros. unscripted television, said: “Jennifer is an incredible talent and can literally accomplish anything she sets her sights on. This show is second to none because of her and all of the talented producers and crew who work daily to make every single episode special. A season two pick-up this early on proves that this show is here to stay.”

Produced by Warner Bros. Unscripted Television in association with Telepictures and distributed in national syndication by Warner Bros. Discovery Content Sales, The Jennifer Hudson Show is executive produced by Mary Connelly, Andy Lassner, Corey Palent, Jennifer Hudson, Lisa Kasteler Calio, Graehme Morphy and Walter Williams III, with Shani Black as co-executive producer.

The post ‘The Jennifer Hudson Show’ Renewed For Season 2 appeared first on TV News Check.

The cash-plus-barter freshman talk show hosted by actress, comedian and the Daytime Emmy-winning co-host of The View, Sherri Shepherd, gains the long-term extension from its anchor station group based on its first-season success.

“I am so thrilled that Sherri has been renewed for two more years,” Shepherd said. “I launched this show with the mission to give daytime viewers a ‘good time,’ just like my theme song says. I am so appreciative that Fox and Debmar-Mercury have partnered with me to continue bringing more laughter, joy and inspiration to my audience.”

Frank Cicha, EVP of programming for Fox Television Stations, said: “In success, the hour leading out of a.m. news can act as a springboard for a station’s entire daytime, and it’s not easy to find the right fit. Sherri’s mix of professionalism and competitive strength has been a great fit for us, so we’re happy to be bringing her program back.”

Debmar-Mercury Co-Presidents Ira Bernstein and Mort Marcus said: “We initially sold Sherri for one year based on our strong belief that this extraordinarily talented host would be successful and her show would become a long-term talk franchise. Our thanks go to our good friends and longtime partners at Fox, who shared in our enthusiasm and have renewed their faith in Sherri with this long-term commitment.”

Currently cleared in 98% of the U.S, including stations from other leading broadcast groups CBS, Sinclair and Nexstar, the weekday talk show originates from New York’s Chelsea Studios in front of a studio audience.

The post Fox TV Stations Renews ‘Sherri’ For Two Years Through 2024-25 Season appeared first on TV News Check.

“We’ve really done a lot of educating on how important it is to be able to tag things appropriately because then it’s much easier to discover it,” Strouse-Kenney told the audience at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum on Tuesday in New York City. “It’s an uphill battle, but the idea of getting all this content into a singular repository that we can all access, as things come up, we can look back.”

The anecdote was shared during a panel discussion, Creating More Content for a Multimedia Audience, moderated by TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp. It highlighted the importance of improved visibility and transparency within networks as publishers scramble to fill time with quality content across a growing number of channels, without overly taxing resources and budgets.

Strouse-Kenney said Court TV has taken the same approach to the development of other content steeped heavily in archival materials. When Showtime premiered a docuseries devoted to Phil Spector, the late music producer who was convicted of murder in 2009, Court TV refurbished archived trial footage into a new package.

The archived content doesn’t even have to be so old that it drums up feelings of nostalgia for it to hit audiences hard. Strouse-Kenney said she recently stumbled across tagged coverage of the war in Ukraine from earlier this year that hadn’t made it into an initial linear broadcast.

“We put it up on YouTube; we had over five million views,” Strouse-Kenney said. “Those are the types of nuggets that, if we can make things easier to discover, there is really long tail value on a lot of the content you already have.”

Though a worthwhile endeavor, Strouse-Kenney observed that the process of digitizing old tapes and tagging them with useful metadata sometimes feels like an “overwhelming” proposition. But new technology can help. AI-driven machines can generate transcriptions, embed metadata into digitally converted tapes and even offer recommendations of content that might pair well with previous searches. There’s also cloud technology that makes access to content across a company far more widespread, spurring greater collaboration possibilities.

“[There’s] a great opportunity for technology to show what it is it can do to help people work on the same thing,” said Stephane Guez, co-founder and CTO of Dalet. “Before, other [collaborators] were in the same room; now they are not necessarily in the same room, they are across nations. [There’s] this notion of being able to work around a platform that provides a space where you can see what everyone is doing.”

This new reality, Guez pointed out, helps keep those with creative minds focused on creative productivity instead of taking on rudimentary tasks that ultimately feel as though they function as a mere time-suck.

“You really want everyone to produce things together and contribute to the production of content that, in the end, is going to be more effective,” Guez said.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has partnered with Sony to develop another tech tool to help speed up productivity and boost transparency and visibility. Ernie Ensign, senior director of news technology at Sinclair, said five of his company’s stations are working with a camera innovation on a pilot basis, allowing a photographer in the field to upload footage to a cloud-based grid, which the digital team can access immediately.

“If it’s a big breaking story the digital team can grab video and produce for the website or mobile app while the story is being shot,” Depp said. Ensign explained the footage is also tagged with metadata by the photographer as it’s uploaded to the cloud, joining other metadata-rich content in the company’s repository.

“You don’t know what you have until somebody can look at it,” Ensign said. “Crews out in the field don’t always communicate [what they’ve captured] effectively enough and we find in certain instances there’s content there that [is] visible to producers back at the station and they may [recognize] that it’s great to blast out everywhere.”

Discoverability of footage also allows breaking news producers to realize the possibilities of multiple stories built out of coverage secured in one sitting, perhaps with the addition of broader context, Ensign said.

Publishing companies would do well to leverage their entire network as well — a much easier proposition with all the innovative tools on the market that allow for greater collaboration between newsrooms. A number of organizations are generating content out of centralized teams, with affiliates producing related stories in concert, specially iterated for a local audience. Gray Television’s InvestigateTV is one outlet that has effectively adopted this approach.

“Whenever they have a national investigation that’s getting ready to roll out, they’ll send all the markets individual data for that particular market if the market wants to localize or even customize that investigation for their viewers,” said Lisa Allen, Gray’s VP and GM of Washington operations.

She disclosed that regional markets are coming together to build capitol bureau reporter positions who provide far-reaching political reporting emanating out of state government hubs and cited the recent documentary Bridging the Great Health Divide as another example of Gray’s group-wide collaborative efforts that paid off. InvestigateTV, Gray’s D.C. bureau and stations in other markets worked together to produce the hour-long film about various health concerns in the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia.

Fox Television Stations’ 24/7 streamer LiveNow also leverages the production power of the company’s 17 O&O stations to aggregate — or, as Depp put it, “DJ” — news from across the country. Emily Stone, VP of digital content operations, said a key to the entire operation is LiveNow’s producers being able to inform its partners about its mission and what content they’re looking for.

“It is a lot of communication and process,” Stone said. “We have to know what’s out there in order to know what our best options are and be able to prioritize 25 stories from multiple places.”

All these technological advancements and aspirations for greater collaboration and more robust productivity are only as impactful as the rate unto which they are utilized, however. Getting employees to alter habits and workflows may be tricky and challenging, but it’s necessary for integration of these solutions.

“You really have to show them the value of what they’re doing, you have to make it easy and show them that ‘If you do X, here’s the result,’” Ensign said. “You just have to keep working toward change.”

For more NewsTECHForum 2022 stories, click here.

The post With New Tech, Stations Are Finding Creative, Different Paths To Generate More Content appeared first on TV News Check.

The proliferation of enabling technologies like low-latency JPEG-XS compression and the NDI transport protocol are making production in the cloud much more feasible, according to top engineers who assembled for the webinar Technology Predictions for 2023, moderated by this reporter. And they see the growing adoption of 2110 on-premise IP routing hardware as helping to boost the cloud’s production prospects, instead of competing with it.

“I think next year is the year where cloud production might actually become viable, at least at smaller scales,” said Peter Wharton, chief strategy and cloud officer for monitoring vendor TAG Video Systems. “We’re starting to see a lot of the technology align. JPEG-XS is becoming more commonplace, we’ve got some nice high-quality, low-latency feeds into the cloud and the tools are there. So, this might be the year where that works.”

While the coverage is not being produced in the cloud, Wharton noted the importance of Fox’s successful broadcast of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, where the network is using JPEG-XS and 2110 technology in Qatar to deliver all feeds to its cloud-based U.S. broadcast centers. He said other networks are considering making JPEG-XS a key part of their everyday operations.

“There are a couple of networks I’ve been working with who are actually thinking about placing 2110 at the core of their network with JPEG-XS, which really allows them to flatten their entire operations,” Wharton said. “No more encoding and decoding cycles to go from New York to Washington, but just have everything JPEG-XS at the core and get rid of the latency, to be able to share content much easier, be able to send to the cloud and reduce your network footprint by 90% when you do that.”

Imagine Communications President Steve Reynolds, whose company sells 2110 routing systems as well as cloud control software, is seeing the same trend. He said that delays in some big 2110 routing installations due to supply chain problems during the COVID-19 pandemic definitely spurred some broadcasters’ move to cloud technology. But now that supply chain issues have improved somewhat, he is seeing customers who want to use 2110 and the cloud in combination.

“One of the areas where we’ve seen advancement is JPEG-XS contribution into the cloud,” Reynolds said, “the ability to actually use 2110 production on the ground, and then use JPEG-XS as the contribution mechanism to move that stuff up into the cloud for production and ultimately master control origination. That has actually accelerated.”

Tim Joyce, SVP, engineering for Fox Television Stations, said the Fox network had been closely tracking the evolution of JPEG-XS for years before deciding to go all-in with the public cloud by building new broadcast centers in Tempe, Ariz., and Los Angeles in partnership with cloud platform AWS. [Joyce was SVP of media and broadcast engineering at Fox Corp. until moving to the station group in January.]

“At Fox Sports that was one of the things we really weighed heavily, looking at JPEG-XS, because we wanted to get in the cloud space,” Joyce said. “That was really the determining factor, when that became available, and all the vendors started jumping on board we knew that was definitely the way to go. We couldn’t be doing what we’re doing at the World Cup today without it.”

Joyce is now focused on how the cloud can aid production at the Fox stations, where he would like to use customized cloud-based tools to quickly spin up remotes with a minimum of equipment for small productions and special events “where we don’t have to rely on so much infrastructure, and we’re able to get to places and locations where we can’t get today,” Joyce said. “That is the future.”

Sinclair Broadcast Group is already successfully using the public cloud for its content ingest pipeline and by the end of next year plans to transition most of its playout to the public cloud as well, said Mike Palmer, SBG senior director, media management. And now the company is exploring how it can use the cloud to transform local news production.

While Sinclair plans to implement 2110 routing at its larger stations when their current HD-SDI infrastructures are due for replacement, Palmer said, the group is looking at “the possibility of skipping that” for its smaller outlets. It is already running a test control room in the cloud today, which it is feeding with NDI and SRT sources.

“For our small stations if we take SRT or NDI feeds from the ground up to the cloud, we can simply switch the entire program in the cloud and deliver it back to the transmitter and not have to worry about 2110,” Palmer explained. “And these NDI or SRT feeds give us the ability to rather economically bring those contribution feeds in for smaller stations. Even for the larger stations, doing much of that in the cloud is very attractive right now using those technologies.”

Beyond exploring further use of the cloud, the rollout of the new ATSC 3.0 transmission standard is the big priority for both Fox and Sinclair in 2023. Fox, which is already running 3.0 “lighthouse” stations in Los Angeles, Houston and Orlando, Fla., views the move from MPEG-2 to HEVC compression that comes with the 3.0 transition as being imperative for its business, particularly given the continued growth of diginets that have maxed out 1.0’s capacity.

“I think this would also help even our MVPD partners, to have a signal that could come in and handle all of the innovations that we’re seeing in HDR and 1080p, things we can’t currently do on MPEG-2 without really hindering how much bandwidth we have,” Joyce said. “And ultimately [with] UHD, the only way you can do that over-the-air is through 3.0.”

While 4K video and immersive audio are powerful improvements that 3.0 can deliver, public broadcasters may be less interested in those aspects than their commercial counterparts, cautioned Stacey Decker, SVP, innovation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He said that given their public safety and educational mission, as well as budget constraints, noncommercial stations are more likely to choose content quantity over video quality when it comes to their 3.0 broadcasts.

“It’s the age-old debate for us, it’s quality versus quantity,” Decker said. “You can do one or the other, you can’t do both.”

Decker would also like to hear more from the broader technology community about concrete plans for non-traditional applications of 3.0’s robust data pipe.

“I do hope in the coming year and maybe even the next 24 months we see some technology providers look at 3.0 and start to solve the problems with the promise of 3.0,” Decker said. “There’s the obvious stuff that comes along with it, the better-quality video, the better-quality sound, but what can we do with this broadcast infrastructure to start solving problems in other areas?

“We’re going to have to diversify the use of those systems to keep them relevant,” he said. “I don’t think content distribution is the only thing they can do to stay relevant in the future.”

The post Live Production In The Cloud Is ’23 Goal appeared first on TV News Check.

Abernethy, the longtime CEO of Fox Television Stations, says the industry’s biggest mistake would be to default to its signature “Ron Burgundy shuffle,” a two-anchor, standard format newscast that has already saturated the market. The extra hour demands programming innovation, he says, and Fox’s stations are each labs to figure out what that means in their respective markets.

In a wide-ranging interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp, Abernethy weighs in on the innovations he thinks have worked so far and how automation must lighten the load on newsrooms under pressure to produce ever more local content. He shares his thoughts on ongoing hiring challenges and the efficacy of continuing post-pandemic Zoom meetings with GMs. He also speaks to NATPE’s demise, syndication’s prospects and Fox’s multi-pronged streaming strategy, including where he sees cracks starting to show in big streamers’ programming profligacy.

An edited transcript.

Fox’s stations and affiliates have long been used to having a 10 o’clock prime time slot to themselves for local programming, but now NBC is making noise about potentially returning that hour to its affiliates and other networks could easily follow. What would that mean for your stations?          

Well, I think number one, it is an indication of how great our model has been for many, many years. We have got the best two hours of primetime, we were able to jump ahead and do news at 10, and as a result, a well-run competitive Fox station is in many cases — or most cases — more profitable than any ABC, CBS or NBC. We have understood the value of this model all along.

What it means for us is there is going to be more competition for news, but for years, we were the only station group that added news. We have added about 180-plus hours in the last five years but going back 10 years we saw that the quality and the economics of syndication was changing and that we were very successful by adding news.

We are going to have to continue to be good and better, but it also means rather than just divide up the potential audience among NBC and other competitors, we are going to have to look to do different formats. One of the things that I joke about what I call the Ron Burgundy shuffle, which is the standard two-anchor process. There’s diminishing returns with the Ron Burgundy shuffle. You are really going to have to make new and different products if you are going to grow the audience rather than divide it up among the existing viewers.

Your group has always produced a very large number of daily hours of local programming and that has only been expanding. Are you able to sustain that at your current level of staffing at most stations?

Yes. There has been a steady technological advance that has allowed for news to be more efficient and effective. So, when we have expanded either earlier or later in the day, we have been able to do that very cost effectively. The real issue is going to be the margins. If there is a substantial increase in news programming, then there will be pressure from a margin standpoint on sales, hence the need to be better and to look for different formats or talent and to try new things.

Are you actively looking at more newsroom automation as one way to mitigate pressure on staffers?

There is always room to be more efficient and effective. It is better to continue to use studio automation and newsgathering techniques that allow for more coverage and fewer resources. That process is never-ending.

The Great Resignation has been a problem for the industry for quite some time. Where are you standing with that right now? Are you having difficulty hiring? 

Separate from the pandemic, broadly speaking this business has become more competitive for eyeballs, for advertising, but it has also been becoming more competitive for people and for talent because people have other opportunities. Working in a television station used to be the most sexy, interesting job in all of media and now we are competing with other forums. As we have gotten into digital, we are proportionately hiring more people with those skills. It forces us to look to a deeper pool of talent, to treat people better and have our organization be places [where] they want to work at and to have a healthy environment.

Are producers and executive producers the most sought after in that mix right now?

Producers, yes, but also engineers, IT people, salespeople. You need the kind of people that are flexible, innovative and confident, and that is hard.

You had a practice during the coronavirus of having frequent Zoom meetings with your GMs and senior staff, and you’ve held on to doing that. What is the value of continuing to meet in that way now that we are past the crisis?

In the past, given the fact that we had 17 different locations, it was very expensive to get everyone in the same room. We would do conference calls, but video calls are just a lot more impactful from a communications standpoint. They were a mix of good ideas bubbling up and then best practices coming down, and that was the key to why those were so important. That process is equally important when it comes to news or programming issues or selling digitally or how we hire people.

You need that kind of communication when we throw out a challenge and someone comes back and says here is the best way to hire tech people, here is our message. Those calls, which served the purpose of COVID, now are becoming even more valuable as we wrestle with many issues. There are limits on Zoom calls, but there’s enough of an improvement over conference calls that forces people to be present that makes them really valuable.

And it has probably given the GMs a sense of the bigger picture and the challenges that we all have growing together at the same time. It has given me and my corporate staff a much better position on the individual challenges people have and how we support them.

Are you virtualizing or hybridizing more positions? Are you more open to doing that since the pandemic?

I don’t think there’s a one size fits all. It’s about performance. We are open to that in some positions. Sales support and finance support have worked exceptionally well remotely and may never change, but there’s also things for which there is just no substitute for interaction.

Let’s talk about programming. What are some of the examples that you find to be most promising as you are venturing into new permutations of news?

We did a show in Minneapolis [at KMSP] called The Jason Show, a single-anchor show. It has been on for many years, and it has been successful. We have a really good management team there that made that happen.

Jason Matheson of The Jason Show on KMSP Minneapolis.

The thing about being innovative is you don’t just try things and they work every time. If you want to create something new, you need to try things that don’t always work. For example, in Philadelphia we did a show and said, let’s see if we can do all the news in 10 minutes and serve the customer in that way. The show did not work, but I love the fact that they gave it their best shot, promoted it and then said it’s not working.

The [programming] in Washington [WTTG] is different and interesting. In Houston [KRIV], we added a show called The Isaiah Factor. It was a single-host show. We encourage the team to take risks. Not all of them work, but you have to create. There’s always been a culture that encourages risk-taking, but it also encourages recognition when things fail.

There is also a reason why the more formatted shows also work, and people are very comfortable with that. Those are formats that people are very comfortable with over the years. But if you are going to expand and you are going to want people to watch for a long period of time, you have to give them something different. You can’t be running the same thing over and over again.

Younger viewers are a little more impatient. They are going to want to see things faster. We are finding on a connected TV that younger viewers actually are watching local news streams in fairly large numbers. Younger people are gravitating to new formats, discarding old ones, so we have to be mindful of that process.

Some of the other groups are starting to form R&D labs to develop new kinds of news products. Is this something under consideration?

No, absolutely not. The lab is at each station. The lab is in the news director and the team. There’s no substitute for knowing your audience. The Murdochs have always been very entrepreneurial, and that means to know your audience.

The thing about trying new shows is you have to give them time. You have to iterate things. Typically, in linear television you don’t do that. You they spend a lot of time, you do research, you do focus groups, you get the pilot, you put it on and then it either fails or not and without any chance to fix it.

NATPE recently filed for Chapter 11 and then canceled the January conference. What are your thoughts on that and what it signals in a larger sense about the syndication market?

I was on the board of NATPE. It is disappointing. People have an emotional connection to NATPE and a lot of business was done there, but COVID had a big impact on accelerating the demise of NATPE, at least in its current form. There is still a great need for what NATPE did to put the industry together to talk.

Beyond NATPE, how do you look at the syndicated marketplace right now? 

I could see years ago that the big, expensive studio shows were going to be few and far between. The sitcoms that Fox, in particular independent stations, lived off and became profitable on were either not going to be coming or be fewer and far between. So, we went out and developed our own, shows that weren’t going to be a big Oprah Winfrey goldmine, but could be game shows, court shows that could be run in different time periods. There is still a great need for that kind of show.

KRIV Houston’s The Isiah Factor with Isiah Carey.

If more networks like NBC begin to cut back, you will see a greater need for those shows because there are diminishing returns on adding news. It’s a healthy little business. You have some good people out there still producing shows — Debmar, Warner Bros. and others. The organizations don’t have the big overheads that they had.

When is auto coming back in spot?

Well, it’s back now. I mean, auto is pacing nicely ahead off a lower base because of COVID and chip shortages, but I think that has been our bright spot from a comps point of view in the quarter that just ended and the quarter we are in. The threat of recession has impacted some other categories, but not as bad as everybody thought. The overwhelming political numbers maybe pushed some categories out as they always do. Auto is looking really good in our markets.

Can you speak to the persistent rumors of a merger between Fox Corp and News Corp?

Not really. I only know what I read, so nothing really to add.

I’m also wondering about the stations’ relationship to Fox News. If there is a big national story, do you throw to them for reporting?

Oh, absolutely. I mean we are more integrated than ever with Fox News and, in particular, with Fox Weather. The way we covered Hurricane Ian was really unprecedented. Remember, we are on the air with news in many cases double or triple the time that, at least locally, than our NBC, CBS and ABC competitors. So, we had a need in big breaking news to use their resources, and it has really worked to our advantage with breaking news.

Your stations don’t have the political baggage and associations of Fox News, so does that ever create an issue?

I wouldn’t feel the weight of a far-left MSNBC on my brand if I was an NBC station, but I think the answer to your question is no. Our viewers know that we are covering it down the middle, and we gear that coverage really to the market. In many ways you might see a different take on something in Dallas than you would in San Francisco, but they are pretty much straight, hard news. We are able to get the best of the Fox News resources’ reach in newsgathering, but they do something very different than what we do. The idea that the MSNBC overhang on an NBC station is different than Fox News to me is misguided.

Weather is a hypercompetitive space in local markets. Has working with Fox Weather and all of the tech arsenal that it has moved the needle for your local stations in terms of ratings or digital performance? Is there a competitive difference that you can measure in some way?

I don’t think we can measure. The Nielsen numbers are so unreliable. But the quality of it has clearly improved, and that is really what we are focused on, in particular with big stories where you are going to cover a hurricane for three days. You need to have fresh, interesting, different perspectives. If you super-serve a group of people when they are highly interested and highly stressed and you can serve them during the time of a big weather event, you may have earned a loyal viewer going forward.

What is your view on just how bad Nielsen’s measurement problems are right now and how that is impacting your business?

I don’t think anything is new. Their sample sizes are too small and unreliable, the ratings are not reliable, and it makes it very difficult. It is also easy for everyone else to say they are going to go somewhere else, but I think it makes it very hard on the buying community if every single company they purchase from has different currencies. You really need a single currency to make exchange easy. You just have a conundrum that the currency is run by a monopolistic company. It is very difficult to change those dynamics. And believe me, I have tried.

On the streaming front, Fox Soul had initially been framed as the tip of the iceberg of other niche-oriented streaming channels from the group. What is going on with Fox Soul? Any expansion of the program hours or changes to the programming?

We haven’t expanded, but we developed a really nice library. We are finding that a lot of the viewing is on-demand rather than live, so we are learning. We talked earlier about flooding the market with traditional news. I thought that it made more sense to go niche and that came from my long experience in watching new formats. I was around when cable came in. What succeeded were niches. C-SPAN was a niche. The Weather Channel was a niche. Even before CNBC, there was the Financial News Network. There was Court TV. It’s the niches that succeeded.

The same thing happened on the internet. Who succeeded initially? It was Drudge, Huffington Post. Whenever I see a new format, trying to take what was working in one platform and pushing it out on the other while everyone else is doing the same didn’t seem to be the way to go. That is why we are doing Soul. That is why we are doing LiveNOW.

Is there another niche site in the offing? Do you have something ready to go?

No, I don’t. But I am thinking about it, which is why in many ways LiveNOW is our lab to figure out what’s working at the edge.

LiveNOW has been around for a bit, and it keeps widening its distribution. It is a very lean operation, essentially aggregating and DJing news content from across the group. Why did you take that approach to a FAST channel? What about that model works to you?

I need to go back to the beginning. I am in upstate New York, going to dinner and driving past this little radio station. I notice they have a window. There was one guy doing the show and by himself, and I thought if you can do a radio show with one guy, why can’t you do TV? So, I got my engineers together and said let’s do a newscast with one person. Ninety percent of them looked at me like I was insane. Phoenix said OK. This was seven years ago. The challenging piece was not the equipment. It was finding the individual who [had] the skills that normally eight people had.

No small thing.

No small thing. We had good people at that station who were really good at some of those eight jobs, but to find someone who was willing to try all eight we had to go to young people right out of college. They didn’t know what they didn’t know. And it has been profitable from Day One, which no streaming FAST channel can say. My experience is if you want innovation, you start out with fewer resources, which probably defines Fox and News Corp. generally over the last 30 years. Then you build.

You stream your local news on Tubi, the Fox owned, ad-supported streaming service. Is that a significant source of viewership and revenue for you?

Not yet, but, in general, viewing on connected televisions is growing. The advertising available on streaming and FAST channels is growing significantly, and so we are looking at that very closely. We expect to expand in other platforms. On the new platforms, you really have to evolve the product. You can’t just push out one platform to another. You need to do some kind of different format geared more successfully to that platform.

Speaking of streaming revenue, when do you see it becoming a significant or a higher percentage of overall revenue? 

In many ways, it has a lot of the same issues that the web has, which is a growing supply somehow outstripping the demand. They don’t have scale yet, but the ability to target advertising via a connected TV gives [streaming] a real advantage over linear television. That is why we are selling the connected television product through FLX. Over time it is going to be a real growth opportunity.

Niche notwithstanding, when are we going to see standalone apps for your local stations?

I don’t know the date. We are actively working on those. It is important, especially for the hardcore fans, but I don’t want to give dates for that or launching on the various FAST platforms because they are fluid and sometimes take more time than you would think.

What have you learned from LiveNOW that might now be applicable to the station apps when they come out on streaming? 

A lot of people covered it, but the Johnny Depp trial was enormous. From it, we have learned that with certain events almost every other media group is going to cut away when it’s not so interesting, but we may have found a niche by just staying there.

Also, getting the feedback that you get with digital that you don’t get in linear. And we are learning the human potential, balancing a number of different things that otherwise were done by a group. That is something that can be applied to local apps.

With the local apps, do you envision the content more or less mirroring what’s on air?

It is going to be an iterative process, and the beauty with connected TV is you will know what works, who is watching, how long they are watching. We are going to have to look at reducing the commercial load because there’s less of a tolerance for that.

Will Fox ever be simulcasting NFL games on a streaming platform as Peacock does with some games now?

I would never say never, but I think our company is unique in that we are focused on putting our best product within the bundle. We think it is the best. All of our NFL, our news, our best content is available via pay services in the bundle. Right now, we are not looking to dilute that effort by driving another business and quite frankly it makes it a lot easier for us to do what we do best.

Do you think that the streaming of Sunday Night Football by NBC on Peacock and Thursday Night Football by Amazon has damaged the whole linear ecosystem on which your stations rely?

Abernethy in his office.

I don’t think it is now. I mean, for our stations, we are still doing the local games in the market. We did a few with Amazon. My instincts are that having it available on a streamer has probably grown a certain portion of [its audience]. Having it not available on linear is probably hurting. We will see. But Fox Stations are very comfortable with our relationship with the NFL and serving our customers through the traditional means that we have now.

Given the prevalence of streaming, do you see broadcasting as no longer the preeminent TV medium, that streaming has usurped it as king? If so, is there any way to recapture that crown for broadcasting?

Streaming will grow, but the kind of scale that you are going to see in broadcasting for the World Cup just really reaches out to larger groups. We are going to still be the preeminent platform of news, sports and big-ticket items, but notwithstanding you will see streaming grow. It may just be more niches, more long tail.

There was an enormous amount of money spent on entertainment for the streamers, and yet, if you look at their last group of earnings, there seems to be a shifting view that maybe they are spending too much money. That dynamic of you can’t spend enough money fast enough on the streamers might slow down a bit, so the inequity between the money spent there and the money available for broadcasting is going to ease.

In the end, I think broadcast is still going to be preeminent for live or as-live. The Masked Singer is an as-live event and is going to be best suited on a broadly distributed platform in this country. I still think there is an opportunity there for non-sports, non-news programming, but it is going to be more as-live, fresh programming like that.

The post Fox’s Abernethy: Expanding News Must Avoid The ‘Ron Burgundy Shuffle’ appeared first on TV News Check.

Panelists are Scott Wilder, vice president field and production operations, Fox News Channel; Elizabeth Plyler, news operations manager, WPVI Philadelphia; Erik Smith, VP of news operations, Fox Television Stations; and Mike Savello, VP of sales, LiveU. TVNewsCheck Contributing Editor Glen Dickson will moderate the 3 p.m. discussion.

“The field and remote production capabilities put to the test during the pandemic have untethered reporters and videographers from their newsrooms as never before,” said TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp. “Scott, Elizabeth, Erik and Mike will unpack how, pragmatically, technology and news technologists are helping the effort to produce more content for more platforms while continuing to allow journalists to work from anywhere, including more adversarial conditions.”

NewsTECHForum’s theme for 2022 is Reimagining the News and How It’s Made, and panels also include Blowing Up the TV Newscast in Order To Save It; Building Tomorrow’s News Studio & Workflows; Reinventing News Presentation & Presenters in a Multimedia Ecosystem; Creating More Content for a Multimedia Audience; and New Frontiers in News Production. The keynote interview is Radical Moves: Inside CBC’s Reinvention of TV News. The event is co-located with the Sports Video Group Summit.

Register here for NewsTECHForum.

The post Field And Remote Production’s Multiplying Options At NewsTECHForum appeared first on TV News Check.

Abernethy has been at the helm of Fox Television Stations since 2004, overseeing 29 Fox-owned stations in the nation’s largest television markets. The stations are industry leaders based on the growth and success of locally produced programming, which have more than doubled under Abernethy’s leadership, with over 1,000 hours of locally produced news per week, more than any other owned-and-operated broadcast group.

“I would like to thank Scott Herman, Tim McCarthy and the Broadcasters Foundation board of directors for this prestigious Golden Mike Award and for their tremendous commitment to helping and supporting broadcasters in need across the country,” Abernethy said. “Now, more than ever, we must help those in our industry who are facing challenging times so we can continue to encourage and foster the entrepreneurial spirit and journalistic dedication of local newsrooms, which are making an immeasurable impact in their respective communities.”

“We’re proud to honor Jack for his distinguished career, and the success his leadership has brought to the Fox Television Stations,” said Scott Herman, chairman of the Broadcasters Foundation of America. “A champion of local news and live events, Jack’s vision has propelled the Fox group of stations to the forefront in their markets, earning recognition across the industry.”

Tim McCarthy, president of the Broadcasters Foundation, said: “This is the perfect time for this announcement when we are all giving thanks and grateful for others who impact our lives. Jack is one of the most respected and admired individuals in broadcasting. We’re grateful for his support of the charitable mission of the Broadcasters Foundation, and we’re delighted to have an opportunity to recognize his many contributions to our industry.”

An esteemed broadcaster, in 2018, Abernethy was awarded Broadcasting & Cable’s “Broadcaster of the Year” and named a “Giant of Broadcasting” by the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation. In 2017 and 2018, he was named one of The Hollywood Reporter’s “35 Most Powerful People in New York Media” and was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame in 2012. Under Abernethy’s leadership, TVNewsCheck named FTS “TV Station Group of the Year.”

A graduate of Georgetown, Abernethy holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and received his MBA degree from New York University.

The Broadcasters Foundation Golden Mike Award is presented annually to an individual for their excellence in and commitment to broadcasting, and their ongoing service to the community at large. The award ceremony and dinner attract a who’s who of broadcast media executives and celebrities.

Previous recipients include entrepreneur and former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Bob Pittman chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia; Gordon Smith,former Senator from Oregon and president of the National Association of Broadcasters; Perry Sook, chairman and CEO of Nexstar Media Group; and Hilton Howell Jr., chairman and co-CEO of Gray Television,  among others. This year’s host, presenters, and performer will be announced shortly.

For information, or to reserve a seat or table, please contact the Broadcasters Foundation at 212-373-8250 or info@thebfoa.org.

The Broadcasters Foundation has distributed millions of dollars in aid to broadcasters who have lost their livelihood through a catastrophic event, debilitating disease or unforeseen tragedy. Personal donations can be made to the Foundation’s Guardian Fund. Corporate contributions are accepted through the Angel Initiative, and bequests can be made through the Foundation’s Legacy Society. For more information, please visit www.broadcastersfoundation.org, call 212-373-8250, or email info@thebfoa.org.

The post Jack Abernethy To Receive Broadcasters Foundation Golden Mike Award appeared first on TV News Check.

Panelists are Lisa Allen, VP and GM of Washington operations at Gray Television; Ernie Ensign, senior director of news technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group; Vanessa Strouse-Kenney, VP and head of digital, Scripps News and Court TV, The E.W. Scripps Co.; Emily Stone, VP digital content operations, Fox Television Stations; and Stephane Guez, co-founder and CTO of Dalet. TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp will moderate the 1 p.m. discussion.

“TV newsrooms need to make more content than ever to push across more platforms with limited to no additional staff to do it,” Depp said. “To make it work, they’re turning to hubbing, news sharing and collaboration and tools like AI, the cloud and emerging video acquisition strategies. Lisa, Ernie, Vanessa, Emily and Stephane will present each of their own approaches to making more news and the tools and technologies they rely on to make it possible.”

NewsTECHForum’s theme for 2022 is Reimagining the News and How It’s Made, and panels also include Blowing Up the TV Newscast in Order To Save It; Building Tomorrow’s News Studio & Workflows; Reinventing News Presentation & Presenters in a Multimedia Ecosystem; Field and Remote Production’s Multiplying Options and the Quest for More Stories; and New Frontiers in News Production. The keynote interview is Radical Moves: Inside CBC’s Reinvention of TV News. The event is co-located with the Sports Video Group Summit.

Register here for NewsTECHForum.

The post NewsTECHForum: Creating More Content For A Multimedia Audience appeared first on TV News Check.

Topics will include the industry’s historic and ongoing move from hardware to software and on-prem to the cloud, the increments likeliest to be realized in the next year and the challenges in the process. Panelists will also tackle cybersecurity, SMPTE 2110’s evolving standard, the convergence of broadcast technology and the internet of things and the numerous fronts that streaming has opened up.

“Broadcast technologists have so much on front of them to work through in the coming year,” said TVNewsCheck Publisher and Co-Founder Kathy Haley. “Another priority is how to build the right IP network and what will be moving into the cloud in terms of production and playout, major questions that will also figure into their predictions.

“This annual webinar has been enormously popular and for good reason—it’s a free-ranging conversation that helps attendees frame up their own thinking for the year ahead,” she said.

Register for Technology Predictions for 2023 here.

Speakers:

Stacey Decker

Stacey Decker, SVP of Innovation and System Strategies, Corporation for Public Broadcasting —He is responsible for the development and implementation of a multi-faceted strategy to advance innovation and sustainability of public media through accelerating public media’s digital transformation.

A strategic and creative thinker with more than two decades of innovative leadership in public media, Decker is helping CPB develop and create strategies and services to assist the public media industry in many areas, including implementing and leveraging the new NextGen TV broadcast standard.

Before coming to CPB, Decker was president of Public Media Management, a media management and content distribution service, and chief technology officer at Signal Infrastructure Group, which builds and operates the physical and digital infrastructure to enable all broadcasters — commercial and public — to leverage the full power and revenue opportunities of NextGen TV, ATSC 3.0.

From 2013 to 2019, Decker was chief technology officer of WGBH Boston, playing a key role in evolving the organization’s strategic planning, production, audience development and technology direction. For 11 years before that, Decker held technology leadership roles for Nebraska Educational Telecommunication and South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

Decker received his broadcast technology education while in the U.S. Coast Guard. He also served on the PBS Technical Advisory Committee from 2010 to 2016.

Mike Palmer

Mike Palmer, Senior Director, Media Management, Sinclair Broadcast Group — Prior to his current role at Sinclair, Palmer was CTO of Masstech, where he was responsible for defining and overseeing the company’s technical strategies for developing new technologies that allow it to grow its position in existing and new markets.

Palmer is an active contributor to SMPTE standards and is also spokesperson emeritus of the MOS Protocol Group, an organization which he led for nearly 15 years which was awarded a 2017 Technology and Engineering Emmy. Palmer is also a recipient of Broadcasting + Cable‘s Technology Leadership Award. Both awards recognize the impact of technical standards and highly integrated systems on the work done every day by thousands of journalists around the world.

Prior to Masstech, Palmer worked for the Associated Press, where he was director of ENPS design and integration strategy. Earlier, Palmer held both editorial and technical management positions at the local, group and national levels in the U.S.

Tim Joyce

Tim Joyce, SVP of Engineering, Operations and Technology, Fox Television Stations — Prior to joining FTS, Joyce spent nearly three years as the SVP of media and broadcast engineering for Fox Corp. Previously, he was the SVP of technology business relations for Fox Networks Group in Los Angeles, and before that, was VP of broadcast operations for Fox Networks Group in Europe and Africa.

Joyce spent six years as VP of operations and production services for National Geographic Channels International. He began his career as a senior editor for Fox Latin American Channels. A graduate of the University of Southern California, Joyce holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations and Spanish.

Steve Reynolds

Steve Reynolds, President, Imagine Communications — Imagine Communications is a global provider of multiscreen video and ad management solutions that broadcasters, networks, video service providers and enterprises around the world rely on to support their mission-critical operations.Reynolds brings 25 years of technology leadership in the video industry to Imagine Communications. He previously was CTO at both Imagine and Harris Broadcast, SVPO of premises technology at Comcast, SVP of technology at OpenTV and CTO at Intellocity USA.

Reynolds earned a M.S. in computer engineering from Widener University and a B.S. in computer science from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. As the chairman of the AIMS Alliance and a member of SMPTE and SCTE, he has participated in numerous standards-making bodies in the cable and digital video industries. Reynolds also holds more than 40 patents relating to digital video, content security, interactive television and digital devices.

Peter Wharton

Peter Wharton, Chief Strategy and Cloud Officer, TAG Video Systems —TAG Video Systems makes all-IP monitoring systems. Wharton is the founder of Happy Robotz LLC, a media technology engineering, development and consulting company that focuses on creating transformative cloud-based media operations through intelligent, cost-managed and highly automated end-to-end workflows and led the cloud migration project for a major U.S. network.

Wharton has also held a range of live production, product management, technology innovation and business development roles at Grass Valley, Fox and ABC Networks.

He is a SMPTE Fellow and has previously served as SMPTE’s membership VP, secretary-treasurer and Eastern regional governor and has produced the Bits by the Bay SMPTE technology conference in the Washington, D.C., area since 1999.

Glen Dickson, contributing editor at TVNewsCheck will moderate.

The post TVN Webinar: Technology Predictions For 2023 appeared first on TV News Check.

Jack Abernethy, FTS CEO, said: “We were fortunate that someone with Steve’s exceptional track record and knowledge of L.A. was available. The fact that he worked at FOX before is also a win.”

Carlston has a broadcasting career of more than 40 years. Most recently, he spent 11 years as president and general manager of KNBC, the NBC O&O in Los Angeles. Prior to that, Carlston held the roles of VP-GM of KUTV Salt Lake City; president-COO of Vegas TV; and EVP of affiliate relations and marketing for the UPN Network.

He was the chief operating officer for SF Broadcasting, where he managed Fox stations as part of the then Savoy/FoxX partnership. Carlston also was VP-GM of KSTU Salt Lake City, and executive director of Buena Vista Television Syndication owned by The Walt Disney Co.

He started his broadcasting career in sales for Katz Communications as an account executive and later, as a sales manager, and then served as both national and local sales manager at WTAE Pittsburgh. A graduate of Brigham Young University, Carlston holds a degree in broadcast management.

Carlston said: “I am thrilled to be joining Jack and the team at KTTV to continue the station’s tradition of excellence and build upon its legacy of news and programming.”

The post Steve Carlston Named KTTV-KCOP GM appeared first on TV News Check.

In this Talking TV conversation, Paul McGonagle, WTTG’s VP and news director, walks through two new shows debuting this fall and how they represent the need to constantly innovate on more tried-and-true newscast formats. He shares how the newsroom organizes its workflows to accommodate its high volume of content, especially the all-important handoffs of developing stories between shifts. And he shares what he’s doing to find new talent in a tight market where fresh blood is increasingly rare.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

WTTG, the Fox-owned station in Washington, D.C., is a local content powerhouse, producing 78 and a half hours of original content every week. This fall, the station is adding even more with a new lunch hour program and an anchorless show that will be shot inside the newsroom itself instead of in the studio. But in a period where every station is struggling with hiring and retention issues, the Great Resignation and burnout, how is WTTG or any station managing to make more shows?

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, the podcast that brings you smart conversations about the business of broadcasting. Coming up, the conversation with Paul McGonagle, VP and news director of WTTG, about creating new kinds of shows and staffing them up without breaking the staff.

Welcome, Paul McGonagle, to Talking TV.

Paul McGonagle: Michael, thank you very much for inviting me.

Paul, you are already producing a lot of daily content at WTTG. Can you break down how much you’re doing?

We’re doing 78 and a half hours of broadcasting, the majority of which is news. But we have original programing as well. We do the Final Five, which is a show about politics, not a political show, but a show about politics that runs Monday through Friday at 11:30 p.m., anchored by Jim Lokay. We run, Like It Or Not, which is a show it runs at 7. And that’s kind of what when we get into a spinoff of how we’re going to expand it at 11. It’s a spinoff of that show. And that’s a show where we have our anchors and surprise guests come in and they comment on social media, what’s on the social media feeds every day on your phone, on your laptop.

And then we have In the Courts, which is anchored by our chief legal correspondent, Katie Barlow, and that runs at 11:30 at night on Sundays. We just debuted that back in April, and shortly afterwards we had the leak at the Supreme Court. And, you know, we look like geniuses here are getting a chief legal correspondent. It has been nothing but court cases recently, whether it’s local or around the country. So, that show has been incredibly successful on Sunday night.

And your GM, Patrick Paolini, has a podcast as well. Is there a video version, too?

The Paolini Perspective. Absolutely.

As you contemplate adding new hours to your lineup, is it a key criterion now that when you spin something up, it has to be different? It can’t just be another newscast or a typical show, but somehow it has to break the mold.

Absolutely. And I think we’re talking about recruitment as well. The younger generation coming through our doors and through the doors of any TV station in this country didn’t grow up necessarily watching a traditional newscast with two anchors delivering the news, and they’re looking for something a little different. So, what we’ve done here first is we built our new facility, built to expand to control rooms, many different studios anywhere in this building can be set. We’ve always communicated to our staff we’re going to continue to expand and continue to grow as a TV station.

So, when I go back to some of the younger generation, they’re looking for a younger generation of broadcasters, looking for something a little different. In that aspect of it, it’s made it a little easier when we’re interviewing them to say, you know what, we’re not doing the traditional newscast. We’re looking for something a little different, whether it’s shows about social media, whether it’s In the Courts and, you know, peeling the curtain back behind what’s taking place in Supreme Court or superior court or district court. And they like that. They like that we’re doing something a little different.

Obviously, we have veteran broadcasters here who take care of the more traditional newscast. But it’s been great for our newsroom because the pulse is different. You know, we have some people working on that daily newscast of breaking news, but we have others spending a little more time on the creative or maybe the quote unquote fun topics. So, it’s a good banter in the newsroom. And now that everyone’s back from COVID, we have our producers and our talent cross-trained so they can go back and forth from show to show, whether it’s traditional, nontraditional. I think that helps in the overall production, whether it’s our regular newscast or some of these specialty shows.

And of course, talking of energy and morale, you are in a new location in Annapolis, a couple of miles from your previous studio. Your own view is the envy of any news directors out the window there. But it has had an energizing effect, having a brand-new facility with so many capabilities and coming back from COVID, it does have a marked effect on the energy level of employees.

Absolutely. So, we’re actually in Bethesda, not Annapolis, just outside of D.C. Coming out of COVID, you know, where everyone was doing these Zoom calls and we’re producing from home and sometimes anchoring from home, coming to a new facility where literally, you know, we had to figure out our backgrounds again because now everything’s a screen. So, we had to figure out shots. What was nice about this whole thing, and it was really a blessing coming out of COVID, is it was a huge positive look to look forward to during the pandemic.

And once we’re here, it got the creative juices flowing again. And that’s what’s great. You know, I say to our staff, I said, we all get into this business for a reason. We’re creative people and you need to unleash creativity. And I think, you know, in the pandemic, our industry did an amazing job keeping things on the air. But things were sometimes basic just because technology had to keep it basic. And right now, we’re in a position where we can explore, we can do more creative things. And that’s what’s going to come out, especially with these new shows we’re rolling out this fall.

It’s like performing in Carnegie Hall. You game up?

Absolutely.

What do you know from your audience about what they want to see more of and less of in your newscasts for your original programs?

D.C. is a really interesting market because we have the District of Columbia, Maryland and Northern Virginia, and then parts of West Virginia as well. We actually use through our guests, especially on our morning show, because we’re on 4 to 11 every morning, we have a lot of guests, a lot of content. Those guests, they’re kind of our focus group. What do you want? What do you like? What don’t you like about Fox 5? We have a very strong our social media presence and our viewers are dedicated Fox 5 viewers and they let us know what they like and what they don’t like. So, we really take into consideration all of that. But what’s also great about it is the fact that every one of our staff lives in different areas. This marketplace is very diverse, you know, Northern Virginia, Maryland, D.C., and they come with different perspectives and different ideas.

So, when Patrick, maybe over a year ago, was saying, you know, we’re talking about possibly expanding again, we need ideas, the staff comes with ideas. And staff has pitched many ideas. It’s a very collaborative effort, and I think that’s what makes it special, the fact that it’s not one or two people in a room trying to come up with a concept. We’re all pitching in, and the ideas that we’ve come up with, the shows we’ve come up with have evolved over time, you know, before we even went to the budget meeting to get them approved.

Let’s look at the shows here. You’ve got two new ones. One is the LION lunch hour, and I gather that LION is an acronym for Like It or Not. So that means, like it or not, you’re getting a new lunchtime newscast?

Exactly. We’re coming on 11 in the morning and when that’s going to start on Sept. 12. And it’s coming right out of Good Day. And our popular anchor, Marissa Mitchell, is anchoring that show. She should be the main anchor of the show. And then Erin Cuomo, who’s our traffic reporter and anchor, she also has a segment “Cooking With Cuomo.” The two of them are going to lead this show and we’re going to have contributors, guests and some of the top chefs in the D.C. market. So, we’re going to expand upon Like It or Not, where I said we’re talking about things that are out there on your social media feed. It’s what you’re talking about with your friends, the videos you’re passing around. But at the same time, we’re going to do it over making lunch or making a meal at the same time. It’s going to be a mix between the cooking and conversation. It’s going to be unscripted. It’s going to be unpredictable. And that’s kind of what we want. We don’t want to go in there with lines that are run down. We want to go in there with a thought and idea. OK: Here’s what we’re going to make today for lunch and the 11 hour. Who are the greatest people to bring in to talk about these topics that are on your social media feed and just keep that conversation going?

You’re getting people hungry then?

Absolutely.

In terms of a social media-driven content, how does that come about? You’re watching feeds, are you watching trend lines and what stories are trending generally or in the D.C. metro area? And then sort of extrapolating on that, what does that literally mean?

Our digital team is very strong. Our digital team is very much a part of our editorial process, you know, in the meetings itself, explaining to everyone what is trending out there, what’s trending locally, what’s trending nationally. And they’re the ones helping direct our executive producers and producers of our shows. Or if there is a social media video that may be newsworthy, you know, maybe harder news and we’ll say, you know what, the viewers are hungry for this content on digital and we need to figure out if there’s more to do with that story in the broadcast side to do that story, because they’re seeing the numbers on digital itself.

So, it’s a communication effort. And what’s great about it is our digital teams on the front lines seeing some of these things before, some of us maybe even seeing it on our feeds or maybe even seen it as a news story that’s percolating in a neighborhood or region in the DMV.

So, you identify the story. I guess identifying it is sort of easy enough with tools to do that. But then what do you do? Throw out to people in the field who are going to cover it and follow it up? Are they just going to discuss it in studio? What’s the actual follow up?

Again, it depends on whether this is a news content story. If it’s a hard news story, we will discuss this in an editorial meeting, who we think is the most appropriate reporter on that. If this is a social media story that’s maybe more pop culture, this is where we have a conversation internally because we have ties with a lot of different radio stations and in social media outlets in the DMV, we’re like: You know what? This disc jockey at this radio station may be the best person to bring in because he or she is also a contributor for our station. But this is something that really interests them, and they can keep the conversation going, not only on our show, but they can keep the conversation going on their radio program as well. And it’s really cross-promotion for both of us.

The second show is called DMV Zone. And the DMV there is not the Department of Motor Vehicles, but D.C., Maryland, Virginia. I did not know this acronym, though I think you might have bumped into something accidentally fascinating if you did set up cameras in the DMV and just waited for the fireworks of people exploding in impatience. But in the real world, what is the premise of your show?

We’re big fans of TMZ. And again, we’re trying to figure out how to present news in a different way. We’re going to take the TMZ format, so to speak, and the show itself is going to take place in the newsroom live at 3 o’clock. We’re going to utilize steady camera, a jib, mobile cameras all around. And we’re going to have our reporters, the assignment desk, our digital team, but also bring in contributors who will be either in-house or we have a giant media wall that we’re going to display where we can do live zooms or live talkbacks with people.

What we’re doing here is to take an issue, let’s just say, for example, one of the things that’s taking place here is masking in schools, right? We’re going back again and whether you should mask in school. You know, it may be a two- or three-minute story in our traditional newscast, maybe at 10 here. We want to give it maybe 11 minutes, and we’re going to talk about it more and get more voices.

Our biggest goal of this 3:00 show is to get more voices, some of those voices that maybe don’t make our newscast. They can have a voice in some of these issues that they’re dealing with on a daily basis. We’re also going to have a man on the street … we’re going to get a lot of live comments on these shows and on these topics. We really want it to be interactive. And as I said earlier, we have a very strong social media presence in D.C. We put on hashtag, and it takes off. We’re really hoping that the use of tag board, which we can literally put people’s social media posts on the broadcast screen, whether it’s Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and make sure we are going to them constantly to and say, OK, here’s what we’ve been talking about this issue and people in real time commenting on it. Here’s their take on it.

This is anchorless, but you do have to have some sort of organizational driver here. Are you going to be sitting in the newsroom playing that role of the main TMZ guy, kind of bouncing around ideas or is someone stepping into that role to steward the show?

You’ll see someone there to steer the ship. Absolutely. At least keep it going and knowing as to when it’s time to move on to a different topic or whether it’s time to expand, because this thing maybe, you know, the topic itself may be taking off and it’s very successful. And we shouldn’t end the conversation in eight minutes like we originally thought. There will be someone there, but it’s not going to be the traditional news anchor type thing.

Now, of course, you also have to make sure that you have enough reporters actually in the newsroom during that show. So, Paul, the big question hovering over all of this as you create new shows and have creative different angles to try to break away from traditional news show structures is how do you make more stuff like this, more local shows, without crushing the people who are making it? Are you staffing up to handle this?

We are staffing up. We’re hiring seven for this expansion. We’re lucky. We have a strong workforce here and we have people who really want to continue [and go] outside of what they’re used to contributing. It’s a juggling act. Because, you know, when this is all said and done, and we have the DMV Zone on as well as LION Lunch Hour, we’ll be doing 88 and a half hours of broadcasts a week. It’s a lot of time on television. You know, people are going to people start their shift and end their shift and the show on is still on television.

But the one thing we have found, Michael, honestly, is we have to verbally communicate more, especially in this new setting, in a new building. We’re having more in-person meetings, verbal communication instead of a top line or an email. We’ve got to talk it out. We all have to make sure we’re on the same page. You got to take everyone’s temperature to see how people are doing, how people think the show is doing. And we need everyone’s feedback.

And with that, feedback has to come from talent on television, the producer or the people in the control room. Not only are they producing these new shows or existing shows, but they’re also viewers. They’re watching this content. And if they have some thoughts or ideas or concerns that this segment may not be working well or this is what we need to do, or adjust we listen to that. And that’s what’s made this process in our expansion so successful. Everyone has a voice in what we are putting out there and everyone has had a voice in this expansion as well.

It always takes a certain amount of time to go and report anything. Even if you’re talking to one source, that takes time to do. And just seems like people are on camera a lot or they’re facing the audience. There will be 80 hours a week, as you said. So, do you find that your reporters are checking in more incrementally now as their stories are developing? And rather than sort of waiting to file the big piece, they’re coming to you in pieces? And then the thing gets cumulatively put together later on in the story package? How is that impacting what is being delivered by reporters out in the field?

I think this has been something that’s been taking place over time with technology. Obviously, the check in, you know, you’re not waiting necessarily until 1:30 in the afternoon and a conference call with everyone. We utilize Slack here, so people are constantly Slacking information so you can literally in real time get a sense of where everyone is in their story gathering and story developments. And that has really helped us.

I ran track, you know, and the baton you’ve got to hand off at the top and every shift has to hand off to the next shift. And that’s and that’s key because they have to make sure that we’re advancing a story. So, if someone is assigned to a story, we’re covering it as part of a segment. We have to make sure that not only are we passing that segment or that story along to the next shift in the next set of shows and next set of executive producers. But that reporter and the photographer are saying here’s how to advance a story. Here are the questions that still need answers. And that’s been a huge asset to us. But it’s you know, it’s a team effort, but it has paid off dividends.

Is Slack enough of a tool to execute that or are you having to bring in other systems, too? I mean, it’s enormously complicated. What you’re describing is these intersecting workflows that are bridging, you know, one day and multiple shifts and different iterations on different platforms. It just boggles the mind how complex those threads are intersecting.

It absolutely is. But you know, Slack has an incredible tool because not only we can you know, put in text how it reporters developing something but then really put video on there and we can bring that right to air. It’s really cut down a lot of processes. It’s really streamlined things. But this is something that we’re constantly evaluating. How could we do it better? And again, it takes everyone. You don’t know what you don’t know. So, we need to know what is working, what can be adjusted.

But again, it’s that handoff that is key in knowing how to continue to advance the story because if not, you get the criticism of many when they say local news is very repetitive. We need to make sure we’re not repetitive. We need to make sure that we’re advancing the story or at least even telling the viewer, you know what, we don’t have answers but here are the questions we want to ask. There’s certain tools and strategies like that. I think the viewer appreciates, like, OK, I didn’t get the whole story yet, but I know they’re still working on it and maybe they will get it on social media an hour from now or two hours from now. Maybe they’ll have it on a future broadcast.

But, you know, as I said, internally, we need to verbally communicate. And I think we’re doing a better job of it with our viewer. As well as what we’re working on, what questions we have, who we want as guests. If some people we are trying to avoid being questioned on a topic, we let the viewer know we’re trying our darndest to get this, you know, politician on TV because they work for you. And we need answers.

Lastly, D.C. is a very exciting market. Obviously, a lot of people want to work there, but it’s still hard to get a high caliber of worker to come into this business in any market right now. You talked to this a little bit before of when you’re trying to get new recruits giving them a narrative that you’re moving toward different types of programing, not just a traditional newscast. But what else are you doing to try to get in the best talent right now and convince them that local broadcasting is a good career? It’s exciting, and more importantly, it’s sustainable?

It’s funny, we’ve kind of gone old school in some ways. We’re saying reach back to your college and universities. People are helping to recruit some of the people, whether they went to school with them or, you know, years later, they’re talking to a broadcast journalism class via Zoom. And we’re trying to make those connections. We have a great internship program, and I think D.C. obviously attracts a lot of people because they at least want to experience the District of Columbia and all the politics and excitement of it.

We’ve been really selective because in Washington, D.C., in a market like this, we look at these interns as possibly employable after they graduate in May or after they graduate in December. They may be a writer or an assistant on the assignment desk, not a reporter necessarily. But we now look at them differently. It’s no longer the day you need to go to three markets before you come back to D.C. So, we’re really looking at these people and having really good conversations with them. What do you want to do if there was an opportunity to be here and be a writer? But you really want to be a reporter? We can help you and we can critique your tapes. We’re having those kinds of conversations.

And I think it’s really helped us. We’re going back to LinkedIn. We’re recruiting big time on LinkedIn. In a strange way, as tough as it is in this workforce trying to find people, I feel like we’re really not settling now. We know we need the best of the best. Right. If there’s if the pool is limited, we need to make sure we get the best people working here.

Well, that’s sounds like quite an elaborate system you have. That’s all the time we have today. Thank you. Paul McGonagle, news director of Fox’s WTTG for being here today.

Michael, thank you so much.

You can catch past episodes of Talking TV on the TVN videos page at TVNewsCheck.com. I would also encourage you to check in regularly for continuously updated industry news throughout the day. You will also find Talking TV on YouTube, where I’ve got a personal bet running with PewDiePie that I can beat his number of followers by the end of the month. So, please help a guy out there and like and follow us there. Thanks to all of you for watching and listening and see you next time.

The post Talking TV: WTTG Keeps Upping The Ante With Local News, Programming appeared first on TV News Check.

In making the announcement, Cicha said: “For the last 15 years, TMZ programming has anchored our overall first-run, day-and-date strategy. Now that they are officially in the Fox family, we look forward to working even closer with Harvey Levin and his incredible team during this renewal.”

Executive produced by Harvey Levin, Charles Latibeaudiere and Stuart Alpert, TMZ debuted in 2007 and is now cleared in 200 markets (99% of the U.S.). TMZ Live followed in 2013 and currently airs in 97 markets (75%). TMZ Live is executive produced by Levin, Latibeaudiere, Alpert and Ryan Regan. Both programs are produced by EHM Productions Inc. Fox First Run oversees all distribution, program sales, marketing and affiliate relations.

Levin added: “This is exciting for two reasons … one being the longevity of the brand but the second and more important is the support we have received over the years from the station group, which has just been amazing. Thank you!”

Rob Wade, Fox Entertainment’s president of alternative entertainment and specials, added: “These richly deserved renewals further cement TMZ’s and TMZ Live’s important role circulating viewers into our entertainment programming.  In just a year’s time since joining the Fox Entertainment fold, Harvey, his team and their TMZ documentary specials have become integral partners for Fox Network, and we look forward to enjoying continued success with them in the all-important access and primetime dayparts.”

The post Fox Television Stations Renews ‘TMZ’ And ‘TMZ Live’ appeared first on TV News Check.

Before that he spent 17 years as GM of WDRB-WBKI Louisville, Ky., and was also VP of broadcast operations for Block Communications, overseeing eight television stations.

He has been in broadcasting for more than 50 years starting in Flint, Mich. He then moved to Nashville;, Jacksonville, Fla’; Birmingham, Ala.; Miami; and Peoria, Ill., before Louisville and Los Angeles.

He told his staff today: “As I have said before, ‘The only constant is change.’  In that spirit, I’ve made the decision to step away from my 50-year television career. I don’t know if I’m comfortable calling it ‘retirement,’ but I do plan to spend more time with my family and my golf clubs! I’m not leaving tomorrow. I will be continuing in my role here at KTTV until October 3, or until they name my replacement.

“My time here with you has been dynamic, invigorating, and productive during some very challenging times. The pandemic presented many challenges, which we, as a station, met head on and overcame. Honestly, if you had asked me before COVID-19 if we could operate a television station remotely and never miss a newscast, I would have said it was impossible. Unthinkable. Preposterous! And I would have been wrong. Sadly, the pandemic also forced an isolation on us all that prevented many of us from getting to know each other better. I have not enjoyed that.

“I’ve met and worked with many talented people. We’ve produced some amazing and compelling specials like the town hall with Pete Buttigieg, gubernatorial and mayoral debates, documentaries like Rising Up, When Magic Shocked the World, Lost Angeles, and our newest doc, Hell and No Water as well as brilliant extended Super Bowl and Emmys coverage. Our coverage of the fires and riots was mesmerizing. We built a beautiful new set to enhance and amplify our storytelling and presentation. We’ve welcomed some fresh and accomplished people into the building, too many to mention for fear of leaving someone out. And our sales team has proven time and again that they can maximize big opportunities like NFL, World Cup, the MLB All-Star Game, and the Super Bowl itself like nobody else. They are elite.

“I’d be remiss not to mention Fox. This is an excellent company — better than I ever imagined it would be before I joined. From the way they stepped up to give us whatever we needed to keep our people safe during the worst of COVID, to paying for health care premiums for more than a year and a half, their commitment to diversity and fairness, I grade them the highest of marks.

“And to Jack Abernethy who gave me this opportunity, I say ‘Thank you.’ He is honest, smart and never lets us get caught in the trap of resisting change just because it’s uncomfortable. I can honestly say, he remains the most interesting person I’ve ever met.

“Best wishes to all of you, to KTTV-KCOP, and the entire Fox family.”

In 2018, Lamb was inducted into the Kentucky Broadcaster’s Hall of Fame.

The post Bill Lamb, KTTV-KCOP General Manager, To Retire appeared first on TV News Check.

Stephen brown, executive vice president of programming and development, said: “This is the perfect summer game: light, fun, and breezy, like an Aperol Spritz. Melissa is the host of this summer party- it’s her house, her game and you’ll leave having had the best time ever.”

Person, Place, or Thing is a game where players ask “yes” or “no” questions to guess an answer correctly. Created by Jeff Proctor and Paul Franklin, this game show intersperses comedy with common knowledge. Jeff Proctor, Paul Franklin, Melissa Peterman and Tracy Verna will serve as executive producers.

Twenty episodes will be distributed by Fox First Run.

Peterman said: “I think game shows are a lot of people’s happy place. I know they’re mine. Person, Place, or Thing is uncomplicated fun that the whole family can enjoy, especially since you’ll always be the best player from home.”

Markets/Time Periods

• New York: WWOR at 11 p.m.
• Los Angeles: KTTV at 2:30 p.m.
• Chicago: WPWR at 3:30 p.m. and WFLD at 12 a.m.
• Dallas: KDFI at 8:30 p.m. and KDFW at 12:30 p.m.
• Atlanta: WAGA at 2:30 a.m.
• Phoenix: KSAZ at 1:30 p.m.
• Seattle: KCPQ at 11:30 p.m.
• Minneapolis: WFTC at 4 p.m.
• Detroit: WJBK at 2 p.m.

Actress/host/comedienne Melissa Peterman is best known as “Barbra Jean” from the hit television comedy, Reba. Peterman played “Bonnie Wheeler” on the award winning Baby Daddy for six seasons on Freeform. She starred and executive produced Working Class for CMT.

Currently she recurs on CBS comedy Young Sheldon and just wrapped production on Lifetime movie The Hammer playing Reba’s sister. Peterman has hosted Fox Television Stations’ Punchline, as well as CMT’s The Singing Bee, ABC’s Bet on Your Baby and is a frequent cohost on NBC’s Access Hollywood. She released a CMT comedy special Melissa Peterman: Am I the Only One and has opened on tour for Reba and Kelly Clarkson.

The post Fox Television Stations To Test ‘Person, Place, Or Thing’ appeared first on TV News Check.

After launching FAST channels and apps to stake a presence on OTT, news organizations face a wave of more complicated choices. Chief among them are decisions around content and workflow integration. And many companies are treating streaming as if the very future of their news brands depends on it.

“The way that we’re building these channels [now] is the way that we’re going to build all channels going forward,” said Stephen Bach, sales manager for news verticals at Amagi, a cloud services company that works with broadcast and streaming TV partners, speaking at a TVNewsCheck webinar, Streaming News 2022: Optimizing News Content and Workflow Strategy, last Thursday (July 21).

Throughout the discussion, Bach and streaming executives from NBCUniversal Local, the E.W. Scripps Co., Cox Media Group and Fox Television Stations shared insights and strategies for content generation that has helped them try to gain an early competitive edge in the streaming landscape.

Exploring Automation Tools And The Hub And Spoke Model

To add streaming content production to a newsroom’s workload means the company must either hire new hands or place new responsibilities on staffers already in place — or both. Among the ways leaders can mitigate the impact an increase in work might have on personnel is to invest in automation, which is what the Cox Media Group has done in recent years.

Owen Jennings

“We want [staffers] to be focused on broadcast and creating great content digitally, and just not bogged down in the tools,” said Owen Jennings, the company’s executive director of product and innovation. He added that Cox expects to continue to invest in automation as it improves. “We just want the technology to kind of keep up with what we’re trying to do,” Jennings said.

When embarking on some of its first FAST-channel endeavors, NBCUniversal Local built what Meredith McGinn, EVP of diginets and original production, called “a small, consolidated hub team” to test streaming technology the company had invested in. That team put the tech “through its paces,” she said, created workflow norms, built schedules and then shared its successes with journalists and news managers across the local division.

Meredith McGinn

The hub members also engaged in ongoing conversation about opportunities making themselves apparent, in live events and other special events, to differentiate the channels, McGinn said. She was not alone in her advocacy for TV news hub teams.

“The hub and spoke model is really important and a key to success here,” said Socrates Lozano, senior director of ScrippsCast and newsroom innovation at Scripps. In achieving the goal of streaming differentiation, his team asks itself questions like: “What are those news stories that are uniform across a whole division, and does it make sense to reproduce that 40 times or once?” In choosing the latter approach, Lozano said the Scripps hub then feeds that content to local stations, freeing up time so they can focus more on local reporting “and creating differentiated content within the markets.”

Cross-Training Employees And Expanding Skill Sets 

Hiring new staff to handle streaming production is an obvious solution to workflow issues at first blush. But even if companies choose to ignore the impact new hires may have on the bottom line and explore the job market, they’ll likely encounter additional challenges.

Emily Stone

“Every position is hard to hire,” said Emily Stone, VP of digital content operations at Fox Television Stations. Citing the heavily chronicled Great Resignation of the past year and a half, Stone said competition for talent is high. And with the emergence of the digital streaming technology, newsgroups want personnel with a range of abilities.

“We’re not only looking for someone who has news experience, understands journalism and has news judgment, we’re also looking for people who are tech savvy or at least can pick things up quickly, especially people with video experience,” Stone said. “It’s such a unique skill set.”

But workers like those are a rare commodity in a job market that’s already highly competitive. Stone said a solution is expanding the skill sets of team members already in-house.

“Here, our digital content creators are more focused on streaming and video and understanding that process and revamping their workflows to accommodate it than ever before,” Stone said. “Having them spending more time to focus on that means you’ve got that box checked.”

Even ensuring traditional broadcast staff holdovers know the new tech lingo is a hurdle. More than one panel participant said their organizations coordinate meetings to teach streaming-related acronyms tossed around newsrooms today with regularity.

“We’ve been holding streaming town halls over the last year to get folks comfortable speaking the language,” Cox’s Jennings said. “It is different, and you want to make sure no one feels left out. When people are saying ‘DAI’ and ‘slate,’ all of these are concepts that are just starting to roll off the whole team’s tongue.”

McGinn said her organization gathers small groups of workers together for similar meetings — modest in numbers because they might feel self-conscious asking questions about new verbiage in a large group setting.

Try And Fail … And Try Again

Panelists said one of the most exciting elements of the new streaming opportunities is the chance to explore the technology’s capabilities and experiment with content, free of scheduling limitations that are inherent to linear broadcasts.

Socrates Lozano

“Content prototyping is really important,” Lozano said. “We did prototype different ways of presenting the news … and ultimately some of that content failed. We went far in one way and ultimately what we discovered is there is some flexibility in there, in terms of what we can do, but ultimately what our viewer wants out of us is … to create [news] content that’s still relevant to their community.”

For the time being at least, consumers won’t mind TV news publishers taking their shots — even if they turn out to be air balls.

“You’re able to test and learn and that’s a beautiful thing about this audience,” said Adam Wiener, founder of Continuous Media, and the panel’s moderator. “They may come back and if you create a great product and you’re a known brand they’re going to trust you again, they’re going to try it again.”

Wiener, who for more than a decade led CBS Local Digital Media, suggested “testing segments and not shows.” The reason? Segments are shorter and, thus, the stakes are lower.

With streaming technology, too, organizations can test content, get instant feedback on its impact with viewers and adjust accordingly.

Stone noted that Fox LiveNOW started as a test, based out of the station group’s Phoenix market, and aired live on YouTube for a year before streaming it on its own website. What fueled its growth, in part, was that its producers were able to obtain viewership data immediately, providing insight into what resonated with viewers and what made them disconnect.

“You don’t get that with broadcast,” Stone said. “It’s just real-time feedback from your audience, which is just incredibly valuable in a testing process.”

She said the company looks closely at the time viewers spend watching LiveNOW as “an overall metric,” because having a lot of viewers watch for a second isn’t as valuable as having fewer viewers watch for an hour.

Experimentation is something networks should welcome not only on a macro level, but also more of a micro one, too. As Lozano noted, individual markets all have different needs and viewer expectations.

“It’s really important that we leave room for flexibility and innovation so that content producers can lean on what makes their specific local market special on streaming,” he said.

The post For News Streamers, Content And Workflow Challenges Are The Next Frontier appeared first on TV News Check.

The streaming leaders will discuss how their organizations are adapting to maximize direct sales and get the most out of programmatic exchanges. They’ll also share their strategies for audience development on OTT channels, the role of vMVPDs and where marketing and UX continue to evolve to give newsrooms a competitive edge.

“News organizations are past the plant the flag stage of their streaming operations and have shifted towards making them a viable business with robust audiences,” said TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp. “This webinar will build on our first streaming news webinar in July, which centers around content and workflow strategies, and dive deeply into where and how news organizations are finding their audiences and advertisers, alongside their ongoing efforts to maximize revenue from vMVPDs.”

Register here.

Speakers:

Brian Fisher

Brian Fisher, SVP, Digital Sales, Estrella Media — He was elevated to his role in February 2022, having previously held the position of VP, digital sales. In his new expanded role, he continues to drive the national digital sales opportunities and strategy for Estrella Media’s AVOD, FAST and digital platform sales, as well as lead the digital sales team strategy. He reports to Steve Mandala, chief revenue officer and local media officer and remains based in New York.

Fisher joined the company in 2019 after running a successful media consulting company guiding and building media properties. He brings extensive traditional and digital media platform knowledge and a passion for building and strengthening media companies. During his career he has held positions at McCann-Erickson, one of the world’s leading advertising agencies, Tribune Media, Bloomberg Media, ABC Television Network, LookSmart, one of the leading search directories and The Excite Network.

Erin Overstreet

Erin Overstreet, VP, Digital Sales, Gray Television — With a drive to contribute to the industry’s convergence of traditional broadcast and digital, Erin Overstreet oversees digital sales for Gray, the owner and/or operator of television stations and digital properties in 113 markets that currently reach 36% of U.S. households.

A former financial advisor with a background also in both sales and news, Overstreet joined Gray in 2008 with the aim to help local advertisers continue to successfully market their brands in a rapidly changing consumer environment. OTT is no exception to this, and Gray continues to evolve in content creation and delivery.

Michael Page

Michael Page, SVP of Digital Sales for Fox Television Stations — He has been with Fox Television Stations since 2019. Before joining FTS, Page was VP of digital sales for Tribune Media, increasing the group’s revenue by 45%.

Previously, he led Tegna Digital in the $2.5 billion acquisition of Cars.com as VP of digital automotive. Prior to that, Page was the head of product marketing for Amazon Media Group. For over a decade, he held various sales roles at Cars.com, including VP of advertiser solutions and VP of advertiser pricing and analytics. Earlier in his career, Page held positions at All-Advantage.com, Congressional Quarterly Magazine, Claritas/Nielsen, Prospects of Wealth and Resources (POW&R), Prognosis Weekly, Legal Time/American Lawyer and Times Journal Company.

Shawn Makhijani

Shawn Makhijani, SVP of Business Development and Strategy, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming & SVP, NBC Spot On — He is responsible for business development and strategy across NBCUniversal with a focus on the broadcast businesses including NBCUniversal Local, NBC Affiliate Relations. He works with TV, digital and sales leaders to create strategies and identify opportunities for growth through strategic alliances, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions and organic business creation.

Makhijani also runs NBCUniversal Local’s NBC Spot On business and manages sales strategy for NBCUniversal Local’s local and regional sales businesses. NBCUniversal Local includes 42 NBC/Telemundo owned stations and their associated digital platforms, 7 regional sports networks, regional news network NECN, a robust digital out-of-home group, national multicast networks NBCLX, Cozi TV and TeleXitos, and the division’s in-house production, marketing and promotions companies.

Makhijani joined NBCUniversal in 2007, initially charged with growing the digital businesses of the NBC Owned Television Stations group.  With the formation of the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations division, which combined the NBC Owned Television Stations group with the Telemundo Station Group and NECN, his role expanded and was charged with overseeing business development and strategy across all local businesses. The NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations division was rebranded to NBCUniversal Local in 2021.

Before joining NBCUniversal, Makhijani held business development positions at AOL, TellMe Networks, Excite@Home, Twentieth Century Fox and Indo American Enterprises. In addition, he worked in M&A and Equity Capital Markets for JP Morgan. He started his first broadcast television venture at the age of 15, when he co-founded the popular U.S. based television network, Namaste America, where he produced and hosted several shows.

Makhijani earned a bachelor’s degree in Government from Dartmouth College, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Ken Ripley

Ken Ripley, VP of Digital Sales, Scripps Networks — He manages the CTV sales team for Scripps Networks, guiding relationships with brands and agencies in helping to grow advertising revenue in the streaming ecosystem.

Ripley has close to 30 years of experience in the media industry and has launched new sales divisions for major entertainment companies, repositioned existing and underperforming businesses and launched new marketing and media concepts.

During his career, Ripley has:

• Drafted the business plan, launched and managed ad sales for DirecTV ‘s entry into the national advertising marketplace – a business model that is still in place today.
• Created and launched the sales development department for Discovery Communications, bringing in blue-chip clients and generating tens of millions of dollars of new to Discovery digital, linear and sponsorship revenue.
• Launched and managed market leader TiVo’s partnership group at the birth of interactive advertising.
• Launched and managed sales divisions for Columbia TriStar Television, Sony’s Game Show Network, Al Jazeera America and IGA Worldwide.

Ripley graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, with a bachelor’s degree in economics.

Michael Depp, Editor, TVNewsCheck  (moderator)

The post Streaming News 2022 Webinar: Maximizing Audience And Revenue appeared first on TV News Check.

Executives will also explain how they’re reconciling their ramp up of production with existing newsroom resources and how they’re using their staff, facilities and technology to meet the new demand.

“Nearly every TV station group has now launched streaming apps and FAST channels into the marketplace, and now they’re grappling with developing appealing, original programming strategies to run on them,” said TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp. “This webinar will look at emerging content strategies from groups that’ve been in the space for some time now, along with how they’ve integrated streaming production demands with their already-innundated newsroom workflows.

“Adam Wiener, who developed and launched CBS’s local stations on streaming, will be moderating this discussion, and there’s no better expert to dive into OTT’s numerous programming and workflow complexities than him,” Depp added.

Register for Streaming News 2022: Optimizing News Content and Workflow Strategy, here. Part two of this webinar event, Maximizing Audience and Revenue, will be on Aug. 25 at 1 p.m. ET. Register for that webinar here.

Speakers:

Owen Jennings

Owen Jennings, Executive Director of Product & Innovation, Cox Media Group — He boasts more than 15 years of digital experience across national and local media with Turner Sports, CNN and Cox Media Group. In his current role, he leads product, UX, innovation and distribution for television and radio at CMG. A key focus this year is on growing O&O streaming across all direct consumer platforms as well as expanding third party distribution partnerships.

In addition to always wanting to talk about the latest digital innovations, Jennings also will have no trouble talking about music, travel and real estate.

Socrates Lozano

Socrates Lozano, Senior Director, ScrippsCast and Newsroom Innovation, the E.W. Scripps Co. — The only thing constant in Socrates Lozano’s 15-year broadcast career is change. He has spent the most recent helping build Scripps’ national teams technology and storytelling infrastructure in Denver. He has a passion for storytelling and is obsessed with modernizing the way we produce and distribute content to our viewers.

He leads a newsroom of talented journalists, covering stories from around the country. Experimentation, failure and innovation are at the core of what drives him forward, and he is always looking to surround himself with like-minded people who have the desire to leave an impact on this industry.

Meredith McGinn

Meredith McGinn, EVP of Diginets & Original Production, NBCUniversal Local — In her role, she oversees NBCLX, a new TV and streaming network designed for Gen Z and millennial audiences; Cozi TV, NBC’s national multicast network that delivers TV’s all-time best shows and pop culture favorites across more 90% of the country and across the NBC owned television stations and affiliates; and LXTV Productions, the production company behind original shows and specials including travel show 1st Look, real estate and design shows Open House and Open House NYC, home improvement show George To The Rescue and live red-carpet specials from the Emmy Awards and the Rose Parade for NBC Network, among others. NBCLX, COZI TV and LXTV Productions are all part of NBCUniversal Local, a division of NBCUniversal.

At LXTV McGinn also manages production of custom integrated marketing solutions for top consumer brands. In addition, she oversees all aspects of NBCUniversal Local’s nationwide annual pet adoption campaign — Clear The Shelters — which has resulted in more than half a million pets finding new homes since the initiative launched in 2015.

Before taking on her division-level role, McGinn worked as director of news and content at NBC’s flagship WNBC New York, where she was responsible for overseeing news decisions and programming for New York Nonstop, which she launched in 2009. Before this, she worked as a senior producer at MSNBC from 2003 to 2006, primarily overseeing live weekday morning and breaking news coverage.

Previously, McGinn spent nearly a decade in news management at the Fox Television Station group as assistant news director for WNYW New York and managing editor for WTXF Philadelphia, where she received two spot news Emmy Awards.
McGinn graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree from Temple University.

Emily Stone

Emily Stone, VP, Digital Content Operations, Fox Television Stations — She oversees digital content strategy and operations for Fox TV Stations. She works closely with all of the Fox O&Os to refine their local digital publishing strategies and workflows. Stone also oversees the operation of the Group Content Team, a team of content creators who produce original digital content for all markets. She is based in Los Angeles.

Stone has been with Fox since the early 2000s. She started her career as an intern at WTVT Tampa, Fla., and went on to lead digital operations at WAGA Atlanta and WTTG Washington. She holds bachelors’ degrees in communications and political science from the University of South Florida.

Adam Wiener

Adam Wiener, Founder, Continuous Media LLC (moderator) — He has spent more than 30 years at the forefront of media evolution, with a career spanning print, radio, broadcast television, digital and streaming. He has worked at traditional media companies, early and late-stage start-ups and as a consultant.

Wiener currently advises large corporations and organizations on streaming strategies, operations and P/L management. He led all aspects of streaming/digital for CBS Television Stations where he conceived, built the business plan and led the roll-out of CBSN Local, the O&O’s 24/7 news streams across major U.S. markets available for free (ad supported) on connected television, desktop and mobile devices via the CBS News app, local station websites, Pluto TV and Paramount Plus.

The National Association of Broadcasters recognized his work in transforming a traditional media company into a future-focused, streaming powerhouse by naming him the 2021 recipient of the NAB Digital Leadership Award.

Stephen Bach

Stephen Bach, Sales Manager, News Vertical, Amagi — He works with national news organizations, local station groups and digital media companies to build new streaming channels and move their operations to the cloud.

Before joining Amagi, Bach was SVP at Engine Media, where he built a live streaming service for local news, Engine Media Live, and distributed a new esports channel, UMG TV, to numerous FAST platforms.

Bach joined Engine after the acquisition of Vemba Corp., a Toronto-based video distribution platform, where he was CEO from 2017 through 2019. Having studied journalism at university, he began his career at CNN and CBS News covering politics and media in Washington.

The post Streaming News 2022: Webinar To Explore Optimizing News Content And Workflow Strategy appeared first on TV News Check.