Nexstar Appoints Taylor Scott Head Of Product For TheHill.com

Allen Media Sets 10-Year Partnership For HBCU Go And Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

The deal includes football, men’s and women’s basketball, as well as Olympic sports through 2032.

‘Love Is Blind’ Contestant Renee Poche Sues Netflix, Says She ‘Felt Like A Prisoner’ While Filming

YouTube TV Subscribers Soar 35%, Legacy Pay TV Subs Fall 12%

YouTube TV is not only the fastest-growing virtual pay TV provider with an estimated 6.9 million subscribers, but has surpassed Dish Network (6.7 million), and now has become the fourth-largest of any pay TV provider of any kind, says MoffettNathanson Research. YouTube TV has grown 35% year-over-year (at just over 5.1 million subscribers in the third quarter of 2022).

Streaming Team-Up By MSG And YES Could Be Prelude To Unified Service For Knicks And Yankees Games

The YES Network and MSG Networks have formed a streaming joint venture that could one day lead to New York Yankees and New York Knicks games being housed on a single service. Gotham Advanced Media and Entertainment, or GAME, is the new 50-50 venture, which is aiming for technical and operational synergies. Like many players in the cash-intensive direct-to-consumer business, the two sports entities have found streaming to be a costly proposition.

Amazon Raids Disney For Exec To Oversee Advertising On Prime Video

Jeremy Helfand, who rose from a position at Hulu to supervise all advertising sales across Disney’s interactive businesses will take the reins as a vice president and head of sales efforts for Amazon’s Prime Video, the executive disclosed in a post on Linkedin on Thursday.

Variety And ‘ET’ To Host Golden Globes Digital Pre-Show Live On Jan. 7

Variety, Entertainment Tonight and the Golden Globes are partnering to produce and stream the official digital pre-show for the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards. The red carpet pre-show will stream […]

Amazon Prime Video’s ‘TNF’ Sees Strong Growth Among Young, Female Viewers

In addition to major across-the-board viewership growth during the NFL season, Amazon Prime Video says it had major gains among younger and female viewers in its second year of the Thursday Night Football franchise. Younger 18-34 viewers averaged 2.4 million per game in 2023 — up 14% over a year ago versus its first year Prime Video airing (2.11 million) and 26% higher than the total that Fox/NFL Network earned in 2021 (1.9 million). For its entire 13-game schedule, Nielsen-measured TNF viewership was up 24% to 11.86 million viewers versus a year ago.

T-Mobile Adding Hulu For Free To Top-Tier Wireless Package

T-Mobile is sweetening the deal for its most expensive wireless plan with another free streamer: The carrier is bundling the ad-supported version of Disney’s Hulu for no extra charge later this month. Starting Jan. 24, Hulu With Ads (normally $7.99 per month) will be included at no extra cost as a part of T-Mobile’s Go5G Next unlimited plan. Under such agreements, the distributor (i.e., T-Mobile) typically pays a wholesale per-subscriber fee to the content provider (i.e., Hulu).

How The Biggest Streaming Services Stack Up Heading Into 2024

Rebrands, consolidation and AVOD set the tone as Netflix, Disney, Prime Video and more vie for ad-tier subscribers in the new year.

Jeremy Renner Talks Recovery From Snowplow Accident, Plans Return To ‘Mayor of Kingstown’

‘Slow Horses’ Renewed For Season 5 At Apple TV+

Americans Are Canceling More Of Their Streaming Services

Hulu, Netflix and other streamers are turning to bundles, discounts and ad-supported plans as customer defections rise.

Warner Bros. Discovery Acquires Turkish Streamer BluTV

“Turkey has been an important investment territory for us for over 20 years, and the acquisition of BluTV brings Turkey’s first local SVOD player into our portfolio.”

Cheddar News Sold To Archetype In Earn-Out Deal After $200M Sale In 2019

Altice USA closed a deal on Thursday to sell the youth-skewing business news streaming channel Cheddar News to Archetype, a media company owned by private equity firm Regent LP.

CES

Advertisers Will Tune In To Streaming In 2024 As More Services Court Brand Dollars

Las Vegas trade show CES always kicks off the new year in gadget-happy style, showcasing the innovations that will (sometimes) define the future. Alongside all of the autonomous vehicles and 8K drone cameras at this year’s January confab, something less tangible but just as significant will take up space: streaming advertising. Disney, which launched an ad-supported tier of Disney+ a year ago and now fully owns veteran ad purveyor Hulu, will have a sizable presence, as will players like Roku, Paramount Global, NBCUniversal and Amazon. Netflix, which entered the ad game just before Disney, will have its first-ever booth on the CES show floor.

Amazon Prime Ads On Movies And TV Shows Will Begin In Late January

Prime will include ads beginning on Jan. 29, the company said in an email to U.S. members this week, setting a date for an announcement it made back in September. Prime members who want to keep their movies and TV shows ad-free will have to pay an additional $2.99.

2024 Is Shaping Up To Be The Year Of The Streaming Bundle

This year proved to be yet another tough one for pay TV, as more people cut the cable cord. But it wasn’t exactly kind to streaming services, either, as platforms dealt with subscriber declines, slumping ad revenue and stubborn losses while Netflix continued to assert its dominance.
Still, the age of the cable bundle is giving way to the era of a new kind of bundle that could give both streamers and cable providers a path forward. Media executives told CNBC this month that 2024 could finally be the year that media companies get serious about the bundle. “The Charter-Disney deal was a sign of the times,” said Macquarie analyst Tim Nollen.

Prime Video Ads Are Coming On Jan. 29

Amazon announced in September that ads were on the way for Prime Video‘s entertainment content. Now we have a date. On Jan. 29, 2024, commercials will be introduced to series and movies airing on the service in the U.S., UK, Germany and Canada. That will be followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia later in the year. The move was announced in a letter sent to subscribers that described the addition of what was termed “limited advertisements” to allow the service “to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.”

As Netflix Reworks Executive Pay, More Changes Could Be Ahead For Hollywood

The parade of CEO pay disclosures in regulatory filings in 2023 will be remembered for bad timing, ugly optics and symbolic shareholder votes.

Why CTV Is Playing Catch-Up To YouTube In The Ad Game

Bite-size clips, granular targeting and simple buying afford advantages to the Alphabet-owned platform.

 

Why Peacock Is Giving Fans A Taste Of The NFL Without Commercials

Playstation Will Not Delete Discovery TV Shows After All

PlayStation will no longer be removing over 1,300 Discovery TV shows from its platform next month. Sony had previously announced that users would not be able to watch Discovery content on PlayStation after Dec. 31, even if they had already purchased it. However, the firm now says that due to an “updated licensing agreement” with Warner Bros. — which owns the Discovery brand — consumers will now be able to access their previously purchased shows “for at least the next 30 months.”

 

Bills-Chargers Game On Peacock Will Have No Commercials During 4th Quarter

The Dec. 23 contest, the first to be exclusively on Peacock, will be commercial free. NBCUniversal says there will be a 40% reduction in the standard ad time for an NFL game that should result in at least 12 additional minutes of game-related content.

Synacor Fast Tracks Complex Streaming Integrations With Cloud ID Media Connect

Synacor today announced the Cloud ID Media Connect managed consumer identity access management (CIAM) service to fast track streaming ecosystem deployments amid a heavily fragmented viewing market. Cloud ID Media […]

‘Suits’ Showed The Power Of Licensing. Is Hollywood’s ‘Walled Garden’ Strategy Losing Favor?

When Disney+, HBO Max (now just Max) and other streaming services were launched, the idea behind their strategies was simple enough. The entertainment companies took what was essentially a “walled garden” approach by having a bunch of content from the same company, new and old, streaming in one place. Lately, though, the walls around the streamers’ orchards have started to crack. Executives have become increasingly willing to license titles from their libraries to third parties, including Netflix, as studios mine their catalogs for much-needed cash.

‘My Life With The Walter Boys’ Earns Speedy Season 2 Renewal At Netflix

Seven Takeaways From The Netflix Viewership Report

Highlights include the plight of stand-up, the enduring appeal of Gilmore Girls and the meteoric rise of South Korean TV.

‘The Buccaneers’ Renewed At Apple TV+

‘Warrior’ Canceled At Max As Netflix Picks Up Non-Exclusive Rights To 3 Existing Seasons

Warrior won’t be returning for a fourth season on Max. However, the existing three seasons of the martial arts crime drama are set to find additional audiences as Netflix has picked up the series’ library in a co-exclusive deal with Max in Warner Bros. Discovery streamer’s markets.

Streaming Giants Weigh Costs Of Big Licensed TV And Movie Libraries

With studios rethinking exclusive streaming licensing deals and warming to the idea of selling to Netflix, executives face tough calls on whether to bulk or trim catalogs.

Tubi To Stream Documentary Following Star WNBA Players

Vice Names Former Miramax CEO Michael Lang Interim Executive Chairman

Lang is a former CEO of Miramax, was part of the team that launched Hulu, where he was a founding board member, and has worked for companies including Disney, Fox, Universal Music and Discovery. He was most recently CEO of Pixel United, a mobile games business and joins Vice from the role of operating partner at Fortress, the company that acquired it out of bankruptcy earlier this year.

Fox Nation Plans Comedy Month With ‘SNL’ Alumni, Stand-Up Concerts From Tyrus, Jimmy Failla

‘Lord of the Rings’: Amazon and Tolkien Estate Win Copyright Lawsuit Over TV Show, Copycat Book

In April author Demetrious Polychron published a book called The Fellowship of the King that he claimed was a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. He planned for the book to be the first in a seven-part series. The author then filed suit against both Amazon and the Tolkien estate, claiming the streaming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power had borrowed from his sequel and infringed his copyright. It can now be reported for the first time that a California judge summarily dismissed Polychron’s lawsuit with prejudice in August.

‘Wednesday’ Uncle Fester Spinoff In The Works At Netflix

The potential offshoot of the streamer’s megahit — produced by Amazon MGM Studios — would focus on Fred Armisen’s character.

Broadcasters Must Adapt Quickly To Keep Gen Z Engaged In News: Study

New research from Vizrt finds that 64% of Gen Z (64%) consume news on social media, showing the necessity for broadcasters to consider how to harness viewers’ attention on these platforms with live production solutions.

‘Homicide: Life On The Street’ Writer David Simon Updates When Drama Will Be Available To Stream

BritBox App Now Available On Vizio Smart TVs

In Search Of Cash, Studios Send Old Shows Back To Netflix