Media Info Bureau

When Consumer Reports asked its members for feedback on their pay TV, home internet, and bundled plans, most companies got poor marks for value and many for customer service. But, a couple of bright spots emerged from the survey of more than 108,000 CR members.

Analyst Michael Nathanson believes that while the industry is under siege from accelerating cord-cutting and audience erosion, "Fox’s laser focus on live sports and news content is the right strategy to drive higher per subscriber pricing and more stable viewership trends."

Among the many attendees at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was Brian Wieser, Global President for Business Intelligence at GroupM. In this column, Wieser notes that there was no shortage of new gadgets at CES 2020. But, do any have a potentially positive -- or negative -- impact on broadcast media?

The outbreak of Coronavirus is a widening tragedy. As GroupM's Brian Wieser sees it, "Many aspects of life and business will be altered in many countries around the world with the possibility of a recession realistic for many countries, at least on a short-term basis." What does this mean for radio and TV? "Shifts in media consumption and other behaviors are important to monitor."

What sort of advise does Media Information Bureau featured columnist Ken Benner have for broadcast station operators that may want an alternative FCC inspection, which he has specialized in for decades? Here's what he has to say, in this column you'll only see at RBR+TVBR.

As Americans hunkered down under stay-at-home orders for much of March and April, they consumed more mobile media. The added mobile time, however, wasn’t distributed equally, eMarketer finds. Some long-term trends accelerated as people sought diversion. Other longer-term trends stagnated as commuting time fell precipitously.

The House Subcommittee On Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law is accusing four of the "GAFAN" members of antitrust violations, as their digital platforms offer an unfair advantage over other forms of communication -- including radio and TV.

"Radio is one of the best performing media to help brands recover from a recession." Really? For broadcasters across Great Britain, that seems to be the case, new research from Ebiquity indicates. What learning lessons are there for U.S. radio broadcasting companies that can't seem to propel themselves out of the COVID-19 bog?

NBCUniversal's U.S. household addressable footprint is set to expand by nearly 40%. To accomplish this, it has agreed to a newly formed advanced advertising pact with one of the nation's top cable TV service providers. Importantly, NBCUniversal says the deal makes its advanced advertising offering one of the largest offered in the market by a TV publisher.

NAB President/CEO Gordon Smith offered remarks on the state of the industry, and on his year-end farewell from public service, at the association's State Leadership Conference. We're pleased to share them in their entirety.

For the 97 news outlets whose primary domain, its website, averaged at least 10 million unique visitors per month, traffic rose 11% in the fourth quarter of 2020. That's according to a fresh Pew Research Center analysis of the state of the U.S. news media.

More than a year later, Zoom burnout persists as virtual meetings have become a daily fixture of remote and hybrid work environments. This column from Rosemary Ravinal offers a half-dozen ways to combat Zoom fatigue.

How are radio and TV poised to perform in the next five years? WARC, the international marketing intelligence service, has some new intelligence on the subject.

As veteran public relations executive and "Zoom expert" Rosemary Ravinal sees it, some of the most memorable lines from speechwriting use "the rule of threes" to emphasize ideas and increase retention. How so?

Standard Media Index (SMI) took a sequential look by quarter to gauge any particular trends of note. And, it did notice something: Audio ad spend declined in Q1 2022 compared to Q4 2021. But, by how much?