TV/Cable News

An audio technician for NBC News has died after testing positive for COVID-19. He was 61. According to his wife, the longtime employee suffered from other health issues.

Sinclair Broadcast Group's pay TV offering Tennis Channel, like all sports-focused audio and visual networks, found itself in a bind as all professional tennis tours are on hiatus due to the worldwide coronavirus containment effort. The company's solution? A daily three-hour program from a Los Angeles studio.

With the COVID-19 pandemic impacting such Hispanic population hubs as New York and California, Spanish-language television broadcasters have stepped up their efforts to serve as a first destination to concerned citizens craving coronavirus updates in the language of their preference.

With Wednesday's Closing Bell on Wall Street, there was renewed carnage for some of broadcast media's best-known and biggest companies. The damage, however, for Nexstar Media Group on the Nasdaq Global Select exchange is particularly disturbing.

By now, investors should have had their look and C-Suite assessment of Urban One's fourth quarter and full-year 2019 results. At 7:45pm Eastern Tuesday, the Washington, D.C.-based media company superserving African Americans put a hold on the release. It's not a COVID-19 related move.

MFM will provide notification if, and when, the event on political advertising featuring Advertising Analytics Partner Paul Winn is rescheduled. Meanwhile, planning for the organization’s 60th Annual Media Finance Focus, scheduled for late May at the Loews Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles, is continuing.

On Friday, Gray Television sent an email detailing its protocols for employees regarding potential exposure to the COVID-19 virus. This includes a new Special PTO policy and mandatory 14-day absence from the workplace in certain circumstances. To help employees, Gray's HR team distributed two slides "that illustrate the new protocols a bit more clearly than a text email can do."

The coronavirus pandemic has led the FCC to allow any station scheduled to complete its post-spectrum auction transition to a new channel in Phase 9 that believes it may be unable to meet the May 1 deadline to apply for a waiver and reassignment to Phase 10.

It took a pandemic to put a stop to a retransmission consent dispute that, by law, has blocked Cox Media Group stations from reaching DISH customers in 10 DMAs. The markets are those comprising what was Brian Brady's Northwest Broadcasting, now a part of Cox's “Terrier” assets.

Year after year, on the Monday following Mother's Day, hundreds of advertising executives, CMOs, media buyers and broadcast TV C-Suiters engaged in a three-day cavalcade of hype, braggadocio, previews and promotional puffery in what has become the annual Upfront Week. This year, broadcast media's upfronts are gone. But, it is due to the growing global COVID-19 pandemic.

A broadcast ministry is grabbing an ION Television presently operated by the newly constituted Cox Media Group -- a donation made possible by Apollo Global Management's investment in CMG and the acquisition of TV stations from Brian Brady.

As a big political advertiser leaves the fray and takes with him his massive advertising war chest, the summit of the TV Spot Ten was a competition of major insurance companies. You’ll recognize the names in the latest Media Monitors report.

Now that the Mike Bloomberg for President campaign has ended, GEICO has returned to its prior role as an irrepressible force in media advertising. For the week ending March 8, it proved once again, as the insurance giant topped the Spot Ten Cable report as measured by Media Monitors.

"The most sports for the least money." That's the brand promise given to consumers by fuboTV, a digitally delivered service that allows subscribers to watch live sports and TV without cable. More than 100 channels offering local sports, news and Cloud DVR can be had. Now, two big nationally distributed sports networks are in the mix.

With Ed Ansin's WSVN-7 a dominant English-language source for local news, The E.W. Scripps Co. hopes to soon slice away some of the massive reach -- and ad revenue. Now, viewers can receive a blend of headline news via a low-power TV station serving Miami-Dade County -- another sign that TV news in a heavily Spanish-speaking market still means big bucks.