TV/Cable News

AT&T has experienced two challenging quarters on Wall Street. Its stock hasn't closed above $40 since mid-April, and has been dancing between $35.60 and $39.17 ever since. Thanks to a revelation regarding its churn rate for video subscribers delivered Thursday, "T" could be heading toward another valley as investors fret over what appears to be not only cord-cutting concerns for AT&T, but all in the MVPD space.

TV stations owned and operated by Draper Media have reached a new multi-year agreement with the lone cable TV service provider in the Salisbury, Md., area — Comcast. However, the offerings can't be seen on Verizon Fios' local channel lineup — the result of the latest dispute over retransmission fees to be seen in 2017.

There are plenty of vocal Wall Street soothsayers and media ecologist clairvoyants out there, presenting their forecasts on what your business climate will likely be like for the next 12 months. The latest prognostication comes from Noble Capital Markets, which has a good report card for radio while giving broadcast TV a rotten egg.

Two Ranking Members of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee are pleading for a hearing with the head of the FCC and each of the Commissions. Why? "So that they can publicly disavow President Donald Trump's repeated threats to revoke NBC's broadcaster license due to its reporting."

U.S. financial markets once again ended on a high note, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 42.21, to 22,872.89. Nasdaq was up 16.30, to 6,603.55. Media stocks were once again mixed, with Fox falling following investor concerns that it will lose viewers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup now that the U.S. has crashed out of the qualifying stage for the tournament.

One of the biggest winners of spectrum in the FCC's incentive auction has partnered up with FOX Television Stations to assist in repacking its 600 MHz spectrum. In doing so, T-Mobile is doing its part in accelerating the final repack by 16 months and, it claims, reducing overall costs for the Incentive Auction Relocation fund by tens of millions of dollars.

The locally owned company that owns two stations in the Raleigh-Durham market, including its current NBC affiliate, and a TV station in the Wilmington, N.C., market, has reached a new long-term retransmission fee agreement with DISH Network. It's the second tussle with the DBS provider since January 2015.

A review of the 2017-18 Nielsen Local Television Market Universe Estimates shows Houston moving up in rank once again. Conversely, the San Francisco Bay Area is moving downward, thanks to a 12-month DMA population loss of 36,450.

If there ever was a big week for big department stores, this was it. No less than three national retailers boost their ad spend at broadcast television — a sign that attracting consumer attention through fall premieres on the Big Four networks, or on live sporting events, is still key for strong ROI.

Two Class A television stations serving the New York metropolitan area and the Chicago DMA are for sale. Patrick Communications will benefit from their sale, as they have been retained by the seller to make a deal happen.

The company behind a network of independent religious noncommercial TV stations in Arkansas recently petitioned the FCC to modify the local satellite carriage TV market of one of its stations licensed to the city of Jonesboro. It wants in to two other DMAs, giving it access to DISH Network and DirecTV systems. The DBS players said it was "partially feasible," and the FCC's Media Bureau has now ruled on the matter.

The largest affiliate partner for Univision Communications' two broadcast TV networks has solidified a new agreement that will ensure its Univision and UniMás stations keep their programming in place through 2026.

In the final days of August, the parent company of a home shopping channel agreed to sell its full-power digital TV station serving Boston. At the same time, a channel-sharing agreement (CSA) was forged by the buyer to allow a company that collected millions in the recently concluded FCC incentive auction to use one-third of this digital station's spectrum. The asset purchase agreement and CSA recitals have finally found their way to the FCC via a Form 314 filing made today, with Media Venture Partners serving as the exclusive broker.

The trading of Channel Sharing Arrangements secured by companies that shed their broadcast TV stations in the FCC's recently concluded incentive auction just may be the next big boost for media brokers eager to buy and sell, and collect their commissions. The latest "CSA" to be dealt involves an affiliate of The CW that fetched $105,731,122 and is now dealing its post-auction channel sharing to Hearst Television.