TV/Cable News

A consortium of local television broadcasters led by Nexstar Media Group, TEGNA, Sinclair Broadcast Group and desired merger partner Tribune Media have rolled back the curtain on an industry work group dedicated "to developing standard-based interfaces to accelerate electronic advertising transactions for local TV broadcasters and their media agency partners."

The staff and management of the TEGNA-owned CBS affiliate serving Houston will not be returning to Allen Parkway -- one of several areas severely impacted by floodwaters related to Hurricane Harvey.

With the FCC's approval by a 3-2 GOP-led vote to allow broadcasters to voluntary implement ATSC 3.0 next gen television signals at their UHF and VHF stations, Sinclair subsidiary ONE Media intends to "fully deploy ATSC 3.0" on Sinclair's stations nationwide.

Is the amount of time a viewer actually spends with their eyes affixed on the screen the best ratings metrics for advertisers in the modern era? That's what TVision Insights has been pushing to marketers, and its third-quarter report is now out. What are the shows with the most attention? One is "modern." The other has taken a positive "TURN" in this audience measurement report.

Viacom reported fiscal Q4 2017 earnings today that were "OK versus expectations," says Pivotal Research Group Senior Research Analyst/Advertising Brian Wieser. But, the owner of MTV, Nickelodeon and BET provided an outlook that was worse than expected. That reset Pivotal's price target on Viacom shares, which sank to a new five-year-low.

After nearly four hours in Room TW-C305 of the FCC's headquarters at The Portals, broadcast TV companies received an expected and anticipated thumbs up to take a leap into the future. In a 3-2 party-line vote, TV broadcasters may now move forward with their use of the Next Generation television transmission standard known as ATSC 3.0 "on a voluntary, market-driven basis." Dissenting Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel was particularly vocal in her opposition, saying it will harm consumers' wallets.

The Weed Whacker was put to action by a whipper snapper and two of his GOP colleagues at the Commission on Thursday, as the FCC voted 3-2 to eliminate its cross-ownership rules for newspaper and broadcast media and for radio and TV, respectively. The "Eight-Voices Test" is also gone. Democrats were vociferous in their opposition, but further action to stop the changes is now up to Congress -- or, more likely, the courts.

The largest pay-TV providers in the U.S. -- representing about 95% of the market -- lost about 405,000 net video subscribers in the third quarter of 2017. That's not good news for companies fighting the surge of cord-cutting, as this reflects a huge jump from Q3 2016, new data from Leichtman Research Group finds.

The SVP and Deputy Controller for Turner and the SVP/Corporate Controller for tronc, the newspaper company spun off from Tribune Media prior to its planned merger with Sinclair Broadcast Group, have been selected as Co-Chairs of the Media Financial Management Association's Media Finance Focus 2018.

The American Cable Association has taken an aggressive stance against the rapid acceleration of retransmission fee revenue seen by the nation's biggest broadcast TV owners. Now, it's taken out its pocket calculator and done some math. One company that just completed a merger in 2016 is guilty of a 162% year-over-year increase in its retrans revenue, ACA says.

Spectrum and Spongebob are getting a little closer: Viacom and Charter Communications have inked a multi-year renewal and expansion of their distribution relationship. The new deal also calls for the co-production of original content, and collaboration around advanced advertising.

Moody's Investors Service has assigned its rating to Entravision's amended and extended $300 million first lien term loan, while it has concurrently upgraded its Probability of Default (PDR) rating. Moody's also provided a general outlook on the broadcast media company that's swiftly growing its digital revenue while seeing the bulk of its dollars from TV.

Seven broadcast TV companies have joined with Next-Gen TV proponent Pearl TV in what's being called "a comprehensive effort" to show how the forthcoming ATSC 3.0 digital broadcast standard can be deployed while maintaining existing digital TV service (ATSC 1.0) for viewers. The "model market" that's been selected is Phoenix.

What's being billed as the "first-ever streaming television service featuring live TV, DVR, and on-demand services, focused on entertainment, lifestyle and knowledge programming" has just been launched. Discovery Communications and Viacom are among the partners participating in Philo.

The leaders of 11 organizations representing small-sized MVPDs and communications providers across the U.S. have expressed support for swift passage of a bipartisan House bill that would create procedures to provide opportunities for regulatory relief for small providers in what they say is "a more predictable and streamlined manner."