Broadcasting and Cable - September 23, 2019

BROADCASTER OF THE YEAR

Gray Matters Gray Television’s Hilton Howell is brainstorming the future of local TV. He discusses ATSC 3.0, acquisitions and how best to compete with Netflix.

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WHY PREMIERE WEEK IS STILL A RITE OF FALL SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

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STREAMING September 23, 2019

Volume 149 Number 9

WATCH THIS Season four of This Is Us arrives on Tuesday. Kate and Toby have a baby, Jack is still deceased and what else? No one is saying nothing. “If you think you know what’s coming

This Is Us

next, you don’t know us,” allowed NBC. Also on Tuesday is Mixed-ish.

A spinoff of, yes, Black-ish, Mixed-ish shows Rainbow Johnson growing up in a mixed-race family. Sure, it’s Premiere Week, but the cable networks aren’t exactly laying low. Season 14 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia begins on FXX Wednesday.

ROB McELHENNEY, CHARLIE DAY, GLENN HOWERTON, KAITLIN OLSON and DANNY DEVITO are

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COVER STORY

B&C Broadcaster of the Year Hilton Howell, Gray Televison’s executive chairman and CEO, saw his group get much bigger with its $3.6 billion Raycom Media deal — and he says the growth spurt’s not over.

By Michael Malone

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PECIAL REPORT: S FALL NETWORK PREVIEW

Even in an age when TV viewers eschew set schedules to watch their favorite shows on-demand, the traditional fall Premiere Week provides a focal point to build buzz for new broadcast offerings.

Here’s what’s on tap this year.

Cover: Wesley Cummings; On this page: Wesley Cummings; Ron Batzdorff/NBC; Patrick McElhenney/FXX; Elizabeth Fisher/CBS; Getty Images

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

up to their (un)usual shenanigans.

And on Comedy Central, season 23 of South Park starts Wednesday.

“Our efforts to get our own show canceled have fallen short,” creators TREY PARKER and MATT STONE said. Thursday, it’s drama Evil on CBS. A shrink, a priest-in-training and a carpenter examine the origins of evil. Creepy stuff, especially for broadcast.

Evil

Gray Television chief Hilton H. Howell Jr. at the station group’s Atlanta headquarters.

By Michael Malone

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DISTRIBUTION

Billy Bush’s return to anchor the revamped Extra is just one of many on-air changes in a transition year for entertainment mags.

By Paige Albiniak

DEPARTMENTS 4 Lead-In 18 Platforms 19 Connections 20 Local News 22 Currency 26 Washington Watch 28 Schmooze 30 Data Mine 32 Editorial 34 The Five Spot

Don’t miss 2019 NYC Television Week, which runs from Oct. 28-30 at the Westin Times Square. This year’s event features a new format that highlights four tracks, including Advanced Advertising (Oct. 28), Streaming TV (Oct. 29), TV Data (Oct. 29), and Hispanic Television (Oct. 30). And don’t forget the 29th annual B&C Hall of Fame and the NYC Television Week 40 Under 40 awards.

For more information and to register, go to https://www.nyctvweek.com.

Vol. 149 No. 9 September 23, 2019. B&C Broadcasting & Cable (ISSN 1068-6827) (USPS 066-000) is published monthly by Future US, Inc., 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10036. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to B&C Broadcasting & Cable, P.O. Box 8688, Lowell, MA 01853-8688. Printed in U.S.A. © Future US, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Promotion, Retention Are Key to Inclusion Surveys released at Diversity Week show progress in hiring, areas where gains can be made

By R. Thomas Umstead

C

ABLE OPERATORS and programmers took heart from new survey results showing increased employment opportunities for people of color and women, the same week that companies contributed more than $1.4 million to bolster diversity efforts during the industry’s annual Walter Kaitz Foundation dinner.

Still, executives said the challenge remains to continue recruiting new, diverse and inclusive talent while working harder to keep executives of color and women from leaving for other industries.

“As we open the report card on our own [diversity] efforts and continue striving to advance the cause of diversity, we do so understanding that … the business of a diverse America is diverse business,” NCTA president and CEO Michael Powell said during the industry’s Diversity Week programs in New York, including the annual Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) Leadership Conference and the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC) Conference.

See It, Then Be It Comcast’s Cohen said it is also important for young women and people of color to see diverse executives in the workplace if the industry is going to retain the best and the brightest talent.

Signs of Progress Fifty-three percent of Comcast’s workforce now Findings of the two-year AIM/ reports to a person of color or a woman, Cohen PAR Workforce Survey from WICT said, compared to a mid-40% share of employand NAMIC include an increase in ees five years ago. representation of people of color and NCTA CEO Michael Powell (l.) and Cox presi“As the pressure gets put on other industries women in executive and senior-level dent Pat Esser open the NAMIC Conference. like the tech industry to hire diverse talent, management positions by 3% and they’re coming for our diverse talent,” he said.

2%, respectively, compared to the last “The competition for our diverse talent is much more intense than survey in 2017. Hiring rates for people of color exceeded the rate for it has ever been, and I think that’s contributing to our turnover white people by roughly 15% compared with the last survey, while problem. It’s a war everyday.” hiring rates for women exceeded the rate of men by nine percentage To aid in the industry’s diversity efforts, the Walter Kaitz Foundapoints. tion’s annual fundraising dinner raised more than $1.4 million, The positive results stem from continued efforts to cultivate an consistent with the numbers in recent years. The cash helps fund industry culture that welcomes women, as well as people from all NAMIC, WICT, and internship-placing organizations Emma L. backgrounds, Comcast senior executive VP and chief diversity ofBowen Foundation and T. Howard Foundation to help advance ficer David Cohen said during the Sept. 17 town hall meeting where diversity, equity and inclusion within the industry. the report was unveiled.

“True inclusion is a sthroughtful, vigorous and disciplined “What other industry in America does what we’re doing?” Cohen exercise that is needed in order to develop strategies to ensure (the asked rhetorically. “We have senior executives, managers and execuindustry) lives up to our goals in business, in society and in life,” tives, women and people of color collectively getting together to atKaitz executive director Michelle Ray said. tend seminars, sessions and learning best practices in the D&I space.

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Todd Williamson/Getty Images; NAMIC

At the NAMIC/WICT Diversity Town Hall (l. to r.): David Cohen, Comcast; Maria Brennan, WICT; Johnita Due, WarnerMedia; Karen Bennett, Cox; moderator Suzanne Malveaux, CNN; Adria Alpert Romm, Discovery; Rhonda Crichlow, Charter; and Lee Schroeder, Altice USA.

We’ve created an enlightened culture around D&I, and that is what is driving our success.”

While the survey showed positive results, industry executives said it also showed some weaknesses in diversity efforts that need to be addressed. Paramount is turning around low promotion rates and high departure figures for women and executives of color.

Promotion rates for people of color are lower than for white people, and white professionals younger than 36 are promoted at more than two times the rate of young professionals of color, according to the survey. Also, the turnover rate for people of color is 11% points higher than their white counterparts, and for women it is 7.3% points higher than for men.

“A lot of time when we talk about inclusion, workplace and culture efforts, but internal mobility and having an opportunity to advance is part of inclusion,” Johnita Due, senior vice president and chief diversity & inclusion officer for WarnerMedia News & Sports, said at the town hall.

Charter Communications senior vice president and chief diversity officer Rhonda Crichlow said that increased executive mentorship is one of the keys to retaining quality, diverse and inclusive executives.

“For anyone to be successful in a corporate environment, they need to make sure that they have adequate sponsorship in the organization to help them continue to [thrive],” Crichlow said. “What we know is that people of color … are under-mentored and underdeveloped compared to their peers. So the question for us is, what are we going to do about it, because we know that when they get that level of sponsorship they are inclined to stay in organizations longer and they are inclined to be much more satisfied with their career experience.”

Added Powell: “Mentorship is imperative to the industry’s advancement of diversity and inclusion. If you’re going to be a great mentor you’re going to be a truth-teller … you can’t make someone a superhero if they haven’t bought the right cape.”

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THEY SAID IT “Cokie was a tenacious journalist and generous friend and mentor to so many, especially women in the newsroom. Whether she was offering advice on a story or how to balance family and work-life, Cokie was always someone who you could count on.”

— Sarah Just, executive producer of PBS NewsHour, in response to news of the death of ABC News political commentator Cokie Roberts, who died at 75. Roberts was also a longtime contributor to public broadcasting.

+ Fates & Fortunes 1) Charter Communications named STEPHANIE MITCHKO executive VP and chief technology officer. She replaces Jay Rolls, who retired in March. Mitchko joins Charter from ad tech company Cadent, where she spent the last five years, and reports 1 to chief product and technology officer Rich DiGeronimo. Prior to Cadent, she worked for Cablevision for 15 years.

Also, Charter has hired NBCUniversal veteran CAMERON BLANCHARD as senior VP of communications.

Blanchard spent 19 years at NBCU before serving as chief communications 2 officer for Condé Nast. She reports to David Ellen, senior executive VP. Former Turner executive 2) DAVID LEVY has been tapped as CEO of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center.

Levy was also named president of J. Tsai Sports as well as a venture partner of the company. Levy was president of Turner, where he helped shepherd 3 the programmer’s partnership with the NBA. The announcement came as Joe Tsai completed the acquisition of the team and arena.

MARIA BARTIROMO has inked a multiyear deal with Fox News. Bartiromo, who joined Fox News in 2014, anchors Fox Business Network’s Mornings with Maria and Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street. She also anchors Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News Channel. MIKE LEWIS has been appointed VP and general manager of WJZY-WMYT in Charlotte. Lewis joins the Fox-owned duopoly from Fox’s WTTG-WDCA in Washington, D.C., where he was VP and general sales manager.

Amazon Studios head of marketing 3) MIKE BENSON has been named president and chief marketing officer for CBS. Longtime CBS marketing chief GEORGE SCHWEITZER will transition to the role of chairman before becoming a special adviser to the company in the spring. Before Amazon, Benson oversaw marketing for the ABC Entertainment Group for 12 years. He joined Amazon in 2015. Schweitzer has led CBS’s marketing since 1994.

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THE WATCHMAN

Senior content producer Michael Malone’s look at the programming scene

Son Shines on Fox’s Prodigal; CBS Has Second Act for Patricia Heaton PREMIERE WEEK is upon us, which means about a thousand new shows.

Creepy thriller Prodigal Son begins on Fox Sept.

23. Tom Payne from The Walking Dead plays criminal psychologist Malcolm Bright. His father is a notorious serial killer known as The Surgeon. The son is like the father in some ways, but he’s a good guy Prodigal Son who helps the cops track down dangerous villains.

Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter executive produce. So do Sam Sklaver and Chris Fedak, who are showrunners. Sklaver said they think of Malcolm as “Sherlock Freud.” While it has some humor, Prodigal Son is a dark, angsty show. “We wanted to push the envelope in terms of what you can do on broadcast TV,” said Sklaver. “We definitely see the show as a thriller.”

Michael Sheen plays the charismatic Surgeon, who killed two dozen people. Bellamy Young plays his WASPy ex-wife. Halston Sage portrays Malcolm’s sister Ainsley, a TV journalist. Lou Diamond Phillips plays Bright’s detective contact at the NYPD. Fedak calls Diamond Phillips “the Filipino Steve McQueen.”

“You just don’t realize how cool Lou Diamond Phillips is,” he added.

The idea was hatched when Sklaver and Fedak started thinking about how parents affect their children. “Bright knows how killers think because he was raised by one

of the best,” Sklaver said.

The men thought about their own influence as dads. “We wondered how we are affecting our kids,” Sklaver said.

On a lighter note, Carol’s Second Act begins on CBS Sept. 26. Patricia Heaton plays Carol, who raised kids, got divorced and retired from being a teacher. She embarks on a second career as a doctor.

Kyle MacLachlan plays Dr. Stephen Frost, senior attending physician at the hospital where Carol is an intern.

What sets Carol’s Second Act apart from the 999 other new shows? “The concept of someone older and very capable coming back and then mixing it up with a younger generation, and being able to see the value of somebody,” MacLachlan said at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour last month. “Watching that play out is interesting.”

Second acts run in the MacLachlan family. Both of Kyle’s brothers, he said, were musicians who went into other occupations in their 30s, and his mother took on a new career at 40. For his part, Kyle started a winery well after making it in Hollywood.

(To paraphrase MacLachlan’s Twin Peaks character, “This is a damn fine cup of wine.”)

“Second acts are happening all the time around us,” MacLachlan said. “So I think people will find something to Carol’s Second Act relate to in this.”

JohnStaleyPhoto.com; Mark Seliger/ Fox; Sonya Flemming/CBS

LEAD-IN

COVER STORY Broadcaster of the Year

Booming Broadcaster Sees Growth As a Gray Area

Raycom acquisition doubled the size of Gray Television — and CEO Hilton Howell says it may get even bigger

By Michael Malone michael.malone@futurenet.com | @BCMikeMalone

B&C Broadcaster of the Year Hilton H. Howell Jr. has shepherded Gray’s $3.6 billion Raycom merger without losing sight of its local markets.

H

B&C: How did the Raycom acquisition make Gray better?

Hilton H. Howell Jr.: It doubles the size of the company, first and foremost. And it brings in a company that has a remarkably similar journalistic quality to Gray. It is a tremendous number of really remarkable television stations with heritage commitments

“I sometimes think of this business as a Chicken Little business, because it’s always something — back in the day it was the remote control or it was cable or it was Aereo. It’s always something that’s gonna take us out.”

— Hilton H. Howell Jr., executive chairman and CEO, Gray Television

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Hilton H. Howell Jr. heads up a Gray Television that’s become a much bigger player.

to their communities that’s very similar to the footprint, and complementary to the footprint, that Gray Television has. That is really quite compelling.

We announced on our earnings call that we have already hit our preannounced synergy numbers and actually exceeded them, and we continue to do so.

The whole transition of making two great companies into one has gone very smoothly and quite remarkably well. I’m very excited to be able to talk about the team that we’ve built and what we’re going to be able to do with the company going forward.

B&C: Even with two companies that share a similar mindset, is it still a challenge to get everybody on the same page?

HH: Absolutely, it’s a challenge. But that’s what you do each and every day. Everybody has worked very collectively and very well in getting everyone on the same page. The human species is kind of averse to change to begin with. The fear of the unknown is the biggest issue we have to overcome. With time and with our

Wesley Cummings; Gray Television

WHY THIS MATTERS

ILTON H. HOWELL JR., executive chairman and CEO of Gray Television, is B&C’s Broadcaster of the Year. In January, Howell was elevated to his new title, after the group completed its massive $3.6 billion merger with Raycom Media, adding stations in 34 markets to the group. Gray now operates in 93 markets and its station portfolio reaches 24% of U.S. households.

Call it Graycom: Howell said Gray and Raycom were kindred spirits with similar takes on local journalism. Pat LaPlatney, co-CEO and president of Gray Television, and former Raycom president/CEO, said the companies have known each other well for years, which has made the transition easier. “Hilton brings vision and a ton of energy,” LaPlatney said. “He wants us to be the best at everything we do.”

Howell grew up in the business, learning broadcasting in Texas from his father and grandfather. These days, Howell is bullish on ATSC 3.0 and what that platform means for local TV’s next iteration. LaPlatney describes him as a “dedicated broadcaster” who simply loves the business.

Howell will receive the Broadcaster of the Year award Sept. 26 at the TVB Forward Conference in New York. He spoke with B&C about how the Raycom acquisition makes Gray stronger, why local broadcast scores high in terms of the trust factor and the group turning back the clock to do a daily station sign-off. An edited transcript follows.

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been blessed to have been, in one way or another, in the business essentially my whole life and I see the future as exceptionally bright. It’s not the business it was back in the mom-and-pop days; consolidation had to occur to be able to compete. But I really think it’s an exceptionally great time.

Axios Media put out a piece that said most adults in the United States continue to rely on local television more than any other kind of television news, and that is true across all age groups and across almost all levels of education and household income. In terms of the most trusted source in the entire media universe, it always comes down to a local television station and local media.

When we talk to our people — our news directors, our management, our on-air talent, our sales people — we make sure that they understand that we have to maintain and build on that trust and that localism.

B&C: Any concern that younger viewers who grow up on Netflix just don’t follow in their parents’ footsteps and tune into news at 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 11 p.m.?

HH: Time-shifting continues to change and I think that broadcasting has to change along with it. But the power of our news continues to drive it. I sometimes think of this business as a Chicken Little business, because it’s always something — back in

actions we’ve proved our words, and I think that has gone a long, long way.

The shareholders of Raycom are happy, the shareholders of Gray are happy and my management team is ecstatic.

B&C: Are you poking around for more acquisitions?

HH: We are. At the very beginning of this year we were pretty bold in what we were doing. We are actively back in the market.

We are very careful about what we do in terms of our leverage and where we take the company. We’re probably at the seventhinning stretch in terms of consolidation in the TV industry.

Gray Television wants to be part of that. We’re now in a position, after bringing Raycom on board and what we’ve done in a fast and furious fashion to continue to grow through mergers and acquisitions.

B&C: How do you see the future of local broadcast?

HH: I put my money where my mouth is. We continue to buy shares in our company and continue to grow this business. I’ve

Tricia Macke (l.) and Rob Williams anchor the 10 p.m. news at Gray Television’s WXIX Cincinnati.

the day, it was the remote control or it was cable or it was Aereo.

It’s always something that’s gonna take us out.

Netflix is a powerful thing. I watch it all the time, they do a great job. But if you really think about it, it’s really just a digital form of the old VHS rental stores — Blockbuster and all the rest.

People are always going to watch movies. When you have live programming, when you have live news, when you have mustview television, which I think broadcasters continue to deliver, it’s going to get eyeballs.

I see bright things ahead. The only people that can mess up this business is the broadcast industry itself. We need to make sure we don’t have a circular firing squad, shooting at each other. We need to be in that circle, firing outward against our real competition.

B&C: Is there anything Gray is doing on the digital side, either at the station or group level, that has you excited?

HH: Gray was the first local broadcaster to have mobile apps that we developed ourselves. We were the first ones out there and we remain committed to doing that. We are now getting literally bil-

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Broadcaster of the Year

lions of hits on a regular basis on our websites, on our apps. [Gray had over 2.3 billion total online sessions, or user clicks, JanuaryJuly, up 19% from the prior year.] One of our guys sent us the consolidated summary of where we were and it’s really remarkable.

Our digital properties are the leading ones in almost every one of our 93 markets. The sheer number of interactions in our markets is stunning.

We need to continue to sell that. We need to make sure we find a way to monetize that.

The most powerful ad mechanism is linear television coupled with digital. Digital by itself, while it’s great, isn’t as great an

the one product that brings the community together is unique.

B&C: Has there been a news story coming out of a Gray station this year that made you really proud?

HH: There are so many of them that I can’t even list them for you.

We have gotten more awards on a regional and national basis than ever in company history. WCTV (Tallahassee, Florida) and prior to that KWTX (Waco, Texas) and KOLO (Reno, Nevada) have been awarded by NABEF [the NAB Education Foundation] with Service to America awards. It’s really remarkable, the number of awards the company has won. We talk all the time about trying to encourage our people to get involved and to create stories that are locally meaningful and locally relevant.

That for us is the key to everything, local relevance.

At left, Sports director Rick Russo, anchors Ted Hall and Amanda Hara and meteorologist Heather Haley of Gray’s WVLT in Knoxville, Tenn.

Below, WVLT anchor Brittany Tarwater and chief photojournalist Keith Smith.

— Hilton Howell, Gray Television

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B&C: What words come to mind when you think about a Gray station?

HH: Local community. Many of these stations are the community hearth that everybody gathers around. It’s the one thing in a community that people have in common. In a world where there’s so many individual competitions for eyeballs, for Instagram views or Facebook likes or any of the rest of things, having

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B&C: Who do you consider a mentor?

HH: I have had a lot of mentors, starting with my father and grandfather when I was a young kid and moving on to my father-in-law.

[J. Mack Robinson acquired Gray in 1993.] People like Ralph Gabbard, who was one of the first guys to step into the company when we began to grow it. He tragically passed away way too early.

I’ve been very blessed. I’ve been able to watch really great broadcasters and pioneers like [Nexstar Media Group chairman and CEO] Perry Sook and [Sinclair Broadcast Group founder] David Smith,

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“We’re probably at the seventh-inning stretch in terms of consolidation in the TV industry. Gray Television wants to be part of that.”

advertising product or as convincing an advertising product as what we can do by putting things on linear television.

You can run linear television over the top, you can run it on your websites. I just watched on YouTube — Gray brought back one of the traditions of local broadcasting.

For decades, if not from the beginning of the industry, when we signed off, the national anthem was played.

Gray brought back that tradition. We launched with a wonderful 9-year-old singer named Reina [Ozbay] in all 93 markets. We don’t sign off anymore, but we shift from one broadcast day to another.

CBS liked it so much they asked if they could use it on their ownedand-operated stations. We were delighted to let them do so.

Just a few minutes ago, I watched our national anthem on the New York station owned by CBS. It was a great thing.

Television is accessed across the board in so many different ways. My biggest challenge is that we don’t get credit and it’s not measured. Somehow or another our industry needs to find a way to measure it better, because it’s compelling.

If you live in one of these local markets, if you put a couple ads on television, everyone in the city knows about it. You know the power of it.

B&C: What does ATSC 3.0 mean to the group?

HH: I’m extremely enthusiastic and excited about ATSC 3.0. When we acquired Raycom we really didn’t have any stations that were in the top 40 markets. Raycom was a member of [local broadcast consortium] Pearl [TV] and we continue to enthusiastically back what Pearl is doing. We are launching across the board because the protocol for doing so is less and the cost is less. We have a unique position because, in many of our markets, not only do we have a full-power television station, but low-power stations, too. So, we are experimenting with ATSC 3.0 and its opportunities in markets all over the United States.

We look at ATSC as an enabler of technologies. If we look back at when the smartphone came out, who would’ve imagined, 12 year later, what they could do?

When ATSC is deployed and when consumers have the receivers they need to receive it, I think it’s going to be amazing, what it enables the broadcast industry to do.

If there are any naysayers in ATSC 3.0, I can’t imagine it because we know all the things it can do in terms of giving you the ability to expand local programming, in terms of microtargeting of your advertising. You can do so many things that are much more compelling than what pure over-the-air broadcasting used to be. I can’t even imagine, 10 years after its implementation, where it could take this industry.

I want to congratulate FCC chairman Ajit Pai for getting that approved. He got it out of development and now it’s our job to get it implemented and adopted by the viewing public. I think the opportunities are amazing.

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Broadcaster of the Year

— Hilton Howell, Gray Television

who in terms of technology and engineering is a genius. They’ve all inspired me in different ways.

At right, WDBJ Roanoke, Va., anchors Melissa Gaona and Logan Sherill on a live remote at downtown Roanoke’s Elmwood Park.

Below, WKYT Lexington, Ky., reporter Kristen Kennedy on assignment with photographer Ray Brown.

B&C: How did you get your start in broadcasting?

HH: My grandfather put our station in Lincoln, Texas, on the air in the early ’50s with a group of investors that included President Lyndon Johnson. I grew up listening to the stories of broadcasting, the trials and tribulations of the whole thing.

Waco, Texas, was my hometown. We used to have in KWTX both the ABC and CBS network affiliations. I don’t know what happened, but something came down from somewhere and the company had to choose which of the two to stay with. For whatever reason, the folks at the time decided to stay with CBS and we had to give up ABC. A group of investors led by Roy Disney [brother of Walt Disney] bought it. I remember listening to the group of country boys like my father and his business associates, and candidly how frightened they were to compete with Roy Disney, an individual of that accomplishment and a company of that acclaim. As you look back at it, it was not what came from Beverly Hills and Hollywood, it was what people did in the local market that succeeded. Our station [KWTX] continues to succeed and that investment did not turn out that well for the competition.

That whole enterprise has guided the M&A philosophy behind Gray Television since we bought control of the company in the early ‘90s. We try to buy the locally dominant station with all the eyeballs, in markets of relevance. We’ve just been working at it day in and day out for decades now.

B&C: What are you watching on TV? HH: The HBO show Succession, I’m completely infatuated with.

I make sure I’ve got it DVR’d, but Sundays at 9 p.m., that’s where I’m going to be, in front of my big-screen TV watching Succession.

I watch the evening news, I watch the local news. I watch a wide variety of the early morning programs, I kind of channelsurf the morning programs. We don’t have a station where I live.

60 Minutes is one of my must-sees also — I’m happy it comes

on before Succession. Game of Thrones was one of my all time favorites. There’s just a lot of great television out there.

B&C: Do you feel the broadcast networks don’t get the love they deserve from Emmys voters?

HH: I think the broadcast networks are working very hard and they do a remarkable job making really fantastic content that can be viewed by a lot of individuals. The cable networks don’t have to deal with decency rules. There are things they cover that maybe make a certain group of people enjoy it more. But the broadcasters try to hit a broad audience and really create some great shows, and have done so forever.

B&C: So there’s a young reporter considering job options in a market where Gray owns a station. Why should they come to you?

HH: We’ve got the best corporate culture anywhere in the industry. We are devoted to the markets we’re in. We’ve now got the scale where you can start anywhere in our markets and work your way up within the company, into larger markets with more opportunities. We’re not a bureaucratic company. We’re a lean, mean organization that gives opportunity to the best individuals.

We develop things from the bottom up, not the top down. It gives us a real unique position.

B&C: What else is going on at Gray?

HH: We’re always testing new technologies. We run it all through our station in Omaha, where it’s created and put together and then it’s tested at a station in Lincoln, and if it works we put it across the board.

Five years ago, we launched our Washington bureau. It gives local officeholders access directly to their voters, without a lens other than a local one. It’s an exciting job to have. You’ve got to have that passion for politics and you have to be able to hide your preferences, because we are not opinionated. During a time like August, when Washington is not in session, we get our reporters out to the local markets to make sure they know what is driving the local viewer in those markets.

We launched Full Court Press with Greta Van Susteren Sept. 8.

We’re exceptionally thrilled about it. She’s in all 93 Gray markets and we’re real excited about what she will be able to do, especially as we come up on a real exciting political year.

Gray dipped its toes into the political waters, launching Full Court Press with Greta Van Susteren in all 93 of its markets.

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Gray Television

“When you have live programming, when you have live news, when you have mustview television, which I think broadcasters continue to deliver, it’s going to get eyeballs.”

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Fall Network Preview

Why Premiere Week Still Matters

Broadcast networks make their case for set schedules in the on-demand age

By Michael Malone michael.malone@futurenet.com | @BCMikeMalone

country,” ABC Entertainment’s Kubitz said. “It has a chance to make a splash.”

ABC’s live musical output has been nil, but that may change.

The Walt Disney Co., of course, owns a bit of IP. “This could be the start of a franchise,” Kubitz said.

Mixed-ish looks at Black-ish mom Rainbow’s 1980s childhood in a mixed-race family. It slides into the Tuesday comedy block. Allison Tolman stars in Emergence. Stumptown is set in Portland, Oregon.

On Sundays, Tiffany Haddish hosts Kids Say the Darndest Things. “This show is made for her,” Kubitz said.

That one is unscripted, but still fits the ABC mandate. “Shows with strong women are really close to our brand,” Kubitz said.

Cobie Smulders solves mysteries in ABC’s Stumptown.

CBS: Viewers ♥ Chuck Lorre

WHY THIS MATTERS Even in an age of on-demand TV, viewers see the rollout of new broadcast-net shows as a rite of fall.

I

N THIS AGE when more and more viewers watch what they want when they want, the concept of a TV schedule — say, Bluff City Law, Mondays at 10 p.m. — won’t be around forever.

But it’s here for today and for the foreseeable future. While all the networks are more focused on year-round scheduling, ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and The CW continue to debut their shows with the best chance to break out in the fall.

“The fall schedule still feels significant because that’s when Fox and the other [broadcast] networks still launch their biggest programs,” Michael Thorn, Fox Entertainment president, said.

To many, fall means back to school, football and new shows on the networks people have watched their entire lives, if perhaps a little less over the last few years. “People are used to Premiere Week,” said Andy Kubitz, executive VP, programming strategy, ABC. “They know what it is and they know when it is.”

Here’s a look at the traditional Big Five networks, and how they are going about the new season.

ABC: Strong Women and a Live ‘Mermaid’ BIG SWINGS: Little Mermaid Live, Stumptown STRATEGY: Try a live musical and see if there’s a future for the plan It’s a modest list of new shows on ABC, the scripted stuff including drama Emergence, about a police chief who takes in a child she finds near the site of a mysterious accident, and Black-ish spinoff Mixed-ish beginning Sept. 24.

A day later, it’s Stumptown, with Cobie Smulders as an army veteran and private investigator with some character quirks. That one comes from a graphic novel series.

There’s also live musical The Little Mermaid Live on Nov. 5. Auli’i Cravalho from Moana plays Ariel and Queen Latifah handles Ursula.

“It’s a cultural event that will resonate with large parts of the

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

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The Big Bang Theory is finished, but Chuck Lorre is at it again with Bob ♥ Abishola. The new one is about a compression sock salesman — that ought to be good for a laugh or two — who has a heart attack and falls for his nurse, a Nigerian immigrant. Billy Gardell plays the sock guy.

Thom Sherman, senior executive VP, programming, said he and CBS Entertainment president Kelly Kahl were “blown away” at an early table read.

Noriko Kelley, CBS head of scheduling, called Bob ♥ Abishola “likeable and heartwarming.” It begins Sept. 23, after The Neighborhood. “It’s really authentic,” Kelley added. “The show will resonate with viewers. There’s a story for everyone.”

New legal drama All Rise, with Simone Missick as the boundary-pushing judge, also begins Sept. 23.

CBS has five rookie shows, Bob ♥ Abishola the other three debuting Sept.

26. Young Sheldon leads into The Unicorn, with Walton Goggins as a widower father who begins dating again.

Then it’s Carol’s Second Act, with Patricia Heaton as a woman learning to be a doctor at an advanced age, and frightful drama Evil from Michelle and Robert King.

Evil is a psychological drama that looks into the origins of evil.

A psychologist, a priest-in-training and a carpenter investigate a church’s list of weird happenings. Kelley calls it a “sophisticated mystery” that touches on the concept of science versus religion.

Fox: Mining Dysfunctional Dads for Drama BIG SWINGS: Prodigal Son, Almost Family STRATEGY: Load up on live, whether football, baseball or wrestling It’s hardly a new strategy, but it works. Use your well-established shows — in Fox’s case, 9-1-1 and The Masked Singer — to drum up sampling for your new shows — in Fox’s case, Prodigal Son

ABC/Kailey Schwerman; Sonja Flemming/CBS

BIG SWINGS: Evil, Bob ♥ Abishola STRATEGY: Tap tested creators to trot out shows viewers will come to love

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hot time slot and proven star in Smits, formerly of LA Law and The West Wing (not to mention NYPD Blue on ABC), give it a decent shot.

Season four of This Is Us begins Sept. 24.

Wednesdays are the Chicago shows and Thursdays are comedies: Superstore; Perfect Harmony, with Bradley Whitford as a music professor taking on a small-town choir; the final season of The Good Place; and Sunnyside, with Kal Penn as a hotshot NYC councilman recuperating after an embarrassing bust.

The comedies debut Sept. 26.

“We’re not looking at first-week ratings,” Kern said. “We’re looking at ratings over a period of time.”

THE CW: Super-Duper Sundays BIG SWINGS: Batwoman, Nancy Drew STRATEGY: Better monetize young viewers’ tendencies to watch when they want, where they want Fox will focus on live fare this fall, but scripted drama Almost Family also joins the lineup.

— Steve Kern, senior VP, program planning and scheduling, NBC Entertainment

NBC: Ratings Champ Looks Pretty Buff, and Bluff BIG SWINGS: Bluff City Law, Perfect Harmony STRATEGY: Established prime means maximum promotion for minimal newbies Similar to last year, when three shows debuted in the fall, NBC offers a short list of rookies. They are the Jimmy Smits law drama Bluff City Law and comedies Perfect Harmony and Sunnyside.

“We don’t have a lot of real estate for launching shows,” said Steve Kern, senior VP, program planning and scheduling, NBC Entertainment.

“We are choosy about what we launch in the fall.”

The Voice serves up ample samplers for Bluff City Law Sept. 23. The strong lead-in,

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

Batwoman is The CW’s latest Sunday night offering from the DC Comics universe.

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Jimmy Smits in Bluff City Law

A year ago, The CW began programming Sunday prime, a venture Pedowitz describes as “enormously successful.” This fall, Sundays feature new Greg Berlanti show Batwoman, where crime is rampant in Gotham City and Batman is nowhere to be found, and Supergirl. Those start Oct. 6.

Also new is Nancy Drew (Oct. 9), leading out of Riverdale on Wednesdays. As you’ll probably recall from reading as a child, Nancy Drew is about a brilliant teen detective. Her mother dies and she can’t go off to college.

“We find ways to take prior IP and make it contemporary and put the CW spin on it,” Pedowitz said.

The fifteenth and final season of Supernatural begins Oct. 10. Pedowitz won’t say much about it, but allows that “the dead aren’t so dead.”

Elisabeth Caren/Fox; Jake Giles Netter/NBC; Kimberley French/The CW

“We don’t have a lot of real estate for launching shows. We are choosy about what we launch in the fall.”

(Sept. 23) and Almost Family (Oct. 2). The former is about the son of a serial murderer who helps the cops bust bad guys, and the latter is about a fertility doctor found to have used his own sperm to conceive lots of children, meaning his daughter has some new siblings.

Call it the fall of dysfunctional dads for Fox. Fox is betting big on live programming. The season started with the Emmy Awards Sept. 22. There’s NFL Thursday Night Football, WWE’s Friday Night SmackDown and college football on Saturdays. Major League Baseball playoffs happen on Fox, too.

“Our platform has the best that sports can offer,” Michael Thorn, Fox Entertainment president, said.

Fox is also bringing back “Animation Domination,” and Thorn is excited about Emily Spivey’s Bless the Harts, about a Southern family short on cash but rich in friends and family, sliding into Sundays Sept. 29. Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph provide voices.

“They face issues a lot of people face,” said Thorn of the Hart clan. “I think that’s a great message, and it allows for great comedic storytelling.”

It’s former AMC president and GM Charlie Collier’s first full season as Fox Entertainment CEO, and Thorn said he’s made his mark. “He’s brought his sense of risk-taking and bold choices,” he said. “There’s a new energy in the hallways.”

The CW has always seen a large part of its viewers consume the network’s shows on digital platforms. The network took a big step toward better monetizing those by announcing it will stream every episode of new series the day after their broadcast premiere.

For non-rookie programs, The CW will have a rolling five episodes on its digital platforms the day after debut.

The CW president Mark Pedowitz said his network’s programs lend themselves to multiple-episode viewing. “The shows always play well if you have a chance to binge them,” he said.

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Xfinity Flex Lays Down a Track for Peacock Comcast expands distribution of device it wants viewers to watch new OTT service on

By Daniel Frankel daniel.frankel@futurenet.com | @dannyfrankel

Comcast’s more than 6 million broadbandonly customers would receive an Xfinity Flex box for free.

WHY THIS MATTERS The Xfinity Flex launch is meant to make it easier for Comcast broadband subs to access streaming services, including its own Peacock offering due next year.

A

FTER ANNOUNCING an April launch date — as well as a name, Peacock — for its entry into the streaming wars, Comcast shook up the hardware side of the video industry a bit, too.

The operator revealed that Xfinity Flex, the light streaming box extension of its more robust X1 video platform, would be given away to the more than 6 million Comcast customers who take broadband but not video. These customers would also get an X1 Voice Remote, which also works Flex.

Previously, Comcast had been charging $5 a month for the Xi6 streaming device, which provides access to OTT apps including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and Tubi.

Pretty soon, one can imagine that Xfinity Flex will also support NBCUniversal’s Peacock, which is kind of the idea.

Speaking to investors at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference about Peacock’s potential, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts pointed to Comcast’s relationships with 75 million to 80 million U.S. consumers, either Xfinity customers or those who get NBCU networks through other service providers. “Can we extend with distributors, can we find a way to have Flex — I’m sorry, Peacock — be available to those customers? And if you do so, then there’s no cost to the customer,” Roberts said.

Comcast also is proliferating its streaming device via partners that license X1. Cox Communications, which markets Contour, a platform based on the X1 blueprint, has been quietly selling Contour Stream since May for $5 a month to broadband-only customers. Contour Stream uses the same Xi6 client and Voice Remote as Flex.

Having the biggest operator give away streaming devices to all the cord-cutters in its footprint, and license the No. 4 U.S. cable operator to do the same, could help Comcast but also cause collateral damage in the video industry. Streaming device maker Roku, which has been one of the hottest companies in the OTT space, saw its stock price decline around 15% after the Xfinity Flex announcement.

ActiveVideo Shifts Focus to Android FIVE YEARS AFTER Charter Commu­ nications first used its cloud virtualiza­ tion technology to power the Spectrum Guide video system, ActiveVideo reappeared at the IBC tech gathering with a new spin on its technology.

AppCloud will allow operators to deploy advanced video systems off­ ering Android OTT apps found in the Google Play Store. Since all set-top processing is done in the cloud, op­ erator clients will be able to hoist the system without upgrading set-tops.

B&C caught up with ActiveVideo CEO Jeff Miller for an email Q&A as he was flying back from IBC to his company’s home base in San Jose, California.

B&C: What’s the status of Active­Video?

Jeff Miller: ActiveVideo is still owned by a joint venture between Charter and CommScope (who recently ac­ quired Arris). We have about 100 em­ ployees worldwide, split between our offices in San Jose, Hilversum in the Netherlands and around the world.

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

of the Android application ecosys­ tem to operators, while giving them control over their service and reducing the complexity and cost of delivering and maintaining OTT apps as part of their video offering.

We operate fully independently.

B&C: What is AppCloud?

JM: ActiveVideo’s CloudTV platform has been deployed increasingly for several years, serving billions of user sessions per year. At IBC this year, we announced the ActiveVideo AppCloud platform that adds Android applica­ tion virtualization to our product line.

Using very efficient remote GPU tech­ nology, the ActiveVideo AppCloud product offers a powerful option for operators looking for a scalable, cloud-based solution for delivering Android applications as part of their user experience.

B&C:How big is the market for AppCloud?

JM: The market for OTT applications in the pay TV market is big. Every operator recognizes the need to offer OTT services as a part of the pay TV user experience. Their custom­ ers demand it. Most major content providers are looking to create their own branded OTT apps to deliver

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Miller

content direct to consumers (see for example Disney+, Peacock, CBS All Access, etc.) and we expect this trend will continue. Operators can choose to use a managed platform, like Android TV, and effectively deliver the Google service to their custom­ ers. Alternatively, they can build their own service around Android AOSP or other technologies which involves porting and maintaining applications themselves. At ActiveVideo, our goal is to bring the diversity and richness

B&C: How many people are using ActiveVideo technology at this point?

JM: ActiveVideo technology is used by many operators in over 10 coun­ tries. Today, we support operators in delivering next-gen services to over 18 million subscribers including those served by J-Com in Japan, VTR in Chile, Ziggo in The Netherlands, Altice in the U.S. and many others. Charter has deployed our technology exten­ sively across its footprint, as many others have.

B&C: Is ActiveVideo in every Charter video home?

JM: Charter uses ActiveVideo technology to deliver their Spectrum Guide to millions of set-tops across their nationwide footprint. The number continues to grow as the rollout con­ tinues. — DF

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“There is no such thing as a skinny bundle with a regional sports network that costs $10.”

— David Zaslav, Discovery Inc. CEO, at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference on Sept. 17, adding that he hopes pricey RSNs get “puked out” of content packages aimed at cost-conscious consumers.

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The Top 5 OTT Startups Still on the M&A Market A DECADE AGO, OVER-THE-TOP DISTRIBUTION was a startup’s game, dominated by the Slingboxes and Aereos of the world, not to mention the wave of YouTube multichannel networks like AwesomenessTV. Heck, it wasn’t that long ago that Roku, which went public as recently as 2017 and will be a billion-dollar revenue company this year, was considered a startup. In fact, Netflix Daniel Frankel was once a startup, too, although it went public in 2002, long before it began streaming video.

OTT video these days is dominated by huge Silicon Valley giants, which have — somewhat ironically — put the major media conglomerates and telecoms in the role of insurgents, with The Walt Disney Co., AT&T-WarnerMedia and Comcast-NBCUniversal about to launch new streaming services to try to disrupt the strongholds of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube. Even Apple is playing the role of disruptor, with Apple TV+.

Indeed, streaming is now a big company’s game, with the next wave of disruption driven by some of the biggest corporations in the world. But there are a few scrappy streaming startups still out there, waiting to get bought.

Of course, OTT startups very infrequently say outright they want to get purchased. But it’s so obviously the plan!

With that in mind, here are five notable independent OTT companies which seem to be seeking a lot of attention these days. Note that we’re focusing on streaming startups here, and not ad-tech companies.

Find out who the top 5 startups are, and learn more about them, at broadcastingcable.com/Sept23.

NUMBER

45%

The share of U.S. cord-cutters who use the Roku over-the-top ecosystem, according to the company.

VIDEOPHILE

Gross SVOD Subs Up 38% in 2018, Says Researcher DISMISSING THE NOTION that the subscription streaming business has become saturated, at least at the global level, Digital TV Research said gross SVOD subscriptions increased by 139 million in 2018 to 508 million, a 38% uptick.

According to the research company, the net subscriber count — the customers left after churn is considered — was up by 31%, or 83 million consumers.

The average SVOD subscriber paid for 1.43 SVOD subscriptions at the end of 2018, up from 1.05 in 2010, Digital TV Research said.

More than one-fifth of the world’s TV households had at least one SVOD subscription as of the end of last year.

“China and the U.S. together accounted for 63% of the global total in 2018,” Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said in a statement. “China overtook the U.S. in 2018 to become the gross SVOD subscription leader. China added nearly 60 million subscriptions in 2018 alone, with the U.S. up by 27 million (despite its relative maturity). India nearly doubled its subscription base.” — Daniel Frankel

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

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LOCAL NEWS

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Beyond Beer and Brats Milwaukee features strong stations that invest in local product

By Michael Malone michael.malone@futurenet.com | @BCMikeMalone

M

ILWAUKEE was known for decades as a major beer producer, home to the likes of Miller and Pabst. Its baseball team is, of course, the Brewers. While there’s still plenty of beer in DMA No. 36, it’s more about financial and technology these days.

“Milwaukee was manufacturing,” WVTV general manager Pete Monfre said, “and it had to reinvent itself.”

Chuck Steinmetz, president and general manager of WITI, grew up five miles from the station. He said Milwaukee always tried to keep pace with Chicago, and finally just focused on being Milwaukee. The city flourished after that revelation.

“It’s a market where you still have block parties, still have church festivals — it’s very, very Midwest,” he said. “But Milwaukee has more culture and art than people would think.”

Many will see the city in person when Milwaukee hosts the Democratic National Convention in July. “The DNC is going to be a very big deal for Milwaukee,” Steinmetz said.

Nexstar Media Group owns Fox affiliate WITI following its acquisition of Tribune Media. Scripps has NBC-aligned WTMJ. Hearst Television has ABC affiliate WISN and Weigel holds CBS station WDJT. Sinclair has WVTV, which airs both The CW and MyNetworkTV. “Every station plays above the rim, plays above our market size,” Steinmetz said.

The general managers at WTMJ, WISN and WDJT did not return calls for comment.

The main pay TV operator is Spectrum. Last fall, it debuted Spectrum News 1. Diane Irving is news director, and the statewide network covers employment, healthcare, education and infrastructure.

Alan Mason, group VP/general manager, Spectrum News, South and Central, calls it “issues-based journalism, kitchen-table issues,” not so much the local spot news the broadcasters cover.

“We didn’t think there was a reason to duplicate what the stations are doing,” he said.

The market is full of strong broadcast groups willing to invest in local product. “It’s a fun horse race kind of market,” said Bill Hague, executive VP of Frank N. Magid Associates, which does not currently work with a Milwaukee station. “It’s a good, aggressive, smart news market.”

Ben Handelman, Stephanie Grady, Mary Stoker Smith and Ted Perry are on the news team at Nexstar’s WITI in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee is unique in that a Fox affiliate wins the news races.

WITI aligned with Fox in 1994 after a long run as a CBS station.

In August, WITI won the 6 a.m. race in both households and 2554. WISN won a close household race at 5 p.m. and WITI took 2554 easily. At 6 p.m., WTMJ took households and WITI won 25-54.

WITI airs news at 9 p.m. and won the 10 p.m. news battle in August. WITI did a 6.4 in households and 3.7 in 25-54. WISN averaged a 4.7 and 1.4, WTMJ a 3.9 and 1.5 and WDJT a 3.2 and 0.5.

WITI does 61 and a half hours of news a week. The tagline is “Because You Matter,” and Steinmetz said station staffers take it to heart. “We work very hard to make ourselves part of the community,” he said.

WVTV does not do news, but has high school football this time of year. The weekly program is called Thursday Night Lights.

The market has a booming downtown, access to Lake Michigan, and a varied business portfolio that includes HarleyDavidson, Northwestern Mutual and craft breweries such as Lakefront. “There’s great sports, we’re right by a lake and we’re 90 minutes from Chicago,” Monfre said. “The recreation in this state is beautiful.”

WHY THIS MATTERS Market No. 36 is more than a brewery town — and one that punches above its weight in the news game.

Cable Strong and Able in Milwaukee SPECTRUM NEWS 1 REACHES its first anniversary in Milwaukee in late November. The news channel replaced a sports network and covers the whole of Wisconsin, though the network’s main office and studio are in Milwaukee.

There’s “Weather on the 1s,” a Green Bay Packers program called The Roundtable and lots of news. Sachelle Saunders anchors mornings, Jason Fechner handles evenings and JD Rudd is chief meteorologist. “All three have ties to Wisconsin,” said Alan Mason, group VP/general manager, Spectrum News, South and Central.

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

While viewers in Milwaukee see the same programming that viewers in Madison and Green Bay do, Spectrum News 1 is able to issue separate weather updates to zones around Wisconsin when it’s appropriate.

A bureau in Washington, D.C., covers local issues in our capital, with one reporter focused on Wisconsin politics. There are bureaus in Madison and Green Bay, too.

Mason said Year One has been positive. “By everything we measure, it’s been successful,” he said. “And I think we’ve made an impact.” — MM

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Spectrum 1 News morning anchor Sachelle Saunders

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One Year In, Xandr Still Pushing for Relevant Ads Bloomberg, Vudu jump into Community pool

By Jon Lafayette jon.lafayette@futurenet.com | @jlafayette

WHY THIS MATTERS AT&T wants to use its year-old Xandr advanced-ad unit to make ads more relevant — and not just on its own platforms.

O

NE YEAR after being christened as Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising company continues to push the message that its technology can help make advertising more palatable for consumers and more effective for advertisers.

It also wants to make advertising more lucrative for programmers and content creators — and not just for the ones owned by AT&T. “We’ve been very busy in building technology and launching products to realize our vision of building a premium advertising marketplace, so advertisers can reach audiences and media companies can get the best value for their inventory,” Xandr CEO Brian Lesser said at the company’s second annual Relevance conference in Santa Barbara, California.

Some things have been accomplished in year one. The company has launched an adbuying platform, Xandr Invest; an ad-selling platform, Xandr Monetize; and an ad-inventory marketplace it calls Community.

At the conference, Lesser said Bloomberg and Vudu had joined the Community marketplace.

Meanwhile, AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson, defending the company’s “modern media company” strategy at a Wall Street conference, talked about his expectations for the company’s advertising business.

“Because we have all of the viewership data from set-top boxes, we have viewership data on the mobile phones, we’re getting an amazing premium for selling that small advertising inventory in DirecTV,” Stephenson said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference in New York. “When we did the Time Warner deal,

How To Do Ads with Team Coco ONE WAY TO IMPROVE advertising is by reducing clutter and integrating brand messages into content.

Long-running late night host Conan O’Brien has collaborated with advertisers for years and was asked

by Kevin Reilly, president of TBS, TNT and truTV and chief content officer for HBO Max, what works and what doesn’t.

O’Brien warns that when brands try to be too controlling bad things happen.

“If my fans, or people who consume whatever it is I’m making, feel

22 SEPTEMBER

23, 2019

I’ve been co-opted by the brand, I say you’re spending money but they’re going to resent you because they’re going to feel that you forced Conan to do something that isn’t in his wheelhouse,” O’Brien, host of TBS’s Conan, said at Xandr’s Relevance conference. “So they’re going to resent you. It’s going to be bad for me. It’s going to be bad for you. It’s not going to help people enjoy your brand more.”

O’Brien said that brands like Snickers give him a lot of latitude.

“They let us write how we’re going

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now WarnerMedia, what came with it was a rather large inventory of advertising,” Stephenson said.

Stephenson noted that AT&T had hired Lesser, who had been with media buyer GroupM, and invested in technology, including AppNexus.

“We spent the last year and a half standing up the technology stack to now take the Turner ad inventory,” he said, referring to WarnerMedia’s ad-supported channels. It will use the same AT&T data and “drive advertising revenues off the Turner inventory. We will be going to the upfronts next spring with one face, Xandr, and representing all of the Turner inventory. We will be doing that next spring and we’re pretty excited about what the possibility is here for advertising.”

Xandr officials at the conference did not elaborate on how Xandr and WarnerMedia would be working together more closely than they had at the past year’s upfronts.

In addition to the Turner linear cable TV ad inventory, Xandr will eventually be selling inventory from a new streaming video product from WarnerMedia. WarnerMedia plans to launch HBO Max next year as a non-ad-supported product.

About a year after that, though, the company plans to launch an ad-supportXandr CEO ed video-on-demand service. Lesser said Brian Lesser Xandr was already looking at ad loads speaks at the and ad formats for the service.

Relevance The conference, attended by media conference. buyers, brand marketers, media companies (some that have joined Community, some that have not) and ad tech companies, continued a conversation about how advertising should react as consumer content consumption behavior changes.

“That is causing changes in how businesses behave and how they invest,” Lesser said. “It’s also causing changes in how we cooperate and how we work together. If you remember nothing from my talk today, remember that in order to meet the consumer where they are in terms of delivering content, in terms of integrating advertising, we need each other as partners.

“No one company is going to get there by itself and this conference is really a way for us to engage with all of you — our customers, our partners, our clients,” Lesser added.

to incorporate Snickers,” he said.

“We can do it in a way that’s funny the way I like to be funny. Snickers is the punchline to it and it really works.”

O’Brien has a podcast that now has more than 1 million listeners.

TBS, TNT and TruTV’s Kevin Reilly with Conan O’Brien

He said fans consider one of the best parts of the podcast is when O’Brien tries to read his sponsors’ ad copy and totally butchers it.

“We have not had one person say, ‘We’re not paying for that ad,’ ” he said. “They love it. They know that a lot of times people fast-forward through the ads. They don’t do that on our podcast because they want to hear what I do with this ad. They can hear me lose control and be unable to read the copy. It becomes its own happening.” — JL

Getty Images for Xandr

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Entertainment Mags Look for a Comeback Anchor chair changes have the category looking a little different this season

By Paige Albiniak palbiniak@gmail.com | @PaigeA

WHY THIS MATTERS Once the font of celebrity news, entertainment magazines are struggling to fit into a world they originated.

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

I

T WAS THE VIRAL VIDEO literally seen ’round the world.

When The Washington Post posted a behind-the-scenes video of Access Hollywood host Billy Bush chatting with then-Apprentice star Donald J. Trump, headlines exploded all over the globe that then-Republican presidential candidate Trump made sexually inappropriate comments toward women, including Bush’s then co-host Nancy O’Dell, while Bush laughed and egged him on.

As the world knows now, Bush was fired from his new job at NBC’s Today while Trump went on to become president. No one ever said justice was part of politics or Hollywood.

But while Trump won the White House, Bush found himself on a forced three-year time out. Now, thanks to the belief of Extra senior executive producer Lisa Gregorisch-Dempsey (known widely as Lisa G), Bush is emerging from his forced early retirement as the new host of Warner Bros.’s veteran entertainment magazine.

He’s definitely humbler for the experience.

“I came back from this reckoning in my life with a real kind of appreciation,” Bush said. “I find myself happier at work and I’m a better person to work with. I feel like the old bull who has been there — I’ve seen some things and I know what it’s like to be all the way down, so you treat people and approach your work differently because of that.”

While Bush looked for his next gig, he did some thinking.

“Everyone in this business has said to me that it would just take time,” Bush said. “I didn’t murder anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. It was just not a great moment. I didn’t like seeing myself in that moment, either. But it was a moment that took place in 2005, 11 years before I was fired. This was about Donald Trump and not me.”

That said, Bush still had to pay a hefty price for his casual backstage actions. “We are knee-deep in cancel culture right now,” he said. “You should be able to get up. I owned up to everything. Does the fact that this happened mean I should never be able to work again? If you can’t get up from that and come back and work and provide for your family, then we are really living in scary times.

“I’m glad to be back. I’m grateful to be back. And I’m a different person, to be sure.”

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Following the Story Gregorisch-Dempsey plans to take advantage of those contacts by turning Extra into less of a typical magazine show and more of a reality show, featuring Bush on the clock while he tracks down the story of the day. It seems like a stressful setup — Bush has to show up and try to close the deal on a story every day by early afternoon — but he seems entirely up for the challenge.

“The pressure is on me, certainly,” he said. “Most people in our genre go straight to hair and makeup and get handed their scripts, but the process of building stories and contacting people is what you do as a working journalist. We document that whole process now.”

Gregorisch-Dempsey and Bush brought the idea to Fox and they loved it, feeling that it fit right in with the station group’s emphasis on day-and-date topical programming.

“Extra has come up with a new format that’s more investigative and less promotional,” said Frank Cicha, executive VP, programming, Fox Television Stations. “They have a talent in Billy Bush that I think can execute the concept and they have an executive producer and team that knows what they are doing. It’s a very clear vision of what they are going to do.”

It’s not just Extra that’s undergoing revisions. Both of the other top entertainment magazines — Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood — also are shaking things up. The reasons for the changes are multifold.

First, like all syndicated shows, there is pressure on the economics. As ratings decline due to viewer fragmentation, so does revenue. Adapting to less resources has been a challenge in a genre that had gotten used to champagne tastes and now has to run on light-beer budgets.

Second, all of the shows would like to grow by attracting younger audiences. This is especially challenging because not only do young people not watch this format, they don’t watch linear TV. That makes it nearly impossible to bring those demographics

Extra/Telepictures; Danny Ventrella/NBC; Timothy Kuratek/CBS

Senior executive producer Lisa Greg­orischDempsey and host Billy Bush on the set of the revamped Extra.

For her part, Gregorisch-Dempsey was looking to change up the show. Extra was losing its clearances on NBC owned stations in six top markets and moving to Fox, and Fox wanted to see something different. At the same time, Extra’s host, Mario Lopez, was moving to NBCUniversal’s Access Hollywood (ironically, the show from which Bush hailed) so the time was right to try something new.

Gregorisch-Dempsey reached out to Bush in the most modern of ways: she direct-messaged him on Instagram. But Bush, 47, remains of a generation and didn’t see the message until his new agent pointed it out and set up a lunch between the two of them.

Gregorisch-Dempsey claims credit for launching Bush’s TV career, hiring him as a New York-based freelancer for Extra back in the day. At the time, George W. Bush had just become president and Gregorisch-Dempsey wanted to put a Bush on the air. But when the show insisted on referring to Bush as the president’s nephew, he got annoyed. He wanted people to know him on his own terms.

Fast-forward to 2019, and Gregorisch-Dempsey still thought highly of Bush’s talent, his work ethic and his relationships.

“We’ve never had a host like Billy, who is also a journalist and deeply involved in the content,” Gregorisch-Dempsey said. “We should insure his phone because his contacts are worth their weight in gold.”

ing to change things up. It changed its name back to Acc­ess Hollywood after a two-year stint as Access, and it brought on entertainment magazine veteran Mario Lopez to fill the space left by NBC’s Natalie Morales, who departed the franchise after joining it in 2016. Morales took Bush’s vacated spot in 2016 when he went to join Today.

Lopez, who is probably the most recognizable of the current crop of entertainment magazine hosts, joins Kit Hoover and Scott Evans on the franchise. It’s now live for two hours a day in some markets, with three shows: Access Hollywood, the flagship; Access Daily, which had been called Access Live; and new show All Access.

All Access is taking over Extra’s time slots on WNBC New York, KNBC Los Angeles, WCAU Philadelphia, KNTV San Francisco, WTVJ Miami and WVIT Hartford, Connecticut, focusing on true crime and human-interest stories.

(From l.): Sibley Scoles, Scott Evans, Kit Hoover and Mario Lopez will helm Access Hollywood in its 24th season.

to linear television, no matter the format. That’s why Entertainment Tonight, for example, has launched a 24/7 streaming service, ET Live, that relies on younger, less experienced, but maybe more socially fluent talent.

Conversely, when these shows try to program to younger viewers, they run the very real risk of alienating the older core viewers who do come to the set every night.

Finally, entertainment magazines face competition from celebrities themselves, who can publish all of their own content direct to social media and no longer have much need for the magazines.

ET Relies on Its Brand Equity At Entertainment Tonight, a combination of those factors resulted in the departure of longtime anchor O’Dell, who started on ET in 2011 after 13 years at Access Hollywood. CBS also brought in a 37-year-old executive producer, Erin Johnson, to bring a different perspective to the production.

“People aren’t waiting until 7:30 p.m. to get the news — news is happening immediately,” Johnson said. “We’re really looking to make our show more of an experience and make it more fun while providing additional context.”

What that means is making the show less about reporting the entertainment news of the day, and making the show more about providing viewers with what feels like exclusive access.

For example, ET spent the finale of CBS’s The Big Bang Theory backstage with the cast; visited Jennifer Lopez, currently starring in box-office topper Hustlers, on tour and in her dressing room; and spent an entire episode at the Country Music Awards in Nashville with Garth Brooks as the guest co-host. It’s about giving viewers content they can’t get anywhere else that ET can deliver because of its brand equity, Johnson said.

“We want to lean into the fandom and offer them something totally unique,” Johnson said. That said, when celebrity news breaks — such as the death of Luke Perry or Valerie Harper — the show will throw out the plan and spend the episode focusing on the news of the day.

ET is looking to fill O’Dell’s spot with a female co-host but in the meantime Kevin Frazier remains in place. The show just added ET Live host Lauren Zima as a correspondent, joining Nischelle Turner and Keltie Knight. And like having Brooks as a guest host, other stars are joining for short stints as guest hosts, such as The Bachelorette’s Hannah Brown.

“When you had Mary Hart and then you have Nancy and you’ve only had those two women, you don’t just jump into another marriage quickly,” Johnson said. “But we have a great, deep bench so we don’t feel like we have to make this decision right away.”

Meanwhile, Access Hollywood also spent the summer busily work-

Access Hollywood Goes Live “In March, the team and I started laying the groundwork for the show to go live on the East Coast at 7 p.m. ET and to add an extra half-hour to the show,” said Maureen FitzPatrick, senior executive producer of all three shows, who replaced longtime Access Hollywood executive producer Rob Silverstein earlier this year. Besides serving as a senior development executive at CBS Television Distribution and launching Hot Bench, FitzPatrick most recently launched Tegna’s Daily Blast Live, now entering its third season.

“It’s great because all of these shows have a distinct tone and feel to them,” said Lopez, who last week underwent emergency surgery after tearing his bicep. “Nothing beats going live. We’ll be able to give our viewers up-to-the-minute details and we’ll be the only show in this space to do that.”

Lopez and team will broadcast from their brand-new set at Universal Studios. “You get a West Coast Today show feel,” Lopez said.

“People visiting the park can come by and watch us do what we do.”

Besides the magazines, Lopez also signed a development deal with NBCUniversal and one of the first things to come from that is a reboot of Saved by the Bell that will air on the company’s new subscription streaming service, Peacock, coming this April.

Even with the changes, syndication remains a challenging place to be for the once all-powerful entertainment magazines. But perhaps Bush has it figured out: “I hope over time people tune into me because they know I care about what’s true, I care about people’s psychological health and if they are embroiled in some kind of controversy of the day, I will root through it with them responsibly and with empathy.”

“People aren’t waiting until 7:30 p.m. to get the news — news is happening immediately.

We’re really looking to make our show more of an experience and make it more fun while providing additional context.”

— Erin Johnson, executive producer, Entertainment Tonight

TRACKING DOWN OVER 10 YEARS

The below 10-year track reveals the steady ratings decline for the top entertainment magazines, with the exception of CBS Television Distribution’s Inside Edition, which offers more news and human-interest stories than entertainment news and has remained relatively steady over the past decade.

BROADCAST SEASON

ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT

INSIDE EDITION

ACCESS HOLLYWOOD

TMZ

EXTRA

2008-2009

4.14

2.92

1.99

2.05 1.65

2009-2010

4.17

3.02

1.99

1.95 1.71

2010-2011

3.83

2.92

1.90

1.97 1.61

2011-2012

3.67

3.02

1.93

1.93 1.56

2012-2013

3.58

2.92

1.69

1.89 1.46

2013-2014

3.48

2.92

1.66

1.85 1.53

2014-2015

3.25

3.01

1.69

1.91 1.45

2015-2016

3.09

2.89

1.60

1.69 1.39

2016-2017

3.09

2.77

1.36

1.50 1.20

2017-2018

2.98

3.00

1.25

1.35 1.15

2018-2019

2.79

2.87

1.25

1.22 1.04

(Data excludes breakouts, specials and programs less than 5 minutes.)

SOURCE: Nielsen, Npower, live-plus-same-day

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ET’s Kevin Frazier

SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

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WASHINGTON WATCH

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Google Seeks Help Saving Free Content Model Offers up ‘privacy sandbox’ amid rising pushback from broadcasters

By John Eggerton john.eggerton@futurenet.com | @eggerton

WHY THIS MATTERS Edge providers like Google are seeking a solution to protect privacy without disrupting the free online content business model.

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ACED WITH PRESSURE from Washington over the massive data collection that fuels targeted advertising and, in turn, the free web-content model that the current generation considers something of a birthright, Google says the online ad industry needs to figure out how to protect both privacy and that business model.

If those efforts are successful, it will add fuel to the broadcasters’ arguments that the government should start treating digital advertising outlets like Google and Facebook as direct competitors, a point they have been trying to make to the Justice Department.

Creating a Secure Space In a blog post, Justin Schuh, director of Google Chrome engineering, said the company wants to create what it is calling a Privacy Sandbox, a way to play with some digital plastic rakes and buckets, as it were, to create a more secure space for their growing share of ad budgets.

Perhaps understating the issue a bit, Schuh said “some data practices don’t match up to user expectations of privacy.”

The sandbox idea comes as social media sites and the search giant are under pressure from Congress, where there is bipartisan support for national privacy legislation but also talk of reining in their business through changes to antitrust and other laws.

The backdrop also includes privacy breaches and mishandling of data, the $5 billion fine levied against Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission and the ongoing review of edge providers’ business practices by the Department of Justice.

Google’s Schuh suggested that to meet those expectations, edge providers should not simply block cookies, which make ad targeting possible, but instead come up with a set of open standards to “fundamentally enhance privacy on the Web.” If the edge providers can’t figure out how to protect both, the consequences for ad-supported web content of not being able to milk those cookies for ad revenue could be dire. “When advertising is made less relevant by removing cookies,” Google said, “funding for [web content] publishers falls by 52% on average (based on Google Ad Manager data from May-August 2019).”

Google hopes the sandbox will yield solutions in the following categories: User Information: Identifying how information is used in the “ad ecosystem” in order to develop privacy-preserving APIs (interfaces that allow applications to talk to each other).

Ad Selection: Exploring ways to deliver ads to large groups of similar people while not sharing individual identifiers that someone is part of such a group.

The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, under assistant attorney general Makan Delrahim (r.), has been studying whether it should adjust its merger reviews given the argument that the edge is now competing for the local car dealer ads and should be considered part of the relevant competitive market, but so far has not concluded that digital is in the same league as broadcast spot.

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Conversion Measurement: Measuring an ad’s effectiveness “without letting the advertiser track a specific user across sites.”

Fraud Prevention: Protecting against ad fraud while adding more privacy mechanisms.

Broadcasters are all for privacy, but also for a recognition that online targeted advertising is taking a bite out of their local ad revenue, even in the current chillier climate for edge providers in Washington.

Digital competition in key categories for broadcasters, like automotive, are on the rise, according to a BIA survey from April.

The Justice Department has been looking at spot prices in TV advertising, including settling with Nexstar Media Group and other broadcasters over their sharing of competitively sensitive information. That investigation stemmed from its review of Sinclair Broadcast Group’s effort to buy the Tribune Media stations.

Justice has concluded for the purposes of the just-approved Nexstar-Tribune merger, and other potential mergers in the space, that cable and digital spot ads are not sufficient competition to be included in the relevant product market.

Carnage in Car Sale Ads Broadcasters counter that behemoths like Google are hardly playing in some other sandbox.

A BIA survey released in April highlighted the growing digital competition in the automotive category vital to local TV coffers.

In 2015, BIA predicted that despite “traditional media’s dominance,” digital ads would get about a third of all local automotive ad spending in 2019. It has now upped that prediction to over 40%, and predicts it will be effectively half (49.3%) by 2023.

If it looks like Congress may be stepping in to help determine who is playing in whose sandbox.

The House Judiciary Committee included Google in a massive data request as part of its investigation into whether web giants are using their size and power anti-competitively.

The request includes information on market share of Google’s Ads Data Hub, Ad Mob and Ad Sense and “each of the competitors in any market in which the company offers or sells” those services.

Look for broadcasters to be raising their hands in answer to that question.

SCHMOOZE

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+ On the Scene 1) On the OTT & Video Distribution Summit’s “Premium Video’s ‘TV’ Moment” panel (l. to r.): Eric Berman, Ellation; Richard Cusick, College Humor’s DROPOUT; Griffin Gmelich, Whistle; Jim Bennette, Applicaster; Croi McNamara, Condé Nast Entertainment; and David Bloom, TV[R]EV. 2) B&C sister pub Multichannel News honored the inaugural group of Wonder Women in Streaming at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel (top, l. to r.): Julie McNamara, CBS All Access; Heather Moosnick, Hulu; Julia Veale, Showtime Networks; Diana Pessin, HBO; Dina Weisberger, Google; and Sarah Lyons, WarnerMedia. Bottom row (l. to r.): Anne Aaron, Netflix; Kelly Abcarian, Nielsen; Lori LeBas, ESPN; Alison Hoffman, Starz; Soumya Sriraman, BritBox; and Thea Ellis, Sony PlayStation Vue. 3) Moderator Tim Hanlon (l.) of The Vertere Group and Mike Keyserling, chief operating officer, Philo TV, during the opening keynote of the OTT & Video Distribution Summit. 4) At press day for Hallmark Channel’s Kitten Bowl VII (l. to r.): Beth Stern, host; Bill Abbott and Michelle Vicary, Crown Media Family Networks; and Boomer Esiason, commentator. 5) In the Tennis Channel suite at the U.S. Open in New York (l. to r.): Chris Ripley, president and CEO, Sinclair Broadcast Group; Martina Navratilova; and Ken Solomon, president, Tennis.

6) Actors Holt McCallany (l.) and Anna Torv and director/executive producer David Fincher of Netflix’s Mindhunter at a PaleyFest Fall TV Previews event in Beverly Hills, Calif.

7) Actors Mark-Paul Gosselaar (l.) and Tika Sumpter at the PaleyFest Fall TV Previews event for ABC’s Mixed-ish. 8) Actors Marg Helgenberger (l.) and J. Alex Brinson of CBS’s All Rise at the 13th annual PaleyFest Fall TV Previews. 9) EP/director Jonathan Krisel (l.) and actors Louie Anderson and Zach Galifianakis at the series finale event for FX’s Baskets at Neuehouse Hollywood. 10) Marking the launch of Tamron Hall across all of Hearst Television’s New England stations (l. to r.): Jeff Bartlett, WMUR, Manchester, N.H.; David Abel, WMTV in Portland-Auburn, Maine; Tamron Hall; Bill Fine, WCVB Boston; Emerson Coleman, senior VP, programming, Hearst; and Justin Antoniotti, WPTZ/WNNE, Burlington, Vt./Plattsburgh, N.Y. 11) Actors Hannah John-Kamen (l.), Keegan-Michael Key, Donna Kimball, Jason Isaacs, and Nathalie Emmanuel at a screening of Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance at the Museum of the Moving Image in Long Island City, N.Y. 12) Ja Rule (l.), WE tv president Marc Juris and Irv Gotti at WE tv’s celebration for Growing Up Hip Hop: New York and Untold Stories of Hip Hop at Lavo in New York.

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David Zentz Photography (3); Fred Mullane; Michael Bulbenko for the Paley Center; Brian To for the Paley Center (2); Faith Ninivaggi for WCVB; Monica Schnipper/Getty Images for Netflix; Frank Micelotta/FX/PictureGroup

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FOR MORE PHOTOS, log on to broadcastingcable.com/Sept23.

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DATA MINE

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Who’s Spending What Where BIG SPENDERS

Brands ranked by the greatest increase in TV spend from Sept. 9-15

MOST-SEEN TV ADS

Brands ranked by TV ad impressions from Sept. 9-15

1. Truvada Spend Increase:

1. GEICO TV Ad Impressions: 1.5B

402% Est. TV Spend: $5.9M Spend Within Industry: 100% Top Nets: Comedy Central, Adult Swim, MTV

Est. TV Spend: $24.2M Attention Score: 91.14 Top Show: NFL Football

2. Arby’s Spend Increase:

2. McDonald’s TV Ad Impressions: 1.16B

357% Est. TV Spend: $5.7M Spend Within Industry: 7% Top Networks: Fox, Adult Swim, NBC

3. Mercedes-Benz Spend Increase: 272%

3. Liberty Mutual TV Ad Impressions: 1.1B

Est. TV Spend: $4.6M Spend Within Industry: 4% Top Networks: NBC, CBS, FX

4. Chantix Spend Increase:

Est. TV Spend: $8.18M Attention Score: 93.94 Top Show: SportsCenter

4. State Farm TV Ad Impressions: 1.04B

178%

Est. TV Spend: $5M Spend Within Industry: 88% Top Networks: Fox, CBS, USA

5. L’Oreal Paris Cosmetics Spend Increase: 140%

Est. TV Spend: $17.7M Attention Score: 92.62 Top Show: NFL Football

Est. TV Spend: $15.59M Attention Score: 91.86 Top Show: NFL Football

5. Ford TV Ad Impressions: 959M

Est. TV Spend: $2.4M Spend Within Industry: 26% Top Networks: Telemundo, ABC, NBC

Est. TV Spend: $10.4M Attention Score: 91.58 Top Show: NFL Football

PROMO MOJO

Our exclusive weekly ranking of the programming that networks are promoting most heavily (Sept. 9-15)

1. Thursday Night Football, NFL Network TV Ad Impressions: 521,552,815 Total TV ad impressions within all U.S. households including national linear (live and time-shifted), VOD plus OTT and local

Est. Media Value: $122,854 Est. media value of in-network promos

Attention Index: 128 28% fewer interruptions than average

On the strength of nearly 522 million TV ad impressions, NFL Network’s Thursday Night Football is the ranking’s most-promoted program. Once again, though, most of the top five are traditional broadcasters hyping shows on their fall lineups, with Fox dominating the list. Fox took second place for Prodigal Son, third for The Masked Singer and fourth for 9-1-1, while ABC grabbed fifth for Stumptown.

Notably, the Thursday Night Football promo earned the highest iSpot Attention Index number (128) in the ranking, interrupted 28% less often than the average promo (interruptions include changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV).

Data provided by

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2. Prodigal Son, Fox TV Ad Impressions Est. Media Value Attention Index

391,711,598 $3,970,044 93

3. The Masked Singer, Fox TV Ad Impressions Est. Media Value Attention Index

391,203,236 $4,445,812 70

4. 9-1-1, Fox TV Ad Impressions Est. Media Value Attention Index

321,576,677 $2,295,363 114

5. Stumptown, ABC TV Ad Impressions Est. Media Value Attention Index

299,391,514 $3,562,352 87

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AT&T’s Misleading STELAR Campaign Does a Disservice

By Gordon H. Smith, president and CEO, NAB

N

EARLY 30 YEARS AGO, Congress passed a bill representing a temporary fix to copyright law to boost competition to the cable industry. The bill — now known as STELAR — provided for a “distant signal license” that allowed fledgling satellite TV companies to deliver ABC, CBS and NBC programming to households unserved by local TV stations.

This legislation was never intended to be permanent — indeed, Congress set the bill to sunset after five years. However, because of lagging efforts by the satellite industry to carry local TV stations in all 210 television markets, Congress has continued to renew the distant signal license.

Now, with the latest iteration of this bill set to expire at the end of the year, AT&T-owned DirecTV has launched a misleading on-air campaign warning viewers they are “at risk of losing your TV channels” unless the legislation is renewed by Congress. Viewers, including those in unaffected areas such as the Washington, D.C., market, have reported turning on their DirecTV systems and being “auto-tuned” to a screen directing them to contact Congress in support of STELAR’s renewal.

These scare-tactic messages appearing on the TV screens of DirecTV customers are disingenuous at best and deceptive at worst. The truth is there is no reason for AT&T and DirecTV to grossly mislead most of its subscribers. That’s because the vast majority of DirecTV customers face no impact whatsoever from STELAR’s expiration.

Today, the number of locally unserved households for the five major television networks has dropped to fewer than 500,000 (or less than 0.5% of total U.S. households). Indeed, the U.S. Copyright Office — the expert federal agency on copyright issues — supports expiration of STELAR, and rightly believes that a free-market solution will protect the dwindling number of unserved DirecTV homes from losing access to broadcast programming.

For most of these relatively few remaining households, DirecTV can easily ensure that its viewers won’t lose access to broadcast network programming when STELAR expires. They can simply deliver on their decade-old pledge to carry all local TV stations in every television market. Today, that pledge remains unfulfilled in 12 U.S. TV markets where it refuses to invest in carriage of local TV stations. There is no longer any technical justification for this anticonsumer decision to deprive viewers of local news, weather and emergency information.

It is long past time for DirecTV to fulfill its decade-old promise and provide every subscriber with their local TV station signals. That way, DirecTV viewers from Maine to Montana, and from Kentucky to Texas, will be able to watch local TV station affiliates rather than piped-in New York and Los Angeles programming from thousands of miles away.

DirecTV is doing a serious disservice to both its customers and to Congress by running these misleading messages. We urge AT&T and DirecTV to reconsider airing alerts that only confuse their viewers, and to work with local broadcasters to ensure that all DirecTV customers receive their network programming from local TV affiliates.

Smith

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How’s That Again?

T

HE TRIBUNE BROADCASTING STATION SALES saga appears to be finally over, with Nexstar Media Group getting the FCC go-ahead on Sept 16.

The FCC and the Justice Department both got that merger call right, which is to allow broadcasters to scale up in a crowded video marketplace, though they were a bit stingy with the individual-market combos it allowed.

What Justice definitely did not get right was to conclude — as it did in its settlement with Nexstar and Tribune, getting Justice to “yes” on the deal — that online advertising is not part of the mix when it comes to determining the relevant competitive market for broadcast mergers, and thus what other competitive pressures on price remain when broadcasters merge.

If Justice doesn’t think advertising on giant social media platforms takes business away from broadcast TV advertising, it should think again.

That is certainly news to broadcasters, who’ve been trying to make the point that the Justice Department should rethink its position. — John Eggerton, senior content producer

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Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne Non-executive chairman Richard Huntingford Chief financial officer Penny Ladkin-Brand Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244

THE FIVE SPOT

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Harry Friedman Executive producer, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, Sony Pictures Television IT’S A LITTLE IRONIC that Harry Friedman is choosing this moment (next year, really) to retire. Both of the shows he executive produces — Sony Pictures Television’s Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! — remain at the top of their games (pun intended) and last spring, Jeopardy! spent several weeks as TV’s top-rated show due to the sensational performance of professional gambler James Holzhauer.

Around that same time, sad news broke: Jeopardy!’s host, Alex

Both of your shows are still operating in top form, and Jeopardy! has generated its most excitement and highest ratings in recent years.

Why did you decide now was the time to announce your retirement? Twenty-five years is a hell of a good run. I’m going to find out what it’s like to have very little if any responsibility. In all seriousness, I wanted to have a well thought-out transition. After the first of the year, Michael [Richards, who was named new executive producer of both shows] will start spending more time here.

What was your takeaway from James Holzhauer’s epic run in the spring? I think it really fulfilled the promise of what was possible, of what we envisioned when we dropped the five-win limit, just before Ken Jennings [won 74 games in a row] in 2004.

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Bonus Five What are you bingewatching? The Good Fight, Schitt’s Creek What was your last great meal and where? Osteria Santo Spirito in Florence, Italy What places are on your travel bucket list? Seville and Barcelona What books are on your nightstand? Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari What’s your all-time favorite TV show? Threeway tie: The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad

Some people have said Holzhauer broke the game.

Do you agree? No, Holzhauer didn’t break the game. He played it in a way that has never been played before. He’s a professional sports gambler, so he has a gambler’s mentality.

He also has an incredibly deep and broad base of knowledge and very fast signaling-button skills.

What’s been the reaction to Alex Trebek’s cancer diagnosis on set? Alex has been so touched by the fan reaction. On our Jeopardy! stage we have a Hall of Fame area set aside for the cards, letters and gifts people have sent in, like T-shirts, hats and a lot of kids’ drawings. It’s been really, really, really sweet.

What are you most looking forward to about retirement? Getting my backhand to go from mediocre to just so-so. And it sounds cliché, but spending more time with the family — my grandkids are just so damn much fun.

MORE ONLINE: For more from Friedman, including his take on what makes Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune so enduring, go to broadcastingcable.com/Sept23.

Elizabeth Fisher/CBS; AMC

Trebek, revealed he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Trebek recently has had to resume chemotherapy but remains back at work taping season 36 of the iconic game show.

Still, Friedman felt the time was right to announce that this spring he will depart both of the shows he has carefully shepherded for so long. In the following conversation with B&C contributor Paige Albiniak, Friedman explains why he’s stepping away and also reveals how he felt about Holzhauer’s run and the incredible fan reaction to Trebek’s diagnosis.

Harry Friedman is walking away from the long-running Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune at the top of his executive producer game. At left, Friedman (c.) celebrates Wheel’s 7,000th episode with hosts Vanna White (l.) and Pat Sajak.

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