Layoffs have hit the ad sales ranks in the CBS owned-and-operated TV station portfolio as a long-term restructuring effort takes effect. Tuesday’s cuts come after new ad sales staffers were hired over the past three months. The exact number of employees affected could not be determined, but sources told Deadline the net number of departures
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NBCUniversal still considers the Olympic Games to be “the great aggregator of viewership,” in the words of top exec Dan Lovinger, and sees 2024 revenue for Paris on pace to exceed the tally of the 2020 Tokyo Games. Lovinger provided the outlook on Olympic ads during Advertising Week in New York, echoing recent public comments
National CineMedia shares are popping today in a down market as the cinema advertising company emerged from Chapter 11 and named former top executives of NBCUniversal, HBO and Fox to a reconstituted, and pretty impressive, board of directors. Lauren Zalaznick, formerly EVP & Chair, Entertainment & Digital Networks, Comcast NBCUniversal, is now board chair. “We
College athletics may be on the verge of another major conference shakeup, one that could end the fabled Pac-12 and create a giant, coast-to-coast conference. Speculation is running rampant about which schools will move where. As usual, television and streaming rights will play a large part. Numerous reports indicate the Big Ten is talking to
The company behind Bud Light is not holding back in its efforts to dig out of the hole it created by angering customers of its brand. But despite Anheuser-Busch mounting the biggest Bud Light summer advertising campaign in its history, sales continue to sag. A boycott by consumers angered by a campaign featuring transgender influencer
Media giant Comcast beat on its top and bottom line for the three months ended in June with theme parks and studio strong, even as the latter basks in another giant opening, for Opppenheimer, in the current third quarter. Total revenue nosed up 1.7% to $30.5 billion for the second quarter ended in June. Net income jumped
John Deyle, a veteran actor on Broadway and television commercials, died June 22 in Mount Kisco, NY of esophageal cancer. He was 68. Born and raised in Rochester, New York, he studied at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. In 1978, when auditioning for the Richard Rodgers and Martin Charnin musical I Remember Mama, Charnin decided
If that whole playing-a-cop-on-TV thing ever dries up, Chris Meloni always has ongoing opportunities in the commercial advertising space — as long as he’s willing to take it all off. In a new advertisement Meloni posted on Instagram, the Law & Order: SVU zaddy shows off his multiple pairs of Tommie Copper socks — and
After waving their sports flags proudly last week at their upfronts pitches to ad buyers, Disney and Warner Bros Discovery are confronting a head-scratching situation with the NBA and NHL playoffs. The conference finals in both basketball and hockey — broadcast by WBD’s TNT and Disney’s ESPN and ABC — have been remarkably lopsided. Until
YouTube drew a round of applause from advertisers at its annual Brandcast event by announcing it would let them run 30-second commercials that can’t be skipped by viewers on connected-TVs. The feature will be available via YouTube Select, a curated platform for top-end advertisers Introduced several years ago. The new 30-second initiative will affect 70%
Fox News Media waved its banner during the Fox upfront Monday afternoon in New York, plugging a wide array of platforms but notably gliding past its main profit center in prime time. Opinion shows like the one hosted by the recently ejected Tucker Carlson got only a glancing mention during the 7-minute segment. Carlson’s stunning
Despite all of the upheaval at Twitter under new owner Elon Musk in recent months, the social media firm and NBCUniversal say they have gotten their earliest start yet in ramping up their Olympic Games partnership. With more than a year to go before the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Twitter announced during a presentation
The nation’s biggest movie theater advertising network National CineMedia said tonight it’s filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Texas – where one of its biggest shareholders and customers, Regal parent Cineworld, has just presented a restructuring plan to emerge from bankruptcy itself. Cineworld filed in
National CineMedia said today it’s negotiated a second extension of the grace period on interest payments originally due Feb. 15. A one-month grace period for a payment said to be about $6.6 million ended March 15, when the company announced lenders had agreed to another 17 days. Big ratings agencies Moody’s and S&P Global declared
The Army is mobilizing to quickly update its planned Jonathan Majors recruiting ads touting the service so that they can run as scheduled. The ads were pulled last Sunday following Majors’s weekend arrest on various assault charges. The new ads will be part of the men’s and women’s Final Four advertising offerings by the Army.
A new Amazon Prime ad campaign debuting at tonight’s Academy Awards kicks off with a spot directed by Olivia Wilde. The campaign “It’s On Prime” aims to highlight how the world’s biggest loyalty service makes everyday life easier. Lizzo and John Krasinski will also be a part of the campaign, Amazon said. By Wieden+Kennedy in
With this year’s domestic box office expected to rise to $9 billion, of course the major Hollywood studios are taking Super Bowl LVII ad spots seriously. The big game, which last year attracted 112 million viewers, remains an enormous bullhorn when it comes to drawing attention to your tentpole movies — and this year, starting
Netflix’s landmark entry into ad-supported streaming, which began last November, is off to a “solid” start and will soon bring in at least $3 billion in annual revenue, executives said. “The hardest step is that first step as you’re crawling,” Co-CEO Greg Peters said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings interview. Netflix’s decision to offer a
EXCLUSIVE: James Wan has been labeled by fans for being responsible for killer doll movies, specifically his Conjuring franchise spinoff, Annabelle. “It’s funny, I really hadn’t done that yet,” says the horror auteur. And that was his prime reason to create M3GAN with screenwriter Akela Cooper. “In my previous doll movies — they don’t kill
EXCLUSIVE: Buttressing the $441.6M global opening of Avatar: The Way of Water this past weekend –the 11th best ever– is a curated promo partner campaign assembled by Disney; a lineup that reflects the eco-friendly and technologically advanced sensibilities of the James Cameron directed epic. All in, the value of media which advertisers paid for here
NBCUniversal is getting the jump on the new year, announcing dates for its NewFronts and upfronts presentations next May while touting the ways it has “fueled fandom, growth, and innovation” in 2022. Linda Yaccarino, NBCU chairman and head of sales and partnerships, revealed the 2023 outlook in a LinkedIn post. The NewFronts presentation will be
Taking advantage of the expected mass tune-in for tonight’s finale of The Walking Dead, a handful of ads featuring characters who died during the show’s 11-season run has given fans reason to not look away during commercial breaks. The initiative resurrecting four characters for ads for Autodesk, Deloitte, DoorDash, MNTN and Ring (watch a compilation
The fruits of Disney’s industry-reported $100M+ promotional partner campaign on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever have been yielded, not just in a November U.S./Canada box office opening record of $181.3M and 12.7M admissions but in stoking a diverse range of demographics including Black, Latino/Hispanic and older women to cinemas in droves this past weekend. The media
The nation’s biggest cinema advertising network National CineMedia saw revenue rise and losses narrow last quarter as executives cited brisk sales of movie theater ads and insisted that it’s business as usual fo now, even as part owner and major client Regal is swept up in bankruptcy. “From our perspective, nothing has changed on a
Publicly-traded in-theater advertising network National CineMedia may be delisted from the Nasdaq stock market if its share price doesn’t perk up. An SEC filing said the company has received written notice from Nasdaq that it’s not in compliance with the $1 minimum bid price required for listing and has 180 days or risks being booted
Dikembe Mutombo, the gravelly voiced center whose finger-wagging shot-blocking made him a Denver Nuggets legend and built a cult following among basketball fans worldwide, is undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, the NBA said in a statement Saturday on behalf of him and his family. “He is receiving the best care possible from a collaborative
AMC Networks is consolidating its distribution and affiliate operations with ad sales, promoting Kim Kelleher to the new role of chief commercial officer. Josh Reader, who joined AMC Networks in 2011 and has been president of distribution and development since 2019, is exiting the company. He had previously informed top execs of his plan to
IATSE is accusing the Association of Independent Commercial Producers of “union busting” and providing companies with a “license to blacklist” production department workers engaged in unionizing efforts. Last month, the union said that thousands of workers employed in TV commercial production departments had formed a new union called Stand with Production under the umbrella of
EXCLUSIVE: Palisades Media Group, a multi-faceted agency based in Santa Monica and known in entertainment circles for its marketing work on behalf of Netflix, has abruptly closed after 26 years in business. According to multiple sources, agency employees came to work Friday and an email was sent out early in the morning informing them that
In the annals of full-tilt ad pitches that have left buyers razzled and dazzled, Amazon’s NewFront presentation tonight may not merit an especially lengthy or detailed chapter. Most of the announcements during the 90-minute event had been posted to Deadline and other outlets before the crowd of several hundred filed into David H. Koch Theater