Herbert G. Klein, 91, a San Diego newspaperman who was a longtime aide to Richard M. Nixon and was White House communications director during much of the Watergate era, died July 2 at his home in La Jolla, Calif., after a heart attack.
Friends and family in his hometown mourned and paid tribute to the popular TV pitchman who died last Sunday of a heart attack in Tampa, Fla. Mays' body was clad in his signature blue button-down shirt and khaki trousers as were his pallbearers. The Discovery Channel, which airs Mays' reality show, covered the funeral.
Nielsen Thursday officially announced the launch of local people meter service in Portland, Ore., and Pittsburgh, replacing its "set meter" service in those markets, but said it was delaying a previously planned launch of the service in Baltimore until July 7, due to a "very difficult conversion to digital television" in that market.
Retransmission and Internet revenues can't climb fast enough for TV stations. But in a few years, both will be contributing significantly to stations' coffers. Each revenue source will be over the $1 billion mark, according to two recent estimates.
A dour report on job losses in June sent stocks sharply lower Thursday. Major stock indexes fell more than 2.6% after the government said the U.S. unemployment rate hit a 26-year high. The Dow Jones industrials closed at their lowest level in six weeks.
Local broadcasters are increasingly degrading their high-definition picture quality due to multicasting — transmitting digital subchannels alongside the primary HD stream within a station's 19.4 Mbps digital TV pipe.
Gray Television, owner of KKTV in Colorado Springs, Colo., has asked the FCC to substitute its ch. 10 allotment with ch. 49 in order to improve the station's coverage.
A joint research repoft by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing and research firm NeuroFocus found that TV earns high marks for emotional engagement, commercial recall and intent to purchase. Small-screen media is less immersive; as such, viewers tend to find that advertising on mobile and Internet platforms is not nearly as engaging as it is on TV.
In a move that will make it significantly easier, faster and far more efficient for ad agencies to buy local and national spot cable TV advertising, the leading spot cable TV rep firm, National Cable Communications, has integrated its sales systems with Donovan Data Systems, the leading provider of "back office" data processing systems for advertising agencies. The breakthrough will enable media shops to place orders and process spot cable TV buys electronically and without any manual paper insertion orders.
The faltering economy is causing many stations to consider outsourcing master control and other technical back-office jobs. Among those that may provide such services are third-party firms as well as LIN, Media General, Raycom and other station groups that have already began centralcasting or hubbing.
Fox's So You Think You Can Dance pulled ahead of NBC's America's Got Talent in their shared 9 p.m. timeslot last night, a week after the Wednesday night debut of Talent topped Dance. Dance averaged a 3.1 adults 18-49 rating, 0.2 ahead of Talent. Last week Talent had a 3.1 and Dance a 2.9 in the hour.
The networks have done a good job of explaining away the impact of DVRs on ratings, noting that, in fact, few users actually bother skipping through commercials. But that is about to change, according to one top researcher. As more and more users acquire and begin to use DVRs, ad skipping will become a far larger issue for networks, and those annual cost-per-thousand pricing increases will become a thing of the past.
The mysteries that continue to surround Michael Jackson's death include a frustrating and potentially costly one for news organizations: how and when the fallen pop idol will be laid to rest and where a memorial service would be held.
Nearly two in three Americans say news organizations have given too much coverage to the death of Michael Jackson, but half say the media have struck the right balance between covering the pop star's personal life and musical career.
Only six of the Top 50 TV station groups posted revenue growth, according to the latest BIAfn/TVNewsday 2008 ranking by revenue: Post-Newsweek, McGraw-Hill, Dispatch, Capitol, Griffin and CCA. Overall, BIAfn says, revenue fell 6.5% to $20.1 billion in 2008 and will plunge another 17.3% to $16.6 billion this year. And don't look for significant growth until 2012, it says.
