 |
NBCUniversal says that the Beijing Winter Olympics racked up the smallest prime-time audience ever recorded for the games. This year’s average of 11.4 million viewers was down 42 percent from the 19.8 million average number of viewers brought in during the 2018 Pyeongchang games. Those figures follow a similarly disappointing perfomance for the 2020 Tokyo games, which only managed to pull in an average of 15.5 million viewers—down more than 43 percent from the 27.5 million recorded for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro games. NBC is in the middle of a $75.5 billion that gives it the US right to air the Olympics through 2032.
 |
Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social-networking platform, is up and running—sort of. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, some potential users say they were unable to create an account or got error messages when they tried setting up an account. But snafus do not seem to be dimming the platform’s prospects. Truth Social currently sits at #1 on the App Store’s ranking of free apps, and Digital World Acquisition Corp., the blank-check company that is merging with Trump Media & Technology, saw its shares jump by 19 percent in premarket trading on Feb. 22. “I’m sure this isn’t the company’s fault,” one App Store commenter said. “I’m sure it’s the corrupt liberals at Apple.”
 |
Tegna, which owns 64 television stations in 51 US markets, is acquired via a partnership deal between private equity firms Standard General and Apollo Global Management. Standard General founding partner Soo Kim will become Tegna's chairman, and its CEO, Deb McDermott, will serve as Tegna’s chief executive officer. The partners beat out a rival offer from Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group. Apollo acquired a controlling interest in the TV stations that had been operated by Cox Media Group in 2019, and the Hollywood Reporter says that Tegna stations in Austin, Dallas and Houston are expected to be acquired by Cox in the wake of the deal. Tegna was spun off from Gannett in 2015 as a separate, publicly traded company.
CBS News Radio will go off the air on May 22, part of the axe-swinging managerial plan put into play by CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss... The Economist, which was first published in 1843, is changing hands. Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith has agreed to acquire a 26.9 percent stake in the publication from Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, her family and family foundation... Nexstar Media Group says it has closed its acquisition of TEGNA, the broadcast, digital media and marketing services company that was formed in 2015, when the Gannett Company split into two publicly traded companies.
USA TODAY brings on Jamie Stockwell as VP of news, effective March 30. Stockwell was most recently deputy managing editor of news for the Washington Post... YouTube expands its likeness detection capabilities to a pilot group of government officials, journalists and political candidates... The AP Fund for Journalism adds 50 news organizations to its local news program, bringing the total number of participating newsrooms to 100. 
Versant Media Group, the NBCUniversal cable TV spin-off, today reported its first financial results as 2025 revenues dipped 5.3 percent to $6.7B and standalone EBITDA dropped 9.1 percent to $2.2B.
Trump Media & Technology Group is discussing a spin-off of the Truth Social platform following the expected closing of its $6B merger deal with TAE Technologies... Condé Nast sells off Them, the digital LGBTQ-focused platform it launched in 2017, to Equalpride, publisher of Out, The Advocate, Out Traveler, Health PLUS Wellness and Pride.com... CBS News has parted ways with longevity influencer Peter Attia, one of the 19 contributors that editor-in-chief Bari Weiss brought on as part of her plan to present a wider variety of voices on the platform. 
Symbolic.ai forms a partnership with News Corp to begin using the company’s AI-native publisher platform in the newsrooms of News Corp publications to augment research, writing and publishing... Mediaite launches a newsletter that promises to give readers a summary of—media newsletters... The Fund for American Studies launches the Journalism Excellence Fellowship, a program that will provide promising young journalists the opportunity to work alongside top writers, reporters, and media professionals.
