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NBC may be chopping an hour from its nightly prime time schedule, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The plan would eliminate the 10 pm to 11 pm hour, which would be given back to local stations to program at their discretion. However, the report also says that the network’s late-night schedule would likely be moved back to 10:30 pm or 11 pm, giving “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon a head start on its competition at ABC and CBS. NBCUniversal Television and Streaming chairman Mark Lazarus have already eliminated programming in the 1:30 am to 2 am time slot and handed that back to affiliates. The WSJ notes that NBC could save tens of millions of dollars in content costs through the move.
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| Sean Hannity |
Sean Hannity leads a long lineup of Fox News personalities who have been called for a deposition in the ongoing defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems against the network in Delaware Superior Court. Also slated to appear are Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs. The New York Times reports that others set to join that list are Fox News Media chief executive Suzanne Scott and president Jay Wallace, with Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch both possibilities in the coming weeks. The suit charges Fox with pushing false claims of voter fraud. A Fox News spokesman claimed that the First Amendment protected the company from the suit and that making the Murdochs a focus of the investigation would constitute “a fruitless fishing expedition.”
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| Anna Bateson |
Guardian Media Group names Anna Bateson as its chief executive. Bateson previously held the interim CEO spot at GMG for several months in 2019-20 and also served as chief customer officer. She replaces Keith Underwood, who has held the role of interim chief executive since the resignation of Annette Thomas in June 2021. Most recently, Bateson was CEO of Josh Wood Colour, an e-commerce beauty brand. Before coming to the Guardian in 2016, she was director of global consumer marketing at YouTube. “Her deep understanding and experience of the Guardian and of digital media and marketing, combined with her significant leadership experience, mean she is very well placed to lead the Guardian into the future,” said GMG board chairman Charles Gurassa. GMG had a rare cash surplus last year, largely due to increased revenues from digital audiences.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
Boston Globe Media acquires InstaTrac, a company that provides subscription-based services aimed at making government information easier to find, track, and understand... AARP names former New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso as its SVP and chief content officer, unifying the organization's portfolio of media, live events and digital platforms... The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit, awards its inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellowships.
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. has replaced CEO and former California Congressman Devin Nunes with Kevin McGurn, a seasoned media sales executive.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is being bought by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit that is the parent organization of the Baltimore Banner... The British Broadcasting Corporation is axing approximately 2,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its work force... Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is also succumbing to layoff fever, announcing plans to lay off 16 percent of its employees, about 1,000 people.
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.
