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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.
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.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which has roots going back to 1786, is going out of business, the paper’s owners, Block Communications, announced on Jan. 7... GQ editor Will Welch is stepping down to take on a new Paris-based role with the musician Pharrell, who is also men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton... Semafor says it has raised $30 million on a $330 million valuation, following its first profitable year. 
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach an agreement that will make a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars available for use by Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform... CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has moved Tony Dokoupil, a co-host at “CBS Mornings” since 2019, into the anchor’s chair for the “CBS Evening News,” following the departure of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois... USA Today editor-in-chief Caren Bohan has left the paper.
