CNN’s New Chief Says ‘Breaking News’ Banner is Overused

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorSir Nick Faldo, who has helped call golf tournaments for CBS Sports alongside Jim Nantz for years, plans to step down from his role as CBS Sports’ lead golf analyst in August.Faldo, who has held the role of CBS Sports’ lead golf analyst since 2007, will be replaced by Trevor Immelman, who joined CBS Sports’ golf team in 2019. His new multi-year deal with CBS Sports will begin with its 2023 coverage, when he sits with Nantz for the Farmers Insurance Open.“Sir Nick has had a remarkable career on Network television for nearly 20 years and is one of the most accomplished commentators to ever sit in the 18th tower,” said Sean McManus, chairman, of CBS Sports, in a statement.  “Nick brought the same passion and dedication that propelled him to the world’s number one golfer to our broadcasts.

Sony Music last week told the high court in London that a dispute over the rights in the Jimi Hendrix Experience recordings should be heard in the New York courts, because the legal battle centres on agreements signed in the 1970s in the US. And a separate lawsuit in relation to this dispute has already been filed with the courts in New York.The dispute is between Sony Music and the Jimi Hendrix estate on one side, and UK-based companies representing the estates of the other two members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience band – Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell – on the other.

BTS member J-Hope is set to be the first member of the boyband to release new music, according to Big Hit Music.A day after the septet announced their temporary hiatus from group activities, a representative from Big Hit Music confirmed that the group will be releasing new solo material and collaborations during their break from group engagements.Of the members, J-Hope is slated to be the first to release new solo music, with a full-length solo album reportedly in the works, per Billboard. Further details on the rapper’s forthcoming release are expected to be released in the coming weeks.“[The hiatus] will be a time for each of the members to grow with their diverse activities, and we anticipate that this will foster BTS into a long-running team,” the representative told South Korean media outlets, as translated by Soompi.

The Uvalde School Police Chief is speaking out after the tragedy that unfolded at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last month.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorAdam Verdugo, a news producer who has worked for years with anchor Norah O’Donnell, has been named executive producer of “CBS Evening News,” just weeks after O’Donnell and CBS extended a contract to keep her at the helm of the show.Verdugo will start his new duties June 13, and brings the executive producer position for the program back to Washington, D.C. For the past several months, CBS News veteran Al Ortiz supervised the evening newscast out of New York.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorCNN is breaking up with an old habit that has defined cable news for decades.Erin Burnett, Jim Sciutto and Don Lemon are still talking about the latest headlines on CNN, but their new boss thinks they can do so without the visual aid of a longtime TV news crutch: a graphics block on-screen that tells viewers they are hearing about “Breaking News.”The words appear frequently during all kinds of news broadcasts, whether they be of the cable, evening or morning variety — and even when the news is not breaking at all. Chris Licht, installed by Warner Bros.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorLuis Silberwasser is getting ready to till new terrain on a familiar piece of ground.The veteran TV executive, who has in recent years become a top content executive in Spanish-language media, has been named to head up the broader sports business for Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorA judge in New York State Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit against former ABC News producer Michael Corn, who was alleged to have sexually assaulted a subordinate and to have created a toxic work environment at ABC News.In August of last year, Kirstyn Crawford, a producer who worked with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, alleged that  Corn, the former top producer at “Good Morning America,” assaulted her and another staffer, Jill McClain, on different occasions over a span of multiple years. Both women reported to Corn, who also for a time supervised “World News Tonight.” Crawford also alleged she lost opportunities to advance at work after she began trying to avoid Corn.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorA second senior CNN executive who was deeply involved in the launch of the company’s CNN+ streaming-video hub is set to leave the company.In a memo to staffers delivered Wednesday, CNN CEO Chris Licht said Alex MacCallum, who had been named interim chief of CNN’s digital operations, was planning to leave the Warner Bros. Discovery unit on June 30. Wendy Brundige, senior vice president of global digital video, will take over the role of interim chief.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor“Saturday Night Live” mainstay Kenan Thompson will return as host of the 2022 NHL Awards on Tuesday, June 21, the NHL announced Wednesday, as the league aims to make the event an in-person one again after a two-year hiatus spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.The televised celebration of the league’s best regular-season performances will broadcast live from  either New York City or Tampa on the second night of the 2022 Stanley Cup Final, and will appear on ESPN, Sportsnet and TVA Sports in the U.S. and Canada and 7 p.m.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer“Stranger Things” Season 4, Volume 1 has already smashed multiple Netflix viewership records in less than two weeks after its release, and anticipation for Volume 2’s July 1 launch is building more by the day. But the success of the streamer’s first-ever two-batch drop with just over a month in between releases does not mean Netflix is considering shaking up the “Stranger Things” model further ahead of its fifth and final season, meaning there are no plans to shift the Duffer Brothers series to a weekly release.“For the fans of ‘Stranger Things,’ this is how they’ve been watching that show, and I think to change that on them would be disappointing,” Peter Friedlander, Netflix’s head of scripted series for U.S.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorTV’s battle for new yardsticks isn’t over yet.The TV companies that own ad-tech firm OpenAP intend to make a pitch at Cannes to get advertisers to move their dollars to new kinds of measurement technologies — just as the networks are trying to roll out alternate audience-tabulation systems to Nielsen, which still sets the main currency upon which most ad deals are based.Open AP is owned by Fox, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery, which will push advertisers to “shift real dollars from panels to census,” says Brittany Slattery, chief marketing officer at OpenAP.Despite the networks’ best efforts, Nielsen remains an integral part of the audience-measurement mix. In April, the Fox-owned streaming outlet Tubi said it plans to expand its relationship with Nielsen to help advertisers measure viewing of Tubi programming across a wider array of venues.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorOne of the most consequential events in the recent history of the U.S. is set to be dissected on Thursday night during TV’s primetime schedule. Journalists slated to cover it will have to hope America sees the broadcast as something other than entertainment.On Thursday night, most major broadcast networks and cable-news outlets are slated to shake up their evening programming grid to show what is expected to be a shocking report from the U.S.

CNN's new President, Chris Licht, said that there's too much Breaking News. New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin took to his Twitter to share the "scoop. "On Thursday morning, Licht emailed staff to inform them that the notorious "BREAKING NEWS" banner is overused and is finally getting reworked.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District police chief is finally explaining why he and his team have suddenly stopped cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s investigation into the devastating mass shooting that took place at Robb Elementary School last month. And his answer is just as cowardly and misguided as his response to the active shooter.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor“Good Morning America” opened its broadcast Thursday with some of its top correspondents far from the show’s studio in New York’s Times Square. The ABC morning program is hoping to put similar distance between itself and one of its main competitors.As “GMA” launched, viewers were told the show was coming to them live “from Times Square, Kyiv, Ukraine, and London.” The references were to Robin Roberts, who had just completed an interview with Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s First Lady, and to Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes, the “GMA 3” co anchors who have been leading the show’s coverage of the Queen’s Jubilee in London.

The Crichton Trust has announced the appointment of a new chief operating officer.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorSurvive, from New York: “Saturday Night Live” will continue on without four prominent departing cast members, but most of them got a chance to offer up a few final laughs before the show completed its 47th season.Word that Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Kyle Mooney and Pete Davidson planned to leave the venerable late-night series after Saturday’s broadcast leaked out late in the week. That made appearances by the actors all the more emotional during NBC’s broadcast of SNL’s season finale. McKinnon made one more run as Ms.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorWhen CNN presents an exclusive interview Sunday evening between Jake Tapper and Trevor Reed, recently released from Russia after nearly three years of imprisonment, the network has the potential to spur a new strain of activism around U.S. citizens incarcerated abroad.Reed, who spoke with Tapper for several hours Thursday in Florida, was released “because the Biden administration engaged in a prison swap with Russia, and in the past, that has been seen as controversial,” says Tapper during a recent interview. “The family wants those days to disappear.”During the hour-long special, Reed talks about his experiences overseas, some of which, Tapper says sound like something out of a “horror movie franchise.” He also speaks about his interest in helping other American families who have relatives detained unlawfully overseas.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThis wasn’t supposed to be Joe Buck’s first assignment for ESPN.The veteran sports announcer raised eyebrows earlier this year by jumping from his longtime roost at Fox Sports to the Disney sports giant, where he and colleague Troy Aikman are set to host “Monday Night Football.” On Thursday afternoon, however, Buck was doing something completely different. Here he was, sitting alongside golf analyst Michael Collins on ESPN2, watching Tiger Woods on the green at the 2022 PGA Championship and talking to baseball great Ken Griffey Jr.