Horizon Media Plans to Utilize VideoAmp Data in TV Upfront Deals

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The bill may be coming due for continued declines in TV ratings. Advertisers are pressing for rollbacks, or declines in the rates they pay for reaching TV viewers, in early “upfront” talks with TV networks, according to two media buying executives and other people familiar with these annual discussions in which U.S. media companies try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory ahead of their next cycle of programming. Agreements that include reductions in these rates, also known as CPMs and a measure of the cost of reaching 1,000 viewers, have generally been extremely rare, and offer a signal that the continued migration of viewers to streaming and digital-video options is eroding the marketplace leverage of both traditional TV companies and some of their new-tech rivals as well.

Oli Sykes has spoken to NME about Bring Me Horizon’s “unhinged” new album ‘Post Human: NeX GEn’, finally headlining Download Festival, the band’s constantly evolving sci-fi rock opera live show and political single ‘AmEN!’.The follow-up to 2020’s ‘Post Human: Survival Horror’ is due September 15, and was announced shortly after Bring Me The Horizon’s mammoth headline set at Download Festival on Friday night (June 10).‘NeX GEn’ is the second chapter in Bring Me’s planned four-part ‘Post Human’ series, with the album taking influence from emo and hardcore. “Linkin Park were the first band that I got into, but when I found Glassjaw is when I became obsessed with music and knew I wanted to be a singer, so the album pays homage to that,” Sykes told NME backstage at Download.He continued: “I wouldn’t say it’s a hyper-pop album, but I’ve definitely been inspired by that world.

Bring Me The Horizon followed their headline set at Download Festival on Friday night with an announcement of a new album and tour dates in 2024.The band will release their seventh album ‘Human: Next Gen’ on 12 Jan, by which time they will already have kicked off a run of UK and Ireland tour dates.

Bring Me The Horizon headlined Download Festival last night (June 9) with a brand new live show to announce new album ‘Post Human: Nex Gen’.Following on from their “triumphant, hard-won victory lap” at Reading & Leeds Festivals last year, Bring Me The Horizon returned to Download for the first time since 2014 yesterday and were joined onstage by Nova Twins and Evanescence‘s Amy Lee.Before the band took to the stage, the band teased the long-awaited follow-up to 2020’s ‘Post Human: Survival Horror’ before a two-minute video introduced the band’s evolved stage show and a new, ambitious narrative involving murderous A.I. and a mysterious cult, The Church Of Genxsis.

Bring Me The Horizon headlined Download Festival last night (June 9), and announced a new album and 2024 arena tour at the show.On September 15, the band will release ‘POST HUMAN: NeX GEn’ via Sony/RCA, and head out on a UK and Ireland tour next year with support from Bad Omens, Cassyette and Static Dress.The new album follows the recent sharing of single ‘AmEN!’, which features Lil Uzi Vert and Daryl Palumbo of Glassjaw. ‘POST HUMAN: NeX GEn’ will follow their 2020 EP ‘Post Human: Survival Horror’.Presale tickets for the tour will begin on Wednesday, June 14 at 10am BST, with a general sale following on Friday, June 16, also at 10am.

EXCLUSIVE: Following months of going through dozens of audition tapes, Warner Bros and DC Films look to be getting closer to finding the stars of their Superman: Legacy movie as a second round of testing looks to be imminent.

A gaming school for young people has in Media City.

The James Beard Media Awards, dubbed the “Oscars of food”, has dished out its winners.

Kevin Costner is taking the phrase “go big, or go home” very literally.

Bring Me The Horizon have teamed up with rapper Lil Uzi Vert and Daryl Palumbo of Glassjaw for new single ‘AmEN!’.‘AmEN!’ is a powerhouse track featuring BMTH frontman Oli Sykes‘ signature howling growl and a perfect flowing rap verse from Uzi himself. The song also tackles the theme of extra-religious hypocrisy with the opening verse reading: “I hope you have fun/ Rotting in hell!/ Swim the witch/ Slay the infidel!/ Suck a dick heretic!/ I hate you! & I’d like to see you/ Burn, burn, burn!”The new single debuted last night (June 1) at the band’s show in Budapest.

The idea of Lil Uzi Vert as a rockstar might be a well-worn one by now, but it's something they have leaned into this week. First came an appearance with Paramore at Madison Square Garden, with Uzi joining the band to perform their song "Misery Business." Today they appear on a new Bring Me The Horizon track, arguably the heaviest musical moment of Uzi's career to date.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Big media companies and Nielsen have battled for months over the exact way to count TV viewers who no longer watch traditional TV when they want to see a favorite sitcom or drama. One media agency wants to test a different tactic. Mediahub, a media-buying agency that is part of Interpublic Group, has been asking big media companies to consider ad deals that involve not just guarantees of audience impressions, as has long been the norm. but commitments to other sorts of measures that examine whether the commercials spur the people who saw them to take new action. Such a deal could put “more skin in the game from media partners,” says Carrie Drinkwater. the agency’s chief investment officer. “It also helps them change the conversation to get away from the Nielsen linear discussion.”

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Andrew Ross Sorkin is the co-creator of the Showtime series “Billions,” but he isn’t really known for drama in his professional life, just financial reporting. So it came as something of a surprise on Monday, when the CNBC and New York Times journalist got up on stage at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall to tout some of the dramatic fare that NBCUniversal was able to cobble together for the advertisers and media buyers assembled in the audience. It was all part of the industry’s annual “upfront,” when U.S. media companies try to sell the bulk of their advertising inventory before the release of their next cycle of programming.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Noah Lyles might be one of the nation’s fastest athletes, but there’s one thing he was falling behind on: managing his social-media profile. The Olympic runner knows how important it is for fans to see clips of him in action, particularly with the Paris Games about a year or so away. But securing rights to video footage and putting it up in an intelligent way across different digital venues can be difficult, he says. “That can be very stressful, and take away from the ability to perform.” NBCUniversal wants to offer athletes some assistance. The media company is launching a new production effort called Fortius that aims to help Olympic athletes burnish their brands in the months leading up to the next Games. The company has many reasons to do so. NBCU and its parent, Comcast have invested heavily in U.S. rights to the Olympics broadcasts, having agreed to pay $7.75 billion for broadcast rights to the events between 2021 and 2032. That programming, especially the hours that air in primetime, rely heavily on in-depth features on the athletes that often require NBC Sports crews to meet with them several times over the course of their training.

It’s a spring afternoon, high up in the mountains of Moab, Utah, and Kevin Costner looks up at the sky. Rough weather is starting to roll in and he needs to get back to work and bank some more scenes. After all, it’s coming out of his pocket. The project is called Horizon, the first of four films set in the pre- and post-Civil War expansion of the American West. It is his most sprawling epic since Dances With Wolves, which he also part-funded, and which brought him seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The upfront presentation that looks most like traditional TV came from a company that likes to tell investors, advertisers and consumers how it’s leapfrogging that entire business. Netflix on Wednesday showed dozens of scripted series and movies that could support advertising — if only Madison Avenue would take a chance and bet on its nascent efforts to sell commercials. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chris Hemsworth and Julia Roberts were only some of the actors whose efforts could be tied to advertising. Counterparts like NBCUniversal and Fox Corp. were hard-pressed to do the same earlier this week. “We are just getting started,” said Peter Naylor, vice president of global advertising sales at Netflix.

Cowboys don’t cry! Kevin Costner is all-in on his new western movie, Horizon, amid his divorce from Christine Baumgartner — and the drama surrounding Yellowstone ending.

Emiliano De Pablos Spain’s The Mediapro Studio is teaming with writer-director Marcel Barrena (“Mediterraneo: The Law of the Sea,” “100 Meters”) and Spanish star Eduard Fernández on real-life inspired social film “The 47.”  Scheduled to shoot in Catalan and Spanish June-July in Barcelona, “The 47” is based on the true story of Manolo Vital, a bus driver who, during the city’s expansion in the 1970s, help shape the Barcelona of today.  Produced by Jaume Roures and executive produced by Laura Fernández Espeso, Javier Méndez and Eva Garrido, the film is one of the projects The Mediapro Studio Distribution is presenting for international sales at the current Cannes’ Marché du Film.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Spanish-TV giant TelevisaUnivsion wants to speak a different language than its English-speaking rivals when it comes to audience measurement. Under pressure from some media companies, Nielsen said in April that it was going to hold back a new product that sought to use “big data,” or audience information gleaned from set-top boxes and smart TVs, as a way to provide more granular information about viewers. Nielsen said the new data would not be accredited for mainstream use, but would be available “for additional measurement during this transition for clients seeking to transact on it.” TelevisaUnivision is going to try. “We all know that today’s TV measurement is inadequate for our multi-screen world, and as a consequence, U.S Hispanics have been undercounted,” says Donna Speciale, president of U.S. ad sales and marketing at the company. “In fact, our audience is 26% bigger than current measurement. How did we get that information? Nielsen just told us,” she tells Variety, using its traditional panel-based tabulation as well as its “big data” product. “This is huge and and a huge step for equity,” she adds, noting that TelevisaUnivision will ask all agencies and clients to base this year’s upfront ad deals on that measurement.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CNN on Wednesday broadcast one of the most controversial news events of the year, a runaway town hall interview with former President Donald Trump, and advertisers like Subaru and Fidelity Investments went along for the ride. There are new questions about whether all of Madison Avenue will do so in the future. The nation’s big TV-news outlets are about to enter what should be a healthy cycle. The closer the U.S. gets to a presidential election, the more audiences tend to watch. CNN, for example, has indicated it expects to telecast more primetime town halls with candidates (last week’s lured nearly 3.31 million viewers), while Fox News Channel is expected to broadcast the Republican Party’s first primary debate in August.