NBCU Assigns Sports-Advertising Chief Dan Lovinger to Focus on Olympics

Bella Thorne is calling on world politicians, including President Biden, to assist in putting an end to the suffering of citizens in Cuba on the heels of the country's new 10% tax on food sales. Cuba announced the tax earlier this month.

Novak Djokovic is willing to risk his legacy if that means staying unvaccinated against COVID-19! Wut??

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorIn TV’s never-ending morning wars, one law has been immutable: When NBC shows the Olympics, its “Today” wins in the ratings. That is not the case in this go-round.ABC’s “Good Morning America” won more viewers overall during NBC’s first week of coverage of the Winter Olympics from Beijing, the first time it has done so in more than three decades, according to data from Nielsen.

Bez has revealed that he once hid out in a cave for weeks after he was chased out of an area in Morocco where he’d shoplifted.The Happy Mondays percussionist/dancer said in a new interview that he’d turned to theft as a way to survive while travelling the world in his late teens, which was before he joined the band in 1985. Bez was “mostly homeless and sofa-surfing” at the time, and had intentions to move on from petty crime, for which he had served prison time.He told The Guardian: “By the time I was about 19, I decided I didn’t want to get caught up in the sort of shit I was doing again, so thought the best thing I could do was to have a huge adventure and go travelling.“I lived in Morocco for a bit and was shoplifting just to survive; pinching bars of chocolate.

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar nominee Terrence Howard (Hustle And Flow, Empire) and Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr (Jerry Maguire) are leading cast in horror pic Skeletons In The Closet, which gets underway this week in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorMadison Avenue used its most tried-and-true techniques to keep Super Bowl watchers from being overwhelmed Sunday night by a brave new world that emerged with great speed as the nation was hunkered down during the coronavirus pandemic.General Motors, one of the nation’s most staid corporations, put its marketing heft behind a fleet of electric vehicles, using revivals of media favorites like “Austin Powers” and “The Sopranos.” Verizon touted quickening telecommunications service by reviving Jim Carrey in his role as “The Cable Guy” and T-Mobile pressed viewers to think about 5G by showing Dolly Parton with a phone pressed close to her chest. Rocket Mortgage dressed its digital service in bright Barbie overtones along with the familiar site of Anna Kendrick.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorNBC News has a lot of stories to tell during the Olympics and the Super Bowl. One of them is about itself.The large NBCUniversal news division is using both events to get the word out about its growing package of streaming news programming at a time when the battle for broadband info junkies appears to be reaching a new apex.NBC News will tout its streaming-news outlet NBC News Now with a 20 second promo in the first quarter during NBC’s broadcast of Super Bowl LVI this Sunday, as well as with a 15-second promo during the pre-game.

Nick Cave has opened up about touring Australia in a new post on his Red Hand Files website.Cave, who was responding to a group of questions from fans asking him if he was going to return to Australia soon for a tour, revealed that he will be touring Australia this winter with Warren Ellis.He explained: “I am sitting here looking at this year’s calendar. My assistant, Rachel, has helpfully laid it out in various child-friendly, primary-coloured blocks.

The family of late Los Angeles rap legend Nipsey Hussle has announced plans to reopen his popular Marathon clothing store in a new location. “This second location is a dream that Nipsey always had, and it’s important that his kids are able to see his plans fulfilled,” Nipsey's brother and business partner, Samiel Asghedom, told The Guardian. The Asghedom brothers hosted the grand opening for the original Marathon in June 2017.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorEver since Jeff Zucker seized the reins at CNN in early 2013, the cable-news network has been one of loudest voices in media circles. Now, even though Discovery didn’t push the executive out, there’s a sense the company will, after it buys CNN along with the rest of WarnerMedia, look to turn down the volume.In the Zucker era, CNN became more swashbuckling, more colorful, and indeed, more opinionated than it ever was under the aegis of its founder Ted Turner, or his successors at the former Time Warner. CNN went from delivering headlines to being in the headlines.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorWhile the colorful and grandiose Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony unfurls on TV, the company showing all the pomp has an equally elaborate project taking place off camera.NBCUniversal has been one of the most vocal critics of Nielsen, the company that has for decades measured TV audiences and provided tabulations that serve as the bedrock of ad deals for the nation’s TV networks. To boost its efforts to offer an alternate means of counting the video-watching masses, NBCU is working with more than 30 different advertisers to test a new measurement tool it has built with iSpot.TV — and using the company’s Olympics and looming Super Bowl broadcasts as a sort of test run before trying to get more sponsors to embrace the system during the industry’s annual “upfront” ad-sales season later this year.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorKatie Nolan, the sportscaster who has made a name for herself in the world of digital content, is taking her talents to NBC Sports.Nolan is joining the NBC Olympics team, and is expected to create daily short-form content, which will be distributed across both traditional and digital platforms.“We are excited to welcome Katie to Team NBC Olympics, where her unique storytelling ability will be utilized across multiple platforms,” said Rebecca Chatman, vice president and coordinating producer for NBC Olympics, in a prepared statement. Nolan left ESPN in September.“I always dreamed I’d go to the Olympics one day,” Nolan said in a statement.

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis-featuring film This Much I Know To Be True has been released – you can watch the clip below.The Andrew Dominik-directed film is set for release later this year, and will be a companion piece to the 2016 music documentary One More Time With Feeling. It’ll premiere at the Berlin Film Festival later this month.This Much I Know To Be True will explore Cave and Ellis’ creative relationship and feature songs from their last two studio albums, 2019’s ‘Ghosteen’ (by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds) and last year’s ‘Carnage’ (Nick Cave and Warren Ellis).The first clip from This Much I Know To Be True has been released today (February 3), and begins with Cave discussing his own definition of his artistry.The clip concludes with Ellis conducting a string quartet as Cave performs the track ‘Lavender Fields’ – you can watch the first teaser video for This Much I Know To Be True above.The film was shot on location in London and Brighton last year, and will “document the duo’s first performances of the albums and feature a special appearance by close friend and long-term collaborator, Marianne Faithfull“ (via Deadline).It’ll also visit the workshop where Cave is “creating a series of sculptures depicting the life of the Devil”.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorGillette has a new razor it thinks is so sharp that it required the company to return to the Super Bowl for the first time in 16 years.The Procter & Gamble men’s-grooming giant plans to use NBC’s coming broadcast of Super Bowl LVI on February 13 to put the spotlight on its new GilletteLabs razor that comes with an exfoliating bar to remove dirt and debris from the skin. The new ad and won’t play up the usual elements of Super Bowl advertising — no celebrities or cute animals or babies.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorMSNBC’s Rachel Maddow plans to take a hiatus lasting “several weeks” in order to focus on other projects she is working on as part of a broader content deal with NBCUniversal, according to two people familiar with the matter.The anchor, who is the linchpin of the cable news outlet’s primetime schedule, is expected to tell viewers about her planned absence, which is slated to start Friday, during this evening’s broadcast. Ali Velshi is among the anchors who have filled in for MSNBC’s primetime anchors in the past, and Mehdi Hasan and Ayman Mohyeldin have both taken up 9 p.m.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterNBCUniversal is about to begin broadcasting the second half of a rare Olympics doubleheader — and fatigue has set in.The Winter Games in Beijing begin Feb. 4, just six months after the close of the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games that were postponed from 2020 because of the pandemic.

Two top Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have fired off a letter to NBCUniversal, calling for them to answer questions about their concerns that China’s ruling communist party may influence the upcoming coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorIs one football game big enough for two different networks?NBC and Fox both intend to broadcast the (new) inaugural game from the USFL, the latest in a series of efforts to launch a spring football league that can soak up attention while the NFL is on its usual hiatus. Under an agreement unveiled Tuesday, NBC Sports will provide pregame, halftime and postgame coverage of a game between the New Jersey Generals and the Birmingham Stallions, while Fox Sports will produce coverage of the match-up itself.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorNBCUniversal has pushed in recent months to change the way TV audiences are measured and to shake up the methods Madison Avenue uses to place ads, but at least one thing about the Comcast-backed media conglomerate will remain the same: the location of its main upfront presentation.NBCU pledged to hold forth from Radio City Music Hall once again, just as it has for many years before the coronavirus pandemic scuttled the in-person extravaganzas that have become so much a part of the TV networks’ annual pitch to advertisers. The owner of the NBC, MSNBC and USA networks said it would kick off the industry’s annual Upfront Week on May 16, with an evening event aimed at promoting Spanish-language outlet Telemundo, marking a return to at least some of the traditions of the annual market, when U.S.