NBCU News Group Taps Consumer Reports For Product Reviews to Spur Online Shopping

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThe Marvel Universe’s newest hero doesn’t have the sort of super-powers used by Thor, Captain Marvel or Spider-Man, but some people think the figure is pretty daring all the same.In a new commercial that launches today, Procter & Gamble’s Tide helps save the day when Wong, Doctor Strange’s longtime colleague, finds himself having to clean up an independently-minded Cloak of Levitation, which is smudged and befouled by pizza flour and pieces of tuna melt. The ad, which will appear on various social networks and TV, is a deliberate effort to promote the May 6 opening of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” the latest film from Disney’s Marvel Studios, but that doesn’t mean it can’t put a spotlight on a well-known laundry detergent as well.

Neil Lennon has paid Omonia Nicosia fans the highest compliment he could muster after guiding Omonia Nicosia to the Cypriot Cup semi-finals – insisting it sounded like a Celtic Park European night.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorOne reward for a successful journalism career at The Washington Post might be a move into a different medium, like NBC News. Leigh Ann Caldwell is reversing the dynamic.Caldwell, who has been with NBC News since 2014, will join The Washington Post as one of the two writers on its morning newsletter, “The Early 202,” as well as an interviewer of newsmakers and Congressional leaders on Washington Post Live, the news outlet’s streaming-video forum.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorNorah O’Donnell and CBS News have come to terms on a new deal that will keep the anchor at “CBS Evening News” beyond the 2024 election, according to three people familiar with the matter.A CBS News spokesperson declined to offer immediate comment, and a spokeswoman for O’Donnell declined to make the anchor available for comment. O’Donnell disclosed her new contract Friday evening while having a toast with her crew at CBS News’ Washington, D.C., facility, according to these people.The deal was cemented despite growing speculation that CBS News, under the direction of co-president Neeraj Khemlani, might seek to replace the anchor, who has seen her profile grow during a stint co-anchoring the formerly-titled “CBS This Morning” and a tenure at a “CBS Evening News” that has moved its main operation to the nation’s capital.

ABC has set Sunday, April 24 for part one of a two-part event that will serve as a backdoor pilot for a potential spinoff of The Rookie. Part two will follow on May 1. You can watch a trailer above.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorBefore the TV industry can claim to have a new yardstick in place for measuring audiences, it will need to test many different ones.WarnerMedia, slated to be acquired by Discovery within days, has struck an alliance with Interpublic Group’s Mediabrands that will allow advertisers to test how three different measurement services gauge the performance of ad campaigns. The results from the test could influence the sorts of measurement deals Warner offers in the industry’s next “upfront” ad-sales market and will aid Mediabrands’ review of measurement providers.

John Mulaney, Billy Eichner, Bill Burr and other comedians have been added to the growing roster of performers headlining events at the inaugural “Netflix is a Joke: The Festival,” the streamer announced on Tuesday.The festival will host over 250 live shows in over 30 Los Angeles venues over the course of 11 days, featuring A-list names in stand-up and comedy. Previously announced performers and events include David Letterman, Gabriel Iglesias, Dave Chappelle, Amy Schumer, Tim Robinson and Aziz Ansari.Highlights from the newly announced shows include stand up sets from Mulaney, Sebastian Maniscalco, Franco Escamilla, Neal Brennan and Jacqueline Novak.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorOne of cable’s biggest news outlets has started to fill more of its schedule with something other than traditional news coverage.MSNBC has defined itself for the past few years by using the bulk of its daytime schedule to air breaking reports from NBC News personnel on the news of the moment, then amping up analysis and progressive opinion-making in the early afternoon and evening. Now, as media companies intensify their efforts to attract audiences via streaming video, the business behind the TV home of Joe Scarborough and Nicolle Wallace is in flux.Three different people familiar with the relationship between NBC News and MSNBC  — each outlet is supervised by a different top manager — say that some NBC News correspondents have been directed to bring breaking-news coverage first to NBC News Now, the company’s ad-supported streaming news service, or other digital NBC News properties before any appearance on MSNBC is considered.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThe nation’s biggest TV-news outlets have made it increasingly easy for top officials in the White House to have a presence in your house.If White House press secretary Jen Psaki joins MSNBC as expected, she will be the second Biden official to land at the NBCUniversal-owned network in the space of less than a year. She will join Symone Sanders, a former campaign adviser to President Biden and Sen.

It’s been three years since Nipsey Hussle’s death at age 33. His wife Lauren London, 37, shared a photo of the rapper smiling along with a loving message to her late husband. The model and actress wrote that she’d always love Nipsey in the remembrance shared on her Instagram on Thursday March 31.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorFox News Channel named Caitlyn Jenner, a reality star, former Olympian and one time California gubernatorial candidate as a contributor.“Caitlyn’s story is an inspiration to us all.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorAfter more than eight years, the weekday and weekend editions of PBS’ signature evening newscast are finally getting together.Washington’s WETA has long produced the venerable “PBS NewsHour,” the show once known as the “McNeil-Lehrer Report” and now anchored by Judy Woodruff, while New York’s WNET has since 2013 produced the Saturday and Sunday editions of the program. Starting April 2, all seven days will be under the auspices of WETA, with Geoff Bennett, a former NBC News and MSNBC correspondent and anchor who was named the program’s chief Washington correspondent in November, taking the reins of a re-titled half-hour “PBS News Weekend.”“I think we are going to build on ‘NewsHour’s’ traditional mix of news and interviews and in-depth features,” says Bennett, in an interview.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorEveryone’s talking about this week’s furor at the Oscars — even the hosts at Fox News Channel’s “The Five.”On Monday afternoon, regulars Greg Gutfeld, Dana Perino, Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro held forth with guest Piers Morgan — the British journalist and TV host who has demonstrated a proclivity for getting into celebrity feuds — sitting in a chair typically reserved for someone with more liberal political views. In the show’s opening segment, however, politics went out the window.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorMedia-measurement mainstay Nielsen said it had agreed to be acquired by a private-equity group for $16 billion after holding out for a higher price than a previous bid.Nielsen said Tuesday that it would be purchased by a group led by Evergreen Coast Capital Corporation, an affiliate of activist fund Elliott Investment Management L.P., which has been lobbying for a Nielsen sale, and Brookfield Business Partners L.P., in a deal that calls for an all-cash deal of for $28 per share, or $16 billion, including the assumption of debt. Nielsen had previously blocked a sale, saying it did not value the company’s growth prospects properly.The sale takes place with Nielsen under the media industry’s microscope.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorCBS News hasn’t put the same kind of spotlight on weather as many of its rivals, but that may all be about to change as quickly as a shift in the wind.The Paramount Global news unit is teaming with The Weather Channel to bring more reporting on weather and climate to CBS News programs including “CBS Mornings” and “The CBS Evening News,” as well as the division’s streaming efforts. Some of the most popular Weather Channel personalities — including Stephanie Abrams, Jim Cantore and Mike Bettes — are likely to turn up on CBS News programs in reports that originate from Weather Channel’s Atlanta headquarters.

Nicki Minaj has released a new song featuring Brooklyn drill star Fivio Foreign. "We Go Up" sees Minaj leaning into Fivio's world of New York rap with a haunting drill beat crafted by Papi Yerr, Szamz, and Swizzy.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorHeather Riley was named executive editorial producer of political programming and affairs at ABC News, and has been assigned to help develop political-news programming for both the Walt Disney Co. unit’s linear programming as well as for Hulu and the streaming-video outlet ABC News Live.She will report to Wendy Fisher, ABC News, senior vice president of newsgathering.“Heather will oversee the development of new political series on Hulu and ABC News Live plus special political projects across television, audio and digital as we gear up for the midterms and beyond,” Fisher said in a memo on Thursday.

Paramount Plus has released the official trailer for “The Offer,” the upcoming drama miniseries that chronicles the making of “The Godfather.”Set in the early 1970s, “The Offer” stars Miles Teller as Albert S. Ruddy, who is hired as the producer for the film adaptation of the best-selling novel “The Godfather,” written by Mario Puzo (played by Patrick Gallo). While the series faces typical behind the scenes tension between its director Francis Ford Coppola (Dan Fogler) and producing team, the filming grows more complicated when mob boss Joe Colombo (Giovanni Ribisi) signs on to help assist in the production.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorAdvertisers still want TV to deliver big audiences, but they are also increasingly demanding new abilities to find smaller ones.NBCUniversal on Tuesday used an annual technology conference to keep demonstrating new technologies that help Madison Avenue track all the discrete consumer niches that may be found within the broader audiences watching TV programs. One new effort, an artificial-intelligence engine known as a “harmonizer,” aims to help marketers “make sure we are finding consumers at the right moment based on specific behavior,” says Josh Feldman, global chief marketing officer of NBCUniversal’s ad-sales unit.Using NBCU’s data about how viewers watch programs on the company’s streaming site Peacock, he says, advertisers might be able to assign an ad specifically created to “welcome” a new subscriber to the service, or feed particular commercials to customers who often watch programming late at night — even if they are tuning in at other times of the day.