New-Tech Firm The Trade Desk Aims to Influence Old-School TV Upfront

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor A producer for Fox News who has worked for Maria Batirormo and Tucker Carlson alleged in court filings Monday that she was coerced by executives into providing misleading testimony in the $1.6 billion defamation suit that Dominion Voting Systems has levied against the Fox Corp.-backed outlet. In filings made Monday Delaware Superior Court and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Abby Grossberg, who had worked as a senior booking producer for Bartiromo and head of booking for Tucker Carlson, alleged that Fox attorneys worked to “coach, manipulate, and coerce Ms. Grossberg to deliver shaded and/or incomplete answers during her sworn deposition testimony, which answers were clearly to her reputational detriment but greatly benefitted Fox News,” according to the Delaware lawsuit.

Bad Bunny and Kendall Jenner’s relationship rumors continue to grow. His new song, titled “Coco Chanel,” appears to have a reference to Jenner’s ex, Devin Booker.

Ready to roll with the homies again. Stacey Dash would totally be down for a Clueless sequel — as long as director Amy Heckerling was involved.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The battle for cable-news viewers is coming to March Madness. CNN intends to run a new promo during the heavily watched NCAA men’s basketball tournament that throws a sharp verbal elbow at Fox News Channel and the legal defamation case filed against it by Dominion Voting Systems. The promos will air starting this weekend on TNT, TBS, TruTV and CBS, all of which carry the games under a joint rights agreement held by the owners of those networks, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery, which is also the parent of CNN. Fox News Channel is not mentioned in the promo script, reviewed by Variety, but the references are clear. “What should you expect of a news network?” asks the narrator. “Some bury the truth, while we fight to reveal the facts. The only side we are on is yours.” Viewers see images of CNN correspondents and anchors such as Abby Phillip and Clarissa Ward.

Naming a young Black man’s story after a transport stop gives off strong Fruitvale vibes, but Aristotle Torres’ feature debut reaches back further to the hip-hop morality tales of the early ’90s, like Boaz Yakin’s Fresh or Ernest Dickerson’s Juice — the wave that immediately followed John Singleton’s influential Boyz n the Hood. Surprisingly, given Torres’ history of videos for the likes of Ludacris and Nas, the soundtrack is light on rap, using unexpected needle drops like Pavarotti’s version of “La Donna e Mobile” to score scenes of spray-can anarchy on the New York subway.

Lucy Liu isn't totally ruling out a return to .ET's Ash Crossan spoke to Liu at the  premiere in Los Angeles Tuesday, where Liu said that while she doesn't know «what lies ahead,» she would love to work with her fellow angels, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz again.«I don't know. I mean, of course, we love each other. So, any opportunity to work together would be fun, but I don't know what lies ahead.

As far as this year’s Oscars goes, it was undoubtedly the year of the comeback.

America may be deeply divided, but politics and the culture wars will not be center stage at this year’s Oscars if the organizers have their way.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Nexstar Media has spent months assembling a massive roster of TV stations; acquring TV’s CW network; and building the NewsNation cable-news oulet. Now comes the hard part: Getting Madison Avenue to buy ads across all of it. The nation’s largest owner of local TV outlets is ready to make its pitch to advertisers and has already scheduled a presentation for media buyers in New York for April 25. The goal, says Michael Strober, the company’s chief revenue officer, is to showcase the company’s reach among both national and local media. “We can bring local and national to our clients in ways that have never been replicated across the country,” he says in an interview. “The CW, NewsNation, TheHill, Nexstar Digital and over 200 local stations — that to me is our differentiator in the marketplace.”

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor With big U.S. media companies scrambling for soccer rights, Paramount Global wants to kick things up a notch. The company’s CBS Sports on April 11 will debut a 24-hour free streaming network dedicated to global soccer coverage. CBS Sports Golazo Network will launch with analysis, highlights, a range of game broadcasts, and its own morning program. “Morning Footy” will run weekdays from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. eastern and will be led by host Susannah Collins along with former U.S. Men’s National Team player Charlie Davies, analyst Nico Cantor and “The Cooligans” soccer personality and comedian Alexis Guerreros. Reporter Jenny Chiu will provide updates.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Dick’s Sporting Goods is getting ready to play a new game with the NCAA. The Pittsburgh company has been named the college-sports league’s official sporting-goods retailer, a new partnership that will become quickly visible during the NCAA’s “March Madness” basketball tournament and is part of a multi-million dollar deal that will give Dick’s on-court signage and exclusive access to select fan events. Commercials purchased in game inventory from CBS Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, which televise the March Madness games, are a strong element of the deal. Dick’s also plans to have a presence at NCAA women’s Final Four Open Practices, which has not had an active on-site sponsor in the past. Dick’s plans to invest in media around the women’s basketball tournament on Disney’s ESPN.

shared two photos and a video of her 10-month-old son on Instagram, and before you ask, she did not reveal his name. While Rihanna referred to her first child as “baby” throughout their recent , she called him “my fat man” in her most recent post.In the first pic, the baby boy can be seen tearing up while looking at the camera, which explains , “my son when he found out his sibling is going to the Oscars and not him.” Rihanna, who during her Super Bowl performance in February, will soon be at on March 12.This year, Rihanna is also , and her son is clearly rooting for her. In the third slide, a younger version of the little boy appears completely enraptured by footage of his mom.This content can also be viewed on the site it from.Rihanna and A$AP Rocky in May 2022 but didn't until he was seven months old.

It can be difficult to know exactly what you are looking for when it comes to buying your first house. Some people opt for a new build home that is near enough ready to move straight into, whereas others prefer to take on the task of renovating an older property.

The streamers, led by Netflix, moved into the non-scripted entertainment space in a serious way about five years.

horrific car fire accident on Nov. 12 that left him with third-degree burns on his face, chest, and hands.The 72-year-old was met with loud applause from the audience as he sat down to chat with the “Since U Been Gone” singer about his injuries.“You look great though,” Clarkson told Leno, to which he replied, “This is a brand-new face.”“It is, it’s unbelievable,” Leno continued.

Not even four months ago, Jay Leno was in intensive care getting skin grafts for third-degree burns he suffered during a terrible accident. Now, he's back to work and making an appearance on "The Kelly Clarkson Show," showing off his "new face." In a clip from today's episode, Leno walks out to a rousing round of applause and a standing ovation.  After lamenting that he missed a previously scheduled appearance on the show because of the accident, Clarkson told him, "You look great though!" "This is a brand new face," he told her. The comment got a reaction from the audience, and Leno looked out and insisted, "It is, it's unbelievable." He explained, "What happened, I was working on a car and I got a face full of gasoline and it caught fire, and I had been eating a flaming hot Dorito and when I bit into it, it set my face on …" Clarkson and the audience cut him off with laughter, but he continued on a slightly more serious note.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor David Westin, the Bloomberg TV anchor, will focus more intently on duties tied to “Wall Street Week” as the network focuses more intently on breaking-news coverage throughout the market day. Westin will host the weekly show, which has ties to the PBS original hosted by Louis Rukeyser, while anchoring daily “Wall Street Week” segments tied to the program. The daily segments will feature a rotating panel of influential voices and thought leaders. He will leave his duties on “Balance of Power,” which will shift to 5 p.m. weekdays rather than noon, and move to Washington, D.C. from New York. “Balance” will be co-anchored by Annemarie Hordern and Joe Mathieu. Executives expect the retooled show to include more original reporting and roundtable discussions.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Fox Corp. sought to tamp down furor around a series of implicating quotes and texts culled from corporate executives and Fox News anchors, in the newest filing, part of a closely watched defamation lawsuit from voting-technology firm Dominion Voting Systems. Fox Corp. and Fox News Channel made the case in two filings in the Superior Court in Delaware that many of the colorful utterances from Fox News stars such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and even some from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch were beyond the scope of Dominion’s case, and urged the court to reject the company’s call for a summary judgement, or a ruling in Dominon’s favor that would negate the need for a trial. Dominion is suing Fox for $1.6 billion in damages it alleges it is owed after Fox News made false claims about the Dominion’s actions and influence on the 2020 election. It is the second legal proceeding made against Fox News for its coverage of the aftermath of the 2020 race for the White House. Smartmatic, a voting technology company, has filed a massive $2.7 billion suit against Fox News. At issue in the suits, are allegations that Fox News falsely claimed the companies had rigged the election, repeated items about the matter and refused to engage in efforts to set the record straight. The 2020 election was not fixed and its results were certified by multiple legal processes.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor David Zaslav sounds tired of taking lumps. After months of cost cutting, write-downs, and getting pilloried among Hollywood natives for killing projects, the Warner Bros. Discovery chief showed off some new truculence, making the case that while his newly-merged company has been having a tough time, so too were others. “‘Last year was a year of restructuring,” said Zaslav, during a call with investors Thursday. “This year will be a year of building.” Over the course of an hour, Zasalv and Gunnar Wiedenfels, Warner’s chief financial officer, made the case that their company was just as well-equipped as any of its rivals — perhaps even more so — to withstand a stormy era during which media companies are pressed to grow their streaming operations but maintain profitability. Zaslav elbowed Netflix for releasing all of the episodes for a program’s cycle all at once; suggested that a move to launch new “Lord of the Rings” movies would take away some of the momentum that Amazon had enjoyed from its launch of a series based on the novels; and told listeners Warner Bros. Discovery could launch an ad-supported streaming service without having to buy an outside asset, as Fox Corp. and Paramount Global had. “We can create a Tubi or a Pluto without having to buy anybody,” he boasted.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Warner Bros. Discovery continued to work on making all its various pieces, merged together last year, into a cohesive whole. The New York owner of the TNT and TBS cable networks, the HBO Max streaming service and the Warner Bros. production studio reported a net loss of $2.1 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter after the company wrote down $1.85 billion in assets and faced nearly $1.2 billion in restructuring expenses. Revenue fell 9%, excluding the results of foreign exchange, and the company saw ad sales decrease 14% as its TV networks, even as it worked to add subscribers to its HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming outlets.