Brian Steinberg-Senior Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Comcast notched a small first quarter profit despite continued erosion in its core cable operations and a lack of new spending from advertisers at its NBCUniversal operations. The Philadelphia owner of NBC, USA and the Peacock streaming service said profit rose just 0.6% during the period, to $3.86 billion, or 97 cents a share, compared with $3.83 billion, or 91 cents a share in the year-earlier quarter. Revenue rose 1.2% to $30.06 billion.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Continued investment in streaming contributed to a first-quarter loss for Spanish-language media giant TelevisaUnivision, which is seeing the bulk of its growth come from its Mexican operations while U.S. revenue stays flat with year-earlier results. The company, which operates the Univision TV network, said operating expenses grew 16% during the first quarter, to $821 million, driven by continued investments in its ViX streaming service and the expansion of a third party ad-sales business in Mexico.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Jo Ann Ross, the first woman to run a broadcast TV network’s ad-sales efforts and one of the last senior ad-sales executives in the TV industry to hold direct relationships with advertisers when primetime broadcast programs were seen as the primary venue for Madison Avenue’s dollars, is leaving the industry, stepping down from her role as chairman of Paramount Global‘s ad sales division at the end of April. Ross had already stepped back from day to day duties, ceding that role to John Halley, who was named president of ad sales for the company in 2022.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CNN anchor Kate Bolduan got an interesting new job in 2022 when she was named the anchor of “5 Things,” a quick-hit open-the-day summary of top stories that was made available for streaming audiences. Two years later, she appears poised to get it again. Bolduan will lead a test run of “5 Things” starting Monday on CNN Max, the live-streamed news service available on Max, the streaming venue backed by corporate parent Warner Bros.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor As Amazon ramps up its efforts to woo ad dollars that once were earmarked for traditional TV, it is also luring ad executives who tried to capture that money for TV networks. Krishan Bhatia, previously a senior executive at NBCUniversal who ran the business aspects of the company’s ad-sales division, is joining Amazon as vice president of global video advertising for Amazon Ads. He will be charged with leading a global sales seeking to monetize Amazon’s growing video operations tied to sports, Freevee, Twitch and Prime Video.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor John Dahl, an ESPN veteran who helped produce the much-lauded Michael Jordan documentary “The Last Dance,” is getting into gear at NASCAR, where he will lead new efforts to connect to fans with content. Dahl has been named senior vice president of content, and will start in his new role on May 1.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Richard Leibner, a celebrated talent agent who represented some of the best-known anchors in TV news, first at a firm he helped build and then for UTA, died Tuesday after a battle with cancer. He was 85 years old. In his time, Leibner served as an agent and adviser to Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, Bob Simon, Steve Kroft, Bill Whitaker, Diane Sawyer, Chuck Scarborough, Paula Zahn, Brian Stelter and Fareed Zakaria, among others.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CBS News is ready to launch a new salvo in TV’s streaming wars. With many of its rivals bolstering their streaming offerings in recent months, CBS News plans to broaden its efforts by debuting a new signature “whip-around” live-streamed program, “CBS News 24/7” that will rely on journalists both from the national news outlet as well as from CBS local stations — and serve as the new name of the broadband outlet.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor E.W. Scripps hopes the recent surge of interest in Caitlin Clark and JuJu Watkins will serve it well in a different sort of match-up, the one that takes place every year between TV networks and advertisers. Scripps is highlighting recent rights deals that help its ION broadcast network serve up both a Friday-night WNBA showcase as well as Saturday-night doubleheaders from the National Women’s Soccer League.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor AMC Networks plans to offer ad-supported versions to all of its targeted streaming services by the end of the 2024-2025 upfront market, part of a broader bid to give advertisers a potential perch in nearly every video venue. AMC in late 2023 launched an ad-supported edition of its flagship AMC+ streaming venue, which comprises offerings from Shudder, Sundance Now and IFC Films Unlimited. Now, it wants to offer plans tied to those individual hubs, as well as other services, outside of an overarching AMC+ plan.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CBS is forecasting that viewer interest in the ins and outs of national weather is about to gain new wind. Wendy Fisher, a longtime senior executive at ABC News who ran its newsgathering operations, has been named to lead a newly formed national weather-news operation that will work with both national and local news programs across CBS’ news-and-stations unit. “This is a significant team effort, as Weather coverage plays a role in virtually every program produced by CBS News and Stations,” said Adrienne Roark, president of content development and integration for the Paramount Global division, in a memo sent to staffers Monday.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Workday is getting ready to go back on tour. The human-resources software company is ready to launch another leg of the ad campaign it launched in 2023’s Super Bowl LVII, in which popular musicians set the record straight on whether high-performing corporate types ought to be called “rock stars.” In this go-round, two new ads will be seen during The Masters between April 8 and April 14 and in five key overseas markets: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Norby Williamson, the ESPN veteran who has managed everything from NFL coverage to “SportsCenter,” is leaving the Disney sports-media giant abruptly just weeks after being called out on camera in a surprise and unprecedented outburst by daytime host Pat McAfee. The McAfee contretemps is not at the root of Williamson’s departure, according to a person familiar with the matter, but rather disagreements between the executive and the longer-term strategy being devised by Burke Magnus, who was handed oversight of content and news production in March of last year.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The outsized audience for this week’s highly-watched women’s NCAA basketball match between Iowa and LSU may also have noticed that many of the commercials seen during the game belonged to AT&T, State Farm, Home Depot and Gatorade. There was good reason. Optimum Sports, a media agency that specializes in sports properties and is part of ad giant Omnicom Group, had quietly snatched up 35% of advertising time during the game, a record setter in terms of viewership for women’s sports and the latest example of how interest in female players and the leagues in which they play is booming.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Does the sports world have room for April Action after weeks of March Madness? Fox aims to answer the question in 2025 when it launched a new post-season college-basketball tournament in tandem with large sports and music promote AEG Worldwide. The College Basketball Crown will rely on 16 teams drawn largely from the Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East conferences, with the possibility of other participants.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Add “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper to the list of non-traditional commentators taking part in NBCUniversal’s activities around the 2024 Paris Olympics. Cooper will lead “Watch with Alex Cooper,” a series of interactive watch parties that will stream on NBCU’s Peacock during Olympics activity.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Fierce media rivals like ESPN and Fox Sports aren’t often eager to see the other do well. But the competitors may be cheering one another this weekend. Fox and ESPN will this weekend each broadcast two games from the new — depending on how one looks at it — UFL, a league that has been built out of the former USFL and its rival, the XFL.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor One of the benefits of hosting any sort of news or discussion program on TV is an authorization to talk. Now some TV journalists and personalities are also being given permission to bite. NBCUniversal needs to get out the proverbial Bactine after being savaged earlier this week by many of its top news personalities over the hire made by NBC News executives of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CAA, the agency that helped broker the recent deal that brought former Republican National Committee chief Ronna McDaniel to NBC News as a political analyst, has parted ways with her, according to a person familiar with the matter, as she wrangles with the media outlet over appropriate terms for an exit. McDaniel has been advised to seek an attorney to represent her, this person said. A representative for CAA did not respond immediately to a query seeking comment.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor A long line of MSNBC‘s most popular anchors spent Monday calling out the network’s corporate sibling, NBC News, for its hire of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel in a stunning display of internal rifts laid bare on the TV screen. The hire of McDaniel as a contributor is “inexplicable,” Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC Monday night as part of a half-hour commercial-free monologue that painted the former politico as one in a line of fascists and would-be usurpers who have tried to take over America’s political process.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Ronna McDaniel was supposed to be the new star contributor at NBC News. Now her position there is looking increasingly untenable. NBC News hired the former Republican National Committee chief last week, betting that her recent access to the Trump campaign and Republican politicians would make her a valuable analyst as the 2024 election cycle intensified.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Chuck Todd left moderating duties at “Meet The Press” behind several months ago, but he isn’t through with the show yet. During a surprising appearance on Sunday’s broadcast of the program on NBC, Todd took issue with a decision to hire former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as an NBC News contributor, then put her on “Meet The Press” for an interview with current moderator Kristen Welker, who had booked McDaniel prior to the hiring becoming known.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Ronna McDaniel is no doubt going to create a lot of sound and fury over at NBC News. Shakespeare could tell you what it’s all going to signify.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The day after the Super Bowl typically brings with it another kind of celebration: Nielsen’s annual announcement of the size of the audience for the NFL extravaganza. This year, someone stole some of the spotlight from the measurement giant with an end run. In the early afternoon hours of Feb.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Nearly every commercial that runs on TV is backed by a guarantee of how big an audience will watch it. Late last year, Fox and Netflix decided to throw out that rule, one of the oldest in media economics. In November, Fox ran a two-minute-long segment during its Sunday-afternoon NFL showcase — one of the most-watched programs on TV.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Call it a daytime double. Steve Harvey, who has become an almost ubiquitous presence on TV through his host duties of both a daytime talk show as well as the long-running game show “Family Feud,” is teaming up with Dr. Phil.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Hallie Jackson is taking NBC’s venerable “Nightly News” to Washington D.C. for one night each week. The NBC News senior Washington correspondent has been named the new anchor of NBC’s Sunday evening-news broadcast, taking the reins from Kate Snow.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor NBCUniversal hopes to create a new type of event when its coverage of the Paris Olympics kicks off in late July. You don’t have to be an athlete to participate. When viewers of the company’s Peacock streaming hub open Olympics coverage, NBC is likely to ask some of them if they’d like to order food or beverages.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Taylor Tomlinson has proven herself to be a big draw among younger crowds and those savvy with social media. Now CBS hopes the new “After Midnight” host will have similar appeal with a decidedly niche sector: B-to-B advertisers. The network is trying to develop partnerships with a cluster of marketers that typically find their customers among decision-making executives at corporations.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Former President Donald Trump has filed a defamation suit against ABC News and one of its best known anchors, George Stephanopoulos, alleging that the TV journalist damaged Trump’s standing by saying on air that he had been found liable for raping E. Jean Carroll, a journalist and writer who recently won a defamation suit against the former Commander in Chief. The suit, filed Monday in the Miami division of Southern District of Florida in the U.S.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Bill Maher‘s long-running “Real Time” is getting more time across the Warner Bros. Discovery portfolio. CNN will start running episodes of the program on Saturday nights at 8 p.m., a day after their original broadcasts on HBO.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Tired of forking over hundreds of dollars for cable channels that aren’t always available? DirecTV may have a solution, albeit a controversial one. The satellite content distributor said Sunday it would give its subscribers the choice to “opt out” of receiving the feeds of local TV stations “for as long as they want,” and get a discount for doing so.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Bill Maher is getting more time for “Real Time” at HBO and its parent, Warner Bros. Discovery.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor NBCUniversal is testing a new game for the Paris Olympics. The Comcast-backed media conglomerate has for years launched every Summer Games with primetime coverage of the Opening Ceremonies that typically feature a top sportscaster like Mike Tirico or Bob Costas alongside a popular news anchor such as Savannah Guthrie or Katie Couric.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor NBC is only dipping into a recent “Vintage” when it comes to showing primetime repeats of “Saturday Night Live.” The network has since 2014 used its 10 p.m. slot on Saturdays to run “SNL” repeats from across the show’s decades-long run, a move that whets fans appetites’ for the 11:30 p.m. main showing of the popular late-night series.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Warner Bros. Discovery wants to bring one of its “zombie” cable networks back to life with a big jolt of sports. The media company intends to create a new nightly sports block for TruTV, the reality-series cable network that has largely been left to show endless episodes of the popular prank show “Impractical Jokers” and the caught-on-camera serial “World’s Dumbest.” In doing so, Warner no doubt hopes to create new value where there has only been a little.