EXCLUSIVE: With the 10th edition of the Playoff set to cap off a high-rated season starting on New Year’s Day, Disney says advertising inventory is nearly sold out for the semifinals and championship. “We have a lot of consistency with brands,” Deidra Maddock, VP, Sports Brand Solutions, Disney Advertising, told Deadline in an interview. “Not
Advertising
Layoffs have hit the ad sales ranks in the CBS owned-and-operated TV station portfolio as a long-term restructuring effort takes effect. Tuesday’s cuts come after new ad sales staffers were hired over the past three months. The exact number of employees affected could not be determined, but sources told Deadline the net number of departures
NBCUniversal still considers the Olympic Games to be “the great aggregator of viewership,” in the words of top exec Dan Lovinger, and sees 2024 revenue for Paris on pace to exceed the tally of the 2020 Tokyo Games. Lovinger provided the outlook on Olympic ads during Advertising Week in New York, echoing recent public comments
Mark Marshall, a nearly 10-year veteran of NBCUniversal, has been promoted to Chairman of Global Advertising and Partnerships. The elevation follows a hectic period last May when Marshall took on new duties on short notice at the NBCU upfront presentation at Radio City Music Hall. Marshall was pressed into service to handle the day’s lead
National CineMedia shares are popping today in a down market as the cinema advertising company emerged from Chapter 11 and named former top executives of NBCUniversal, HBO and Fox to a reconstituted, and pretty impressive, board of directors. Lauren Zalaznick, formerly EVP & Chair, Entertainment & Digital Networks, Comcast NBCUniversal, is now board chair. “We
Media giant Comcast beat on its top and bottom line for the three months ended in June with theme parks and studio strong, even as the latter basks in another giant opening, for Opppenheimer, in the current third quarter. Total revenue nosed up 1.7% to $30.5 billion for the second quarter ended in June. Net income jumped
Leslie Wood, a noted data science expert and advertising industry veteran, is joining ad tracking firm iSpot as the company’s chief research officer. She will lead new currency initiatives across linear and streaming and oversee the data science department responsible for measuring ads and programming. Wood comes to iSpot after maintaining a longtime partnership with
John Deyle, a veteran actor on Broadway and television commercials, died June 22 in Mount Kisco, NY of esophageal cancer. He was 68. Born and raised in Rochester, New York, he studied at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. In 1978, when auditioning for the Richard Rodgers and Martin Charnin musical I Remember Mama, Charnin decided
UPDATED with report of lawyer’s letter: Actual fisticuffs between longtime tech industry rivals Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have recently become a looming possibility. Now, Musk could be expanding the conflict to the courtroom. Hours after Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms launched Threads, a new service billed as a “Twitter killer,” a lawyer for the Musk-owned service
If the warm vibes between Keke Palmer and Amazon Studio’s Global Head of DEIA Latasha Gillespie continue, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship. The pair came together at a Cannes Lions panel this afternoon and Palmer – a growing force in the industry, as podcaster, actress, musician and now CEO of her
The nation’s biggest movie theater advertising network National CineMedia said tonight it’s filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Texas – where one of its biggest shareholders and customers, Regal parent Cineworld, has just presented a restructuring plan to emerge from bankruptcy itself. Cineworld filed in
National CineMedia said today it’s negotiated a second extension of the grace period on interest payments originally due Feb. 15. A one-month grace period for a payment said to be about $6.6 million ended March 15, when the company announced lenders had agreed to another 17 days. Big ratings agencies Moody’s and S&P Global declared
A new Amazon Prime ad campaign debuting at tonight’s Academy Awards kicks off with a spot directed by Olivia Wilde. The campaign “It’s On Prime” aims to highlight how the world’s biggest loyalty service makes everyday life easier. Lizzo and John Krasinski will also be a part of the campaign, Amazon said. By Wieden+Kennedy in
Disney Advertising has sold all inventory for Sunday night’s Oscar telecast on ABC, but with pricing slightly down from 2022 levels. The company sought between $1.6 million and $2.1 million for 30 seconds of airtime, which is down by a low-single-digit percentage from last year’s range, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. For
UK TV history will be made tonight when an aid appeal seeking donations to help the Turkey-Syria earthquake disaster airs across 29 channels, narrated by Daniel Craig. Channel 4 has brought together media owners ITV, UKTV, Channel 5, Sky, STV, Warner Bros. Discovery and Ocean Outdoor for the appeal, which will run for 90 seconds
A glimpse of stocking was once deemed shocking. But today, heaven knows…there are still limits on what you can say on certain broadcast outlets. Bill Maher found that out the hard way. Maher recently joined CNN with the segment Overtime, which uses the guests from his HBO show Real Time in an extended conversation. The
With this year’s domestic box office expected to rise to $9 billion, of course the major Hollywood studios are taking Super Bowl LVII ad spots seriously. The big game, which last year attracted 112 million viewers, remains an enormous bullhorn when it comes to drawing attention to your tentpole movies — and this year, starting
Streaming service Peacock closed 2022 with more than 20 million paid subscribers, helping Comcast slip past Wall Street estimates during a challenging fourth quarter in the media business. Total revenue came in at $30.55 billion in the period, less than 1% ahead of the prior-year quarter but just above analysts’ consensus. Earnings per share of