Ad buyers and sellers were buzzing last week about a nasty feud between newsletter editor and publisher Jack Meyers and Paul Rittenberg, Fox News head of network sales, that became very public. After the Jack Myers Report published some negative…
NBC and Vivendi Universal on Friday moved a step closer to completing their $14 billion merger of the broadcast network and the French conglomerate’s U.S. entertainment assets by receiving deal approval from the European Union Commission. The all-stock transaction, announced…
Nielsen Media Research ratings for selected television stations in the top 15 U.S. Designated Market Areas during November Sweeps.See printed publication for chart
News Corp.-DirecTV a Done Deal Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. announced Monday that it has completed the $6.6 billion deal that will give it a controlling 34 percent stake in DirecTV parent Hughes Electronics. The deal, which transfers ownership of the…
The dark era may or may not be over. Analysts and insiders, who for years predicted the fall of syndicated programming, received a thump in 2003 as audiences rediscovered syndie fare, new series broke from the pack and ad rates…
Showtime Networks is near an agreement to acquire Gerald Posner’s controversial best seller “Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11,” sources close to the deal said. The book is an exhaustive chronicle of two decades of intelligence failures and…
* In “Pursuit of a Story” (TelevisionWeek, Dec. 15), “This American Life” is broadcast from WBEZ, Chicago.* In the chart “Regional Cable Networks at a Glance” (TelevisionWeek, Dec. 8), the Ohio News Network has 1.5 million subscribers.* In “Football Promotion…
This amusing photo hit the Internet not long after Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq. The artist, who used a computer program to combine the cast of the hit show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” with…
USA Network is planning to introduce a hosted-movie franchise on Thursday nights.Hosted movies, such as TBS’s “Dinner and a Movie,” are attractive to programmers because they reinforce the network’s brand, and to advertisers because they create opportunities for product placement…
The most important news story of the year was the war in Iraq.But the year’s battle royal in the news business was over the “big gets.” The contests to land high-profile interviews resumed when journalistic troops came home to the…