DAISY WHITNEY Text: Recognizing the mounting need of television stations to reduce costs, the Grass Valley Group announced plans last week to introduce a laptop-based field editing system designed to help broadcasters become more efficient and two other new systems…
Sinclair was criticized when it canned news at some of its stations last year due to the recession-inspired ad sales slump. But it’s gotten virtually no ink on its effort to reach out to viewers locally: It is now the…
ABC has been taking a lot of heat lately for turning its back on “Nightline,” but the truth is the network has done more than either of its Big 3 rivals to find a late-night market for intelligent, issue-oriented television.The…
Posted Friday, March 8, at 4:30 a.m. (PT); last updated at 3:25 p.m. CBS bids $31.5 million to keep Letterman The bidding war for David Letterman, who currently earns a reported $30 million per year at CBS, is now up…
Posted Thursday, March 7, at 3:45 a.m. (PT); last updated at 1 p.m. CNN looking at KoppelCNN is eyeing ABC’s Ted Koppel for its own newsbeat. The Atlanta-based all-news network’s Chairman Walter Isaacson would “love to talk” to Koppel about…
Posted Wednesday, March 6, at 4:15 a.m. (PT); last updated at 4:15 p.m. MTV’s ‘Osbournes’ is the highest-rated series premiere in net’s history The opening episode on Tuesday night of “The Osbournes,” the new MTV series in which cameras follow…
Posted Tuesday, March 5, at 10:30 a.m. (PT); last updated at 4:25 p.m. Diller gets bigger stake in Vivendi Universal Jean-Marie Messier is so pleased with the integration efforts Barry Diller is overseeing at the merging Vivendi Universal Entertainment that…
Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe may be the biggest private equity firm that actively manages investments in healthcare services, but at least two others firms are active investors in providers.Thoma Cressey Equity Partners, Chicago, manages about $1 billion for institutional…
Orlando `Manhunt’ boosts WOFL-TVFox affiliate WOFL-TV, Orlando, Fla., last month launched “Manhunt,” a campaign to catch local criminals. WOFL profiled the 10 most wanted criminals in Central Florida in every newscast for the first two weeks of the campaign. Re-enactments…
Buck gets an agentNew York-While speculation swirled last week about who might replace Pat Summerall and John Madden as the lead NFL announcing team at Fox, one of the leading contenders, Joe Buck-who has not previously had an agent-signed with…