Nielsen’s Next Move to Count Multi-Screen Viewers Has Support From Disney, Interpublic, Sony

Gemma Owen has been flooded with praise and support as she revealed her next move in honour of her brother. The Love Island star has shared that she has become an ambassador for a charity which funds research into the prevention and treatment of blindness and eye disease.

Ant McPartlin and Dec Donnelly have left fans wondering what they're going to do as they confirmed that they were sensationally ending Saturday Night Takeaway. The popular duo confirmed they'll be taking a break from their hit ITV show after the 2024 series.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Andrew Ross Sorkin is the co-creator of the Showtime series “Billions,” but he isn’t really known for drama in his professional life, just financial reporting. So it came as something of a surprise on Monday, when the CNBC and New York Times journalist got up on stage at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall to tout some of the dramatic fare that NBCUniversal was able to cobble together for the advertisers and media buyers assembled in the audience. It was all part of the industry’s annual “upfront,” when U.S. media companies try to sell the bulk of their advertising inventory before the release of their next cycle of programming.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor When Lester Holt visits Florida next week, it won’t be for a vacation. But he will take the regular format of “NBC Nightly News” on a short trip. The veteran anchor will visit Fort Myers Beach and Miami early next week, and on each of two nights will spend a significant amount of time delving into news and issues pertinent to those locations. “There are a lot of stories to be told in Florida, not just from a political standpoint, but environmental and tourism and recovery from storm disaster,” Holt says in an interview. He’s traveled to Fort Myers before, when a hurricane was making its way through the city, but “the idea is to visit places when they are not necessarily going through their worst day,”

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Noah Lyles might be one of the nation’s fastest athletes, but there’s one thing he was falling behind on: managing his social-media profile. The Olympic runner knows how important it is for fans to see clips of him in action, particularly with the Paris Games about a year or so away. But securing rights to video footage and putting it up in an intelligent way across different digital venues can be difficult, he says. “That can be very stressful, and take away from the ability to perform.” NBCUniversal wants to offer athletes some assistance. The media company is launching a new production effort called Fortius that aims to help Olympic athletes burnish their brands in the months leading up to the next Games. The company has many reasons to do so. NBCU and its parent, Comcast have invested heavily in U.S. rights to the Olympics broadcasts, having agreed to pay $7.75 billion for broadcast rights to the events between 2021 and 2032. That programming, especially the hours that air in primetime, rely heavily on in-depth features on the athletes that often require NBC Sports crews to meet with them several times over the course of their training.

Charlotte Dawson was seen breaking down in tears as she opened up about the extent of the trolling she receives as she prepares to welcome her second child. The reality star and her fiance Matthew Sarsfield are preparing to welcome their 'rainbow baby' after suffering a heartbreaking miscarriage.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Spanish-TV giant TelevisaUnivsion wants to speak a different language than its English-speaking rivals when it comes to audience measurement. Under pressure from some media companies, Nielsen said in April that it was going to hold back a new product that sought to use “big data,” or audience information gleaned from set-top boxes and smart TVs, as a way to provide more granular information about viewers. Nielsen said the new data would not be accredited for mainstream use, but would be available “for additional measurement during this transition for clients seeking to transact on it.” TelevisaUnivision is going to try. “We all know that today’s TV measurement is inadequate for our multi-screen world, and as a consequence, U.S Hispanics have been undercounted,” says Donna Speciale, president of U.S. ad sales and marketing at the company. “In fact, our audience is 26% bigger than current measurement. How did we get that information? Nielsen just told us,” she tells Variety, using its traditional panel-based tabulation as well as its “big data” product. “This is huge and and a huge step for equity,” she adds, noting that TelevisaUnivision will ask all agencies and clients to base this year’s upfront ad deals on that measurement.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CNN on Wednesday broadcast one of the most controversial news events of the year, a runaway town hall interview with former President Donald Trump, and advertisers like Subaru and Fidelity Investments went along for the ride. There are new questions about whether all of Madison Avenue will do so in the future. The nation’s big TV-news outlets are about to enter what should be a healthy cycle. The closer the U.S. gets to a presidential election, the more audiences tend to watch. CNN, for example, has indicated it expects to telecast more primetime town halls with candidates (last week’s lured nearly 3.31 million viewers), while Fox News Channel is expected to broadcast the Republican Party’s first primary debate in August.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Gio Benitez is hoping to marry the two jobs he holds for ABC News. As the Disney unit’s transportation correspondent, he has been close to the recent movement into private space travel. As a newly named co-anchor for the weekend edition of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” he will handle stories that draw out viewers’ emotions and attention. He will continue to handle both roles. “I’m a space geek,” says Benitez, “and I get to still keep on doing it.” “I’ll tell you what he’s pitching,” says Simone Swink, the executive producer of ABC’s A.M. flagship. “He wants to be the first civilian and journalist on whatever the first mission to Mars is. That will be our ongoing conversation for the next five years.”

Will Mellor is set to return to the small screen in a new drama after his triumphant time on Strictly Come Dancing. But the actor, candidly, admits that he was “gutted” to miss out on making it to the final of the 2022 edition of the BBC One dance contest.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor In an era when gargantuan media conglomerates hope to tempt advertisers into buying tons of commercials across many networks, streaming outlets and digital sites, Marianne Gambelli has come to appreciate the art of staying small. The executive, president of ad sales for Fox Corp., says in an interview that she believes the company will stand apart in the TV industry’s looming “upfront” sales session by not pressing potential sponsors to snap up commercial inventory in multiple venues. Want to buy an ad in a Fox Sunday NFL broadcast without having to load up on commercial avails at Tubi? Gambelli says staffers are willing to accomodate.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Fox’s 2022 broadcast of Super Bowl LVII has a new score. Nielsen has added audience to the overall total of the February 13, 2022 broadcast, and the new viewership makes the game the industry’s most-watched TV event. According to a revamped Nielsen report, 115.1 million viewers tuned in to watch the Big Game across Fox, Fox Deportes, and various streaming services. Nielsen had previously reported that the broadcast was seen by an estimated 113.06 million viewers. “There were two separate issues, each of them accounting for an additional 1 million viewers,” explains Mike Mulvihill, executive vice p and head of strategy and analytics for Fox Sports.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Trevor Noah is moving from being in front of the camera at “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central to a weekly comedy program on Amazon Freevee that has him working behind the scenes. The ad-supported streaming service will offer a U.S. version of the long-running British series “Mock The Week,” a half-hour program that combines elements from talk shows. stand-up comedy sessions and improv games and sets two teams of comics against each other in a bid to satirize current news events and popular culture. Noah, who left “The Daily Show” late last year, will executive produce the series, along with Dan Patterson, who helped create “Mock The Week,” which has run in the United Kingdom for more than 15 years.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Donald Trump and CNN have in recent years seemed to go together as well as Coca-Cola and mayonnaise, which is to say not at all. Now the two entities are teaming up for a town-hall program to be broadcast next week. Kaitlan Collins, the former Washington correspondent turned morning anchor who was often called out by Trump during rallies and press scrums, will moderate a live CNN Town Hall with the former president on May 10 from St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. Trump, who has declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, will take questions from an audience of New Hampshire Republicans and undeclared voters who say they intend to vote in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor After an enviable career working for traditional TV outlets, Charlie Collier surprised many a media executive late last year by leaving a senior job running entertainment programming for the Fox broadcast network to join Roku, the company that gives millions of Americans their access to the world of streaming. He hopes advertisers will follow. On Tuesday, Collier, 53, now heading Roku’s ad sales and development of content on its own platforms, will be pressed to show potential sponsors why. Roku, which boasts 71.6 million active accounts, will make a big pitch to Madison Avenue as part of a group of industry “newfront” sessions. Even though NBCUniversal, Disney and their rivals won’t make similar outreach until May, presentations this week from digital players such as Amazon and Roku are seen as an aggressive bid to win ad dollars that might previously have gone to the TV companies. After all, the networks, one secure in their ability to deliver media’s biggest audience, are losing viewers to streaming, and Roku is one of the biggest facilitators of that activity.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Comedian Roy Wood Jr. did something many guests at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner forget to do: celebrate journalism. In a series of funny remarks that took on everything from Don Lemon to Fox News Channel’s massive $787.5 million settlement to Dominion Voting to President Biden’s age, Wood devoted significant time to calling for support for local journalism, noting that reporters working for regional and local media outlets are often the first to spot malfeasance or something wrong. He also mentioned his father’s work in local radio and his mother’s career in education. The comments added a personal touch to the proceedings, which are organized each year by the White House Correspondents Association and meant to call attention to the mission of holding government officials accountable in reporting meant to be consumed by the American public.

His next move. Don Lemon is already making plans for his future after an unexpected exit from CNN earlier this week.

Austin Butler and Kaia Gerber are one sharp looking couple!

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor It’s an idea that would make any news executive salivate. What if MSNBC revived CNN’s old “Crossfire” show, enlisting Tucker Carlson from the right and Don Lemon from the left? Such a concept would normally be unthinkable. Tucker Carlson is known for his work on Fox News. Don Lemon has long held forth for CNN. It has been that way for years. Until, as of earlier this week, it wasn’t. Within the space of 90 minutes on April 24, Carlson was ousted from Fox News Channel and Lemon was pushed from CNN. Both were stalwart personalities for their networks. Both were valued for their ability to spark conversation, debate, pushback and even furor. For years, that has been the cable-news coin of the realm. As the economics of TV shift, however, it is becoming clearer that media executives may have less patience for TV-news pot-stirrers.

Amanda Peet has her friends by her side at the premiere of her Paramount+ show Fatal Attraction at the SilverScreen Theater on Monday night (April 24) in West Hollywood, Calif.