Nielsen on Tuesday, December 22, 2020 released the second batch of December 2020 PPM Data for the following market:
McConnell: Senate to return Dec. 29 for potential Trump veto override vote https://t.co/hg5jU6HNsH pic.twitter.com/1XbI7NaeKD
— The Hill (@thehill) December 23, 2020
Nancy Pelosi Goes on CNN and Has a Meltdown Too Amazing to Miss https://t.co/wNbOVfDJAn
— Tom Benson (@Tombenson1) December 23, 2020
Trump begins pre-departure pardons, including 2 people part of the Russia investigation https://t.co/Qsp6k8WBBY
— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 23, 2020
What you need to know about the coronavirus right now https://t.co/uTg8Ig6AXl pic.twitter.com/4nBy9U9FxT
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 23, 2020
Stunning unseen footage reveals The Beatles as never before https://t.co/E2v7jDicfj pic.twitter.com/Dc2sFusgld
— New York Post (@nypost) December 23, 2020
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| USAToday 12/23/20 |
AP source: Justice Dept. filing lawsuit against Walmart alleging it illegally distributed opioids, helping fuel crisis. https://t.co/XBOH9JI5zA
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 22, 2020
The New Year's Six Bowls are set!
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) December 20, 2020
Which matchup are you most looking forward to? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/FciXnlJqjC
In the year everyone wants to forget, America's media was already positioned for action. Rather than riding athwart the troubled waters of America in 2020, offering a beacon of accurate, intrepidly researched reporting to help guide the country, the biggest names in media time and again chose instead to abuse their positions, advancing narrow political interests in lieu of valuable, fact-checked information.
If there’s a theme to this year’s edition, it’s the mainstreaming of gaslighting. Time and again news consumers were told that what they were seeing meant the opposite of what it clearly did (see, for example, #s 15 and 14).
Our normal custom with the Most Mortifying Media Moments series is to summarize the 10 worst moments of the year. But 2020 being 2020, this year we’re doubling it up so that we can hereby present … 2020’s 20 Most Mortifying Media Moments.
So, without further ado, enjoy this (mortifying) meander down memory lane:
MONTAGE!
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 22, 2020
2020's 20 Most Mortifying Media Moments pic.twitter.com/eOQGrPQL1Y
Hallmark Channel ratings are up 2% over 2019′s holiday season, the Nielsen company said. That may not seem like much, but year-to-year increases are the exception rather than the rule in modern television.
The network turned its programming over to holiday fare on Oct. 23 and has been the top-rated entertainment cable channel, excluding news and sports, for the fourth quarter, Nielsen said.
“We made a choice not to let COVID affect us thematically,” she said. “There are a lot of places you can find information about COVID. What we provided was a respite from that.”
This season’s most popular movie has been “If I Only Had Christmas,” about a perky publicist who teams with a cynical executive to help a charity. It stars Candace Cameron Bure, probably the most reliable draw among a collection of actors who often return to Hallmark each holiday season.
CBS was the top-rated broadcast network last week, averaging 4.4 million viewers in prime time. NBC had 3.8 million, Fox had 2.9 million, ABC had 2.7 million, Univision had 870,000, Ion Television had 830,000 and Telemundo had 620,000.
The L-A Times reports CBS had been in third place behind Fox and NBC through Friday but moved into the top spot with its coverage of Alabama’s 52-46 victory over Florida in Saturday’s SEC Championship, which averaged 8.921 million viewers, seventh for the week behind three NFL games; “60 Minutes”; NBC’s nine-minute “Sunday Night Football” pre-kickoff show; and Fox’s six-minute NFL postgame show.
➤Top 20 Prime-Time TVs Shows (Total viewers):
1. NFL Football: Cleveland at N.Y. Giants, NBC, 15.61 million.
2. NFL Football: L.A. Chargers at Las Vegas, Fox, 12.96 million.
3. NFL Football: Baltimore at Cleveland, ESPN, 12.42 million.
4. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 11.59 million.
5. “NFL Pregame,” NBC, 11.31 million.
6. “NFL Postgame,” Fox, 10.96 million.
7. College Football: Alabama vs. Florida, CBS, 8.92 million.
8. “The Masked Singer,” Fox, 7.41 million.
9. “NFL Pregame,” Fox, 7.34 million.
11. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 7.09 million.
12. “Football Night in America,” NBC, 6.92 million.
13. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 6.86 million.
14. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 6.38 million.
15. “Monday Night Kickoff,” ESPN, 6 million.
16. “The Voice” (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), NBC, 5.89 million.
17. “Garth & Trisha Live!” CBS, 5.82 million.
18. “Grey’s Anatomy,” ABC, 5.66 million.
19. “Station 19,” ABC, 5.63 million.
20. “Magnum, P.I.,” CBS, 5.48 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” won the evening news ratings race, averaging 9.7 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 7.9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.9 million.
Fox News Channel was the most popular cable network, watched by an average of 2.38 million people in prime time. ESPN had 2.07 million, MSNBC had 2 million, Hallmark had 1.72 million and CNN had 1.68 million. The only non-news or sports programs among cable’s 40 most popular last week were two Hallmark movies.
Week of Dec. 14 basic cable (Total Viewers)
According to TV Newser, Tucker Carlson Tonight averaged 3.4 million total viewers last week, down from the previous week, but still more viewers than any other cable news show.
Anderson Cooper 360 was the top prime time cable news show of the week among adults 25-54, averaging 506,000 demo viewers; a hair more than The Rachel Maddow Show (505,600), whose total also includes Friday, when Maddow was off.
Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have agreed to “cooperate and assist one another” if they ever faced an investigation into their pact to work together in online advertising, according to The Wall Street Journal citing an unredacted version of a lawsuit filed by 10 states against Google last week.
The suit, as filed, cites internal company documents that were heavily redacted. The Wall Street Journal reviewed part of a recent draft version of the suit without redactions, which elaborated on findings and allegations in the court documents.
Ten Republican attorneys general, led by Texas, are alleging that the two companies cut a deal in September 2018 in which Facebook agreed not to compete with Google’s online advertising tools in return for special treatment when it used them.
Google used language from “Star Wars” as a code name for the deal, according to the lawsuit, which redacted the actual name. The draft version of the suit says it was known as “Jedi Blue.”
The draft version spells out some of the contract’s provisions, which state that the companies will “cooperate and assist each other in responding to any Antitrust Action” and “promptly and fully inform the Other Party of any Governmental Communication Related to the Agreement.”
In the companies’ contract, “the word [REDACTED] is mentioned no fewer than 20 times,” the lawsuit says. The unredacted draft fills in the word: Antitrust.
A Google spokesperson said such agreements over antitrust threats are extremely common.
The redacted lawsuit filed last week makes no mention of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. According to the draft version, Ms. Sandberg signed the deal with Google. The draft version also cites an email where she told CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives: “This is a big deal strategically.”
Like Google, Facebook has also disputed the allegations in the lawsuit, saying its agreements for bidding on advertising promote choice and create clear benefits for advertisers, publishers and small businesses.
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| Astronaut Doug Wheelock |
By Samantha Masunagastaff, LA Times
Perhaps that explains, in part, the appeal of having one of humankind’s greatest scientific inventions communicate with Earth via technology that’s more than 100 years old. But perhaps there’s a simpler explanation for why astronauts and ham radio operators have been talking, and talking, for years.
NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock was just a few weeks into his six-month mission at the space station when feelings of isolation began to set in.
Wheelock would be separated from loved ones, save for communication via an internet phone, email or social media. At times, the stress and tension of serving as the station’s commander could be intense.
One night, as he looked out a window at the Earth below, he remembered the space station’s ham radio. He figured he’d turn it on — see if anyone was listening.
“Any station, any station, this is the International Space Station,” Wheelock said.
A flood of voices jumbled out of the airwaves.
“It allowed me to ... just reach out to humanity down there,” said Wheelock, who interacted with many operators, known as “hams,” during that stay at the space station in 2010. “It became my emotional, and a really visceral, connection to the planet.”
The first amateur radio transmission from space dates to 1983, when astronaut Owen Garriott took to the airwaves from the Space Shuttle Columbia. Garriott was a licensed ham who, back on Earth, had used his home equipment in Houston to chat with his father in Oklahoma.
Over the last 10 years, ham radio has become more popular, experts say, with about 750,000 licensed amateur operators across the U.S. (not all of whom are active on the air). Helping to drive that interest: emergency communications.
“Ham radio is when all else fails,” said Diana Feinberg, Los Angeles section manager for the American Radio Relay League, the national association for amateur radio. “Unlike other forms of communication, it does not require any kind of a switched network.”
But for some hams, the allure is the opportunity to connect with people all over the world — or even above it.
Hong Kong media tycoon and Next Digital Ltd. founder Jimmy Lai has been granted bail by Hong Kong’s High Court, local media including the Apple Daily newspaper reported.
Bloomberg reports Lai was charged earlier this month with colluding with foreign forces under the city’s new national security law. He is the owner of the pro-democracy Apple Daily.
Lai was released on HK$10 million ($1.3 million) bail, Apple Daily said. He must also hand over his travel docs and be forbidden from taking meetings with foreign politicians, giving any interviews and posting and commenting on social media, the paper reported.
Lai will be confined to his home and be required to report to police three times a week under the bail terms, according to Apple Daily.
Hong Kong’s Department of Justice is appealing the court’s decision, Apple Daily’s report said.
Shares of Next Digital jumped as much as 15% after the reports of Lai’s bail. Hong Kong residents have in recent months piled into shares of the company to show support for Lai.
The number of journalists killed as a result of their work more than doubled in 2020, according to The NY Times citing a report from an international media watchdog group, with armed conflict and gang violence making Mexico and Afghanistan among the deadliest countries for reporters globally.
At least 30 journalists were killed worldwide this year, according to the watchdog group, the Committee to Protect Journalists, with 21 of those killings carried out as a direct response to the reporters’ work, compared to 10 in 2019.
“It’s appalling that the murders of journalists have more than doubled in the last year, and this escalation represents a failure of the international community to confront the scourge of impunity,” Joel Simon, the C.P.J.’s executive director, said in a statement.
While the total number of killings rose in 2020, the number of deaths related to conflict fell to its lowest level since 2000, according to the C.P.J., with waning violence in the Middle East and fewer reporters traveling because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Still, while fewer journalists were caught in the crossfire of war in 2020, at least four were killed because of their work in Syria and Afghanistan, according to the C.P.J. A fifth killing in Afghanistan on Monday is still being investigated, the group said.
Among those killed in Afghanistan was Malalai Maiwand, a television and radio reporter who was fatally shot while on her way to work this month.
On January 1, 1927, NBC formally divided its programming into two networks, called the Red and the Blue. Legend has it that the color designations originated from the push-pins early engineers used to mark affiliates of WEAF (red pins) and WJZ (blue pins), or from the use of double-ended red and blue colored pencils.
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| Jack Webb |
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| Stan Brooks |
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| Gordon Hinckley |
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| Anna Marie Perez de Tagle is 30 |
For the period covering Nov. 5 through Dec. 2, ESPN ranked second overall in the market with 6.5% of the listening audience among men ages 25-54 from 3 to 7 p.m., while WFAN was fifth at 5.4, according to Nielsen data.
That was a smaller gap than in the prior month from Oct. 8 to Nov. 4, during which ESPN had a winning margin of 7.2 to 4.7 against WFAN’s Evan Roberts and Joe Benigno.
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| Craig Carton |
Over those five hours, WFAN averaged 5.8% of the audience, third-best in the market, compared to 5.7 for ESPN New York, which ranked fourth. (Kay’s show does not start until 3 p.m.)
For the full autumn ratings book, which covers Sept. 10 to Dec. 2, WFAN maintained its longtime dominance over ESPN from 6 to 10 a.m. Gregg Giannotti and Boomer Esiason were first among all stations in the market with 6.5% of the audience and ESPN finished 14th at 3.1 with a new national morning show featuring Keyshawn Johnson, Jay Williams and Zubin Mehenti.
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., WFAN’s Maggie Gray and Marc Malusis ranked third with 5.7% of the audience. ESPN was ninth at 3.8%.
The service is expected to include advertising and rely heavily on the extensive library of Mexico’s Grupo Televisa SAB, a Univision investor and longtime programming supplier, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The service is a top priority for incoming Chief Executive Officer Wade Davis, who believes Hispanic audiences aren’t being served by the growing number of online video services. A Univision spokeswoman declined to comment.
Univision hasn’t decided on a price, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the project hasn’t been announced. It’s unlikely to feature current seasons of TV shows to avoid upsetting cable-TV distributors who pay for those rights, one person said.
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| Wade Davis |
At Viacom, Davis oversaw the acquisition of Pluto TV, a free streaming service whose viewership has grown dramatically during the pandemic. He’s also a former board member of Roku Inc., a major seller of streaming devices. In a February interview with Bloomberg News, Davis described the market for a Spanish-language streaming service as “wide open.”
But Univision will face competition for viewers from a growing number of Spanish-language programs on services like Netflix Inc. The streaming giant has more than 36 million subscribers in Latin America. It operates a production hub in Spain, and has produced more than a dozen original series in Spanish, including the popular crime drama “La Casa de Papel.”
Telemundo, the No. 2 Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S., has programming on Peacock, a new streaming service owned by its parent company, Comcast Corp.