Irwin Gotlieb, former chairman and CEO of GroupM, offered the opening keynote at the Advanced Advertising Summit. Interviewed by B+C senior content producer Jon Lafayette, Gotlieb stressed that the TV advertising world faces serious challenges. 

“Are these the best of times? Hell, no,” he said. 

With the streaming players joining linear networks in the advertising forum, Gotlieb spoke about the immense amount of content, driven by the streamers, facing consumers. “The stuff that is produced is not readily discoverable — the streamers don’t run the promo schedules that the linear [networks] do,” he said. “How do you get to the point of knowing what you want to watch?”

He also noted the challenge of different measurement systems on linear and non-linear. “If you don’t have proper measurement you don’t have the basis for doing transactions,” he said. 

Gotlieb assessed the state of the streamers, including Paramount Plus, Max and Hulu, but suggested taking Netflix and Prime Video out of the equation. “How many of them are making serious money?” he asked, noting how they are more likely to report finally stopping “hemorrhaging capital.”

Gotlieb mentioned GroupM gearing up for addressable ads back around 2008 to illustrate the in-fighting that’s long been part of the industry. “We literally faced resistance everywhere,” he said, amidst a prevailing sense of, “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.”

“Here we are in 2024,” Gotlieb added, “ill-prepared.”

The Advanced Advertising Summit is part of NYC TV Week, hosted by Broadcasting+Cable, Multichannel News and Next TV. Advanced Ads happens September 9, Next TV Summit takes place September 10, Hispanic TV Summit is September 11 and 40 Under 40 happens September 12. The first three events take place at etc.venues in midtown Manhattan, and 40 Under 40 is at 230 5th. 

Gotlieb was not entirely pessimistic about the industry. “Television is the most efficient and effective marketing tool that has ever been developed,” he said. Streaming, for its part, “should be the overall answer to the long-term health of the business but for the fact that the industry isn’t prepared for it.”

Gotlieb said the TV players have to focus on raising the tide so all entrants gain, more than stealing a viewer or two from the competition. “If the ecosystem isn’t healthy, nobody in the ecosystem will do particularly well,” he said. 

The technology is out there to fix the issues, he said, but the fix is complicated. 

“It’s not the technology that’s missing,” Gotlieb said. “It’s the industry cooperation.”

It’s a disruptive time in the TV industry as shifting business models are leading to sea changes in how video content is watched, distributed and monetized. Fortunately, there’s also no shortage of rising industry stars who are up to the challenge of being creative and innovative enough to keep things moving forward. 

For over a decade, Broadcasting+Cable, Multichannel News and Next TV have honored a select group of industry pros under 40 — both established veterans and up-and-comers — as part of the 40 Under 40 New York awards program.  

The 40 Under 40 awards are designed to honor those at the forefront of a changing industry. Through a nomination and judging process, B+C Multichannel News has selected a group of creative, tech-savvy visionaries helping to lead media in new directions, wherever the viewers are. 

The 2024 New York 40 Under 40 class will be honored at a gala party September 12, capping off Future B2B’s NYC TV Week of events, which also includes Advanced Advertising, the Hispanic Television Summit and the Next TV Summit. The 40 Under 40 awards party will take place at the 230 Fifth Rooftop at 230 5th Ave. in Manhattan. 

For more information and to register, visit tvweek40under40.com. 

Below, read more about the 2024 40 Under 40 New York, listed alphabetically. 

Greg Barnard
Senior Director, Content Acquisitions and Strategy, Vizio
Barnard has elevated Vizio’s WatchFree Plus streaming service to the next level. With a portfolio boasting more than 300 channels and 15,000 on-demand titles, he has led negotiations with numerous media partners. He has secured exclusive content deals for acclaimed shows such as @Home with Tori, featuring Tori Spelling, and The Pantry, hosted by chef Tom Colicchio. He oversees the team responsible for negotiating and closing content, service and tech agreements for WatchFree Plus, all while unifying processes, implementing efficient project management strategies and strengthening relationships. With more than 17 years of industry experience, Barnard’s influence extends far beyond Vizio. This is evident in his roles as a founding board member for HRTS Associates NYC, adviser for Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) and mentor with the T. Howard Foundation and Ghetto Film School. Barnard’s relentless dedication and visionary approach continue to shape the future of entertainment.

Kevin Belbey
Sports Media Agent, Creative Artists Agency
Belbey represents many top sports broadcasters, including Noah Eagle (NBC Sports), Fabrizio Romano (an Italian sports journalist) and Kevin Brown (Baltimore Orioles/ESPN). He also signed former NFL stars Devin and Jason McCourty, negotiating a multiyear, seven-figure-per-year deal for Devin to join NBC Sports as an analyst for Football Night in America, and a deal for Jason to join CBS Sports as an NFL and college football game analyst, in addition to co-host of NFL Network’s Good Morning Football. Belbey also hustled to sign Ian Eagle in 2022, who recently succeeded Jim Nantz as the play-by-play person for the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four for CBS Sports and TNT Sports. Upon NBC Sports’ acquisition of Big Ten media rights, Kevin orchestrated several prominent moves that would see CAA clients define NBC’s coverage, including Noah Eagle as the featured voice of NBC’s Big Ten Saturday Night football package. He also represented Drew Carter in his contract to join the Boston Celtics as a play-by-play announcer.

Noella Charles
VP, Development & Original Production, Unscripted, WE tv/AllBlk
Charles has helped revitalize WE tv’s offerings, executive-producing brand-defining, celebrity-driven ensemble docuseries, including Keke Wyatt’s World, chronicling the journey of R&B/gospel artist Wyatt; Toya & Reginae, following Atlanta’s dynamic mother-daughter duo; Bold & Bougie, featuring five women determined to live unapologetically on their own terms; The Barnes Bunch, following NBA champion Matt Barnes, his fiancée, model Anansa Sims, and their blended family of six children; and Love During Lockup, about couples fighting to keep their love alive while one partner is incarcerated. While at Viacom, Charles helped lead BET’s music series 106 & Park to its highest ratings with various segments and larger awards-show initiatives and worked as a coordinating producer on MTV’s Wild ’N Out. At Fuse TV, she launched shows such as Trending 10, and was a producer for The People’s Choice Awards on E!

Beau Decker
VP, Growth Marketing, Endeavor Streaming 
Decker leads a team of marketing strategists, analysts and data scientists who operate as an extension of Endeavor Streaming’s clients to help them scale their businesses through marketing, analytics, data and technology, and to drive efficiencies across acquisition, retention and monetization of direct-to-consumer businesses. He has established himself as an effective leader who is highly proficient in implementing unified business strategies that embrace the complexities of the modern media ecosystem. His unique mix of business expertise, understanding of advanced technological marketing and data capabilities and his customer-centric approach directly impacts clients’ ability to maximize the value of their direct-to-consumer streaming businesses. Decker developed the Endeavor Streaming Audience Development team as a direct result of a market challenge: Regardless of an organization’s size, OTT teams often lack the resources to run and scale a streaming service efficiently. Since its inception in 2022, the team has successfully supported a substantial number of high-profile clients, including UEFA.tv and UFC Fight Pass.

Kirby Dixon
Director, Publicity, History 
Dixon has spearheaded the communications campaigns for tentpole History series including Alone, which The New Yorker recently called “the best reality series ever made;” The Harlem Hellfighters, executive produced by Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts; 761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers from Morgan Freeman; and The Curse of Oak Island, among others. She stands out for her thoughtful, creative and nuanced approach to every project, her co-workers said, mining each story for the significant and often untold aspects. Her never-give-up attitude has led to key placements for programming with New York Magazine, The New Yorker, MSNBC, GMA, CNN and other key media outlets. In the past year alone, Kirby has worked to gain access to some of the most high-profile U.S. government locations and officials for key press events. She facilitated a conversation between the nation’s first Black secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, and Morgan Freeman at the Pentagon to discuss 761st Tank Battalion. She’s also a tireless champion for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at History and parent A+E.

Tori Fernandes
VP, Corporate Communications, The Walt Disney Co. 
Fernandes has unified Disney’s narrative across its streaming, digital and linear properties as one authoritative entity, and the integrated strategy has reinvented the way the company comes to market. In January, her corporate communications team spearheaded all press for Disney’s Global Tech & Data Showcase, which took place in person for the first time at CES. The team created an intentional campaign that cascaded throughout the week. This strategic plan included a press preview with key executives and journalists; exclusive stories with various publications aligned with the timing of the showcase; six separate executive interviews and panels during the week that led up to the event; and live social media coverage that extensively followed the excitement on stage. Amid an incredibly competitive CES news cycle, Disney Advertising clinched over 50 unique headlines for exclusive feature stories and organic placements. Also helping cut through the noise was a video message from CEO Bob Iger that Fernandes helped produce. 

Joe Fitzpatrick
Director, Programmatic Partnerships, NBCUniversal
Sitting at the crossroads of technology and addressable advertising, Fitzpatrick has rare knowledge of the industry landscape. Whether engaging with clients and understanding their challenges or seeing opportunities in the content provider world, his multifaceted approach to solutions has been a boon for the companies he has worked for and with. Fitzpatrick joined NBCU in June, following stints at Minute Media, USA Today Network, AP and Fox News Channel. He drives the continued adoption of automated, data-driven and programmatic media buying across NBCU’s portfolio of digital and streaming assets. Colleagues said his commitment and versatility are key character traits in establishing him as a pioneer in the programmatic world, and his personality makes for a warm presence at conferences, industry think tanks and group lunch meetings. 

Chris Giliberti
Co-Founder and CEO, Avail
Giliberti launched Avail in July 2021, after he had been global head of TV and film at Spotify. Avail offers studios and talent agencies a script summarization tool and is increasingly focused on the content/intellectual property licensing and AI search space. In July, Avail launched Corpus, which enables creators and media rightsholders to license their work to AI model developers. Corpus leverages collective scale to get smaller publishers and creators in on the licensing action. Giliberti’s background in TV and film has made him well-versed in the painstaking process of producing successful series and movies and the so-called “pain points” that can be addressed to make production faster and better. He has emerged as a key figure at the intersection of Silicon Valley and Hollywood and an increasingly trusted voice in that relationship. 

Alexander Groysman
VP, Advertising Product Development, Spectrum Reach
Groysman has been instrumental in bringing innovative products to the advanced advertising space. He oversees 20 diverse product managers and analysts emerging as leaders, and has authored two patents related to the converging linear and digital TV ecosystems and enablement of transparent marketplaces for premium TV media. He has been a key leader in transforming Spectrum Reach, the ad-sales business of Charter Communications, to adopt programmatic technologies and expand the availability of addressable targeting solutions in a privacy-compliant manner to better service customert. Groysman also leads several initiatives around measuring and optimizing supply quality and performance attribution, ensuring that every campaign is executed and optimized against the best media possible. In a remarkable step forward for linear addressable advertising and the industry, Groysman and his team found a way to expand linear addressable multicast ad inventory, where many people view the same network feed. 

Shannon Guarascio
Senior Manager, CBS Affiliate Relations
Guarascio’s resilience in navigating challenges in an ever-evolving television landscape, whether it’s broadcast rights or pivoting strategies to keep original programming at its peak during the writers and actors strikes of 2023, proves she can thrive amid any obstacles. She has spent 15 years at CBS. Due to her efforts to ramp up promotion with affiliates for February’s Super Bowl, it was the highest-viewed network broadcast of all time, with more than 120 million viewers tuning in. Guarascio is now working in a hybrid role of overseeing and managing affiliates in addition to communications and operations for CBS Affiliate Relations. As a member of the Paramount Veterans Network, she has also supported and influenced the work between military veterans and CBS programming. 

Walid Hamri
AVP, Media Systems Engineering, Sinclair
Hamri’s leadership in engineering next-generation media systems creates substantial opportunities for content creators, producers and broadcasters, encouraging them to move away from legacy operating models. His work to create more adaptable media ecosystems allows media organizations such as broadcast giant Sinclair to innovate by leveraging the latest technologies. He has designed and
helped architect massively scaled distribution systems, capitalized on emerging cloud capabilities to drive media supply-chain optimization, and harnessed the latest in
media signaling to streamline media operations. Prior to joining Sinclair, Hamri was chief product officer at SeaChange International, where he led the product and solution team in promoting the multiscreen Video Delivery Platform. Before that, he was VP of solutions & business development at Ateme, a specialist in video compression and delivery solutions. He holds both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Grenoble Institute of Technology in France.

Christina Haubrock
Senior VP, Advertising Strategy, NBCUniversal Advertising & Partnerships

Haubrock conceptualizes and develops new ad products for NBCUniversal’s Peacock and its additional streaming assets. Regularly reimagining the advertising experience to maximize effectiveness, she acts on behalf of two customers: the viewer and the advertiser. By creating custom ad experiences for different types of content and introducing innovative ad formats, she plays a critical role in rewriting the advertising playbook, driving ultimate engagement for consumers and meaningful impact for marketers. Prior to Peacock launching in 2020, she was an integral voice in architecting NBCU’s AVOD vision and has evolved the go-to-market strategy as the streamer has scaled. In 2022, Haubrock
helped bring NBCU’s streaming portfolio to market with Peacock Premier, leveraging Peacock’s premium AVOD platform to deliver maximum impact for clients; and Peacock “AX” (Audience Extension), leveraging the entire footprint of NBCU’s streaming assets to deliver maximum reach. 

Alix Hoberman
Managing Director, Sales, LG Ad Solutions 
Hoberman joined LG Ad Solutions in 2021 and has become integral to the company’s business, helping to build and develop LG’s Media & Entertainment East Coast sales efforts.  When she joined LG, Hoberman was a senior account executive coordinating and managing advertising campaigns for smart-TV ad inventory — and she quickly proved to be a rising star, developing positive relationships throughout the organization, and with clients such as Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, BET, Fubo, Pluto, A&E and the NBA. She also fostered several key agency relationships, including with Horizon Media and Hearts & Science. Hoberman now takes the lead on many go-to-market sales packages, collaborating with marketing and sales and contributing to the development of LG Ad Solutions’ measurement strategies. She oversees a team of sellers responsible for more than $30 million in revenue — a 200% increase compared to her first year with the company. 

Isaac Holub
Co-Founder and Head of Development, Lucky 8
Holub has played a crucial role in establishing Lucky 8, one of the unscripted industry’s most successful fully-independent production shops. Lucky 8 shows include Unlocked: A Jail Experiment, which premiered on Netflix in the spring and highlights a daring approach to the challenges of incarceration. Holub is an executive producer on the show and is also behind two of History’s That Built America franchises: He launched Season 5 of The Food That Built America in early 2024 and will launch Season 2 of The Mega-Brands That Built America later this year. In 2023, Holub was integral to the creation, development and sale of Extraordinary Birder With Christian Cooper for Disney Plus and Booked: First Day In for A&E. Holub also executive produces Nat Geo’s long-running hit To Catch a Smuggler. He was a producer at National Geographic prior to co-founding Lucky 8, where he produced Brain Games, Border Wars and American Weed, among other shows.

Annmarie Hordern
Anchor/Chief Political Correspondent, Bloomberg
Hordern is a co-anchor on the Bloomberg Television morning show Surveillance, where the anchors’ “daily conversations with leaders and decision-makers from Wall Street to Washington and beyond cover the latest in business, investment and geopolitics,” the network said. She conducts interviews with world leaders and newsmakers, including the energy ministers from Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Russian Federation. She also serves as chief political correspondent. In addition to her work with Bloomberg Television, Hordern has contributed to Bloomberg.com, Quicktake and Bloomberg Businessweek, among other platforms. In 2022, she wrote a Bloomberg Businessweek piece sharing a personal story on efforts to evacuate a colleague’s family following the collapse of Afghanistan. Prior to her work on Surveillance, Hordern co-anchored the politics and policies program Balance of Power. Before that, she was the executive producer for Bloomberg TV’s EMEA newsroom, managing a team of more than a dozen producers from Dubai to London. 

Lawrence Jones
Co-Host, Fox & Friends, Fox News Channel 
Jones was the youngest Black man to helm a solo program in cable news history when Lawrence Jones Cross Country launched on Fox News Channel. The program saw him talk to people across the country who often feel like their voices are not heard. He spotlighted local stories that spoke to larger issues, such as gun violence and the fentanyl crisis plaguing the United States. During his time as an enterprise reporter, Lawrence traveled to 49 of the 50 states for network reports. In fall 2023, he moved up to morning program Fox & Friends, where he continues to tackle the big stories of the day and break them down in a digestible way. He has also brought a younger perspective to the program. Born the son of a teen mother in Texas, as a child Jones dreamed not of working in television, but of being a police officer. 

Sean Kelly
Senior Director, Ad Sales, Vizio
Kelly joined Vizio in 2019 as a founding member of the Vizio Ads organization, tasked with establishing an East Coast ad sales presence. At the time, the region had generated zero in revenue. Since then, revenue has grown to over $135 million annually, and Kelly oversees about $110 million. His team’s clients include a diverse roster of general-market advertisers across verticals such as auto, pharma, telco, insurance and travel. Promoted to his current role in 2023, Kelly’s responsibilities include negotiating long-term commitments with several large agency holding companies based on spend volume, unique offerings and partnership benefits. During his tenure at Vizio, he was instrumental in the creation of the associate director program, which provides junior employees with professional development opportunities and management skill training. He also continues to mentor both account executives and new employees, fostering a culture of collaboration and inclusivity. 

Madeline Kissel
VP, Business Development and Affiliate Relations, Viamedia 
With her unique blend of rapid adaptability, innate sales skills that have closed major deals, marketing acumen that has led to successful innovative advertising campaigns and a network of cable TV industry relationships, Kissel is a visionary transforming media advertising in North America. She cultivates and manages partnerships with video service providers and advertisers, including over 60 sales partnerships across 70 cities. Viamedia’s managed services business line has seen a staggering 300% increase, evolving into one of the company’s highest profit-margin segments. Her exceptional sales insight has not only signed 20 new partners and renewed over 50, but also significantly boosted revenue while maintaining a 100% renewal rate. Kissel’s development and implementation of dynamic advertising educational content have propelled industry-wide advancement, demonstrating her exceptional ability to drive growth and foster innovation in a highly competitive industry. One of her key accomplishments has been securing a partnership with cable operator Sparklight that brought 300,000 subscribers to Viamedia.

Amanda Klecker
SVP, Marketing & Franchise, pocket.watch
Klecker is head of marketing and brand strategy for pocket.watch, the largest independent kids and family studio, working with the biggest children’s programming creators in the world to create global franchises. That includes engaging more than 1 billion subscribers and 661 billion views on YouTube alone, according to pocket.watch. She leads various teams, including marketing, franchise, press, social, e-commerce and creative, changing the way families connect with media. In the last year, Klecker paved new ground for both the creator economy and kids entertainment by driving first-of-their-kind collaborations and AI innovations with megabrands that had never before considered working with intellectual property hatched on YouTube. That includes her work with grocery brand Dole, personalized video outfit Cameo Kids and tech company Veritone. She also launched the first creator-only record label, pocket.watch Records, distributed by Universal Music Group. 

Andrew Longworth
VP of Advanced TV, Innovid
Colleagues describe Longworth as an innovator and a driver of action, both of which set Innovid up well for the future. Across measurement, optimization and creative, he works with major publishers to spearhead key initiatives. His accomplishments include bringing interactive ads to the Super Bowl; closing the measurement/optimization gap with Instant Optimization, which allows advertisers to immediately optimize ad performance in flight; and making granular, cross-platform measurement more accessible to local advertisers. Longworth’s ability to demystify complex technology and strategy has made him an invaluable asset within Innovid and the broader ad tech industry. In 2024, he continues to be laser-focused on sell-side innovation. He will be behind big news around new ad experiences during live events, real-time optimization initiatives at scale and the global expansion of Innovid’s measurement footprint. He also works to support sell-side players in their efforts to embrace AI initiatives.

Adam Lynch
Advanced Advertising Systems Engineer, Viamedia
Co-workers describe Lynch as someone with an innovative spirit to go with his unparalleled resilience and technical acumen. With more than 14 years of technical experience, he holds a remarkable eight patents. He has architected multiple one-of-a-kind advertising solutions that bridge linear and digital advertising, serving 70 pay TV providers in 27 states and placing over 1 million ads daily. Born with dyslexia and ADHD and being on the spectrum, Lynch has harnessed these conditions as unique strengths. His ability to break down complex problems into manageable tasks has led to innovative solutions and technological advancements that many deemed impossible. His knack for seeing processes amidst chaos drives unprecedented creativity and problem-solving, making him an invaluable asset to Viamedia. His projects include the creation, development and implementation of QTT, which integrates the digital ecosystem with premium linear cable TV ads; and innovations within dynamic ad insertion, with the development and implementation of Viamedia’s Parrot ADS. 

Zachary Malet
Senior Director, Sports Business Development & Innovation, ESPN
What his colleagues describe as Malet’s relentless pursuit of innovation comes from introducing groundbreaking ideas directly to sports fans. He has played a pivotal role in ESPN’s alternative broadcasts, spearheading the live, animated NHL Big City Greens Classic — the first telecast of its kind. His role also involves negotiating and overseeing ESPN’s extensive portfolio of third-party business agreements/partnerships, with a keen emphasis on driving strategic innovation, maximizing revenue and fostering crucial technology partnerships. Malet’s expertise has led to the successful negotiation of several multimillion-dollar deals for the sports giant. His tenure since 2012 has been marked by significant contributions across various divisions, including Disney Platform Distribution, where he managed distribution of Disney properties (including ABC, ESPN and Disney Plus) with cable and streaming partners, and in the content strategy and college sports groups at ESPN programming and acquisitions. 

Rachel Marcus Fawkes
Director of Content and Editorial, Amagi
Marcus Fawkes got her start at ESPN shooting and editing video. While at ESPN, she pushed for video tech beyond the realms of cable, making sure younger users could access video through their phones and tablets before that behavior was the norm. She covered the NBA Finals, College Football Playoff, NBA draft, College World Series and X Games while at ESPN, among other giant sports events. Marcus Fawkes shifted to Wynn Resorts, where she was director of content, and joined Amagi in July 2023. She is currently building and leading content marketing strategy for the company, a leader in unified cloud workflows for TV and OTT. She also spearheads Amagi’s Airtime webinar series and quarterly FAST industry report. A Syracuse grad, Marcus Fawkes worked at SNY earlier in her career, where her role included covering ’Cuse sports.

Sean Mathew
VP, Media Director Investments, Mediahub
After working to invigorate brands like Google/YouTube and Kohler, Mathew joined Mediahub as a supervisor on the video investments team in 2019 for a new challenge: going beyond “spots and dots” media buying to harness the power of data-driven storytelling to drive key business results. Since then, he’s been working with brands across a variety of sectors, including entertainment, retail and financial services. Focusing on Mediahub’s Navy Federal Credit Union and Netflix accounts, he negotiated a unique promotion for Netflix’s Your Place of Mine on ABC’s The Bachelor. Mathew takes an active role in both agency and personal team development. He meets weekly with his team, dedicating time to training and mentorship, and often shelling out any useful financial and investing tips that he learns outside of his industry expertise. A testament to his leadership is his team’s minimal turnover rate — 90% retention over the last three years.

Bill Melugin
Correspondent, Fox News
Melugin joined Fox News Channel in 2021 as a Los Angeles-based correspondent after a stint as an investigative reporter at Fox-owned KTTV Los Angeles. He has spent several hundred days reporting from the U.S.’s southern border, breaking a number of stories. In 2022, Melugin was one of the first national reporters on the scene at Robb Elementary School following the shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Some of his notable reporting included an interview with a grandfather of a missing child and dispelling rumors the suspect was being chased by U.S. Border Patrol prior to the shooting. During his time at KTTV, his reporting appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight and The Ingraham Angle, among other Fox News programs. Melugin always strives to bring the human element into the stories he covers. In 2023, he was profiled in the Los Angeles Times and described as a “rising star” for his well-sourced and dedicated coverage.

Heidi Meyers
Director of Marketing, AMC Networks
Meyers is a neuroscience researcher-turned-digital marketer who brings a unique perspective to strategy. She is a proven expert at cultivating the fandoms behind AMC’s shows, and her work on the launches of Mayfair Witches and Interview With the Vampire, as well as Season 2 of Dark Winds, drove critical praise and ratings. Meyers got her start in digital media at an online dating company, which offered her a unique look at consumer behavior. She moved to WebMD, where she led paid-media strategy for pharma clients, government agencies and household brands such as Johnson & Johnson. Shifting to HBO, where she was digital and social media coordinator, she worked on the content strategy for Game of Thrones, Westworld and Mosaic, among other series. She also founded a microcontent firm that specialized in branding strategy and content creation for live events, from local improv to national theater tours. She joined AMC Networks in 2021, where she pioneers e-commerce strategy, launching fan-centric campaigns such as “Best Fandom Ever.”

Ryan Murray
Senior Manager, Content Distribution, Roku 
Murray oversees the development and negotiation of app and channel partnerships across SVOD, AVOD and FAST business lines on the Roku platform. Whether he’s leading a multilayered distribution agreement with Tier 1 media partners or strategizing internally, he speaks with substance, confidence and an eye toward a solution, his co-workers said. Prior to joining Roku, he was director of U.S. Distribution at Paramount Global, where he led negotiations for MVPD and OTT deals across the company’s cable networks and CBS. His career began at Viacom, where he was a member of the content distribution rotational program. He transitioned to a role within the sales and business development team, focusing on content partnerships and distribution agreements. Murray is making his panel debut this year at the StreamTV Show in Denver, where he will speak on “Approaching a New Frontier of Sports, Weather, & News Broadcasting & Streaming.”

Joseph Nuñez
Director of Communications and Public Relations, Brightcove
Nuñez spearheads global corporate communications, public relations and social media functions for Brightcove, the streaming technology company that powers top media and TV organizations. Since he joined Brightcove early in 2023, his work leading the company’s thought leadership and executive communications efforts has resulted in more than 50 interviews and placements for the CEO among key national programs and publications, including CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Fox Business Network and Sirius XM. Prior to joining Brightcove, whose partners include AMC Networks, BBC Studios and The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Nuñez had a stint at Twitter and previously led consumer publicity efforts for NBCUniversal’s Spanish-language broadcast and cable networks. There, he led the publicity efforts to launch Telemundo morning show Hoy Dia. He also ran the PR efforts for more than a dozen show launches and new seasons, including Telemundo’s Exatlon and La Casa de los Famosos. 

Eric Ortega
Executive Producer, ABC News 
Eric Ortega, executive producer on ABC News Live With Linsey Davis, is a decisive newsroom leader who builds stronger newscasts and journalists wherever he works, according to colleagues. An innovator, he frequently proposes new ideas for presenting material that brings greater awareness to impactful stories. His efforts are paying off: ABC News Live With Linsey Davis was nominated for four News & Documentary Emmy Awards this year and became the first streaming newscast nominated for best live news program. He joined ABC News in late 2022 after a stint at Vice News, where he ran Vice News Tonight. Before that, Ortega worked at NBCUniversal, starting in the page program, then moving on to line producing at Early Today and MSNBC and producing on MTP Daily with Chuck Todd and The Briefing With Luke Russert, among other programs. Before his television career began, Ortega worked on Capitol Hill, including his time as legislative assistant to former Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.). 

Reid Pakula
VP of Talent, IF Management
Across his six years at IF Management, Pakula has amassed a client list that includes many rising stars in news. He has helped his clients make the move from smaller markets to some of the nation’s largest, including Chicago and Philadelphia, while helping them think of different ways to improve their on-air delivery. Bringing high levels of energy and engagement to his role, Pakula has been able to create great relationships with news directors and executives at all levels. A University of Maryland graduate, he earned a degree in finance with a fellowship in sports management. He was a student manager for the men’s basketball team and interned with the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA. Prior to joining IF, he worked for Octagon Sports & Entertainment. Paklula’s love for news goes back to boyhood, when he’d watch the 6 a.m. newscast before school.

John-Marcus Phillips
VP of Product, Effectv
Phillips manages a team of 35 product leaders at Effectv, the ad sales division of Comcast Cable. He leads the introduction of innovations to the ad platform that drive better outcomes across all stages of the marketing funnel. Phillips and his team played an instrumental role in  developing a new suite of ad solutions geared to political advertisers, aimed at helping marketers reach, engage and connect with voters in an election year. He has been involved in efforts to combine the best aspects of traditional linear advertising with the power of digital, most recently partnering with the Comcast and FreeWheel technology teams to introduce dynamic ad insertion capabilities across new live viewing platforms such as Xfinity Stream. He has also helped introduce new measurement capabilities for ad units on the Xfinity guide experience. Phillips addresses each challenge with curiosity and passion, co-workers said, describing him as a “transformational leader.”

Bijan Razzaghi
Director, Business & Legal Affairs, Brightcove
Razzaghi is a key asset for the streaming company in terms of motivating teams, leading projects and driving results while navigating complex legal issues specific to the intersection of software and streaming. A dynamic attorney with extensive experience in the cloud-based technology industry, he provides strategic counsel on a range of commercial matters spanning Brightcove’s corporate, business and legal affairs to drive growth. He has also negotiated groundbreaking deals for Brightcove’s partnerships with Google, Magnite, SpringServe and Pubmatic. He supports Brightcove’s largest and most strategic partnerships, vendor and commercial relationships, privacy program, mergers and acquisitions and new company initiatives. Before joining Brightcove, he was corporate counsel at Parallel Wireless for nearly five years, having started there as an intern. He joined Brightcove in early 2021 as commercial counsel and has moved up rapidly.

Gardner Reed
Senior VP of Development, Wheelhouse Entertainment 
Reed developed three series for the studio that launched last year, including King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch and Designing Miami for Netflix and Secret Restoration for History. He’s also behind the upcoming HGTV series Divided by Design, having found the talent, developed the concept and sold the show, as well as an unannounced dating series on OWN, a celebrity-driven pilot in production with Prime Video, an ensemble docuseries in development with Netflix and other projects for TLC, Max, Bravo, E! and National Geographic. Reed gets a true rush from finding unique characters with distinct points of view, developing viable concepts around them, and ultimately selling them through for the world to see. As an avid consumer of unscripted programming, his love for the type of content he develops fuels his initiative-driven approach, which has resulted in a growing track record of success. Colleagues said Reed is obsessed with what he does and that passion shines through in the content he creates.

Zack Rosenberg
Founder and CEO, Qortex
Rosenberg founded Qortex in 2020, setting out to connect video content with advertising outcomes by pioneering a unique in-video ad experience called On-Stream. This noninterruptive experience delivers overlay ads during editorial content for greatest viewability. To optimize for viewer engagement and sentiment, Qortex’s proprietary AI engine contextualizes each frame of a video to determine the highest moment of impact and serve a contextually relevant message. A few years before he launched Qortex, Zack founded WatchFantom, a sports media company that amplified independent sports leagues and sports radio shows. After acquiring the rights to multiple leagues and recruiting hosts from across the country, the company became a hub for local and national sports content with more than 600,000 daily viewers. Qortex is off to a promising start: In 2022, it was named Programmatic Power Player by AdExchanger. Last year, it closed a $10 million seed round of funding.

Bradley Singer
Partner, WME
A talent agent, Singer’s clients include journalists, thought leaders, production companies and publishers. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in drama from Carnegie Mellon University, he joined WME’s mailroom training program in 2009. He was named partner at the agency in 2021. Over the years, Singer has been involved in the packaging and sale of such programs as Netflix’s Explained, CNN’s History of Comedy, Disney/ABC’s Tamron Hall, Apple TV Plus’ Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn and ESPN’s Skin in the Game. His long client list includes The View co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro, CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, MSNBC host Symone Sanders-Townsend, PBS NewsHour co-anchor Amna Nawaz, ABC News anchor Linsey Davis, actor LeVar Burton, author Ibram X. Kendi and academic Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. Working on behalf of his clients, he saw Collins moved into a primetime slot at CNN and Nawaz become anchor on PBS NewsHour, among other promotions. 

Gaëlle Smagghe
Director, Product Management, LG Ad Solutions 
Smagghe is a driving force behind LG Ad Solutions’ product and engineering team. As one of the earliest hires at the company, she has advanced over the past five years from business analyst to director. Smagghe collaborated with LG Electronics to introduce a dynamic rotating carousel ad unit on the LG smart TV home screen. The unit expanded ad space by 10 times and drove a remarkable increase in click-through rates while enhancing user experience and engagement on the TV home screen by over 10% by improving ad load time and seamlessly integrating auto installation of apps into the user workflow. Smagghe has also led the company’s participation in beta programs, including the introduction of video advertising on the home screen, as well as innovative ad offerings like the screensaver ad unit, which have diversified content offerings and boosted performance metrics.

Lydia Tefera
Director, Brand Marketing, AMC Networks 
Tefera joined AMC Networks over six years ago, coming on board as social media marketing coordinator and moving up to digital marketing and social media manager by the fall of 2021. A graduate of Loyola University (Maryland) with a master’s degree in emerging media, colleagues said Tefera brings relentless drive for innovation to the workplace, developing pioneering marketing strategies that propel brand growth and market differentiation. She was instrumental in the rebrand of Allblk, which rejuvenated the former Urban Movie Channel. She is campaign lead for original series Parish, conceptualizing and executing a comprehensive marketing campaign that effectively targeted key demographics and maximized engagement across various platforms. She is now spearheading the marketing strategy for the rebrand of WE tv. Prior to her current role, Lydia was social marketing Lead for Allblk. She is in touch with how younger viewers consume content, thanks in part to her background as a content creator on YouTube, where she shares beauty tips.

Camille Thelemaque-Bearden
Director, Marketing, Partnerships and Local Ad Sales, TV One
Thelemaque-Bearden is a seasoned marketing professional whose career spans dynamic roles where she has demonstrated expertise in integrated brand partnership strategy and executive-level activations. Her track record reflects her adeptness at relationship building, strategic planning and fostering cross-functional collaboration. Her proficiency in storytelling and cultural relevance underscores her ability to deliver impactful marketing solutions. She executes partnership marketing strategies across digital, retail and in-market platforms. That includes this year’s launch of UPLIFT, a multi-market digital equity partnership with Comcast that provides visibility and support resources to advance economic mobility in Comcast-identified communities; and last year’s “Black to School Campaign,” a cross-platform, multi-market retail partnership with Verizon in urban markets. She was also behind “Cocktails & Conversations: Bosses Don’t Code Switch (Bosses),” an in-market activation with distribution partner Spectrum; and Thank You Black Women and Hey Black America, short-form content series developed to support affiliate pro-social efforts at the height of the pandemic.

John Weinand
IT Supervisor, Mediacom Communications
What makes Weinand stand out is his ability to overcome obstacles. Born deaf, he has made steady progress in forging a career with cable operator Mediacom, joining his uncle Rocco B. Commisso, the company’s founder, and his mother, executive VP of programming and HR Italia Commisso Weinand, in moving the corporation into the 21st century. His involvement began with summer internships in high school, which grew to a full-time position after college. As an IT supervisor, Weinand focuses on Mediacom’s evolving technology needs as it adapts to meet the challenges of today’s digital landscape. He serves on the team developing 5G/0G community and business services that are expected to improve the vital health, economic and educational sectors in the underserved communities where Mediacom does business. His communication skills make Weinand a shining example to others that no matter your disability, dedication and commitment are the keys to success. 

Fethi Ziyadeoğlu
Senior Director, Programmatic Sales Development, Fubo
Ziyadeoğlu was one of Fubo’s first employees dedicated solely to ad operations. He built a team of talented ad ops and ad tech experts and under his oversight, the team was able to successfully fulfill nearly all of the campaigns they managed throughout the year. Ziyadeoğlu has also been instrumental in optimizing Fubo’s programmatic advertising technology, and has helped the MVPD to seamlessly integrate with a new ad server, enabling it to build ad-serving tech internally and to optimize demand and other KPIs. His improvements to Fubo’s ad tech stack also made the company’s ad inventory available to a greater number of advertisers simultaneously. Ziyadeoğlu is also responsible for overseeing many programmatic advertising partnerships across the industry. He launched with new partners in Canada, a growing region for Fubo. After two years of optimizing Fubo’s ad operations, he was promoted to a new role overseeing the company’s programmatic ad-sales efforts. 

The 22nd Annual Hispanic Television Summit, set for September 11, offers a daylong series of conversations that focuses on how TV is authentically reflecting Latino stories.

One conversation will feature actor John Leguizamo with filmmaker Ben DeJesus of NGLmitu and Luis Ortiz of Latino Public Broadcasting. They discuss American Historia, a three-part series that uncovers the overlooked contributions of Latinos in history.  It premieres on PBS in September.

“Here we are in the 21st century, and my son can’t see himself in history textbooks,” Leguizamo said earlier this year at the PBS Annual Meeting. “We’re not anywhere in history textbooks, and we helped build America.”

Another session focuses on how Latino stories are reflected in the news and features journalists Cristina Navarrete, weekend anchor and general assignment reporter for WNJU New York (Telemundo 47); Jessica Formoso, reporter for WNYW New York (Fox 5); and Tanya Rivero, WABC New York weekend anchor. 

A different session focuses on Latino stories in new productions and includes programmers like Hortensia Quadreny Tenchi of  Warner Bros. Discovery, Oswald Mendez of Canela TV, Frank Scheuermann of Endemol Shine Boomdog and more.

A discussion on streaming and distribution features executives including Jen McBride from Condista; Luis Torres Bohl of Castalia and Mexicanal; Doris Vogelmann of V-Me and Evan Redwood of  Google.  In another session, Comcast’s Jose Velez Silva will discuss Now TV Latino, Xfinity’s new streaming platform for serving Latino audiences. 

A session focused on media strategies features Marina Filippelli from Orci; Ron Mendez, with GroupM Multicultural; Alex Minicucci at Horizon Media; and Carla Kelly from NBCUniversal Media.  An opening keynote address is presented by another media star, Isabela Sanchez of Zubi Advertising, who is the current chair of the Hispanic Marketing Council.  Plus, the agenda also includes new research findings from Altman Solon, AIMM, Nielsen and Horowitz, plus a lunchtime mariachi performance.

Award Winners Honored

A popular segment is the presentation of the Hispanic TV Awards. This year’s recipients will be recognized for their contribution to the business of TV for Hispanic audiences in the U.S. and worldwide.

Chiqui Cartagena is the director of CUNY TV and an author. She is one of the two recipients of the Rafael Eli Award for Pioneer in Hispanic Television. Her inspiration comes from her friendship with TV talk show legend, Cristina Saralegui. Cartagena covered news in her early career, and claims this for her success. She used her journalistic skills to develop new Spanish-language media and marketing products. She said receiving this award gives her courage.

The other recipient of the Pioneer Award is Javier Saralegui, CEO of Danger TV. His mentor is Jerry Perenchio, a pioneer in Hispanic television at Univision. Saralegui shared that he was often the first employee hired for new projects and that made him realize that he would be underresourced and require him to develop an “outside the box” mindset.  He said this mindset is a key to his success.

Three awards will be presented for leadership in Hispanic Television.  One goes to Isabel Rafferty Zavala, founder and CEO of Canela Media. She credits her mother for her ability to remain committed to her vision of securing $32 million in funding, making Canela Media the most heavily funded Latina-owned company in the media industry. Rafferty Zavala said that her success is due, in part, to surrounding herself with people who elevate the company and share a common vision.

VAB CEO Sean Cunningham is also a leadership recipient.  He believes most advertising successes come when leaders allow young, bright people to go as far as they can as quickly as they can handle it. Cunningham said he has worked with many in the Hispanic space and being thought of as a peer leader to them gives him great personal satisfaction.

The final award for leadership is presented to Michael Roca, executive director of Omnicom Media Group’s cross-cultural center of excellence. He grew up in Queens as the child of Guatemalan parents. Roca said his mother is his inspiration in his career and influenced him to develop traits of humility, ambition and empathy.  He said programs like Sabado Gigante, Jorge Ramos and Betty la Fea were staples of his childhood.  This award represents the importance of positive representation in storytelling that can only be found in Hispanic TV and media, he said. 

The Hispanic Television Summit, programmed by Schramm Marketing Group during NYC TV Week, will be held at etc.Venues, 360 Madison Ave., New York. For more information, visit nyctvweek.com. 

The Hispanic TV Summit, which happens September 11 in New York and is presented by Next TV, Broadcasting+Cable and Multichannel News, will give out awards to the following individuals. Chiqui Cartagena, executive director, CUNY TV; and Javier Saralegui, founder and CEO, DangerTV, both get the Rafael Eli Award for Pioneers in Hispanic Television. Sean Cunningham, president and CEO, VAB, picks up the Executive Leadership Award in Hispanic Television. 

Isabel Rafferty Zavala, founder and CEO, Canela Media; and Michael Roca, executive director, Cross-Cultural Center of Excellence, Omnicom Media Group, will both receive the Executive Leadership Award in Hispanic Television. 

“I am thrilled to introduce our class for 2024," said Hispanic TV Summit producer Joe Schramm of Schramm Marketing Group. "They each reflect a personal commitment to the sustained growth of this important segment of the television business.”

Presented by Next TV, Broadcasting+Cable and Multichannel News, the Hispanic Television Summit is part of NYC TV Week, which happens September 9-12. The Advanced Advertising Summit takes place September 9, Next TV Summit is September 10, Hispanic TV Summit happens September 11 and 40 Under 40 goes down September 12. 

The NYC TV Week events happen at ETC. Venues at 360 Madison Avenue. 

It will be the 22nd annual Hispanic TV Summit in September. 

NYC TV Week wound down with a party celebrating the 2023 New York-based “40 Under 40” honorees, recognizing a select group of emerging executives who are pushing the boundaries of innovation in the video industry. The event, held Sept. 14 at Manhattan’s 230 Fifth rooftop, was hosted by Bianca Peters, co-host of WNYW’s Good Day New York. For snapshots from the event, click below. 

The daylong Hispanic Television Summit, held September 13 as part of NYC TV Week, featured experts exploring the multiple ways television programming engages Hispanic consumers with video content that is connected across platforms from streaming to broadcast to traditional pay TV. Keynotes, panels and presentations focused on advertising, viewer research, programming, content distribution, subscriber marketing. viewer promotions and content discovery. The event also included the annual Hispanic Television Awards, honoring top executives and on-air personalities in the sector. Click below for an image gallery from the event. 

The Hispanic TV Summit panel Content for Special Audience Segments looked at the best ways of reaching users on multiple platforms and the role AI might play in programming in the very near future. 

The panel saw J.C. Sanchez, CEO and founder of family programming network Family Playland, define the modern TV era as TV 3.0. Broadcast TV was 1.0, and the onset of cable ushered in 2.0. The new era means users want what they want, when they want, on the device they want.  

“We want to be wherever our fans want to consume our content,” Sanchez said. 

Court Stroud, an adjunct faculty member at New York University and Columbia University and a veteran of Univision and Telemundo, among other TV companies, moderated. Chris Knight, Gusto TV president and CEO, echoed Sanchez on reaching users where they choose to be. “We don’t care where you watch us, just as long as you watch us,” he said. 

Knight added that a lot of time is spent thinking and talking about the right “vessels” for content, when more of the focus should be on the quality of the programming. 

Sanchez said there is so much fragmentation in television that it offers content creators a good opportunity to connect with overlooked audiences. “The market is ripe right now to come in and superserve what has been underserved,” he said. 

Oscar Ramos, senior director, digital content at ESPN Deportes, said connection is more than simply speaking users’ or viewers’ language, but serving them “the content that moves them” as well. 

Original content was a theme of the panel. Doris Vogelmann, VP of programming and operations at Spanish-language network Vme Media, said the network “looks for shows that are positive for the community.” Sanchez said Family Playland would love to get into the originals space, but it is not there yet. Food network Gusto TV, for its part, is. “We produce 100% of the content on our channel,” Knight said. 

The panel also touched on AI. Ramos said AI is not yet a major factor in programming. “In the end it’s about being authentic,” he said, “and AI still has a lot of work to do.”

Knight said Gusto TV is “all in” on AI and Sanchez said Family Playland is embracing it, too. He added, “As small programmers, it’s helping us compete.”

Visionaries and leaders from throughout the video industry gathered in New York on September 12 for the Next TV Summit, a daylong event featuring panels and keynotes on the latest trends, challenged predictive models, success stories and insights into the continued navigation of a historically disrupted TV content industry. The event is part of NYC TV Week, a full slate of events that also includes the Advanced Advertising Summit, Hispanic TV Summit and the 40 Under 40 New York gala. Click below to view event photos. 

José Vélez-Silva, VP of multicultural brand marketing for Comcast Cable, read a letter to himself as he will be in five years at the Hispanic TV Summit, helping to kick off a new Hispanic Heritage Month ad campaign that launched on Xfinity Latino's Instagram account today. 

The warmly written note congratulated his future self on achieving career and family goals and encouraged future José to “keep going with the same heart and feeling that you put into everything.” The full room at etc. venues in midtown Manhattan applauded. Velez-Silva encouraged attendees to write their future selves a note, too. “I found it very freeing," he said.

He urged marketers who only think to market to Hispanics during October to not bother if they are not going to be doing so year-round, as Comcast does. He pointed out that the last time Comcast defied the trends and showed positive subscriber growth, the gains were "all because of the Hispanic audiences.”

“We support the Hispanic community every single day of the year,” he said, not just with ads but by designing products inspired by Hispanic households, including the first bilingual voice-activated remote. 

He was joined on stage by José Pablo Rodriguez, managing director of GALLEGOS United, the multicultural marketing agency used by Comcast for more than two decades and the one responsible for executing the new “Querido Futuro” letter-writing campaign. They said a half-dozen celebrities will take part in the campaign, which will expand depending on the social feedback generated. The individuals selected are quite diverse and the LGBTQ community will be represented within them, Rodriguez said.

"I celebrate being Puerto Rican, gay and an American every single day of the year,” Vélez-Silva said.

FAST channels are on the rise, but executives speaking at the “What Makes FAST Go” panel at Tuesday’s Next TV Summit said that the platform’s fast growth has created some business challenges for distributors and content creators.

With more than 1,800 free, ad-supported TV (FAST) channels currently in the marketplace and a projected universe of 2,000 by the end of 2023, according to panel moderator and Rasenberger Media president Catherine Rasenberger, it’s becoming more difficult for content to stand out, panelists said. 

“The competition is so fierce that we won’t bring a channel to market with fewer than 1,000 hours of programming,” said Stuart McLean, CEO of FAST Studios, which distributes sports-themed FAST channels targeting NASCAR fans, women’s sports and sports lifestyles. “Now that you see the major media companies rolling out their products, you really have to lean in as much as possible into original programming to make ourselves attractive to distributors.”

Cineverse president and chief strategy officer Erick Opeka added that content originality is vitally essential to distributors and viewers. “We’ve been working on defensible IP [intellectual property], where you use a single brand as a seed to launch a network and build original programming and brand extensions from there,” Opeka said of the streaming platform’s 36 FAST channels.  

While FAST channels are surging into the marketplace, panelists said the advertising revenue model is still a work in progress. McLean said relying on programmatic ad sales for the bulk of a FAST’s revenue is a mistake, given the uncertainty of the market. 

“If you’re relying on programmatic for your business, you don’t have a business,” he said, adding that his channels rely heavily on programming sponsorships to generate revenue. “Our ability to create custom content for brands is really our top strategy right now.” 

Yet for FAST operators like Plex, which doesn’t own or create content, programmatic ad sales are very important to the bottom line, Plex VP of operations Todd Hay said.

“My costs are in the distribution deals and the revenue-sharing deals I have with the content partners,” he said. “Since I don’t own the IP, it's hard for me to package and sell that so we’re 100% programmatic.”

With large media companies like A+E Networks, NBCUniversal, AMC Networks and Warner Bros. Discovery now getting into the FAST business with the launch of dozens of new, branded channels, several executives expressed concern that smaller companies may find it more difficult to get their channels distributed and recognized.

But Cineverse’s Opeka said that it should be technology, rather than a heavy reliance on legacy brands, that should drive the distribution of content to consumers. 

“We’re literally using touchmarks from the past like brands to determine how we’re going to entertain people in the future, and the reality is that the technology is far better than that,” he said. “The whole notion of using brands is a shortcut to help people find what they really want. Instead, let's use technology to help people find what they want.” 

Fuse Media senior vice president of digital strategy and operations Patrick Courtney added that FAST channel content featuring linear TV brands might not play as well with viewers in the FAST space. He added that Fuse’s FAST channels, such as Shades of Black, Latino Vibes and OUTtv Proud, have unique brands for the platform that will not be confused with the Fuse linear brand. 

“What we came to understand is that Fuse is a very strong brand in pay TV, but it is not a FAST brand,” he said. “We put a lot of effort into making sure that those are extremely good, well-curated products that are effectively monetized for our partners for the FAST platform.”

Eric Berger, CEO and co-founder of kids-targeted Common Sense Networks said that big media brands don’t resonate in particular with younger viewers, who are more interested in user-generated and shortform content that showcase people who look like them. “The content we’re pulling for the FAST platform is not library content, but it's current and new and they are important brands to those that are watching because they can see themselves in it, and I think that’s why we’re continuing to gain carriage the way that we are today,” Berger said. 

The Next TV Summit is part of NYC TV Week, which continues Wednesday morning with the Hispanic TV Summit. NYC TV Week is produced by Future plc, parent of Next TV, Broadcasting+Cable and Multichannel News. 

“Incremental enhancements really add up,” John Jelley, senior VP of product and user experience, Peacock and Global Streaming, at NBCUniversal, said in a keynote interview opening up the Next TV Summit on Tuesday. 

He gave as an example a “watch now” button on the Peacock streaming service that has rounded edges versus an earlier one with square corners. As it does routinely before making changes, Peacock tested different designs for the feature and saw “a significant lift in usage” for a rounder button that “feels a bit more buttony” to viewers. The new rounder-designed button came in as part of a brand refresh of Peacock.

“Whenever we're thinking about product development, we think about big features, but we also think about small enhancements,” Jelley told interviewer Kerry Flynn of Axios at the summit, part of NYC TV Week.

Live sports is a big category for Peacock, which in addition to rugby, English Premier League soccer and NFL and college football carries the Olympics. A lot of work is going into enhancements for next year’s Summer Games in Paris. 

“We've observed that our competitors and some other players in the market are starting to think about how to showcase multiple live events in one screen,” he said, “and that's something we're working on and thinking about very carefully right now. As you can imagine, for the Olympics, you have literally thousands of events and multiple, you know, up to 20, 30 at once.” Having ways to easily see what are the trending events, what are the events that are the most popular events right now or the ones that have Team USA would be helpful for viewers, he said. 

“We're starting to think about how could we create an experience that really allows you to discover, using multiple views of content,” he said. “We're testing out and experimenting with that right now.” 

Peacock is adding a “catch up with key plays” feature to NFL games next month after trying it out earlier on English Premier League soccer and finding that it encouraged users to consume more content, Jelley said. “Users who consume and use this service watch about seven or so clips on average,” he said.

Other enhancements that should be visible on Peacock soon include new ways to “frame” ads that pop up during live sports but don’t block the game action, and targeted product placements inserted into some content. “We are also looking at shopping” and ways to enable viewers during an ad break to “opt in to a shopping experience in a way that just doesn’t interrupt viewing.”

NYC TV Week continues on September 13 with the Hispanic TV Summit and on September 14 with 40 Under 40.

The Sept. 11 Advanced Advertising Summit, part of NYC TV Week, brought together the people and companies leading the charge to make TV advertising more effective and efficient. The day-long event also recognized winners of the Advanced Advertising Innovation Awards. Click on the gallery below for event photos. (Photos by Mark Reinertson)

Evan Adlman, AMC Networks executive VP of commercial sales and revenue operations, sat for a fireside chat with B+C Multichannel News business editor Jon Lafayete to discuss his company’s FAST and AVOD strategies, and what is working on the newer media. He described the longtime cable programmer’s shift to streaming platforms as “more of an evolution than anything” as viewers’ consumption habits change. 

“It is no longer delivering to one particular endpoint,” he said during a fireside chat at Tuesday's Next TV Summit, part of NYC TV Week. 

Lafayette asked about AMC shows streaming on Max, both a competitor and a partner for AMC. Adlman said the strategy is to have AMC programming reach viewers and users on multiple platforms, so “they can access it on their own terms.” 

“There’s a lot to learn,” Adlman added. 

One perk of building FAST (free, ad-supported TV) channels is the abundance of user data one gets back, Adlman said. 

Asked what he’s seeing in terms of the upfront, Adlman mentioned “a push from the buying community on transparency,” and noted that AMC Networks has “always been 100% transparent.” 

There may be a glut of programming on streaming, but Adlman broke it down between premium content and “long-tail content” on FAST platforms. AMC programming, he added, falls in the premium bucket. 

Adlman mentioned The Walking Dead: Dead City, which premiered earlier this year, debuting on a Sunday night, with the latest episode on FAST channels the next day along with messages about how to watch the next episode on subscription streaming service AMC Plus. That strategy “has been working for us,” he said, in terms of building subscriber numbers and show buzz. 

Ad-supported AMC Plus premieres in October. Adlman said the company is excited about the launch. “We feel it’s another way for viewers to interact with us,” he said. “It allows our advertisers to reach a new set of viewers, and an incremental audience.”

The Advanced Advertising Summit panel Measuring Results looked at the latest ways to measure campaign performance, from counting impressions to determining return on investment. 

Sean Cunningham, president and CEO of the Video Advertising Bureau, moderated. He asked the panelists to define advanced advertising. Leslie Wood, iSpot.tv chief research officer, described it as the tools that were built for digital that are increasingly factoring into TV buys. “Across the board, we are bringing the digital world into TV,” she said.  

Erica Barnes, A+E Networks senior director, audience innovation, spoke about advertiser aims varying from target age and gender, to something more specific like consumers who ride bicycles. “Our industry is evolving so much,” she said, “with brands at different stages of evolution.”

As the conversation progressed, Mohammed Chughtai, global head of advanced TV at MiQ, mentioned the quality of data decreasing, causing a trust issue with the user. “The lack of trust in digital will happen to the addressable TV space,” he said. “The same audience is being recycled.”

Barnes spoke about A+E offering business outcome guarantees to build trust with partners. “We want to move away from general reach impressions,” she said. 

She spoke about a women’s health brand planning to advertise on Lifetime, but A+E research saw that it would pop in a few shows on History. The brand went with the new plan, and Barnes spoke of “unbelievable numbers” for the campaign. 

Larry Allen, VP and general manager, data & addressable enablement, Comcast Advertising, said there can be pushback from advertisers set in the traditional ways of buying ads. There used to be one way to buy television, he said, and now there are multiple ways. It can be a lot to sort out. 

“Let the data tell you what is logical now,” he said. “Before, we didn’t have the data.”

Cunningham brought up whether AI will emerge as a major factor in the ad game. “Absolutely yes, AI is going to play a part,” said Allen. “But the human has to be the copilot. Or AI has to be the copilot to the human, depending on your perspective.”

Added Barnes, “There’s a lot of nuance that is required for it to be truly effective.”

As VP and head of data science at Comcast-owned FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the TV advertising industry, Bob Bress is focused on the application of advanced analytics to advertising technologies. He has over 20 years of analytics experience across industries including work in hospitality, energy and at GE's Global Research Center. On Tuesday, September 12, Bress will join a panel discussion about artificial-intelligence applications that could have a big impact on the video business — part of the Next TV Summit at NYC TV Week. He answered five questions on industry topics ahead of the event.

Next TV: How is AI reshaping premium video? 

Bob Bress: AI is reshaping premium video content by not only enhancing how content is created but how advertisers operate in the ecosystem. AI will drive the industry’s advertising capabilities in many ways, including through: greater audience segmentation and targeting, cross-channel optimization and yield management and dynamic content targeting with enhanced metadata.

How video content is made and discovered itself will also be impacted.  Some key applications of AI across content include: automated video and music production, enhanced recommendation engines and automated language translation and dubbing. As AI adoption grows, we can expect accelerated improvements in video content development, content discovery, and in video advertising capabilities.

NTV: What are the best applications for AI in CTV? How has FreeWheel been thinking about it? 

BB: FreeWheel is focused on the development of industry-leading technology in support of the video advertising ecosystem. For us, leading applications of AI drive advertising effectiveness not only on CTV but however consumers are watching content. This includes other digital formats as well as traditional broadcast TV.  For us, the best applications happen behind the scenes of what a traditional advertising or publisher might see. These include: audience modeling for ad targeting, viewership and demand forecasting using advanced machine learning concepts and automated metadata generation to allow advertisers to target ads in the most relevant content.

The applications for AI in CTV will grow to automate media workflows, inspire and create new content and advertising, and allow for greater discovery based on a variety of data sources. There won’t necessarily be one "best" application but an expansion of AI across all aspects of how video content is created and consumed. 

NTV: What would you say to those in the industry who are hesitant to explore or adopt AI? 

BB: The great thing about AI today is that you don’t need an advanced degree in it to experiment with it or begin to leverage it in your day-to-day job. Large language models like ChatGPT can easily be used to draft communications, outline presentations, and create technical documentation. APIs are available to explore how these technologies could be used as part of chatbots or in other customer service applications. Software packages and cloud computing platforms are increasingly building AI-based capabilities to allow for custom application development. It has never been easier to get started in this space. There is also motivation for companies to push AI education and training as they risk being left behind. Companies are scrambling to innovate in how they use AI. AI may not take our jobs in the short term but it will dramatically shift the skills and training we need to be competitive in the industry. 

NTV: What’s your favorite place to visit in NYC? 

BB: Madison Square Garden! I am a big fan of the New York Rangers and there’s nothing like watching them play at the Garden. 

Twenty years or so down the road, a grandchild will look at you and ask, "You were at NYC TV Week 2023?" 

Best decision you ever made. 

This week, starting with our Advanced Advertising Summit on Monday, September 11 and culminating on Thursday, September 14, with the presentation of our annual 40 Under 40 awards program, NYC TV Week will be jam-packed with thought leaders leading thought. 

Next TV readers won't want to miss our Next TV Summit on Tuesday. I'm stoked to  moderate our morning session "Gateway to the Future of TVOS," in which high-level executives from Roku, Vizio and other top TMT companies discuss what happens next to the surface that the whole streaming game is played on. 

And anyone fixated on the profound disruption affecting regional sports networks won't want to miss our afternoon panel “Back to the Future — Nomenclature for a Post-RSN World,” in which I’ll be chatting with ViewLift's Rick Allen, Kiswe's Wim Sweldens, expert consultant Patrick Crakes and other thought leaders as they try to clear up how major live sports events will get televised locally going forward. 

Registration for the Next TV Summit will kick off at 8:15 a.m. EST Tuesday at Etc.Venues at 360 Madison Ave. Visit this registration page to get hooked up. 

Hope to see you there. 

A campaign submitted by TelevisaUnivision for the Toyota Tundra won the 2023 Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Use of Branded Content.

The award will be presented at the Advanced Advertising Summit on September 11 in New York. 

Previously, it was announced that a campaign submitted by iSpot for Consumer Cellular won the Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Use of Multiple Platforms, a campaign submitted by Magnite for Travel Texas won the Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Definition of a target market and a campaign for Ken Ganley Kia in New Port Richey, Florida, won the Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Use of Data.

The Toyota campaign marked the start of TelevisaUnivision’s Asi Studios, which worked with Toyota’s Hispanic ad agency Conill to spotlight “unstoppable” U.S. Hispanics making a difference in their communities.

Asi and Conill produced a docufilm on the “Imparable [in English, unstoppable] Ismael Guzman,” a Toyota Tundra owner who distributes soccer equipment in neighborhoods with needs.

The film branded Guzman and Toyota as leaders.

Toyota is the top-selling automotive brand among Hispanics, but the truck category has been dominated by domestic manufacturers. The Tundra, Toyota’s full-size pickup truck, is ranked No. 5 in the truck category behind Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge. 

Conill used this insight to leverage the power of Hispanics and grow market share within the demographic.

In addition to running advertising spots across both multicultural and general market platforms, there was the opportunity to create a film, and they produced Imparable Ismael Guzman.

Conill and TelevisaUnivision highlighted Guzman’s story in a digital- and social-first campaign while establishing the Tundra vehicle as a working/honorary member of the Guzman family.

Toyota wanted to target “Legacy Makers” — well-known community role models. It defined this target as adults 25-54 with incomes of at least $50,000, a high-school education and established families. The size of this audience is estimated at 6.2 million.

These individuals use social media to stay connected with family and friends, particularly those who live in Latin America. They stay current on local news and do research and watch sports highlights on platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp and  Instagram.

Social content was tailored to each platform and their various placements, using a variety of long-form, short-form, vertical and horizontal content to reach different audiences.

A media campaign to tell Guzman’s story consisted of 15-second and 30-second spots that ran in preroll and midroll inventory, selected with a contextual overlay. Guzman’s story was also told by Univision in segments on the local news; on its national morning show, Despierta América; and during sportscasts.

According to post-campaign studies, the performance exceeded the brand's primary KPIs. The documentary-style videos over-delivered on video view guarantees by 27%. Furthermore, the campaign was very well received by Univision’s social audience with comments sentiment showing 85% positive reactions, surpassing Talkwalker’s sentiment benchmarks for similar TU-branded content campaigns by 28%.

Hispanics who engaged with the videos were also 1.6 time more likely to consider the brand featured as a “leader,” a key KPI for Toyota’s brand identity. 

Research from Shareablee shows the company boosted Toyota’s familiarity by 6 points, elevated viewers’ opinion of the brand by 15 points, increased consideration by 6 points and boosted recall by 23 points.

“We are excited to partner with the TelevisaUnivision team on the launch of Así Studios, providing an innovative platform that created a wonderful opportunity to feature the story of the Guzmán family along with the all-new Tundra,” Ann Dragovits, media manager, integrated marketing operations at Toyota Motor North America, said. “This partnership allows the brand to be part of creative and culturally relevant storytelling that showcases our vehicles in an authentic way for our Hispanic audiences.”

“We feel like there are a lot of stories about our audience that show the positive impact they have on America and those need to be told, and told by brands,“ Dragovits said. “A big part of marketing now is making sure brands are helping and being constructive.” 

Added TelevisaUnivision executive VP and chief growth officer of U.S. advertising Dan Riess: “We feel like there are a lot of stories about our audience that show the positive impact they have on America and those need to be told, and told by brands, a big part of marketing now is making sure brands are helping and being constructive.” 

The Advanced Advertising Summit is part of NYC TV Week, which is produced by Broadcasting+Cable publisher Future plc.

Stay tuned as we reveal the Advanced Advertising Innovation Award Winner for Best Overall Campaign.

News 12 Long Island reporter and anchor Antoinette Biordi and Fox 5’s Good Day New York co-host Bianca Peters have been named as hosts of the 40 Under 40 Awards on Thursday, September 14, during NYC TV Week.

The honorees, who are profiled in the September issue of B+C Multichannel News magazine, will be celebrated at 230 Fifth in Manhattan. 

Peters joined WNYW New York, known as Fox 5, in September of 2019 and was previously the co-host of Good Day Wakeup, weekdays from 4:30-7 a.m. She joined Fox 5 from WFOR Miami, Florida, where she served as a traffic anchor and sports reporter. Prior to that, she was a news anchor and reporter for KOBI in Medford, Oregon. Earlier she had been a host and segment producer for JUCE TV in Tustin, California after having been a host and reporter for ESPN’s X Games in Los Angeles. She began her career in broadcasting as a sports anchor and reporter for College Beat Productions in Long Beach, California. A graduate of California State University, she holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications.

Antoinette Biordi is a four-time Emmy Award winning reporter and anchor for News 12 Long Island and has been a TV reporter since 1997. She began her career as a “one man band reporter” producing, shooting, writing and editing daily stories for News Center 7 in Ithaca, New York. In 1998 she became a reporter/anchor for WETM (NBC) in Elmira, New York. In 1999 she worked at WNYT (NBC) in Albany, New York, and FOX 23 News in Albany. After five years in upstate New York, she jumped at the chance to be closer to home and began working as a freelance news reporter at News 12 Long Island before working full time at News 12 Westchester in 2003. In 2010, she transitioned to News 12 Long Island, where she is now a weekday reporter and weekend anchor. 

NYC TV Week, produced by Future US publications Broadcasting+Cable, Multichannel News and Next TV, includes Advanced Advertising, the Next TV Summit and the Hispanic TV Summit in addition to 40 Under 40. 

Executives from leading marketers Pepsi, General Mills, GKS and the University of Phoenix will be speaking at the Advanced Advertising Summit in New York on Sept. 11.

Marketers pay the bills for advanced advertising campaigns and these senior execs will discuss how they made their media investments pay off.

Katie Haniffy, head of media strategy and investment for PepsiCo. Beverages, will be part of a session that will also feature Travis Scoles of Paramount Global and Suzanne Irving of OMD.

Raquel Navarrski, consumer VP, eCommerce Pure Play at General Mills, will talk about engaging viewers during Thursday Night Football with Amy McDevitt, head of sports brand partnerships at Amazon.

Sierra Bodor, director of U.S. vaccines communications at GSK, will talk about the power of emotional storytelling with Maura O’Donovan of A+E Networks/

Laura Schmidt, senior media director for University of Phoenix, will discuss creative rotation optimization with Laura Grover of EDO.

The Advanced Advertising agenda also features keynote speaker, Jon Steinlauf, chief U.S. ad sales officer at Warner Bros. Discovery.

There will be panels on measuring results, addressable advertising, branded content and local advertising.

Executives from Comcast Advertising, The Walt Disney Co., A+E Networks, MiQ, Alliant, iSpot.TV, Spectrum Reach, fullthrottle.ai, AMC Networks, Vizio, Premion, Compulse, Effectv and ShowSeeker will also be speaking.

The event concludes with the presentation of the Advanced Advertising Innovation Awards.

The Advanced Advertising Summit will be held at ETC.venues at 360 Madison Avenue. 

The summit is part of NYC TV Week, which is produced by Future U.S., the publisher of Broadcasting+Cable, Multichannel News and Next TV.

A full agenda and information about attending live can be found here. 

The 21st Annual Hispanic Television Summit, programmed by Schramm Marketing Group during NYC TV Week, features a morning keynote interview with Beau Ferrari, chairman of NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, parent of the Telemundo network. He will focus on the Hispanic market’s unparalleled potential as an economic growth catalyst and the force of this consumer group in today’s multicultural landscape. 

The summit is the premier event for those in the business of television for Hispanic audiences worldwide. It takes place Wednesday, September 13, at 360 Madison Ave. in New York. The summit explores ways that global and local distribution of culturally accurate TV programming is engaging Hispanic viewers and advertisers across platforms — from streaming to broadcast to traditional pay TV (satellite and cable).

The morning sessions focus on revenue from advertising and subscription, opening with a “state of the Hispanic media market” by the new chair of the Hispanic Marketing Council (HMC), Isabella Sanchez of Zubi Advertising Services.

The morning continues with a panel discussion among leading media buyers from some of the Hispanic market’s highest-spending agencies, including Horizon Media, d’exposito & Partners and Omnicom Media’s Elevate. Up next is a fireside chat with an executive from T-Mobile, a leading consumer brand, about the cultural narrative in its ad creative, and another fireside chat with Comcast Cable’s multicultural marketing leader, Jose Velez Silva, and JP Rodriguez of Gallegos, the brand’s agency. The morning closes with the chairman’s keynote interview with NBCU Telemundo Enterprises’s Ferrari, on tapping into the economic power of Hispanics.

The midday program celebrates the accomplishments of the business’s pioneers and leaders with the presentation of the Annual Hispanic Television Awards (see sidebar).  The ceremony is followed by a celebratory lunch of traditional Caribbean and Mexican cuisines.

The afternoon opens with the Local Broadcaster’s keynote interview conversation with Jesus Lara, President of TelevisaUnivision Local Media. He will demonstrate the value of reaching Hispanics locally. The balance of the afternoon focuses on the business of programming for Hispanic TV audiences. One session spotlights different programming genres and another highlights program origination, featuring a popular series star, a producer and a streaming executive from Prime Video.  A session on viewer demand with Oswald Mendez from Canela Media and Javier Saralegui of Danger TV promises to spark energetic reactions.  

The final session is about distribution on linear and streaming platforms and is followed by a closing reception. 

Multichannel News has announced the 2023 “40 under 40” class to be celebrated during NYC TV Week this September.

Selected after a nomination process, these 40 women and men represent a range of companies and occupations in the media and entertainment industry, from programmers and distributors to technology and service providers. 

For more information about the 40 Under 40 event at 230 Fifth on Thursday, September 14, and the honorees, please visit https://www.tvweek40under40.com/NYC. To learn more about NYC TV Week events please visit https://www.nyctvweek.com/.

Cristina Arango, Vice President, Head of Business Development, Fubo.

Katie Beltz-Long, Vice President, Head of U.S. Demand Sales, Beachfront.

Melanie Brown, Vice President, Advanced TV, Tubi.

Amber Callahan, Vice President, Distribution, AMC Networks.

Lori Cassorla, Senior Vice President, Group Media Director, Investments, Mediahub.

Karen Chan, Group Director, Investment Innovation, GroupM.

Michael Chiodotti, Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Endeavor Streaming.

Christina Chung, Vice President, Business Operations, Estrella Media.

Shawn Donilon, Executive Vice President, Government Relations, National Association of Broadcasters.

Matthew Duarte, Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, YES Network.

David Dworin, Chief Product Officer, FreeWheel.

Matt Farina, Senior Vice President, Content Distribution, NBCUniversal.

Laura Florence, Senior Vice President, Global FAST Channels, Fremantle.

Meredith Garofalo, Freelance Meteorologist & Space/Science Correspondent, Spectrum News NY1.

Katie Gray, Director, Content Fulfillment & Vendor Management, A+E Networks.

Courtney Huber, Vice President, Partnership Marketing, Hallmark Media.

Marielle Kaar, Director, Preschool Production & Development, Nickelodeon.

Andrew Kaplan, Director, Research & Data, New York Interconnect.

Rob Kelly, Senior Director, Marketing, Ampersand.

Ryan Kristafer, Entertainment Anchor/Reporter, Fox 5 NY.

Dan Lanzano, Vice President, Advertising Sales, Warner Bros. Discovery.

Deon LeCointe, Director, Networked Solutions, Sony Imaging and Professional Solutions -- Americas.

Abigail Neugebauer, Senior Director of Content, Magnolia Network, Warner Bros. Discovery

Molly O’Connor, Senior Vice President, Business Planning & Strategy, Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Andy Oh, Principal, Sports Partnerships, Amazon.

Matt Olson, Sports Media Agent, Creative Artists Agency.

Marc Paskin, Agent, UTA

Denise Peluso, Vice President, Research & Insights, BBC Studios.

Jackie Perez, Director, Business Development, Spectrum Reach.

Kendra Prasad, Vice President of Acquisition, The Farmer's Dog.

Cosmina Schulman, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, NESN.

Travis Scoles, Senior Vice President, Advanced Advertising, Paramount.

Jenna Silver, Senior Vice President, Industry Marketing, U.S. Advertising Sales, TelevisaUnivision.

Josh Sims, Fox NASCAR Studio Host & Reporter, Fox Sports.

Thomas Staples, Master Control Operator, Cheddar News.

Lindsay Stewart, Vice President, FAST & AVOD Revenue Strategy, AMC Networks.

Adam Verdugo, Executive Producer, CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell, CBS News.

Brian Weiss, Vice President, Entertainment Programming and Multicast Networks, TEGNA.

Patrick West, Senior Manager — Sales, Amagi.

Travis Winkler, General Manager of Video & Audio, Bloomberg Media.

The window is now open to nominate someone for the 40 Under 40 awards to be celebrated during a festive evening event on Thursday, September 14, closing out Future’s NYC TV Week.

For more than a decade, Future brands Multichannel News and Broadcasting+Cable, now joined by Next TV, have highlighted the accomplishments of entrepreneurs, rising executives and up and comers in all facets of the multichannel media industry. The last few years, the recognition has come with a gala evening out in New York or Los Angeles, to receive awards and mingle with their fellow honorees and other guests. Here's a photo gallery from last year. Honorees also are featured in B+C Multichannel News magazine, in this case the September edition.

Nomination guidelines are here. The link to nominate is: https://www.tvweek40under40.com/NYCnoms23.

Nominations close on Friday, May 26.

The Next TV Summit on September 13, part of the 10th annual NYC TV Week, will for the first time include the Next TV Innovation Awards, recognizing CEOs, technologists, strategists, creatives, marketers and other executives leading some of the most innovative companies in the video business. Each day from Sept. 2-13, our Next TV SmartBrief will profile one of our seven 2022 Innovation Awards honorees. (You can sign up for the SmartBrief here.) For more information about the summit and the award winners and other NYC TV Week events visit nyctvweek.com.

Todd Achilles
Co-founder, CEO and President, Evoca TV

Achilles leads a fledgling video company positioned on numerous cutting edges. The Boise, Idaho-based Evoca TV is a virtual pay TV operator, infiltrated into 10 markets across five states.

The low-priced, skinny-bundled Evoca platform, which is primarily targeted to hard-to-reach, primarily rural customers, delivers most of its content via ATSC 3.0, not streaming (although there is a lower bandwidth IP component to the service). To provide hardware for the platform, Achilles bootstrapped manufacturing of Evoca’s proprietary set-tops out of Asia himself. 

And as regional sports networks begin to go over the top, Evoca has evolved to package these channels in inexpensive bundles that achieve a largely similar objective for sports fans who don’t want to pay the Full Pay TV Monty.  

“I think innovation is key to the future of broadcast, and I think the future of broadcast is incredibly bright,” Achilles told Next TV. “The new technology opens up new business models and that's what we're experimenting with.” Evoca’s rapid evolution has come despite ATSC 3.0’s slow rollout. “Part of that regulatory driven, part of it is broadcasters have lost that innovation muscle, and it’s coming back now,” Achilles said. “I believe the whole broadcast sector is going to transform.”

Reading the checklist of what Evoca and Achilles have accomplished recently can be exhausting:

* Expanded into 10 markets in five states; 
* Added Altitude Sports, GAC Family, Hallmark, and even a Basque-language channel;
* Partnered with Sling to integrate the vMVPD’s national channels into Evoca’s independent, local and regional programming;
* Partnered with broadcaster Heritage to launch in Traverse City, Mich.;
* Launched DVR app Evoca Record;
* Conducted first U.S. test of “MIMO” technology that promises to dramatically expand bandwidth capacity and enable new business models, including data-casting businesses;
* First test of HDR10+ format to further improve 4K video quality;
* Testing emergency information data casts;
* Designing in-home receivers compatible with ATSC 3.0 and wireless 5G.

Evoca’s rapid evolution has come despite ATSC 3.0’s slow rollout. 

“Part of (the slow rollout was) regulatory driven, part of it is broadcasters have lost that innovation muscle, and it’s coming back now,” Achilles said. “I believe the whole broadcast sector is going to transform.” 

Previously announced Next TV Innovation Award honorees:

Todd Achilles
Co-founder, CEO and President, Evoca

Meredith Brace
Chief Marketing Officer, Samba TV

Matt Duarte 
VP of Strategy and Business Development YES Network 

Shalini Govil-Pai
GM and VP of TV Platforms, Google

Erick Opeka 
Chief Strategy Officer, Cinedigm

B+C, Multichannel News and Next TV have named the 2022 “40 under 40” class to be celebrated on September 15 as part of NYC TV Week.

The class was chosen by the publications’ editors from a nomination process and will be profiled in the September edition of B+C Multichannel News magazine. For more about NYC TV Week, with live events happening September 12-14, please visit https://www.nyctvweek.com/2022. 

Here is the 2022 NYC TV Week 40 Under 40, individuals listed alphabetically:

Ben Belmont, Senior Director, Integrated Marketing, Paramount Global.

Dan Callahan, Senior Vice President of Data Strategy and Sales Innovation for Fox Ad Sales, Fox Corporation.

Denise Bailey-Castro, Head of Finance, BET Networks, Paramount Global.

Matthew Chazen, Television Agent, Creative Artists Agency.

Daniel Church, Head of Advanced TV Product, Beachfront.

Kevin Connelly, Senior Director of Programmatic Monetization, Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Mike Correia, Vice President, U.S. Networks Distribution, Paramount Global.

Patrick Courtney, Head of Digital & Business Development, Fuse Media. 

Samantha DiPippo, Senior Vice President of Development, Crown Media Family Networks.

Sean Doherty, Jr., Co-Founder and COO, Wurl.

Matt Dominguez, Senior Manager of Distribution, Cox Media Group. 

Mike Fisher, Vice President, Head of Advanced TV, Essence/Group M.

Lauren Fry, Chief Revenue Officer, Simulmedia.

Tara Gotch, Senior Vice President, Senior Vice President, National Services, Comscore. 

Angela Grande, Director of Streaming News Channels, NBCUniversal Local. 

David Koonin, Sports Media Agent, Head of Sports Media Marketing and Endorsements, Creative Artists Agency.

Courtney Kundtz, Head of Client Services & Ad Business Operations, Roku.

Erin Leigh, Senior Vice President, The TV Group, Screen Engine/ASI.

Brian Lin, Senior Vice President of Product Management,  Advanced Advertising, TelevisaUnivision.

Socrates Lozano, Senior Director, ScrippsCast and Newsroom Innovation, E.W. Scripps.

Kevin Maloy, Vice President, Advanced TV Solutions, Amobee.

Lindsey Mandia, Vice President, Production, Fox Sports.

Jason Manningham, CEO and Founder, Blockgraph.

Joe Marino, Managing Partner and Head of Client Success Organization, MadHive.

Ken Norcross, Head of Data Licensing & Strategy, Vizio.

Corey Petruccelli, Vice President, National Sales, New York Interconnect.

Kirsten Polley, Senior Vice President, Operations, WWE.

Yana Podroubaeva, Media & Entertainment Global Account Lead, Amazon Web Services. 

Isabel Rafferty, CEO and Founder, Canela Media. 

Justin Rosen, Senior Vice President, Data and Insights, Ampersand.

Seth Rubinroit, Manager, Content Integrations and Audio, NBCUniversal Local. 

Adam Salmons, Vice President, Content Acquisition, Philo.

David Sanderson, CEO and Founder, Reelgood.

Christy Smith, Director, Social Creative Strategy, Nickelodeon. 

Brad Stockton, Senior Vice President, Video Innovation, dentsu.

Courtney Thomasma, General Manager, AMC Plus, AMC Networks.

Sapna Vyas, Vice President, Scripted Content, Lifetime Network, A+E Networks.

Simon Wong, Executive Vice President, Sabio Inc.

Jimmy Zasowski, Senior Vice President, Platform Distribution Strategy, The Walt Disney Co.

Samuel Zimmerman, Vice President, Programming, Shudder, AMC Networks. ■

Future’s NYC TV Week returns with live events on September 12-14, with the Advanced Advertising Summit, Next TV Summit and Hispanic Television Summit, ending with the 40 Under 40 celebration on September 15. 

Some of the hottest topics facining the multichannel industry will get a thorough airing — including connected-TV advertising, FAST (free ad-supported television) channels and the state of Hispanic programming among them. 

The week leads off with Advanced Advertising on Monday, September 12, at etc.venues 360 Madison. Topics covered include local OTT and connected-TV advertising, measuring cross-screen reach, programmatic buying and selling and addressable advertising.

The Next TV Summit is the next day, Tuesday, September 13, at the same venue. Topics covered include areas where subscription streaming can find renewed growth, the prospects for ad dollars across the FAST and ad-supported VOD services and the future of virtual pay TV providers.

The Hispanic TV Summit takes place on Wednesday, September 14, also at etc. venues 360 Madison. The 20th-anniversary edition of the biggest TV event in Hispanic television will tackle the universe of issues concerning Spanish-language television. 

A celebration of the 2022 class of “40 Under 40” closes out the week on Thursday, September 15, at 230 Fifth. 

For more information about NYC TV Week please visit NYCTVWeek.com.

Audience demand for series and season premieres is now split evenly among subscription streaming platforms and linear TV, according to Parrot Analytics.

The research firm has created a proprietary metric it calls “demand expressions,” which is an amalgamation of consumer signals indicating their intention to watch a show.

Visit Next TV to read more stories like this one. 

“It’s a holistic view into what people really want,” said Alejandro Rojas, director of applied analytics for Parrot, speaking during Friday's Virtual NYC TV Week Spring panel presentation, an event produced by MCN parent company Future.

Notably, among individual platforms, based on Parrot’s demand expressions metrics, Apple TV Plus has had the biggest demand increase during the pandemic viewing period, increasing its share by nearly 9%—more than even Netflix. 

Audience demand for movie, series and season premieres is now split evenly among subscription streaming platforms and linear TV, according to Parrot Analytics. 

The research firm has created a proprietary metric it calls “demand expressions,” which is an amalgamation of consumer signals indicating an intention to watch a show. 

“It’s a holistic view into what people really want,” said Alejandro Rojas, director of applied analytics for Parrot, speaking during today’s NYC Spring TV Week virtual panel presentation, an event produced by Next TV parent company Future U.S.

Notably among individual platforms, based on Parrot’s demand expressions metrics, Apple TV Plus has had the biggest demand increase during the pandemic viewing period, increasing its share by nearly 9%—more than even Netflix. 

Apple TV Plus has received some buzz of late from filmmaker Spike Jonze's Beastie Boys Story documentary film. 

Apple, meanwhile, just revealed that it generated a record $13.3 billion in the second quarter in its "services" business, for which Apple TV Plus is a new component. 

As for Parrot's data showing a large increase in viewer demand for the platform? Based on where Apple started, it may have not taken much of an uptick to create a big percentage increase. Just a guess there. 

Amid the thickening jungle that has become the over-the-top landscape over the past few years, it can be tough for an upstart streaming service to make a dent. But at Philo, a streaming service that launched back in 2017, head of advertising Reed Barker said success has been driven by three simple tenets -- good customer service, low prices and ease of use.

Philo offers 59 channels for about $20 per month, minus news, sports and local broadcast channels. Philo does not release subscriber figures (some estimates say they had about 50,000 customers in 2018). Barker said Philo grew customers last year at about a 10% monthly clip.

“This year it’s been an even larger explosion,” he said. “We had what we thought were very ambitious goals. Given what’s happened with current events and people streaming more... we’ve seen incredible subscriber growth that we’re hoping to continue with."

Speaking at an opening keynote session at the Future-produced Virtual Next TV Summit Thursday, Barker said strong customer service -- its customer satisfaction scores are in the 90%-plus range -- not charging for features like DVR and Look Back that other larger providers do and making content easy to find have led to success.

“We built a package that has everything included on it,” Barker told session moderator Paige Bilins, VP of product management at Telaria. “We’re not trying to charge extra for having what we think should be just the table stakes.”

Philo also serves as a complement to SVOD services like HBO Max, Disney+ and Peacock, Barker said.

“We don’t carry content from NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia or Disney/ABC,” Barker said. “It’s pretty easy to add a $6 Disney+ subscription to Philo.”

For advertisers, Barker said the Philo approach is similar.

Barker said the key is listening to what its DSP partners and advertisers say they need to make advertising relevant all the way up the chain.

“Addressability doesn’t work if you’re doing something different from everyone or if you’re not trying to lead,” Barker said.

About six months ago Philo started adding genre, rating and runtime in the content signals for targeting, and has been working to build first party data segments based on its customer usage patterns. That allows advertisers to target a consumer who watches a lot of do-it-yourself programming not just on home shows, but in any program they are watching.

“So you’re able to find those targets that are relevant, not only in the context of what they’re watching, but in the context of what they’ve watched in their watch history,” Barker said. “We think that really helps with relevance, making sure you’re seeing an ad that isn’t annoying.” 

Amid the thickening jungle that has become the over-the-top landscape over the past few years, it can be tough for an upstart streaming service to make a dent. But at Philo, a streaming service that launched back in 2017, head of advertising Reed Barker said success has been driven by three simple tenets -- good customer service, low prices and ease of use.

Philo offers 59 channels for about $20 per month, minus news, sports and local broadcast channels. Philo does not release subscriber figures (some estimates say they had about 50,000 customers in 2018). Barker said Philo grew customers last year at about a 10% monthly clip.

“This year it’s been an even larger explosion,” he said. “We had what we thought were very ambitious goals. Given what’s happened with current events and people streaming more... we’ve seen incredible subscriber growth that we’re hoping to continue with."

Speaking at an opening keynote session at the Future-produced Virtual Next TV Summit Thursday, Barker said strong customer service -- its customer satisfaction scores are in the 90%-plus range -- not charging for features like DVR and Look Back that other larger providers do and making content easy to find have led to success.

“We built a package that has everything included on it,” Barker told session moderator Paige Bilins, VP of product management at Telaria. “We’re not trying to charge extra for having what we think should be just the table stakes.”

Philo also serves as a complement to SVOD services like HBO Max, Disney+ and Peacock, Barker said.

“We don’t carry content from NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia or Disney/ABC,” Barker said. “It’s pretty easy to add a $6 Disney+ subscription to Philo.”

For advertisers, Barker said the Philo approach is similar.

Barker said the key is listening to what its DSP partners and advertisers say they need to make advertising relevant all the way up the chain.

“Addressability doesn’t work if you’re doing something different from everyone or if you’re not trying to lead,” Barker said.

About six months ago Philo started adding genre, rating and runtime in the content signals for targeting, and has been working to build first party data segments based on its customer usage patterns. That allows advertisers to target a consumer who watches a lot of do-it-yourself programming not just on home shows, but in any program they are watching.

“So you’re able to find those targets that are relevant, not only in the context of what they’re watching, but in the context of what they’ve watched in their watch history,” Barker said. “We think that really helps with relevance, making sure you’re seeing an ad that isn’t annoying.” 

The Virtual Next TV Summit, part of Future's Virtual NYC TV Week Spring, concludes May 1.

Locast founder and chairman David Goodfriend says he’s now “very optimistic” that his broadcast signal streaming platform won’t go down in court the same way Aereo did eight years ago. 

“We’re very likely to prevail in our court case,” the former FCC legal adviser and Dish Network attorney said today during his Virtual NYC TV Week Spring keynote, an event produced by Next TV’s parent company, Future Media. 

Goodfriend, opening a session of the Virtual Next TV Summit, specifically noted the announcement in late March by international digital rights nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that it would join legal forces with Locast to fight a copyright suit filed against the streaming service by Disney, Fox, Comcast and ViacomCBS, the media companies behind the Big Four broadcast networks. 

Also Read: Locast: Everything You Need to Know About the Streaming Platform Some Are Calling ‘Aereo 2

Locast is now serving the top 10 U.S. designated marketing areas (DMAs) and reaching 40% of U.S. TV homes, offering “free” streaming of local broadcast stations with what Goodfriend calls an “NPR model”—the service requests at regular 15-minute viewing intervals that users make voluntary $5 monthly donations. 

Goodfriend didn’t specify how much in the way of voluntary donations Locast has received to date. But he said the contributions have been ample enough to sustain the service. 

Goodfriend used his keynote to once again hammer home Locast’s mission: to provide a service that is now more essential than ever during the pandemic, delivering vital broadcast information to citizens who either can’t receive over-the-air broadcast signals, or can’t afford to receive them due to rising costs of pay TV services. 

With the pandemic, he said, “Suddenly, Locast has taken on a need that’s even more profound than when we started.” 

Streaming services that take local over-the-air signals and stream them over the open internet have been struck down in court before. Most notably, entrepreneur Chet Kanojia’s Aereo was obliterated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012. 

During his keynote, Goodfriend took time to explain what he feels is Locast’s key differentiating legal high ground—it’s a nonprofit, with solid footing on a carveout created by Congress in the 1976 Copyright Act. 

“We have put the profit motive above all else,” Goodfriend said. “We put the profit motive above in healthcare, and we’ve put the profit motive avow in entertainment and media. And it’s gotten out of hand.”

Goodfrient a letter from he said he recently received from a user, who describe Locast as an essential lifeline to vital broadcast TV services the writer could not otherwise afford. The letter was attached to a $5 contribution. 

“When the court hears our story, and it hears it directly from the American people, I’m confident we’re going to win,” he said. 

TiVo’s chief revenue officer, Matt Milne, said the company’s new consumer-grade streaming device, the TiVo Stream 4K, should hit the market in “the next few weeks.” 

Speaking during a keynote session today at Future Media’s Virtual Next TV Summit online conference, Milne said TiVo product developers have been working at home amid the pandemic to get the Android TV-based OTT device ready to market. 

At CES in January, where TiVo introduced the $70 dongle and successfully created buzz for it, the company touted an April release date for the TiVo Stream 4K.

“It’s a testament to our whole team that we’ve been able to conduct the necessary product test and will have high quality product we can launch to market,” Milne said. 

Also read: TiVo Stream 4K: When Will the Big CES Buzz Product Finally Arrive?

The TiVo 4K Stream will have access to all the apps available in the Google Play Store via Android TV. What will make it different from other OTT devices, Milne said, is its ability to tap TiVo’s sizable search and discover resources.

“We’re investing well over $100 million a year at a foundational level to help people with discovery,” he said. “This is a product built for the streaming wars. It’s built to bring all that content together.”

Users of streaming services, Milne said, spend an average of 11 minutes searching among—also on average—seven SVOD, AVOD and other OTT programming sources for a movie, TV show, or news or sports event. 

The TiVo 4K Stream will allow users to navigate their apps through the traditional “Gemstar grid,” Milne said. But it will also offer a separate UI based on TiVo’s proprietary search and discovery interface. 

TiVo, he said, will become a “neutral third party,” with SVOD and AVOD platforms available to, in turn, anonymously monitor app usage through TiVo. 

TiVo isn’t totally neutral—it recently launched its own AVOD platform, TiVo Plus. Milne didn’t say whether or not TiVo Plus has any kind of priority status in terms of what search and discovery results users might get on TiVo Stream 4K. 

“We see this as a merchandizer opportunity,” Milne said. “How do we connect the consumer to the content?”

Also at the Virtual Next TV Summit, a panel of programming executives talked about their services' place in the streaming world and ways they are adapting. Craig Engler, general manager of AMC Networks-owned Shudder, the horror-themed subscription VOD service, said the disruption in the movie theater world prompted a "surprise drop” on Shudder of new original movie Blood Quantum that was originally supposed to debut in Alamo Drafthouse theaters. “That’s fun, because it creates excitement for people” who subscribe to the service, Engler said.

Rachel Brill, senior VP and general manager of Studio, at WarnerMedia-owned Bleacher Report, said BR is moving more toward integrating social and original programming within the app, notably with three days of coverage of the NFL draft. The aim is to find shareable moments, "how do you truly create an all encompassing immersive experience for sports fans.”

William Sager, chairman and CEO of The Preview Channel, said the year-old, OTT-delivered service plans to add new channels devoted to previews and trailers about video games and classic movies. “We are off and running” and serving passionate fans of games and movies, he said.

Brendon Thomas, VP of distribution at Viacom-owned Pluto TV, said at the ad-supported (free) VOD service “we do see ourselves a bit more as programmers than aggregators,” focused on optimizing the content it has used to create more than 250 "live linear-like channels" plus on-demand programming.

The Virtual Next TV Summit continues the rest of this week.

Kent Gibbons contributed to this story.

Legacy linear brands bring a sense of credibility and gravitas that will help drive viewers and subscribers to new streaming offerings, a panel of TV executives said at the Future-produced Virtual Next TV Summit event Monday.

“Fundamentally, the value of a legacy brand or a well-known brand is simply trust,” PBS chief operating officer Jonathan Barzilay said during a panel session moderated by B&C contributing editor Paige Albiniak. He added that when the broadcaster started making short-form content for the web, it collectively did so via the PBS Digital Studio name. “By putting the PBS name on all of these independently produced short form series, that conveys something to the audience. ...The trust that people have in the PBS brand and the awareness that people have in the PBS brand, maybe gave us a little head start.”

At The Weather Group, parent of The Weather Channel network, president Tom O’Brien said its streaming offering Local Now benefits from the more established Weather Channel brand.

“The ability, the opportunity, is what you do with that brand. If you use it as an anchor, you use it as a basis of innovation,” O’Brien said.

Local Now is The Weather Group’s local news, weather, sports and traffic streaming service. O’Brien added that the service has added new programming -- a series offering advice and mental health insights during the COVID-19 pandemic called with Canadian author and therapist Dr. Wendy Walsh called Dr. Wendy Walsh Is Here for You, has expanded its American Science Lab science show during the COVID-19 lockdown and is live streaming the May 9 Feeding America Comedy Festival, a fundraiser for charity Feeding America. 

At BritBox, a joint venture between British television icons the BBC and ITV, the focus has been trying to balance those two brands to establish a new digital identity in the U.S., Canada and Australia.

“It’s an interesting balance because we want to build our own brand equity, but do so leveraging that of our parents,” said BritBox SVP and Commercial Head Emily Powers. “The way we do that is, it’s a lot about focusing on a content proposition that is both taking advantage of the vast library of our parents, as well as starting to launch some of our own originals. We convey to our audience, through our marketing materials, a certain tonality and sensibility that is respectful of the parent brands but also reaching a new audience.”

Ampersand SVP Agency Strategy Marion Hargett said legacy brands matter when launching OTT services because it gives potential viewers and customers a base on which to set their expectations.

“Many of the legacy players have a rooted history of delivering news and delivering content with standards to that delivery,” Hargett said. “... I think having a heritage is not a bad thing and I think being able to bring that knowledge to bear in the television ecosystem is really valuable.”

Picking the right distribution strategy also is important when a legacy brand launches a streaming option. At PBS, which is made up of hundreds of individual stations across the country all with a local presence, it made sense for PBS.org and the app to have a geo-location function so when a viewer logged in they were asked to verify their local station, and received information on the offerings on that channel. When PBS launched on YouTubeTV, it used the national feed.

“We do hope to eventually get to a place where that gets geo-targeted or tailored individually, but for right now it’s more important for us to be on the platform with some sort of presence rather than to precisely mirror the local station,” Barzilay said. “We do that wherever we can and whenever we can.”

At BritBox, Powers said that the distribution focus was initially to be on a few key platforms.

At launch, BritBox was available on Apple TV, Roku and also through syndicated channels like Amazon Channels and Apple TV Channels.

“For us it’s important to balance the business between direct-to-consumer and these channels because the channel gets you into every household, but does so in a way that has a much lower barrier to entry.”

Phase 2, she added, includes getting access to smart TV. BritBox has agreements with LG and Samsung, and expects more such deals in the future. 

The Virtual Next TV Summit is part of Future's Virtual NYC TV Week Spring. 

The pandemic has signaled perhaps the final fatal disruptive blow to the structured release “windows” for movies, according to Tubi’s chief content officer, Adam Lewinson.

Speaking Monday at Virtual Next TV Summit, part of Future's Virtual NYC TV Week Spring, the veteran programming executive noted, “When I was at FX, windowing was very structured. If a movie premiered theatrically on a certain date, we’d knew exactly when we’d get it [in the pay TV window]. But I don’t know where windowing is at these days. It’s all out the window.”

Related: Comcast NBCU Bypassing Shuttered Theaters with Streaming Releases of ‘Trolls World Tour,’ ‘The Hunt,’ ‘The Invisible Man’ and ‘Emma’

It’s been widely reported that studios are taking new releases straight to transactional streaming platforms these days with theaters shuttered because of the pandemic. And in some cases, studios are bypassing other links in the release chain and going straight to SVOD, as was the case with Disney and Onward.

Without providing any examples, Lewinson said, “There are lots of movies that very quietly premiere on Tubi, some of which are in the TVOD window, some of which are not. You have to follow the money. At the end of the day, a Warner Bros. or a Lionsgate could care less about windows. It’s who has the best dollar.”

Before a short stint at Crackle, Lewinson spent nearly 11 years at Fox in various programming and production roles. In his keynote, he said he long believed, even before Fox’s just-closed $440 million purchase of Tubi, that the two companies match up well.

“Before this acquisition was even a glimmer in anyone’s eye, I used to spend a lot of time talking about how the Fox audience is our audience,” Lewinson said.

With archival seasons of the Fox reality hit The Masked Singer debuting on Tubi last week, he was asked if other Fox shows would soon wind up on the ad-supported video-on-demand platform.

“I think it’s fair to say that The Masked Singer is foreshadowing other things to come,” he said. “Stay tuned.”

Speaking on a broad range of topics, Lewinson conceded that while viewership is way up for Tubi amid the pandemic, the entire AVOD sector is in for a “rough” first quarter earnings report season given the suddenly soft state of the advertising market.

He believes, however, that recovery could occur as soon as the fourth quarter, and that viewership for his streaming platform and others will be permanently enhanced by new viewer habits being acquired during the pandemic.

“This won’t just disappear once the virus disappears,” he said. 

The pandemic has signaled perhaps the final fatal disruptive blow to the structured release “windows” for movies,” according to Tubi’s chief content officer, Adam Lewinson.

Speaking at Future Media’s Spring TV Week Virtual Conference today, the veteran programming executive noted, “When I was at FX, windowing was very structured. If a movie premiered theatrically on a certain date, we’d knew exactly when we’d get it [in the pay TV window]. But I don’t know where windowing is at these days. It’s all out the window.” 

Also read: Comcast NBCU Bypassing Shuttered Theaters with Streaming Releases of ‘Trolls World Tour,’ ‘The Hunt,’ ‘The Invisible Man’ and ‘Emma’

It’s been widely reported that studios are taking new releases straight to transactional streaming platforms these days with theaters shuttered because of the pandemic. And in some cases, studios are bypassing other links in the release chain and going straight to SVOD, as was the case with Disney and Onward. 

Without providing any examples, Lewinson said, “There are lots of movies that very quietly premiering on Tubi, some of which are in the TVOD window, some of which are not. You have to follow the money. At the end of the day, a Warner Bros. or a Lionsgate could care less about windows. It’s who has the best dollar.” 

Before a short stint at Crackle, Lewinson spent nearly 11 years at Fox in various programming and production roles. In his keynote, he said he long believed, even before Fox’s just-closed $440 million purchase of Tubi, that the two companies match up well. 

“Before this acquisition was even a glimmer in anyone’s eye, I used to spend a lot of time talking about how the Fox audience is our audience,” Lewinson said. 

With archival seasons of the Fox reality hit The Masked Singer debuting on Tubi last week, he was asked if other Fox shows would soon wind up on the ad-supported video-on-demand platform. 

“I think it’s fair to say that The Masked Singer is foreshadowing other things to come,” he said. “Stay tuned.” 

Speaking on a broad range of topics, Lewinson conceded that while viewership is way up for Tubi amid the pandemic, the platform is in for a “rough” first quarter earnings report season given the suddenly soft state of the advertising market. 

He believes, however, that recovery could occur as soon as the fourth quarter, and that viewership for his streaming platform and others will be permanently enhanced by new viewer habits being acquired during the pandemic. 

“This won’t just disappear once the virus disappears,” he said. 

The Wonder Women and NYC TV Week Spring events, produced by Multichannel News, Broadcasting+Cable and Next TV, will not be held as scheduled on March 24-26 but will instead be rescheduled until June, amid coronavirus safety concerns associated with large gatherings of people.

The 22nd annual Wonder Women luncheon is moving to Monday, June 8, at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York. The event had been scheduled for March 26 at that venue. The Wonder Women luncheon also supports the mission of the New York chapter of Women in Cable Telecommunications.

NYC TV Week Spring events -- Advanced Advertising, CultureX Conversations and Next TV Summit -- will be rescheduled until the week of June 22.

For the latest information about Wonder Women Spring, please visit mcnwonderwomen.com. For the latest information about NYC TV Week Spring, please visit nyctvweek.com. 

Broadcasting+Cable and Multichannel News’s NYC TV Week Spring kicks into high gear on March 25 with the Next TV Summit – the professional video industry’s authoritative benchmark for assessing the progress and debating the future of television’s digitally driven streaming transformation.

WRAP-LEFT

A concentrated half-day experience in the heart of the nation’s media industry capital, the Next TV Summit offers attendees a unique opportunity to hear current thinking from some of the industry’s leading executives – as they discuss the most pressing economic, operational and technological issues facing the “business” of video – while offering valuable insights into how to succeed in today’s dynamic and historically disruptive times.

Convening on the eve of the TV industry’s annual Upfront showcases, the Next TV Summit affords presenting sponsors an unparalleled environment to reach and connect with high-level decision-makers across the television and video ecosystems as they seek applied knowledge and tangible solutions in key areas such as:

Related: Verizon, Omnicom, Dish Execs Highlight Advanced Advertising Summit

The summit will open with a keynote from Dave Shull, the CEO of Tivo, a company that is pivoting away from its DVR-centric past to its over-the-top future. 

Panel sessions start out with one about linear TV's legacy in the era of streaming. Panelists include executives from Weather Group, PBS and Locast (speakers are subject to change).

OTT pioneer Farhad Massoudi of Tubi is slated to deliver a keynote, and panel sessions also will explore subscription versus ad-supported business models for streaming services and lessons learned from the field of streaming providers.

"The world of streaming video is exploding, and the business implications for the future of 'television' are both profound and daunting," Next TV Summit producer Tim Hanlon said. "Next TV will feature some of the most pioneering executives across the digital TV ecosystem, as we highlight today's best operational practices and divine tomorrow's strategic directions for video content, distribution and monetization."

For more about NYC TV Week Spring, please visit the events' website.

As part of the just-ended NYC Television Week events, Multichannel News has named the 2020 Wonder Women, who will be celebrated on March 26 during NYC TV Week Spring.

For more than 20 years, MCN has been saluting select female leaders in media at a gala luncheon in New York City, and in a special issue of the magazine. The 2020 luncheon will be at the Ziegfeld Ballroom, an event co-hosted by the New York chapter of Women in Cable Telecommunications.

More than 700 people are expected to attend to hear the honorees share their inspiring stories and network with their peers in the multichannel TV industry. 

“Now in its 22nd year, the Multichannel News Wonder Women event is a celebration of standout female leaders in media,” said Randi Schatz, VP/Market Leader of Media Entertainment at Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News. “We are thrilled to be honoring women in the industry who exemplify leadership, determination, and innovation across many aspects of the business. They are an inspiration to us all.”

Here are the 2020 Wonder Women (alphabetically):

Friday Abernethy, Senior Vice President, Content Distribution, Univision.

Tricia Alcamo, Group Vice President, Human Resources, Spectrum Enterprise.

Lisa Bonnell, Senior Vice President & General Auditor, Comcast Corporation.

Samantha Cooper, Executive Vice President, Partnerships, Distribution & Business Development, Viacom.

Nancy Daniels, Chief Brand Officer, Discovery & Factual, Discovery Channel and Science Channel.

Rosalyn Durant, Senior Vice President, College Networks, ESPN.

Mónica Gil, Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises.

Georgia Juvelis, Executive Vice President & Co-Head, Corporate Communications, AMC Networks.

Jennifer Koester, Director of Telco and Video Distribution Partnerships, Google.

Jeanine Liburd, Chief Social Impact and Communications Officer, BET Networks.

Tina Perry, President, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.

Stephanie Plasse, Senior Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, A+E Networks.

For more information about Wonder Women and the event, including table and ticket purchases, please visit the mcnwonderwomen.com site.

The digital platform is full of opportunities for new and upstart streaming services, but executives speaking Tuesday at NYC Television Week’s Streaming TV event say providing quality, targeted and authentic content to viewers across multiple platforms are key to surviving a competitive landscape.

Executives speaking at “The Upstarts” morning panel said that the digital streaming platform allows opportunities for distribution -- whether it's direct to consumer or through services like Pluto TV which offers live and SVOD content -- that are not available in the traditional linear television space.

Other services like The Preview Channel -- which offers movie and video game trailers -- have succeeded in gaining distribution through Smart TV developers like XUMO and Samsung, according to Preview Channel CEO William Sager. Executives say the key it to be available on as many platforms as possible to reach the widest audience.

“You actually have to be everywhere; it’s all about ubiquity,” said Gregor Angus, founder and CEO of True Royalty TV, which offers British-themed content. “Your audience has to be able to watch you wherever and whenever.”

Damian Pelliccione, CEO of LGBTQ-targeted service Revry, added that offering unique content that’s not available elsewhere helps new services break out from the clutter.

“In the U.S. alone the LGBT community spends over $913 billion in disposable income,” he said. “In addition, 20% of millennials, which is the largest consumer purchasing power in the world, identifies as LGBTQ, and 35% of Gen Z identifies LGBQT. That’s where we see the opportunity as those kids buy homes and cars … we will scale up with them by offering more content to them.”

News-themed service Newsy, which has a footing on both linear and streaming platforms, has been able to secure advertising partners due to its ability to target news junkies on multiple platforms, according to Newsy director of ad sales Ryan Forbell.

“It’s been beneficial to our partners from a sales perspective because we’re able to deliver two very uniquely different audiences,” Forbell said. “Digital offers a much younger audience; the linear space tends to deliver a much older audience.”

In order to survive in an increasingly crowded environment, however, it's important to connect to your target audience in an authentic way and to have the community of viewers that you’re targeting buy into the service’s concept, according to BroadwayHD founder and three-time Tony Award-winning producer Bonnie Comley.

“We are recognized by the Broadway industry as an additive to the business,” she said. “They see BroadwayHD as a streaming platform that was built by people within the industry with input from the industry.”

Added Revry’s Pelliccione: “Building brands today, especially for younger people, have to have social impact -- if they don’t I don’t know why you’re doing it and you probably won’t exist in five to 10 years,” he said. “We have a mission to bring totally authentic representation for the [LGBQT] community to the rest of the globe. There needs to be a cause, a mission and a culture that you brand yourself with.” 

Top ad-sales executives in the advanced advertising realm at CBS and at Disney said that though their companies have taken different paths toward extending their reach to consumers, they share the aim of finding the best ways to pay for the premium content consumers demand.

“What’s not going to change is the appetite for premium content,” Laura Nathanson, executive VP of revenue and operations at Disney Advertising Sales, said during a Thursday morning session at Advanced Advertising. What will continue to change is how consumers find and watch that content, and how media providers either get consumers to pay for it directly (such as via the ESPN+ app) or indirectly via advertising. She noted that Disney had undergone corporate reorganizations, including a major one this past spring, to be in position to respond to direct-to-consumer opportunities.

Getting ads to be more directly targeted to consumers was a focus during the session for Dave Morris, EVP of advanced advertising and client partnerships at CBS. Speaking to panel moderator Shane Peros of Google, Morris said that when CBS opted not to invest in Hulu that charted a path toward targeting consumers directly with apps including CBS All Access, CBSN, CBS Sports HQ and the new DTC extension of Entertainment Tonight.

Morris said CBS has reams of data on users of CBS web sites and apps but little to no information about 48 million people who watch CBS over-the-air programming daily. He said CBS is not in the ad-tech business so it’s looking for partners to make that kind of targeted advertising possible. 

“We need partners to help us do a better job to marry reach to relevance and move the ball forward,” Morris said, name checking not only Google as a prospective ally but also AT&T’s Xandr unit, Comcast’s FreeWheel, programmatic-ad vendor Clypd and the OpenAP advanced-ads consortium (backed by NBCUniversal, Viacom, Fox and Turner).

Saying Google, Facebook and Amazon can serve up relevant ads to all, Morris said, “Once we can move over and marry reach to relevance we will compete with the behemoths in digital, full stop.”

Nathanson noted that Disney did move toward direct-to-consumer by investing in BAMTech, which led to ESPN+, but said Disney is still in early stages of “figuring out we how we can be one storefront to our advertisers” with “one ad tech stack” to deal with advertisers and agencies.

Advanced Advertising and Next TV Summit, also taking place today (Nov. 1), are part of the sixth annual NYC Television Week. (Pictured, from left: Shane Peros, Laura Nathanson and Dave Morris.)

This story was updated to correct Laura Nathanson's title and that she spoke about using "one ad tech stack" not "one ad tech staff."

The 2016 Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame has been set for Oct. 18 at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

Honorees named to the 26th annual class include cable industry executives Michael Powell, president and CEO, National Cable & Telecommunications Association; Kevin Reilly, president, TBS and TNT, and chief creative officer, Turner Entertainment; and Jeff Wachtel, chief content officer, NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, and president, Universal Cable Productions & Wilshire Studios. Additionally, Turner Network Television’s Inside the NBA will be honored. 

From elsewhere across the TV industry, the other honorees include Robert Kraft, founder, chairman and CEO of The Kraft Group and owner of the New England Patriots, who will receive the Chairman's Award; Monica Gadsby, CEO, Latin America, Publicis One; The CW President Mark Pedowitz; Peter Liguori, CEO and president of Tribune Media; Deborah Norville, anchor of Inside Edition, CBS Syndication; Stuart Sucherman, chairman, Sucherman Group; Jay Sures, managing director, United Talent Agency; Keith Turner, president, advertising sales & marketing, Univision Communications Inc. 

Related: NYC Television & Video Week Returns Oct. 17-20, 2016

“Each year the Hall of Fame gala continues to grow bigger and more exciting,” said Bill McGorry, chairman of the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame. “It is an honor to add these industry leaders to the prestigious group of inductees we have recognized in our long and storied history.”

“The broadcast industry is led by extraordinarily talented builders and visionaries,” added Louis Hillelson, VP/group publisher, Broadcasting & Cable. “It is a privilege to recognize these honorees and we look forward to celebrating with them this October.” 

Broadcasting & Cable is a sister publication to Multichannel News.

For more on the Hall of Fame, which is part of NewBay Media's NYC Television and Video Week, go to bchalloffame.com.

A portion of the net proceeds go to the Broadcasters Foundation of America and The Paley Center for Media.

NEW YORK – Several “tent-pole” sporting events such as the World Cup, Super Bowl and the Sochi Games helped to up the ante for live streaming in 2014, but anticipated demand for others on the horizon will require that all players in the distribution ecosystem pursue even greater levels of scalability.

That was a key theme here Wednesday morning during a session dedicated to live streaming trends and business models at NewBay Media’s NYC Television Week.

“Scale will be the theme in 2015” and likely beyond as more consumers take advantage of IP-based delivery and alter their viewing habits, Jens Loeffler, principal technical evangelist at Adobe, said.

And it’s not just about scaling up to support more streams, but also the overall quality of those streams as viewers demand a “TV-like” experience from their mobile connected devices,” Eric Black, vice president, technology at NBC Sports Group, said. “But we’re confident that we’re going to get there,” he said, during the session, moderated by Multichannel.com news editor Mike Reynolds.

Adobe’s Loeffler agreed that sports presents a special problem for streaming because a lot of it involves fast-moving content. And with more 4K streaming ahead and the need for rates of 60 frames per second, there will need to be a bigger focus on more efficient video compression technologies.

Matthew Murphy, the senior vice president of digital video distribution for Disney and ESPN Media Networks, stressed the importance of the business model of streaming, noting that his programming properties swaps ads into its digital content using dynamic ad insertion technology and includes those elements as part of the digital ad buy.

That, in turn, causes a greater emphasis on measurement, Loeffler said, referencing the work underway between Adobe and Nielsen to bring digital content ratings to all screens, including OTT devices. That effort aims to “bring the television model to digital,” though the process will create more opportunities to do more targeting and expand, rather than replicate, the traditional TV model, he said.

Murphy was also asked about new projects underway, including Dish Network’s new OTT service and ESPN’s coming NBA OTT service in which the league will hold an equity stake.

“First and foremost, we are committed to our MPVDs and the existing models we have,” Murphy said. But he acknowledged that Disney and ESPN are also attuned to shifting consumer behavior.

As for the Dish OTT service that is nearing launch, he said that will target a relatively small group of consumers who only take broadband service with a slimmed down, entry-level package, while still leaving the door open to fuller pay-TV services. 

New York -- Michael Willner, president and CEO, Penthera and GreatLand Connections Inc., opened up NewBay Media’s NYC Television Week here Wednesday morning by firing away at President Obama’s push toward stricter regulation of the Internet.

Willner, in a conversation with Multichannel News senior finance editor  Mike Farrell, said any movement toward Title II reclassification would be “one of the worst policy decisions” not only for the cable and wireless industries, but for consumers.

He envisions a repeat of what happened 20-plus years ago after the Cable Act was enacted in 1992. At that time, the cable industry was rebuilding its plant, putting in fiber optics to lay the groundwork for the Internet, which no one at that time could fully imagine would become such an integral part of daily existence.

With the Cable Act, Willner said, the investment community “turned off the tap.” In turn, capacity slowed as did the formation of programming networks. “Everything came to a screeching halt,” he said. During this slowdown, Western Europe pushed ahead in fortifying its infrastructure and “we fell behind as a country.”

Willner said that with the “heavy hand of Title II, we’re asking for the same kind of result. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect a different result…We’re teetering toward a 21st Century repeat of 1992 in an even more competitive world.”

During the fireside chat, Willner also weighed in on a couple of other subjects du jour:

*On OTT:  Noting that he blogging during his days heading Insight Communications, Willner said that four years ago he wrote that over-the-top services would become a reality. “If consumers want to view beyond [the bundled] package of services, they’re going to do it legally or illegally. I embrace over-the-top. It makes people appreciate the connectivity to our networks.”

*A la carte: He said a pure a la carte regime would result in higher prices and less programming, “ a lot of content aggregators would cease to exist.”  Saying this is the “golden age of television,” Willner noted a lot of "TV viewing still takes place incidentally, with people thumbing through the channels. Without some form of packaging that model unravels.”

*Technological evolution: Willner said the best businesses understand consumer behavior and most importantly they change their products and services as those behaviors evolve.  “To be successful, we can’t focus on the status quo, but have to evolve toward the next best thing.  When someone invents a new widget and it becomes a serious player, that’s fine. We either leap to the challenge and keep up with the times, or we get ready to perish. “

Canoe, the MSO-backed advanced advertising joint venture, said it has crossed a milestone of inserting its 10 billionth ad into video-on-demand (VOD) content, reaching that mark in roughly two years.

Following a major restructuring in February 2012, when Canoe shut down its interactive advertising unit to refocus efforts solely on VOD dynamic ad insertion, the J.V. began to insert ads into set-top-based VOD content in October 2012.  

The bulk of 10 billion ads inserted so far occurred during 2014, according to Chris Pizzurro, Canoe’s head of product, sales and marketing. He expects Canoe to “easily double that number next year.” Pizzurro is scheduled to join a panel on “Big Data” on Thursday (November 13) at 9:55 a.m. ET at the Advanced Advertising component of NYC Television Week, an event hosted by Multichannel News, Broadcasting & Cable, TV Technology and RatingsIntelligence.

Canoe’s VOD DAI platform currently reaches more than 30 million digital cable homes nationwide. Following initial deployments across Comcast and Time Warner Cable, Canoe is in the process of getting fully deployed with its two other MSO partners – Cox Communications and Bright House Networks – during the fourth quarter of 2014.

On the programming end, Canoe now has DAI deals in place with the nation's Big Four broadcasters, as well as Viacom, Angry Birds Toons, Scripps Networks, AMC, A+E Networks, several networks from the Turner Broadcasting System stable, and Sportskool, among others.  Canoe recently added The CW Television Network to its programming partner roster according to this page on the Canoe Web site.

Canoe estimates that it is stewarding ads on behalf of more than 50 TV networks, with another 70 networks in the “on-boarding” process.

Canoe is also looking to complement its current QAM-based VOD platform with support for DAI in VOD streams delivered over IP to the home.