The Next TV Summit panel “RIP Broadcast TV?” looked at the viability of the original TV platform in the era of streaming TV. It also discussed how broadcast TV is extending its reach on newer platforms. Rob Weisbord, chief operating officer and president of broadcast at Sinclair Broadcast Group, spoke about the importance of the broadcast “ecosystem” in retaining its relevance, including diginets and mobile apps. “We look at everything as spokes to a wheel,” he said. 

That includes Sinclair streaming network Stirr and news app NewsOn. 

As much as the major subscription streamers dominate the traditional primetime, Weisbord said consolidation is inevitable for that sector. Programming costs, he added, mentioning Netflix movie The Gray Man, are not sustainable, and perhaps the streamers will consider licensing content to station groups. 

Also: More Coverage from the 10th Anniversary NYC TV Week

Jim Long, CEO of LocalBTV/Didja, said Sinclair has the right idea about connecting with viewers on all platforms. “Sinclair is doing exactly what they should be doing,” he said. “Be where the consumers are.”

David Bloom, senior contributor, NextTV, moderated the panel, part of NYC TV Week. 

The panelists made the point that, as much as viewers rely on Netflix, Hulu and other subscription streamers, those platforms don’t provide local programming. “Localism is the most important thing to us,” said Kevin Dunaway, VUit VP, affiliate relations & content development, adding how VUit has 300 station partners. “We want to partner with [stations] because that content is important to all those areas.”

Dunaway made the point that a local programming event, be it a sports game or a parade, can often get significant viewership beyond the event’s home market. 

With viewers facing so many viewing options, some say there’s greater demand for local content. “We always say that content is king, but maybe it’s even more true than before,” said Stephane Guez, CTO at Dalet. “If you don’t do it well, people are going to click somewhere else.”

ATSC 3.0 looks to enhance local broadcasters’ relationships with viewers, and users, in their communities. Guez called ATSC “just another way to make it easier to combine traditional broadcast and IP distribution.”

Another unique selling point for local broadcast is over the air, and free. “We have a very attractive proposition,” Weisbord said. “We have 50 plus years of heritage doing this and nothing replaces that heritage.”

NYC TV Week continues Wednesday with the Hispanic Television Summit. ■

Addressable ads can be used to selectively deliver messages to states as they re-emerge from coronavirus safety measures keeping many businesses closed, executives said during the Advanced Advertising Virtual Summit’s conclusion Thursday.

Television ad spending is expected to take some big hits during this pandemic response as key categories including travel pull back. Already ad inventory is up and prices for airtime are down, executives said during this four-day virtual summit, produced by Broadcasting+Cable business editor Jon Lafayette. For some marketers, looking to establish new brands such as newly launched streaming video services, it can be an opportunity to take market share and hang onto it later, as has happened after dramatically negative events such as the 2008-09 recession and 9-11, executives said.

When businesses reopen and ad spending picks up again, budgets will likely be reduced and there will be increased scrutiny on getting a return on that investment. “That dollar will matter more than ever,” Kevin Arrix, senior VP at Dish Media Sales, said at the virtual summit Thursday. He and Tim Sims, senior VP of inventory partnerships at programmatic vendor The Trade Desk, said ad buyers should be looking to put more of their spend into household-addressable ads that can demonstrate results against measurable performance indicators.

Arrix of Dish Media, which includes Dish Network and Sling TV, said after traumatic events companies might want to “retreat into safety” and buy on old Nielsen metrics of ratings points and 18-49s. “Now is not the time to do that,” he said, but instead to “lean into all the different tools and technologies that are available” to target messages to specific audiences.

Sims noted “we will likely see a rolling restart” to the economy, with some states reopening faster than others, and said addressable campaigns can start with those early states and add others later. He used the example of a national quick service restaurant chain that might see 20% of its stores opened in June, 20% in July and the other 60% in August.

More Summit Coverage: Experts See Opportunities for Targeting, AVOD; 'Last Dance' Shows Disney's Agility; COVID Crisis Challenges, Opportunities 

Arrix said moving into advanced advertising can seem daunting at first, with differing measurement, technologies and data sets. But once past that initial barrier “it is very, very robust and it has been robust for a while now. This is not vaporware.” More marketers “need to take a giant step forward into technology, into data, into these worlds that can give them greater accountability for the dollar they are spending.”

The virtual summit (presented by Future brands B+C, Multichannel News and Next TV) Thursday had other presentations concerning measuring return on investment in advertising. Sean Muller, founder and CEO of iSpot.TV, illustrated the ad impact of coronavirus with research showing that travel ad spending was down 99.4% in recent weeks compared with the same period a year ago, and that auto spending was down 53.4%. In contrast, insurance carriers were spending only about 14.8% less, and pizza restaurants’ spending was about even, even though live sports were a big part of their buys and that programming has all but vanished.

Dan Ackerman, chief revenue officer at Samba TV, also shared research indicating time spent watching Netflix and Amazon streaming services has risen 41% year over year in the recent period and time spent watching Hulu was up 48%. Viewers are eager for live sports to return, he said, “but that is being fulfilled with the depth of the libraries in the streaming services.”

As for what data advertisers are looking for to enhance their marketing, Claudio Marcus, VP of strategy at Comcast Advertising, said it was the consumer data and viewing data, with personally identifying information anonymized, and that addressability had two benefits: to target ads to individual households and then to measure whether or not those households had been reached.

Lisa Giacosa, executive VP and global managing director of data, technology, analytics and insights at agency Spark Foundry, made a pitch for common methodology among advanced advertising approaches.

Finally, Jane Clarke, CEO and managing director of CIMM (the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement), discussed CIMM’s mission to bring more granular return path data to TV for planning, buying and attribution measurement. CIMM, now an affiliate of the Advertising Research Foundation, also supports interoperable data platforms for cross-platform premium video.

Next week, Virtual NYC TV Week Spring continues with the Virtual Next TV Summit.

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 future success of audience research could be defined by the industry’s ability to offer data transparency, but reaching that lofty goal might be difficult to achieve in the short run, executives said during a panel session Wednesday at the TV Data Summit.

Executives speaking at the Data Analytics: TV's New Table Stakes panel, said that while there’s a lot of TV data available, deciphering what through the numbers to determine the most efficient data remains difficult.

“When we look at TV data we see retaining ID’s that couldn’t possibly be the same ID’s over and over again,” said Beth Logan, chief data scientist for dataxu. “I think what we really have to do is be really vigilant about checking those metrics.”

Added Ben Tatta, co-founder & president of 605, a television data and analytics company: “We need to do more on the transparency side. It takes a lot to make a data set representative, whether its representative nationally, or representative of the household. Blending the data sets together to get a more holistic view is essential, but I also think the method by which that happens needs to be disclosed.

Dativa CTO and chief data scientist Tom Weiss also said that its extremely difficult to be transparent given all of the information available. “We have to be transparent but we’re not mature and stable enough where we can expect everyone doing this to be at the same level of understanding," he said.

Added Tatta: “Its wonderful that there’s as variety of data sets that are available, and there’s a lot of companies with really smart people managing that,” Tatta said. “In the past there’s been a hesitancy to reveal [methodology] that because that’s our secret sauce, but at the same time I think it’s really important to have full transparency with clients.”

Read More: Complete Coverage of the TV Data Summit

With regard to analytic transparency, Roku’s head of ad and programming research Dan Robbins said the industry is “getting better at” but still has a ways to go. "I don’t think we’re there yet but we spend a lot of time trying to be diligent and rigorous about making sure that folks that we partner with have a good sense of what’s going on,” he said. 

New York – With the ink on its carriage deal with Charter Communications not dry yet, Viacom’s chief data officer and EVP Kern Schireson told an audience at the Multichannel News/B&C TV Data Summit here that the pact, details of which have not been released, could serve as a blueprint for future deals.

Read More: Complete Coverage of the TV Data Summit

In characteristically vague language – programmers and distributors are typically contractually obligated to keep the details of carriage deals under wraps – Schireson told B&C business editor Jon Lafayette during an NYC Television Week keynote that the new deal builds on work Charter and Viacom have been conducting for a while.

“There was an ongoing conversation with Charter about the opportunity for these two businesses to work together and to connect some dots and work more efficiently,” Schireson said. “There are things MVPDs do uniquely well, there are capabilities and assets they have, and there are things on the publisher side in the way they transact and run their businesses that are also unique and valuable. Those things have been held at arm’s length from one another.

“Historically, publishers and MVPDs have gone to the table and treated it as zero-sum game – I give you a dollar more, that’s a dollar less for me; you get more stacking rights, you get a different flexibility around channel positioning and packaging, I make less money,” he continued. “I think what we were able to do, because of the run up to the deal and the history and intent of both of these companies, we were able to do something that when the details emerge, a lot of folks are going to look at as a potential blueprint for how to not make this a zero-sum game, and how to really work in partnership to make the TV ecosystem bigger and better and more efficient and to position ourselves for the future in a way that is going to allow us to compete more effectively with some of the folks outside the TV ecosystem that are going after the same dollars.”

Schireson didn’t provide any details, but given his position and Viacom’s past deals that have had an advanced ad component, it is likely that would be a big part of the most recent transaction.

Read More: Complete Coverage of #NYCTVWK

Viacom and Charter said Oct. 17 they had reached an agreement in principle. The deal is expected to be finalized shortly.

Some reports have said the new deal will involve Charter having to carry fewer channels -- Reuters and the Wall Street Journal said Thursday (Oct. 20) that Charter will carry eight of Viacom’s nearly two dozen channels on its basic tier, with the remainder carried on more expensive packages.

CBS All Access allows the network to go deeper into its scripted storylines, said Marc Debevoise, president/COO of CBS Interactive, and create programming that is perhaps more in line with what’s being offered on streaming platforms and cable.

During a keynote at the Next TV Summit, part of NYC Television Week, Debevoise spoke of intensely serialized storytelling on CBS All Access, whose originals include The Good Fight and Star Trek: Discovery.

Read More: Complete Coverage of NYC Television Week

“We’re scratching deeper and deeper into those characters,” he said.

Debevoise was interviewed by Elaine Quijano, a CBSN anchor.

He identified cable networks AMC and FX as being peers in terms of originals. “We have advertising—we’re not all the way to the HBOs and Showtimes of the world,” he said.

CBS All Access and CBSN are helping the network reach a significantly younger audience. All Access’ average viewer is 43, and CBSN’s is 38. “We figured out that millennials want news,” he said. “They just want it in a different way.”

CBS will launch an OTT product dedicated to sports and news. Debevoise didn’t provide specifics, but said the launch is coming soon.

Three quarters of CBSN viewership is live, he said. “A ton of people came live,” said Debevoise, “and that was really key.”

Documentaries on CBSN, he added, give CBS news professionals “a little more breathing room” to tell a timely story.

Read More: Complete Coverage of the Next TV Summit

For CBS All Access, an upcoming launch is the comedy No Activity, from Funny or Die. “Those guys are great comedians,” he said of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. “They know how to write, how to shoot, how to make things incredibly funny.”

CBS All Access costs $5.99 monthly. The Good Wife spinoff The Good Fight and Star Trek: Discovery, he said, have All Access’ originals strategy off to a strong start, and have driven subscriptions significantly. Of Trek, he said, “The reaction has been incredible. People love it, they hate it, they love to love it, they love to hate it.”

He credited the CBS broadcast network for helping the shows launch. “We happen to own the largest sampling platform,” said Debevoise. “We’re gonna use it when we can.”

New York – Short-form video clips can still drive viewership on OTT platforms, according to a panel session Wednesday (Oct. 18) at the Multichannel News/B&C NextTV Summit. part of NYC Television Week. And though there is no magic number as to how long an audience will pay attention to the videos, 15 minutes seems to be the limit.

Read More: Complete Coverage of #NYCTVWK

Comcast Watchable VP of programming Craig Parks said that while he has always chafed at the term – "short-form" implies “less than” to him – he added that it is increasingly valuable. But the length of the clips, he said, depends on what the content is being used for.

“If you’re cooking a pizza, it doesn’t need to be any longer than it is,” Parks said at the panel session entitled “The Transformation of Storytelling in the OTT/ On-Demand Era. “There is no magic number, no magic length.”

But he said that after producing 18 short-form series, he believes anything past 15 minutes might be pushing the envelope.

Read More: Complete Coverage of the Next TV Summit

While short-form shows may get short shrift compared with traditional 30-minute and 60-mnute series, panel members said the two can work together. At A+E Networks, Paul Cabana, executive vice president and head of History & Biography digital, said the network is bringing back the Biography channel brand, but only through one-to-two minute clips. At that length, he said, they can relaunch the Biography brand on any one of A+E Networks’s channels.

Gunpowder and Sky founder and CEO Van Toffler, a veteran of linear TV (he spent more than a generation at Viacom) said short-form video can lead to longer form projects, but that is a rarity. Short-form also has value in determining if a longer form show will resonate with the audience.

Toffler said his company is currently shooting a 7-minute pilot for a proposed 30-minute show. Once that pilot is finished, Gunpowder and Sky can put it online to determine how a young audience will react to it.

“I love the idea of down and dirty, fast and cheap pilots you put up on your own sites and learn from your experiments,” Toffler said.

The panelists saw mobile video as being the biggest disruptor to their businesses, but that too can be a perfect vehicle for short-form content.

“Let’s do more for mobile," said Revry CEO and co-founder Damian Pelliccione. “I don’t have any competitors in this space because we get to set the bar.”

New York -- Content providers should continue to strive to keep the ad buying experience simple, especially as advanced technologies and targeting emerge, a panel of experts said at the Multichannel News/B&C Advanced Advertising event here Wednesday (Oct. 18), part of NYC Television Week.

Read More: Complete Coverage of #NYCTVWK

Comcast Spotlight vice president of data strategy Justin Evans said during the "Video Everywhere" session that many ad buyers are under enough pressure with small markets, smaller staffs and heavy competition to have to deal with an onerous buying process.

“They don’t have the bandwidth to make five or six types of premium buys,” Evans said, adding that the onus is on providers to bring buyers scale through a combination of linear networks, OTT and mobile.

Premion president Jim Wilson said that confusion is one of the reasons why his company, a unit of broadcast station group Tegna, was formed.

“It’s undeniable that consumer trends are changing, the way we watch premium video is really changing,” Wilson said. “At Tegna we saw this opportunity and, realizing that's the way video is being watched, set out specifically focusing on OTT. There is certainly a lot of confusion in the market, and for our advertisers, we’ve been focusing on building a one-stop shop.”

Read More: Complete Coverage of the Advanced Advertising Event

For SpotX vice president of programmatic TV Randy Cooke, the emphasis should be on making the process less complicated for clients.

“Simplification is what this industry needs most of all,” Cooke said. “Are you buying content based on the composition of the audience, or are you buying audience across different devices?”

Cooke added that those two concepts are entirely different models – one gets the most value from 30-second ad spots, the other from impressions.

“You have to have to understand the enterprise value of audience as much as the enterprise value of content,” Cooke said. “The best opportunity for us to come out on the other side is, we have to be comfortable in the mathematical relationship between the ad marketplace and the content marketplace.

Google head of broadcast partnerships Julie Sterling said providers have to be careful not to lose sight of brands and the audience role in the process.

“Brands are always going to want to buy content, because they want their brand associated with that content,” Sterling said. “The other piece is that audience is going to have a bigger play. At Google, we’re an open platform. We want to make sure that the CFO and the advertiser get what they want and measure effectiveness.”

4C Insights CEO Lance Neuhauser said that providers need to remember the past as they're looking to the future.

“There is a need to start from the future and work our way back,” Neuhauser said. “The recognition that consumers no longer need to watch ads is very real. They can fast-forward, change channels, unsubscribe. If you’re not creating multiscreen experiences that are leveraging all the interaction from consumers and only looking at TV as TV, you will miss the mark.”

Fox Networks Group has begun selling advertising in the video-on-demand content from its channels that is addressable on an individual household basis through Comcast Cable set-top boxes and streaming via Hulu.

TV networks are looking for ways to create innovations in advertising that can increase its value in an increasingly digital age. Fox has already been selling precision audience targeted ads on its linear network with its AIM solution. It is also a partner in Open AP, which is attempting to standardize selling ads based on specific audience targets rather than the traditional broad age and sex base demographic groups.

Comcast Cable has done addressable ad campaigns using dynamic ad insertion technology with its corporate sibling NBCUniversal.

Working with Fox is part of a trial program to see how the distributor can work with programmers on addressable advertising. A source indicated that Comcast is conducting addressable trials with another, unnamed, network group.

Both Fox and Comcast use Freewheel, a division of Comcast, to handle ad insertions.

Fox’s addressable effort is unique because in addition to working with Comcast’s subscribers, it can also offer viewers streaming on-demand programming from Fox Networks including Fox Broadcasting, FX, National Geographic and Fox Sports via Hulu.

Noah Levine, senior VP, advertising data & technology solution at Fox Network Group says that between Comcast and Hulu and its advertising clients more than 10 million households on an addressable basis.

Levine was expected to announce Fox’s new addressable advertising effort at the B&C/Multichannel News Next TV Summit in New York Wednesday (Oct. 18), part of NYC Television Week.

Read More: Complete Coverage of NYC Television Week

“Our strategy is to continue selling to linear buyer through Fox AIM linear,” Levine said. “Now we can also work with the addressable buyers to pursue the addressable opportunity.” Fox is looking to add cross-platform precision audience targeting.

“Our goal is to be able to provide audience targeting across our very wide portfolio of content regardless of the distribution modality,” Levine said.

Read More: Complete Coverage of the Next TV Summit

In addition to working with NBCU, Comcast’s local systems sell addressable ad campaigns to local advertisers.

“We think it’s really important that TV advertising becomes more sophisticated and this VOD trial is one way networks can unify their audiences and marketers reach their targets,” said Marcien Jenckes, president of advertising at Comcast.

With on-demand programming and steaming, Levine said the Fox’s addressable advertising can reach audiences that may not be watching linear.

He noted that addressable would be great for a financial advertisers that uses linear advertising to promote its brand but targets viewers of a different income and lifestyles for particular financial products.

Read More: Complete Coverage of the Advanced Advertising Event

Levine said Fox’s addressable solution is different than what most cable or satellite operators can offer because it can be overlaid with precision targeted programming on the Fox networks, which reach all of the markets in the country.

“That’s national scale,” he says. In addition, Fox has all of its national inventory while distributors only have access to two minute per hour.

That should make the Fox offering attractive to national advertisers.

“By combining addressable components with the linear components, we’ll be able to come up with very acceptable CPM ranges,” Levine said. He added that with addressable advertising, Fox benefits financially because there is very little waste once it and the advertisers have agreed on a data set and reporting method.

Addressable advertising is also good for viewers. “It allows is to provide more relevant advertising that s potential more interesting to the audience,” he said.

TV advertising needs to get more sophisticated, Marcien Jenkes, president of advertising at Comcast, said at NYC Television Week Wednesday (Oct. 18).

Television advertising is seen as relatively unsophisticated when compared with digital, Jenckes said, speaking at the B&C/Multichannel News Advanced Advertising event in New York.

Read More: Complete Coverage of the Advanced Advertising Event

”The only way this industry is going to survive and thrive is if you take this unsophisticated bucket and make it sophisticated," he said. "Make it targetable, make it data-enabled and make it accountable. If you can do that, unified across your full audience, there’s no better way for marketers to drive their business.”

Jenckes said that for a long time, TV took its advantages as an ad medium for granted. It didn’t bring data to the table or move ahead with better targeting. In the meantime, digital advertising earned its place at the table.

Read More: Complete Coverage of #NYCTVWK

At Comcast, advertising is a big revenue generator, behind video and high-speed internet, he said. The company moved to make its advertising business more sophisticated by buying a number of firms, including FreeWheel, Strata, Visible World and Sticky Ads, and incorporated them into its ad business.

“They all don’t exist separately,” Jenckes said. "They’re part of the advanced advertising group, which wants to serve the industry. We want to serve our own interest, but we want to make television the most effective form of advertising.”

To do that, Comcast is working with companies that can do real-time attribution studies, such as tvty and 605.

“Every day we’ll get more sophisticated,” Jenckes said. “Everyday we make a little more progress down the road.”

Amazon is hoping its "Channels" service will provide more value and choice to cord-cutting consumers looking to access traditional cable services, Amazon Channels head Richard Au said Wednesday (Oct. 18) at NYC Television Week.

Read More: Complete Coverage of #NYCTVWK

The service, launched in 2015 to Amazon Prime subscribers, offers access to more than 130 premium channels from cable networks such as Showtime, Starz and PBS Kids as well as to streaming services like Acorn TV and AMC’s horror-themed service Shutter.

Au, who spoke at a Next TV Summit morning panel moderated by B&C/Multichannel News editorial director Mark Robichaux, said Amazon Channels was created to provide increase content selections to consumers beyond Amazon’s original programming and on-demand content available through Amazon Prime.

Read More: Complete Coverage of the Next TV Summit

“It’s a great time to be a fan of video because there’s so much great content, but one of the challenges as a consumer is how to find the things that you like,” Au said. “We want to offer all of that content in a very integrated, easy way.”

Along with serving Amazon Prime subscribers, Au said that the Amazon Channels service also provides opportunities for participating cable networks to reach cord-cutting and cord-never consumers.

“We talk to our channel partners like HBO, Showtime and Starz to help them find incremental customers who may not have a cable subscription who have dropped one,” Au said. "We want to continue to make it really easy for our customers to discover new content, whether its Amazon original content or third-party content.”

New York – Virtual reality may get most of its attention from gamers, but CNN vice president of premium content video Jason Farkas believes the technology is opening up a whole new aspect for television news, allowing networks and reporters to convey feelings as well as facts to their audiences.

At the Multichannel News/B&C VR 20/20 event here Monday, Farkas said VR allows viewers to more deeply identify with programs and news items by “giving witness” to them. And that can range from stories on climate change and war, to putting viewers behind the wheel of a Formula 1 race car, running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, or traveling back in time for an immersive look at historical events like the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

Read More: Complete Coverage of VR 20/20

Farkas said VR is a natural and logical extension for news organizations that for centuries through print, video and digital means strove to give their audience the experience of being there.

“With VR, we have that tool,” Farkas said.  

VR 20/20 kicked off NYC Television Week Monday (Oct. 16); read more #NYCTVWK stories here.

Lisa Martinez Gilpin, global head of news and publishing at Google Play, broke down the attributes of both virtual reality and augmented reality at the VR 20/20 opening session, and spelled out the roles both will play in the media going forward.

Augmented reality (AR) offers the user a “push and pull kind of dynamic,” she said, whereas virtual reality (VR) is more immersive.

Martinez Gilpin detailed Google’s history in VR, including 2014's Google Cardboard viewer, which she described as “simple with a lot of meaning.” She said a New York Times partnership a year later delivered more than 1 million Cardboard viewers to Times subscribers.

“Talk about coming into a really personal space,” she said. “We’re right there at your front door.”

Next was Daydream, offering a more breathable material than Cardboard. “There’s lots of great content to snack on,” said Martinez Gilpin, “as well as episodic content.”

VR 20/20 is happening Monday (Oct. 16) at the Stewart Hotel in Manhattan as the kick-off event of NYC Television Week.

Read More: Complete Coverage of VR 20/20

Martinez Gilpin said VR has a significant role in realms as varied as news and commerce. She spoke of “educating journalists to user VR cameras to tell their stories.”

Martinez Gilpin talked of ARCore, a platform for augmented reality apps. She described AR’s role in helping a consumer virtually try on clothing, or see how a coffee table fits in a family room, or check out a new car in different colors.

Read More: Complete Coverage of #NYCTVWK

Google’s Visual Positioning Service (VPS) can offer on-the-go consumers a look at a store’s layout before they visit. “It’s a great way to think about user flow,” she said, “and where products sit in store.”

VR, and AR, are part of the present, Martinez Gilpin suggested, not the future. “What used to take months now takes hours from a production standpoint,” she said. “It’s a lot more seamless and frictionless.”

NEW YORK — NYC Television Week, presented by NewBay Media’s Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News, returns for a fifth go-round the week of Oct. 16, bringing the industry’s focus to the world’s media capital.

With six high-profile events, NYC Television Week covers a full range of trends and topics vital to today’s television businesses. Over its three years, it has drawn more than 3,000 TV industry executives and featured 200 industry leaders as keynote speakers and presenters.

Events include (speakers subject to change):

B&CHALL OF FAME (Monday, Oct. 16, Grand Hyatt New York). Recognized as the leading industry event honoring the pioneers, visionaries and stars of broadcasting and the electronic arts. This year, the blacktie dinner will honor 12 exceptional executives — and one program, ABC’s The View — that have truly made an impact on the industry as it stands today. Honorees include executives from CBS, NBC, Viacom, FX Networks, Lionsgate, C-SPAN and Univision.

VIRTUAL REALITY 20/20(Monday, Oct. 16, The Stewart Hotel). Exploring emerging trends in VR and augmented reality technology and content, applications and services, with opportunities to connect with potential funding, content and distribution partners. Keynote speakers include Jason Farkas, VP of premium content video at CNN; and Serge Kassardjian, global head of media apps business development at Google Play.

ADVANCED ADVERTISING(Wednesday, Oct. 18, Sheraton Times Square). Thought leaders gather for a day of dynamic content and connections exploring the impact of data, automation and addressability on TV advertising. Keynote speakers include Marcien Jenckes, president, advertising, Comcast Cable; and Lyle Schwartz, president of investment, GroupM North America.

NEXT TV SUMMIT(Wednesday, Oct. 18, Sheraton Times Square). This high-level, future-focused conference, expo and networking event delivers insights into the impact of new video devices, delivery systems and consumer expectations in the OTT era. Scheduled keynote speakers include Amazon Channels director Richard Au and CBS Interactive president and COO Marc DeBevoise.

HISPANIC TELEVISION SUMMIT(Thursday, Oct. 19, Sheraton Times Square). Now in its 15th year as a staple of the Hispanic media fall calendar, HTS attracts nearly 500 professionals from the U.S., Latin America and Spain, drawn to its lively program, networking and awards. Honorees include Rafael Amaya, star of Telemundo’s hit Super Series El Señor de los Cielos; GroupM Multicultural president Gonzalo Del Fa; and Altice USA.

TV DATA SUMMIT(Thursday, Oct. 19, Sheraton Times Square). This new addition to the NYC TV Week lineup will bring together leaders in the field to explain how high-quality data technology is transforming organizations and decision making in allocating resources and developing marketing strategies. Keynote speakers on the agenda include Viacom executive VP and chief data officer Kern Schireson.

For more information and to register for NYC TV Week events, please visit NYCTVWeek.com.

NEW YORK — Altice USA has been both a trailblazer and a visionary in providing the local and national Hispanic community access to Spanish-language news and entertainment, as well as providing innovative packaging of video and high-speed-data products.

The MSO will receive the award for Corporate Leadership in Hispanic Television & Video during the luncheon awards ceremony at the 15th Annual Hispanic Television Summit, to be held on Oct. 19, 12:30-2 p.m., at the Sheraton New York Hotel.

Related: The Hispanic TV Summit Awards
Outstanding Achievement in Hispanic TV > Rafael Amaya: Lord of the Ratings| Executive Leadership > Gonzalo Del Fa: Change Agent

At its former Cablevision and Suddenlink Communications systems — Altice purchased those companies in 2016 and 2015, respectively — the cable operator is continuing the tradition of service and commitment to the Hispanic community, which makes up a large segment of its customers.

The MSO's Optimum unit passes large Hispanic communities in the Greater New York City area, including the Bronx, parts of Brooklyn, parts of New Jersey and Long Island; Suddenlink operates in parts of Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas with significant Hispanic populations.

As Altice USA, the company’s commitment to the Hispanic community is expanding. In the coming weeks it plans to introduce new Spanish-language TV packages — including music, movies, kids and lifestyle programming — for Optimum and Suddenlink customers that better cater to the Spanish-language populations it serves, particularly in the New York Tri-State Area and the southwestern portion of the country.

For Optimum customers, the refreshed Optimum en Español package will offer more than 50 Spanish-language channels, starting at $12.95 per month for subscribers to Optimum Value and above. Suddenlink’s updated Conexión Única package will include more than 30 Spanish-language channels, starting at $10 per month. More details, including the new channel additions, will be made available in the coming weeks.

Hispanic TV Strategies:New Tech Joins Battle for Hispanic Subscribers|OTT Players Look to Latinos

On the phone and broadband front, the cable operator also offers a variety of bundles that feature Spanish-language programming as well as other services, including international calling and a new low-priced high-speed internet service, called Economy Internet, available to eligible households in both the Optimum and Suddenlink footprints for $14.99 per month. Details of the product are available in both Spanish and English at geteconomyinternet.com.

In its Optimum system, Altice USA offers more than 1,000 hours of Spanish-language video on demand programming each month, with content from many Spanish-language channels also available for out-of-home viewing.

Altice USA’s parent Altice N.V. has operations in the Dominican Republic, and is one of the main telecom service providers in that country bringing mobile and fixed residential and business services to more than 4.8 million customers.

Altice USA continues to offer a variety of Spanish-language and bilingual marketing campaigns. The company recently launched an advertising campaign featuring soccer superstar and Altice ambassador Cristiano Ronaldo and previously ran a campaign featuring comedian and actor John Leguizamo, both of whom are popular among Hispanic and general market consumers. The company also provides Spanish-speaking customer-service representatives to assist Spanish-speaking customers.

In addition, Altice USA celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month and recognizes the rich heritage of Hispanic Americans by administering a student essay contest across its footprint that asks students to write about a Latino, past or present, with whom they would like to spend the day. It also holds a separate but similar contest for the children of the company’s employees.

NEW YORK -- Rafael Amaya, star of the popular, Emmy Award-winning, Spanish-language Telemundo super series El Señor de los Cielos (“Lord of the Skies”), which just launched its fifth season on June 20, will be the 2017 recipient of the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Hispanic Television. 

Amaya will accept the award (from Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News) at a special luncheon ceremony, from 12:30 to 2 p.m., during the 15th annual Hispanic Television Summit on Thursday, Oct. 19, at the Sheraton New York Hotel.

Mr. Amaya is being recognized for a career which has propelled him to becoming one of the best-known actors in both Spanish- and English-language television today. His career includes starring roles in successful Telemundo Network original productions, theater, movies, and television series. This leading man has also served as co-host of The Billboard Mexican Music Awards and The Billboard Latin Music Awards.

“We are especially excited to be recognizing the achievements of this outstanding, popular actor and musician, who continues to attract millions of viewers to every episode of the successful, long-running super series,” said Louis Hillelson, the magazines' vice president and group publisher. “This is the quinceañera year for the Summit, and Mr. Amaya is receiving our legacy award which has been presented to other television leaders over the past fifteen years.” 

Past recipients of the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Hispanic Television include other on-air celebrities like Mario Kreutzberger, better known as “Don Francisco;” Andrés Cantor; Cristina Saralegui; Lucero; Raúl De Molina and Lili Estefan; news anchors Jorge Ramos, María Elena Salinas, José Díaz-Balart and María Celeste Arrarás; boxing champion Oscar De La Hoya and advertising executives P&G’s Edgar Sandoval and Monica Gadsby of Publicis Groupe.    

The Hispanic Television Summit is the most popular and longest running annual event for executives in the business of television and video for Hispanic audiences, worldwide. It attracts nearly 500 executives from the U.S., Latin America and Europe, produced for NewBay Media by the Schramm Marketing Group. This year, the summit will be one of a series of conferences and events to be presented during NYC TV and Video Week, Oct. 16-19, 2017.   

To enjoy the early bird rate for this Summit, register by Monday, Sept. 11, at https://nbmedia.swoogo.com/TVWEEK2017.

To learn more about the 15th Annual Hispanic Television Summit, visit www.hispanictvsummit.com.

NEW YORK — What’s the hardest role for an actor? A reality TV star, says Sissi Fleitas, cast member for WE tv’s docuseries My Life Is a Telenovela, about actors vying for roles in the Telemundo Spanish- language scripted drama Eva La Trailera (Eva the Truck Driver).

Fleitas and other cast members on the WE tv program spoke at the Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable Hispanic Television Summit on Oct. 20 about My Life Is a Telenovela, based in Miami, Fla., a.k.a. Latino Hollywood. Fleitas said she’s had an amazing but challenging experience taping the reality series while competing for a role on Eva La Trailera.

Though, to hear from other cast members, producing a telenovela is a huge grind, often requiring actors to film three, 30-minute episodes virtually every day for a minimum 120-episode season.

“It’s extremely hard — it’s a lot of, lot of work,” said Enrique Sapene, a Venezuelan-born actor who plays a villainous character (Ramon Estevez) in Eva La Trailera. “But we love it and we enjoy ourselves.”

(It’s also not as lucrative as fans might expect: As The New York Times reported on Oct. 21, many actors on telenovelas produced for NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo in Miami are not paid union scale, something SAG-AFTRA is trying to change by urging Telemundo to come to an agreement. Telemundo told The Times it’s committed to keeping employees’ salaries and working conditions competitive and noted its created hundreds of jobs in Miami.)

Series actress Maria Portillo, who goes by Raquenel, said the WE series gives viewers an important look at the lives of Latino actors even as the presidential campaign has magnified inaccurate, negative stereotypes of Hispanics.

“I don’t call My Life Is a Telenovela a regular reality show. To me, it’s a very good and amazing experience,” Portillo (Rebeca Marin in Eva La Trailera) said. “We as Latino talent are showing to the audience how the behind the scenes is at a telenovela — for example, the joys of shooting and shooting and shooting.

“This is exactly the right moment,” Portillo added, “because we are in a political moment and we as Latinos want to show the people we are talented people and we came to this country to work and to be better and to help this country be much better than the way it is. And not just to be, like, assaulting people, and we are not criminals,” she added, to applause.

“Very timely,” panel moderator Dade Hayes, editor of Broadcasting & Cable, noted.

An audience member at the session at The Grand Hyatt, who said he’d recently watched the show (which premiered on Oct. 7), asked what sounded like an existential question about reality TV: “Do you guys come up with the script or is there a script writer who comes up with it?”

“It’s a reality show, there’s no script in our show,” replied Fleitas, a Cuban-born model and actress who was a longtime host on Univision’s Sabado Gigante. “We just go with the flow. This is our real life, shot in our real environment, after we are done with hours and hours of shooting telenovelas and movies, doing casting, preparing ourselves for our lives as actors.” For her, that includes home life with her mother, her grandmother and her three pets.

“In my opinion, reality TV — and I have done two reality shows already — is the hardest of entertainment. It’s harder than doing a theater play. Because in a theater you have a script, you know your entrance, you know your exit, you know your dialogue as an actor. Here, you know nothing. … Here, it’s the real thing, and that to me has a lot of merit and it’s very difficult. It’s the most difficult format I have ever done in my life.”

My Life Is a Telenovela airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on WE tv.

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New York -- “I think that 2017 is going to be the year of first-party measurement,” Joan FitzGerald, vice president of product management and business development at TiVo, said during an audience-measurement panel Wednesday (Oct. 19) at the Advanced Advertising conference, commenting that that might be a controversial statement.

It might have been in the sense that the biggest player in third-party TV viewing measurement, Nielsen, was represented on the panel in the form of Andrew Feigenson, managing director, digital. But on the same panel Randy Cooke, VP of programmatic at SpotX, had declared he believed “the future of ad decisioning resides in first-party data.” Cooke, though, also endorsed the importance of a “trusted industry support standard” to evaluate whether or not an ad buy you just made was priced correctly.

FitzGerald’s point was that advertisers have been building their own databases – including visitors to their own websites – and attaching it to third-party data sources from the likes of Nielsen or set-top data from Comscore (which acquired Rentrak) instead of relying more heavily on what comes from third parties. “This experimentation is going to become more mainstream” going forward, she said.

The panel, part of NYC Television and Video Week, also featured Colleen Fahey Rush, executive VP and chief research officer at Viacom, who said the "trust and transparency" role of third-party measurement in TV was underscored by recent news of video views exaggerated by “people grading their own homework.” She wouldn’t name the company when asked to elaborate by moderator Dade Hayes, the editor of Broadcasting & Cable, but the allusion seemed to be about Facebook’s admission that it had accidentally overstated the number of viewers for videos on the site (a situation Facebook said had been fixed and did not result in overbilling to clients).

Rush went on to say the Viacom Vantage data-driven ad product, announced in 2015, had been resonating with ad buyers and growing. Viacom Vantage, she said, “is really all about harnessing all kinds of different kinds of data sets so that we can really work with the advertiser and agency to define the segment together and deliver impressions and reach and their guaranteed target.”

Feigenson agreed that first-party data use was on the rise but used, as an example, Travelocity. That online travel provider has a huge amount of data from its own transactions, but that doesn’t represent the entire travel industry.

Movie studios, he also said, used to have relatively easy choices to make when they wanted to promote an upcoming theatrical release: buy mass audience reach using gross ratings points. Audiences are more fragmented now, though, and buying network TV won’t reach the millions of viewers tuned to Netflix or other streaming sources. “There are so many options right now that I think for a marketer it’s absolutely baffling,” he said.

“The baseline has to be reach and frequency to start with,” Feigenson, and then layer on other more targeted approaches. Nielsen, of course, is hard at work on generating "Total Audience Measurement" that will include online viewing sources.

Feigenson related a story about a recent meeting with customers in an advisory board and how one of the people at the session needed some extra time to absorb the new data features coming out and remarked, essentially, that what Nielsen was doing was awesome but it was moving too fast.

Hearing "Nielsen and too fast in the same sentence," Feigenson said, was memorable.

A Comscore executive had been scheduled to appear on the panel but was unable to attend, leaving Feigenson as the sole representative of third-party measurement firms on the panel. 

Get complete coverage of the Next TV Summit.

NEW YORK – More than year after its initial launch in March, 2015 Sony PlayStation Vue chief Dwayne Benefield said the service is attracting a broad swath of customers, including families with children, a long way from the core gamer demographic the service initially targeted.

At the Next TV Summit here Wednesday (Oct. 19) during NYC Television & Video Week, Benefield, vice president and head of PlayStation Vue at Sony Interactive Entertainment, said that while two-thirds of its audience remains millennial, about one-quarter of subscribers are new to the PlayStation medium. That has been fueled by expanding the platforms that can run on the service.

“The new platforms definitely helped,” Benefield said in a fireside chat with Next TV editor and Multichannel News technology editor Jeff Baumgartner. “Having sticks from Amazon and Roku that are sub-$50 has helped with the ease of access to the service, PlayStation Vue is for the gamer household, including the children, wives and partners of the user.”

Benefield said that the typical PlayStation Vue customer is a heavy sports fan – its basic package includes all the Fox and Comcast regional sports networks – adult cartoons and some kids programming are also joining the most-watched ranks in the service.

“Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is one of our top shows,” Benefield said. “Kids’ channels are performing much better.  Families are engaging.”

PlayStation Vue has worked hard to include broadcast content in the service – it has reached deals to carry all four major broadcasters in their respective owned and operated [O&O] markets. While expanding out of that footprint has been more difficult, mainly because local affiliates are owned by several different groups, Benefield said the idea is to make local TV available across the footprint.

In markets where it currently doesn’t offer live local broadcasters, it offers “slim” versions of its three core packages – Access, Core and Elite – that allow users to watch network content on demand the day after original air. An Ultra TV package that includes premium channels HBO and Showtime and more than 100 other channels was added last month.

“The goal is to make all broadcast stations available,” Benefield said. “You will see us bring more and more live and local to users.”

Sony doesn’t release subscriber figures for PlayStation Vue, but Benefield said the service is exceeding all company expectations.  

At a time when technology and demand are upending TV as we know it, the tenets of video advertising – from audience targeting to content creation – also have to be revamped to resonate with consumers, an industry leader said Wednesday.

“Our brands should be entertaining audiences,” said Donna Speciale, president of Turner Ad Sales. “The ads we feature should be compelling, relevant and ultimately drive the product off the shelves, off the lots."

Speaking at the Advanced Advertising Summit, part of NewBay Media’s annual NYC Television and Video Week, Speciale said that process started at Turner several years ago, when leaders determined to “reimagine the consumer experience” across the company. 

For Turner’s ad sales division, that included upping its emphasis on four “main stops” crucial in “reimagining what great advertising can be” – audience targeting, redefining ad environments, content creation and content optimization, she said.

As a result, Turner today uses data to sell inventory against guarantees that go beyond audience age and gender; sells inventory holistically across Turner properties rather than by show; and fills traditional ad time with branded content – and then cuts that branded content into “bite size pieces of entertainment” that's distributed on social media platforms.

“The experience is everything when it comes to reimagining advertising,” Speciale said.

Get complete coverage of NYC Television & Video Week.

Such steps also are crucial to improving both the impact of ads, and advertisers’ relationship with viewers, both of which are on the rocks because for years “all of us have simply stuffed too much advertising” into TV,” she said.

As television continues to evolve, it is critical that media companies work together to share best practices that will forward the industry – particularly as early successes emerge, she said.

“Over the last few years our industry has faced many challenges,” Speciale said. “We are all living through them and we cannot hide from them. We are not going to be able to advance the ad community if we don’t break down the silos.”

Xumo, an aggregator of ad-based OTT video for smart TVs and mobile devices, said it has added programs and shows from Fox Sports to its free platform, including The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Skip and Shannon: Undisputed, Garbage Time with Katie Nolan, and Speak for Yourself, among others.

Additionally, the Fox Sports on Xumo channel will feature a mix of game highlights, clips from FS1  studio shows, and Fox Sports Digital originals such as @TheBuzzer, they said.

Xumo announced the content deal in tandem with NewBay Media’s NYC Television & Video Week. Colin Petrie-Norris, CEO of Xumo, is participating in a panel later today at the Next TV Summit, one of the individual events tied to NYC TV & Video Week.

Get complete coverage of NYC Television & Video Week.

Xumo recently launched an app for iOS, and has a version for Android in the works. Those apps complemented Xumo’s presence on Roku devices, smart TVs from Vizio, Panasonic, and Funai Electric Co. Ltd., which sells Sanyo-, Magnavox- and Philips-branded TVs in North America, as well as Channel Plus, an offering exclusive to LG-made connected TVs.

RELATED: LG Tunes In ‘Channel Plus’

“Xumo is building a strong following among sports fans and the addition of FOX Sports takes the platform to the next level,” Stefan Van Engen, SVP programming and content acquisitions of Xumo, said in a statement. “FOX Sports is home to some of the most popular sports shows, events, experts and personalities in the country and now their fans and Xumo’s fans will benefit from access to a ton of excellent sports programming on FOX Sports’ Xumo channel.”

Xumo has content deals with several other partners, including Time Inc., Condé Nast Entertainment, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, PopSugar, Mitú Network, Machinima, TYT Network, Reuters, Field & Stream, PBS Digital Studios , Network A, Fandor, Outside Television Shorts, Bonnier, Saveur, and Cycle  World.

Get complete coverage of NYC Television & Video Week.

Baobab Studios, the startup focused on VR animation, said it has wrapped up a $25 million “B” round led by Horizon Ventures, along with help from with Twentieth Century Fox, Evolution Media Partners (backed by TPG and CAA), China'sShanghai Media Group, Youku Global Media Fund and LDV Partners.

They join Baobab’s original investors Comcast Ventures, HTC and Samsung.

RELATED: Comcast VC Backs Another VR Startup

Baobab Studios said the new round will be used to develop more animated VR movies and help the startup grow on a global scale.

In addition to the funding, the company also announced the hiring of Larry Cutler as chief technology officer (CTO), and the exec who served as Pixar's technical director for Toy Story 2 and Monsters Inc., and later became global head of character technology for DreamWorks Animation, which was recently acquired by Comcast.

RELATED: Installed Base of VR Headsets to Reach 81M By 2020: Forecast

Baobab also appointed Chris Milk, founder and CEO of story-focused VR firm Within, to its advisory board.

The funding follows the release of Baobab Studios’s INVASION! Episode One, an interactive animated VR short narrated by Ethan Hawke. The company has also released a “first look” for ASTEROIDS!, the second installment in the studios’ INVASION!, with the full episode scheduled for release in 2017.

Maureen Fan, CEO of Baobab Studios, and Eric Darnell, Baobab’s chief creative officer, joined Jane Rosenthal, executive chair for Tribeca Enterprises, for a keynote on VR storytelling Monday (October 17) at VR 20/20, VR 20/20, the first event for NewBay Media’s NYC Television & Video Week. 

#VR2020 keynote speakers CEO Maureen Fan & CCO Eric Darnell sat down with @janetribeca to talk #VR and #storytellingpic.twitter.com/ItTAAIXxoA

— baobab studios (@baobabvr) October 17, 2016

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New York – Predicting the future is a tricky thing, but it was a task taken on here Monday by Eric Romo, the co-founder and CEO of social virtual reality startup AltspaceVR.

Romo, the closing keynoter at VR 20/20, the first event for NewBay Media’s NYC Television & Video Week, offered his view on how key elements of the virtual reality (and augmented reality) market look today, and how they will evolve and change in the next three-plus years.

“The big challenge [for the industry] is too much looking forward,” Romo said, before reeling off this quote from Mark Twain: “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

RELATED: NBC News, AltspaceVR Team on ‘Virtual Democracy Plaza’

Today, he noted, many investment firms have a "VR person,” the individual who understands what all this new stuff is about. He noted that this similarly played out during the early days of the Internet, “Web 2.0” and mobile, for example. Today, the notion that one person at any one company encapsulates any of those is “ridiculous,” he said, because they eventually became huge, enabling technologies. 

RELATED: VR 20/20: Unknowns Abound in Virtual and Augmented Reality Market

“And VR is the same,” Romo said, noting that companies will embrace and use VR as a foundational technology “or suffer.”  In 2020, there will no longer be “VR companies,” but companies that use VR to solve a problem, he said. 

Today, Romo said, 360-degree video is the dominant form of “passive” VR content that happens to work across all platforms. “People sort of know how to make it already,” he said of that category of content. In 2020, he predicted, new forms of “semi-passive” content will emerge and VR itself will become a new medium under which purpose-built content will flourish.

Today, everyone shows the “sunglasses slide,” representing the merging of VR and AR in a way that resembles a pair of Wayfarers. In 2020, he said, the sunglasses slide will be dropped as VR and AR “diverge” further and become more useful and support more markets and specific applications.

Today, Romo pointed out, consumers receive VR content by pairing viewers with mobile phones, gaming consoles or high-powered  PCs. If the industry is being honest with itself, it will admit that this is a “broken” model for most. Romo predicted that in 2020 stand-alone platforms “optimized for VR” will become dominant and outsell today’s approaches, offering up Oculus’s Santa Cruz project and the Qualcomm Snapdragon VR820 and Intel’s “Alloy” reference platforms among examples of standalone-facing projects that are already well underway.

Today, Romo noted, the “Metaverse” – generally defined as a collective, virtual shared space --  is viewed as a place someone will build, based on what’s been proposed in books such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One or Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.  The Metaverse that will emerge in 2020, Romo said, will embody “the evolution of the Internet” and will become something different than anything being imagined today.  It will not be purposefully built, he said, but will instead materialize from the hard work of disparate groups, all trying to deliver great experiences.

 “It’s organic…it’s an evolution,” Romo said. 

NYC Television & Video Week today released the list of keynote speakers, panelists and participating companies at the inaugural Virtual Reality 20/20. Technology, content, finance and marketing executives from dozens of top companies will appear onstage Monday, Oct. 17, at NYC’s TimesCenter (detailed list follows below).

To purchase tickets for Virtual Reality 20/20, visit https://nbmedia.swoogo.com/TVandVideoweek. 

Virtual Reality 20/20 attendees can expect a deep dive into VR/AR content and technology as these new media affect a broad sweep of industries, from sports and entertainment, to advertising and gaming, to science and education. 

The storytelling keynote session will feature Jane Rosenthal, executive chair of Tribeca Enterprises, in conversation with the co-founders of Baobab Studios, Maureen Fan and Eric Darnell.

In addition to the keynote speakers, the topics will feature perspectives from Comcast Ventures; Time Warner Investments; Intel Capital; Alcatel; VOKE; HTC; Pepsi Beverages North America; Hulu; CNN; Disney | ABC Television Group; ESPN; Fox Sports; IMAX; National Basketball Association; Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A, Inc.; The New York Times Company; Red Bull Media House; Taco Bell; NVIDIA; First Round Capital; GoPro; MaxPlay; Avegant; Time Inc.; Condé Nast Entertainment; Felix & Paul Studios; STRIVR; NextVR; Selhurst Media Ventures; Refinery29; Deep Focus; Luma Partners; Smithsonian Media; Specular Theory; Sketchfab and Surgical Theater, among others. 

“2016 represents a tipping point for virtual and augmented reality,” says Greg Kahn of GK Digital Media, who is executive producing the event. “VR/AR is poised to have significant business, creative and educational implications. New York City is the ideal place to gather so many thought-leaders and practitioners who will accelerate the adoption of VR/AR technologies.” 

Virtual Reality 20/20 will draw industry executives, investors, retailers, educators, and business leaders alike. The event format will range from networking sessions with creators and investors to panel presentations where the latest trends will be discussed and debated. Attendees will also be able to test out cutting-edge hardware and content through hands-on demonstrations.

To see the full list of speakers and events, visit http://www.vr2020summit.com/speakers/.

This year’s Virtual Reality 20/20 features several major sponsors: platinum sponsor Alcatel; gold sponsor HTC; silver sponsor VOKE; bronze sponsors Verizon Labs and New Age Electronics; exhibitor InstaVR.

The Virtual Reality 20/20 advisory board includes Michael Yang, Managing Director at Comcast Ventures; Scott Levine, Managing Director at Time Warner Investments; Arjun Metre, Investment Director at Intel Capital; Cary Tilds, Chief Innovation Officer, GroupM; Neil Carty, SVP Innovation Strategy at MediaLink; Ian Schafer, Founder & CEO of Deep Focus; Evan Kraut, Managing Director at Grey AdVentures; and Hardie Tankersley, CEO of Reality Fabrication Inc. 

Visit http://www.nyctvweek.com for a complete schedule of the 4th Annual NYC Television and Video Week, which includes the 26th Annual Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame, Advanced Advertising, Next TV Summit, Hispanic Television Summit as well as Virtual Reality 20/20.

For information on 2016 NYC Television & Video Week partnerships and sponsorship opportunities, contact Charlie Weiss at 212-378-0478 or cweiss@nbmedia.com. Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News and Next TV are published by NewBay Media. 

About NEWBAY MEDIA
NewBay Media is positioned at the center of the world’s most dynamic industries — Music, AV/Pro Audio, Consumer Electronics/Gaming, Video & Broadcast and Education. We connect and inform millions of constituents in these industries through our award-winning content, integrated media capabilities and high-profile network-building and informative events. NewBay proudly serves some of the broadest B-to-B professional and music enthusiast communities in the world through over 35 print and digital publications, more than 35 integrated web and mobile applications, more than 60 e-newsletters, over 50 conferences and conventions, custom marketing services and e-commerce capabilities. Find out more at www.newbaymedia.com

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.

Pivot, Participant Media’s two-year old network-aimed at digital-savvy millennials, is looking to reach that audience of 17-to-34-year-olds with content it hopes will inspire them to make positive change in the world. During the recent New York City Television Week, Pivot general manager Kent Rees spoke with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about how that millennial generation will affect the future of television, as well as about Pivot’s plans for linear and digital distribution. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

MCN:Two years in, how would you define the Pivot brand?

Kent Rees: Pivot is a network dedicated to content that inspires social change. It came out of our parent, Participant Media, and Participant was founded on the idea that if you show people content that inspires them and gives them different ways to take action on the most pressing issues facing the world, that they would want to get involved and do things directly. Pivot is the TV version of that same idea.

MCN:Pivot’s target is young, millennial audiences who aren’t predisposed to watching traditional television. How difficult is it to reach such a fluid audience base?

KR: We concentrate on a specific kind of millennial whom we call the conscious consumers. These are people who are passionate about the world around them, where their food comes from, what they’re children are eating — it’s really a psychographic and a mentality that is very unique and specifically intense within the millennial audience. They want to get involved, and they see Pivot as a credible resource for them as a way to be entertained and inspired at the same time.

MCN:How big a role will millennials play in defining television’s future?

KR: I think millennials are really reaping the benefits of the content explosion that you’ve seen over the last 10 years. They are not necessarily driving the change, but taking full advantage of the technological explosion in the industry and the opportunities that come from that.

MCN:How is Pivot taking advantage of the technological advancements in digital content distribution to reach millennial viewers?

KR: We offer an authenticated app that you can use to watch the network streaming on a 24-hour basis. We also have a lot of great digital content on our sister site, dubbed Takepart. com, where you can dig deeper into a lot of issues that we create.

I think a really great success story for us was [original series] Fortitude, which had a digital companion series where scientists went episode to episode and talked about the impact of what you saw in the episode and how it related back to global warming.

MCN:How do you see the television landscape developing over the next few years, and how does Pivot fit into that landscape?

KR: We’re bullish on the fact that television is an important way to reach people and a great way to provide content. That’s at the heart of what we do: it’s content that inspires social change, and I think TV is the perfect place to do that among all these other platforms.

What appealed to USA Network about the telenovela format – in the form of upcoming drama Queen of the South – is what appeals to viewers of Spanish-language, action-oriented “super series” and the new category of bio-musicals on Telemundo: compelling heroes and stories that attract young, multicultural audiences.

“We look for really distinctive, noisy concepts that we feel like will break out,” Alex Sepiol, senior vice president, original scripted programming, at USA Network said during a panel session at the Hispanic Television Summit on Thursday at the Park Central Hotel in New York City. “Stories that have urgency to them, that have really memorable characters at their core. Which is why we’re so excited about Queen of the South with Teresa Mendoza. It’s such an incredibly memorable character, she’s so bold and fun and just unique, that we feel like she will make a tremendous impression on the marketplace.”

Queen of the South is adapted from a novel, but that novel was previously made into a hit novela, La Reina del Sur, on Telemundo. The lead character, Teresa Mendoza (played by Alice Braga, pictured, in the USA version), starts out as a victim whose boyfriend, a drug dealer in Mexico, is murdered. She flees to America, though, and ends up learning the trade and becoming a power in the drug cartel.

Perla Farias, Telemundo’s vice president of novela development, shared the panel stage with Sepiol and talked about how the novela genre has over time morphed into several categories in the network’s primetime. They include, along with telenovelas and super series, bio-musicals (like Telemundo’s new hit Celia), bio-dramas and romantic comedies, she said.

The NBCUniversal-owned Spanish-language broadcaster currently has 12 different stories in different stages of development, including the faster-paced, shorter-running super series that Farias and Telemundo are credited with creating. They are heavy on action, but have melodramatic elements, Farias said. This past April, the season-three return of El Señor de los Cielos (Lord of the Skies), a super series about an imprisoned drug lord, set a record for a Telemundo series premiere.

“We like to say amongst ourselves that the [super] series is ‘los narcos también lloran,’ which means ‘the narcos also cry,’ ” she said. “We get to see these violent characters, but at the same time we get to see the human frailty and passions. I think that’s what makes them so compelling.”

Alan J. Sokol, a former Telemundo and InterMedia executive who’s now CEO of Hemisphere Media Group (which has Spanish-language cable channels including telenovela channel Pasiones), said Telemundo deserved applause for championing faster-paced iterations of the genre.

“The way people live today doesn’t necessarily lend itself to watching six months of five-day-a week novelas,” he said. Unitarios that present a self-contained story within an hour are also a format with great potential, he said.

NEW YORK — Spanish-language television is alive and well, Telemundo president Luis Silberwasser declared at the Hspanic Television Summit here Oct. 22.

“You can see the demand for Spanish-language television is pretty significant,” he told interviewer and Noticiero Telemundoco-anchor María Celeste Arrarás during a session at Park Central Hotel in Manhattan.

Silberwasser added, however, that the reduction in immigration from Spanish-speaking countries has had an effect.

“Clearly there is a shift going on,” he said. “But it has opened also the door, for the number of bilinguals are growing. So for us it’s an opportunity."

He attributed Telemundo’s recent ratings success to original content and innovation, which help them reach the evolving Hispanic audience, including millennials.

For example, the network has launched “Telemundo Súper Series,” shows that differ from traditional telenovelas in that they have fewer episodes, higher-end production and pumped-up action. Súper series El Señor de los Cielos recently launched its second season and, to help audience members catch up, the network released a comic book summarizing season one as well as a digital push preceding the premiere.

“When you try to do something different at a high-quality level, I think Telemundo tends to win," Silberwasser said, "and I think the audience is able to see a shift in the marketplace right now."

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

New York – Content for digital short-form and long-form shows is increasingly coming from the gaming and social communities, with a growing list of content creators emerging from online sources like Instagram, Vine and similar sources, a panel of experts said at a Next TV Summit panel session Wednesday.

While online video sites like You Tube are still a major source to find talent, Maker Studios vice president of distribution and strategic partnership Kendra Johnson said during the Next TV session “The New Studios,” that her company is increasingly finding content creators trough other sources.

“Across our creative community we are active in discovering voices as they arise,” Johnson said during the discussion moderated by B&C deputy editor Mike Malone.

She added that Maker, which was purchased by the Walt Disney Co. last year, also casts from traditional sources – Maker is working with actor James Franco’s production company on a project as well as with alumni from Saturday Night Live and ABC sitcom Modern Family.

“Consumers are not consuming one type of content,” Johnson said.

New Form Digital, which recently signed a deal to provide six short-form digital series to Verizon Communications’ go90 mobile video service, also taps talent from several different sources, including You Tube. Senior vice president of development JC Cangilla said that typically New Form signs talent that already has a following on social media.

“We tend to respond to things people have put up and that have been tested,” Cangilla said.

The types of content being produced runs the gamut from horror and drama to comedy and reality shows, but another emerging genre and one that lends itself well to the digital platform is interactive content. At Interlude, a company that specializes in interactive digital content, president and chief operating officer Jim Spare said distributors are learning a lot from the gaming community.

Interlude adds interactive capabilities to programming allowing viewers to directly engage with shows, whether it is by answering questions or choosing specific camera shots and angles to actually determining which direction a particular story will go. Spare said the inclusion of interactivity drives deeper engagement with viewers – in one two-and-a-half minute short that allows the viewer to direct how the main character reacts to a potential home invasion, viewers spend an average of 7 minutes clicking on different outcomes.

“We’re finding that young audiences love the idea of being able to talk to a video and interact with a video,” Spare said. “It’s truly personal and it’s driving retention and engagement rates.”

While the interactive element seems to take some of the creative control out of the content creators’ hands, the panelists said that isn’t the case because the creator defines each scenario. And it provides them with information regarding what their viewers like to see.

“We’re finding a class of creator that loves the notion of enabling the experience,” Spare said.

That mountain of data also is valuable to advertisers.  

“This is very valuable to advertisers and brands trying to deliver a message,” Spare added. “There are incredible applications in testing and being able to test consumer reaction to different choices for talent and story lines.”

Content creators also are becoming increasingly savvy regarding finances, especially since larger companies like AT&T, Verizon, Disney and AOL have begun to invest in the space. But the new breed of content creator isn’t just biding their time before they strike a big network deal.

Johnson said it depends on the creators – some are looking to a network or feature film deal as the ultimate goal, while others would rather keep control of their content and maintain a more personal connection to their audience.

Cangilla agreed.

“The talent class we tend to work with are entertainers and entrepreneurs; they understand the economics of the business of the business,” Cangilla said. “In some cases the TV deal would be most lucrative, but in other cases it would be the digital one.”

New York -- During a keynote appearance at Wednesday's Next TV Summit at NYC Television Week, Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch said the Dish-owned "skinny bundle" service expects to add broadcast networks to its lineup, but not in the short term. "It's a complicated market," he said during a wide-ranging discussion. "To some extent, [networks] aren't ready."

Lynch noted that they hoped to eventually have the local stations but stressed they didn’t want to create a bundle that was too expensive by paying too much for them and that in many ways the broadcast community wasn’t ready to negotiate those kinds of deals.

“ABC can’t do it,” meaning negotiate a national agreement because of all the local affiliate agreements, Lynch said. “Over time, local is something we will offer. But to a certain extent they are not ready”

He also stressed that the deal with broadcasters or any other programmer would have to be priced appropriately. “We are not going to create a bundle that will cause us to miss market,” by paying too much for channels, he said. “We could have launched the service a few years ago but it would have been a big pay TV bundle” and that would have missed the market they were targeting.

Lynch made the comments during a keynote at the Next TV event during NYC Television Week hosted by Multichannel News and B&C that was moderated by Jeff Baumgartner, Editor, Next TV, and Technology Editor at Multichannel News.

During the session, Lynch noted that “pay TV is at a tipping point,” and discussed the experience since the service launched, making a number of important points about how “skinny bundles” and OTT subscription services like Sling TV were moving into the market.

Lynch explained that the pay TV industry was mature but had not seen a segmentation of its services and that were was very little difference in services between major providers. “A lot of that is driven by programming agreements,” he said. “They are required to offer the same channels” and “there is very little difference in term of how it is packaged and priced.”

Services like Sling TV were starting to segment the market to “reach a growing segment of viewers” who found traditional pay TV service too expensive or not mobile enough.

“Over the air is growing and the growth in antenna sales is correlated with cord cutting,” he said.

Lynch provided no subscriber numbers but said Sling TV was very happy with the growth. “When we created the service a year ago we weren’t sure how much demand there would be for a service that didn’t have the major broadcasters, but we now know there is a lot of demand,” he said.

Since launch, Lynch noted that the subscriber profile had remained generally consistent, attracting cord cutters, cord nevers and a surprising number of people who already have a pay TV service. “Why they do it I don’t know….but it is not an insignificant segment,” he said.

The service over-indexed among millennials but it was mostly gaining traction among those in the 23 or 24 year group and older. “Before 22, they are not interested in pay TV,” he said.

Since launch, Lynch noted that one of the key priorities has been to expand the on demand portion of the offering and that this content was likely to become more important in the future. “We now have tens of thousands of on-demand titles,” he said, adding that live viewing would increasingly be on sports and other important live events.

One of the other priorities continued to be on the technical infrastructure and on improving addressable-advertising capabilities. “It is a big opportunity,” he said, noting the higher CPMs for targeted advertising.

The initial focus, however has been a created a good experience for dynamically inserted adds. “We are really at beginning,” he said. “It has been one of toughest things technically” they’ve faced.

When asked about the FCC proposal to classify over-the-top providers as MVPDs so they would have better access to content, Lynch expressed mixed feelings. “It could be a benefit but I worry about unintended consequences.”

Lynch noted that he joined Dish and EchoStar six years ago and that the Sling TV services has been in the works for some time. After being able to negotiate deals with programmers, the company switched its focus and launched an OTT service of international channels about three and a half years ago.

The realities of scripted TV show pitching, evaluating and promoting were shared with The Content Show attendees during a lively opening panel that followed a keynote conversation with Donny Deutsch Wednesday.

Pearlena Igbokwe (pictured, right), executive vice president of drama development for NBC Entertainment, had a popularly-tweeted comment when she estimated she heard 400 show pitches from July to October yearly. Of those, perhaps 50 scripts are ordered into development, eight shows gets pilot orders and four get series orders. “It’s quite a lottery,” she said.

Igbokwe, a former Showtime content executive, said broadcast networks are under competitive pressure to produce shows that don’t feel like traditional network fare, and don’t have the luxury some streamed series seem to have of audiences watching four or five episodes before deciding they like a show. NBC needs “eyepopping” first, second and third episodes “because every week you need to earn the viewer’s attention.”

Kim Rosenblum, EVP of digital, creative and marketing at Viacom-owned TV Land, said that network has evolved the way it approaches and markets original series from when Hot In Cleveland launched in 2010 and Younger debuted in 2015. TV Land is more willing now to make deals that have somewhat less favorable economics for the network in the first season -- provided the first season sets the stage for continued success in later seasons, she said.

Network marketers also must constantly go through social media sites looking for comments about a show and communicate with those fans and create a fear of missing out that will keep drawing in new viewers, Rosenblum said. “We go and read every comment on every social platform and find where the fans are and then just start to talk to them directly to try to snowball it, to try to get those people to talk about it, to bring up the next week and the next week,” she said. 

Shows also hope their stars will exploit social followings to help bring in viewers, panelists (questioned by Leftfield Entertainment CEO Brent Montgomery) said. Younger’s Hilary Duff, for example, can help by promoting the show, but then the network has to work and build on those new leads, not rely on Duff to do all the marketing, Rosenblum said.

Lisa Honig, senior EVP, program distribution, The Americas, for FremantleMedia (pictured, left), agreed that shows need to have buzz as part of the package and get talent to commit to help marketing. Chris Donahue, president of Paulist Productions, said original ideas are still paramount: his studio successfully pitched a series about cryogenics and what happens when frozen people come back to life.

Igbokwe stressed that the real key to successful scripted shows is great storytelling.

The Content Show continues today and tomorrow at The Park Central Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

New York — In this age of “Peak TV” and abundant scripted content, Donny Deutsch is not worried about viewers not finding Donny!, his upcoming comedy series on USA Network, or any other quality show.

“I can’t think of any compelling piece of creative where the reason it didn’t work is people didn’t have (enough) time,” Deutsch said Wednesday at The Content Show, part of NYC Television Week. “Like everything else, the good stuff will find a way... The audience finds them. It’s great news for content providers — if you build it they will come.”

During his conversation at the Park Central Hotel, the former CNBC talk show host and advertising exec talked about the getting into the scripted game, producing the show and the coming up with its feminist backbone and advertising strategy.

Deutsch said he was looking for a new challenge in the years following the end of Big Idea With Donny Deutsch’s run on CNBC. It dawned on him that people have one persona on camera, and another off. He made a pilot and USA bought it.

“They really wanted what they bought,” Deutsch said. “This is their big fourth quarter push. They’re really behind it.”

He likens Donny!, which premieres Nov. 10, to Donald Trump, as an amalgam of scripted, reality, politics and news. “The lines are blurred,” he said.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

This week’s Hispanic Summit will focus on the shifting priorities within the expanding business of Hispanic television. One of those priority shifts should be toward Hispanic viewing of over-the-top services, according to several recent reports.

While Hispanics continue to watch traditional television in big numbers, averaging 112 hours a month watching live and DVR time-shifted TV in the second quarter — behind only African-Americans — those numbers were down by five hours from the same period in 2014, according to Nielsen’s Total Audience report.

What is increasing is Hispanics’ use of OTT services such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon. Among Hispanic TV viewers, 30% of their weekly viewing is of content from OTT services , nearly double the 18% just two years ago, according to Horowitz Research’s recent “Focus Latino” report.

Moreover, nearly half of Hispanic Internet users with a multichannel subscription feel that viewing TV content over the Internet is as easy as watching a multichannel service, Horowitz said.

Also, Hispanics tend to binge-view while accessing OTT services, a Thinknow Research study said. That study reported that 40% of Hispanic OTT viewers prefer to watch three or more episodes of their favorite shows back-to-back compared to just 29% of non-Hispanic viewers.

That’s despite the relatively sparse amount of content targeted to Hispanic viewers on OTT services — and in particular Spanish-language programming — compared with the numerous Hispanic-targeted English and Spanish-language cable networks available on MVPD lineups.

There has been some efforts to reach Hispanics in the digital space: Hulu has been very aggressive in developing original Hispanic-themed projects such as scripted drama series East Los High (pictured).

DirecTV’s Yaveo OTT service has also looked to serve Hispanic consumers seeking Spanish-language programming without the need for a cable-TV subscription.

Still, Hispanic increases in OTT viewing haven’t correlated with a significant increase in cable cord cutting. Horowitz reported that 89% of Hispanics with access to OTT SVOD services also have a multichannel service, providing opportunities for all content providers to reach a very influential and growing customer base.

The third annual NYC Television Week, presented by Broadcasting & Cable, MultichannelNews, Next TV and Ratings Intelligence, is back Oct. 20-22 with top executives discussing the hottest topics in the industry.

Here are some of the highlights of the upcoming five events: Advanced Advertising, the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame, The Content Show, the Next TV Summit and the 13th annual Hispanic Television Summit.

• Advanced Advertising kicks off the events on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Headline keynote speakers are NBCUniversal chairman of ad sales and client partnerships Linda Yaccarino and Group M global chairman Irwin Gottlieb. Panel sessions include deep dives into programmatic advertising, new measurement metrics and addressable advertising.

• 25th Anniversary Broadcasting & CableHall of Fame is the evening of Oct. 20 at the Waldorf Astoria. This year’s gala will be co-hosted by TV legend Regis Philbin, ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir and NBC Today co-host Hoda Kotb. Inductees include The Walt Disney Co. chairman and CEO Robert Iger, Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries, Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber, Dr. Phil McGraw and Today co-host Kathy Lee Gifford. The late National Football League Hall of Famer and broadcast legend Frank Gifford also will be honored for lifetime achievement.

• The Content Show is Oct. 21-22 at the Park Central Hotel, with an opening keynote from Deutsch Inc. chairman emeritus Donny Deutsch in conversation with B&C editor Dade Hayes. Wendy Williams Show host Wendy Williams and Debmar-Mercury co-presidents Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein will participate in a keynote Q&A taking a closerlook at the syndication giant. Thursday’s keynote Q&A will feature a discussion with DiscoveryCommunications’s Henry Schleiff, group president for Investigation Discovery, Military Channel and Destination America, led by B&C consulting editor Melissa Grego.

• Next TV Summit at the Park Central on Oct. 21 boasts keynotes from Jonathan Murtaugh, Facebook and Instagram U.S. head of industry for film and television and head of the L.A. office, as well as a talk with Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch. In the afternoon keynote session, United Talent Agency managing director Jay Sures offers a Hollywood insider’s take on over-the-top video and the overall direction of the television market.

• The Hispanic Television Summit is scheduled for Oct.22 at the Park Central, with an opening keynote session with Group M Multicultural president Gonzalo Del Fa and B&C and Multichannel News editorial director Mark Robichaux. Telemundo president Luis Silberwasserwill be interviewed by Noticiero Telemundo co-anchor María Celeste Arrarás about the challenge of creating new content. Hispanic television host, singer and actress Lucero will be presented the award for Achievement in Hispanic Television, while Verizon vice president of cultural engagement Javier Farfan will accept the Leadership in HispanicTelevision award for his company.

For more about New York City Television Week, please visit nyctelevisionweek.com and follow the hashtag on Twitter, #NYCTVWK.

NEW YORK -- Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News today said  that Gonzalo del Fa, president, GroupM Multicultural, and Gary R. Stevenson, president and managing director, MLS Business Ventures, have been named opening and closing keynote speakers for NewBay Media’s 13th Annual Hispanic Television Summit. The premier one-day conference covering the business of Hispanic television in the United States, Latin America and around the world is set for Thursday, Oct. 22, at the Park Central Hotel New York.  

This year, for the first time, the Hispanic Television Summit will be one of the signature events that make up New York City Television Week, which also includes The Next TV Summit & Expo, The Content Show, Advanced Advertising and the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame.

“The Hispanic Television Summit is always one of our most popular conferences of the year,” Louis Hillelson, VP/Group Publisher, Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News, said. “By bringing it under the New York City Television Week umbrella, our attendees will be a wide cross-section of the general market with the Hispanic television communities. This will bring added value to their participation. It’s a great opportunity for anyone looking to learn from each other, network and be inspired.”

Hillelson continued, “Our keynoters represent two areas of greatest interest to our attendees, one being ad-spend targeting Hispanic viewers, and the other being the changes affecting the immediate future of televised soccer.”

Delivering the opening keynote, del Fa will discuss “Turning Loyal Viewers into Your New Customers.” As president of GroupM Multicultural, del Fa leads all aspects of the multicultural media and marketing efforts initiated by GroupM agencies including Mindshare, MEC, Mediacom and Maxus. Under del Fa’s leadership, GroupM Multicultural handles more than $600 million in billings from clients such as Nestle, AT&T, Unilever, Anheuser Busch, Mars, Colgate, Lancôme, Abbott, Netflix, Church & Dwight, Subway, Kimberly Clark and KFC. del Fa joined GroupM in 2003 as Managing Director of MEC Argentina. 

Last year, MLS received the Leadership in Hispanic Television Award at this summit, so it is fitting that Stevenson’s closing keynote will be “A Look Ahead at the Business of Soccer on Television.” An innovator in sports marketing and media strategies for more than 35 years, Stevenson was named president and managing director of MLS Business Ventures in 2013.  Stevenson oversees the commercial side of MLS, which includes Soccer United Marketing (SUM), media/broadcasting, club services, international, marketing, content and digital. 

In addition to launching and building OnSport, a highly successful sports marketing and television consulting firm in 1997 and selling it to the Wasserman Media Group in 2007, Stevenson has served as a senior-level executive at the NBA and PGA Tour. He also was the COO and oversaw the launch of two television networks, The Golf Channel in 1995 and the Pac-12 Networks in 2012.

The Hispanic Television Summit is the premier event for those in the business of television for Hispanic audiences and covers programming, advertising, online distribution technology and this year will especially feature the genre of telenovelas. Over 500 executives attend from the U.S., Latin America, Europe and other territories, representing broadcasters, pay TV providers, over-the-top digital providers, programming networks, production companies, advertisers, ad agencies, technology suppliers, research firms and investors.

The Summit includes the presentation of the Leadership in Hispanic Television Award as well as the Award for Achievement in Hispanic Television. Previous recipients of the Leadership Award include Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Dish Latino and Major League Soccer, and the Achievement Award past recipients include on-air personalities Don Francisco, Andrés Cantor, and Cristina Saralegui; network news anchors Jorge Ramos, Maria Celeste Arrarás, María Elena Salinas and José Díaz-Balart; sports celebrity Oscar De La Hoya and advertising executives Monica Gadsby of SMG and Edgar Sandoval of P&G.

The Summit is produced by The Schramm Marketing Group, based in New York City. To inquire about speaking opportunities, contact Joseph Schramm at 212-983-0219 or jschramm@schrammnyc.com. For registration, please contact Rebecca Shottland at rshottland@nbmedia.com or 917-281-4782. For sponsorship opportunities, please contact Charlie Weiss at cweiss@nbmedia.com or 212-378-0478.