AT&T reported lower earnings as it lost TV subscribers and costs at its WarnerMedia unit rose as it invested in its HBO Max streaming product.

Net income fell 24% to $2.8 billion, or 39 cents a share,  from $3.7 billion, or 50 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenues fell 5% to $42.3 billion. The company estimated that COVID-19 and foreign currency shifts cost it $2.8 billion in revenue.

AT&T said the combination of traditional HBO and the new HBO Max service grew their combined domestic subscriber base to 38 million, topping the company’s year-end target of 36 million. Worldwide, the HBO brands have 57 million subscribers.

Last quarter, AT&T said it had 36.3 million U.S. subscribers to HBO Max and HBO as of June 30. It said  and that HBO Max had about 3 million retail subscribers and 4.1 million subscribers had activated Max accounts.

The company added that HBO Max activations doubled from second-quarter levels and that the ad-supported version of HBO Max was “on track” to launch in 2021. 

The company said it lost 590,000 TV subscribers, despite gains with its AT&T TV product.

“We delivered a solid quarter with good subscriber momentum in our market focus areas of connectivity and software-based entertainment,” said CEO John Stankey, 

“Wireless postpaid growth was the strongest that it’s been in years with one million net additions, including 645,000 phones. We added more than 350,000 fiber broadband customers and are on track to grow our fiber base by more than 25% this year. And we continue to grow and scale HBO Max, with total domestic HBO and HBO Max subscribers topping 38 million — well ahead of our expectations for the full year,” Stankey said. “Our strong cash flow in the quarter positions us to continue investing in our growth areas and pay down debt. We now expect 2020 free cash flow of $26 billion or higher with a full-year dividend payout ratio in the high 50s%.”

Operating income at AT&T WarnerMedia unit fell 38.4% to $1.759 billion, with costs up at Turner and HBO and revenues dropping 10% to $7.514 billion.  The company said it lost $1.6 billion in revenue in the quarter because of COVID-19.

Turner operating income fell 31.1% to $1.019 billion as revenues rose 5.6% to $3.176 billion. Subscription revenue was down 4.5% to $1.84 billion and advertising revenue rose 18% to $1.077 billion.

HBO operating income dove 91.6% to $60 million, driven by a $600 million investment in HBO Max  as revenues fell 2.1% to $1.781 billion. Subscription revenues rose 5.9% while content revenue were down 45.1%

Warner Bros. operating income plunged 32.8% to $395 million as revenue plummeted 27.7% to $2.411 billion. Revenue from television product was down 34.4%

Advertising revenue at Xandr, now part of WarnerMedia, fell $1.4% to $497 million. Advertising for AT&T’s Entertainment group was down 3.1% to $408 million.

AT&T Entertainment group, which provides video, broadband and voice services, reported that operating income fell 28.1% to $779 million as revenues dropped 10.2% to $10.053 billion.

Revenue from video--including DirecTV and AT&T TV Now --was down 12.2% to $6.964 billion. Video connection fell 17.5 to 17.783 million.

AT&T’s wireless unit’s operating income fell 0.9% to $5.691 billion as revenue rose 1.1% to $17.894 billion, reflecting a 31.8% margin. Total mobility subscribers rose 8.9% to 176 million.

WarnerMedia said it has named former Turner executive Molly Battin as chief corporate marketing and brand strategy officer at the parent unit. She will report to WarnerMedia EVP, corporate marketing and communications Keith Cocozza.

In her new role, Battin will lead corporate brand strategy and brand management across WarnerMedia and will be responsible for coordinated portfolio marketing, agency management, cross promotion planning, media production and presentation services. Battin, who joined Turner in 2000, was most recently EVP and global chief communications and corporate marketing officer for the programmer.

“Molly is a brilliant marketing strategist with a proven track record for creating and evolving global brands,” Cocozza said in a press release. “I look forward to working closely with her as we develop a comprehensive corporate identity for WarnerMedia.”

Battin has held several positions at Turner, including chief brand strategy officer, chief media and business insights officer and general manager of upwave, the entertainment brand created by Turner to explore marketplace opportunities for health and lifestyle-themed digital and television content. She also served as senior vice president of brand development and digital platforms for TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and led domestic marketing for CNN, CNN Headline News and CNNfn as vice president of strategic marketing.

Before joining Turner, Battin was vice president of marketing for EzGov, Inc., an Atlanta-based e-Government company, and served in brand management for The Coca-Cola Company, and advertising account management at Bates USA and D’Arcy, Mathis, Benton, and Bowles, New York.

In the 10 months since AT&T’s megadeal to buy Time Warner closed — and a little more than a month after clearing the final regulatory hurdle for the transaction — WarnerMedia Group CEO John Stankey has spent most of his time dealing with organizational issues. Now, with most of the Time Warner old guard gone and the addition of some seasoned new blood, Stankey and his team face what has always been the primary job at hand: transforming the content industry as we know it.

It’s no small task. WarnerMedia, one of the largest content companies in the world with revenue last year of $18.9 billion and more than 30,000 employees, includes such iconic brands as HBO and the Turner networks. The deal that created the unit — AT&T’s $108.7 billion purchase of Time Warner Inc. last year — was one of the largest attempts by a telco to break into the media business ever. There is a lot to lose.

And with all that at stake, there are those who are skeptical that Stankey, the self-described Bell-head (a somewhat derogatory term for telecom executives weaned during the days of the old Bell System), is up for the job.

A native Californian — he was born in Los Angeles, the youngest of three children to an insurance underwriter father and a stay-at-home mother — Stankey, 56, graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 1985 with a degree in finance. In his high school days, the Eagle Scout worked at a local sporting goods store stringing tennis rackets. It was there, he told an LMU alumni publication, that he learned early on “how decisions are made on what you can and can’t do in a business.”

Shortly after graduating from Loyola, Stankey joined Pacific Bell, one of the original seven regional Bell operating companies, and by 1991 he had added an MBA from UCLA to his resume.

RELATED: AT&T's New World Order

Stankey, who was unavailable despite numerous requests to WarnerMedia to be interviewed for this article, seemed a natural for the phone company. Colleagues have called him a straightforward, no-nonsense manager, fiercely loyal to the brand and despite his physical presence — at 6 feet, 5 inches tall he reminds most who come in contact with him of a college football linebacker — a nice guy. Others have described him as rigid, stubborn and “personality-free.”

Rose Up the Ranks

Whatever the case, Stankey moved steadily up the telco ranks and has been one of the chief architects of AT&T’s media strategy. He led AT&T Entertainment Group after the telco purchased DirecTV in 2015, spearheading the launch of its first streaming video product (DirecTV Now) in 2016 and heading up the integration team after the purchase of Time Warner last year.

As CEO of WarnerMedia, Stankey has overseen a major restructuring at the programming unit, and is readying the division for its third streaming video launch in the fourth quarter of this year.

But to some people familiar with the company, that was the easy part. The pay TV landscape has changed dramatically in the past five years, with traditional distribution losing ground steadily to streaming services. Even DirecTV Now, which was on the fast track to 2.5 million customers two years ago, has dropped back considerably (it had 1.5 million customers as of March 31), as the realities of programming costs forced price increases for the service. DirecTV Now lost 267,000 customers in Q4 because of those increases and shed another 83,000 subscribers in Q1.

AT&T’s latest streaming offering is slated to debut at about the same time as a pair of offerings from two big rivals, Disney+ and Apple TV+. Although few details of the AT&T streaming product have been released — it will offer original and library content from HBO and Turner — most analysts expect it to be priced at about $15 per month, the same as its HBO Now offering and more than twice the $6.99 monthly charge for Disney+.

“Even if we can justify HBO’s existing premium price point of $14.99, with Disney+ in the marketplace at just $6.99, it would appear to make the launch of a premium-to-HBO-priced WarnerMediaFlix service challenging,” BTIG media analyst Richard Greenfield wrote in a blog post.

In a conference call with analysts to discuss its first-quarter results on April 24, AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson called the new streaming option, which he hinted would be described in more detail at a planned WarnerMedia Day in September or October, as a “thin client” aimed at lower-end satellite TV customers.

“Think of that as our satellite replacement product,” Stephenson said on the call. “This thin client gives us an opportunity to meet that low end with a better price point. That should start to moderate the subscriber losses and particularly as we get into 2020. We think this product is going to have a really good appeal for people who are down market, in terms of their expectations of digital pricing.”

Chernin Is a Sounding Board

Stankey isn’t flying blind through the media landscape. He has a trusted mentor in former News Corp. chief operating officer and Fox Group chairman and CEO Peter Chernin, now CEO of The Chernin Group. AT&T and Chernin founded internet video venture Otter Media in 2014 and the executive sold his controlling interest in Otter to AT&T in August.

Chernin, who has been a sounding board for Stankey, was unavailable for comment for this story. But he told The Hollywood Reporter last year that he expected the WarnerMedia CEO to focus on advanced advertising opportunities, beefing up on-demand and selling content to the right customers.

“I don’t think you’re going to see John trying to greenlight movies and looking at rough cuts,” Chernin told THR. “You’ll see him trying to unlock the opportunity.”

But not everyone is quite so convinced.

While Stankey may be the prototype telco executive — tough, rigid and numbers-focused — those traits don’t translate as well to the content business, where relationships between management and creatives are critical to success, said one media executive who asked not to be named.

“Now that they’re [AT&T] in the driver’s seat, it’s just a very bureaucratic culture driving a very entrepreneurial, freewheeling, personality-driven culture,” the media executive said. “I can’t see him [Stankey] engendering great morale, esprit de corps and creative juices.”

Stankey and Stephenson have focused heavily on driving more engagement in the media business, expanding the hours per week consumers spend watching its programming to hours per day.

Along those lines, AT&T consolidated its advanced-ad TV business, its data and analytics business and ad-tech company AppNexus into a new ad unit called Xandr in October. Former GroupM ad maven Brian Lesser, who was hired in 2017 to head up AT&T’s fledgling ad business, leads the Xandr unit. Those moves point to a strategy that is becoming increasingly reliant on targeted ads to make up for pressured affiliate-fee growth.

Some Bumpy Days Already

But there have been some missteps along the way. At a town hall meeting with HBO personnel last June, Stankey told the audience that it was going to be a “tough” year, and his attempt to jokingly compare the business to childbirth fell flat with many employees.

There have been layoffs, and in March two of WarnerMedia’s most senior and prominent executives, HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler and Turner president David Levy, resigned. And last month, in a somewhat embarrassing turn of events, AT&T ousted Warner Bros. studios chief Kevin Tsujihara just a few days after adding to his responsibilities — he was given oversight of a new kids’ division, in addition to his other duties — and shortly after a sex scandal came to light.

Tsujihara admitted to having a sexual relationship several years ago with an actress he had tried to get roles in Warner Bros. productions, allegations AT&T had been previously aware of, investigated and found no impropriety with after the actress denied the charges. But when the accusations came to light again, AT&T changed its tune.

“Kevin acknowledges that his mistakes are inconsistent with the company’s leadership expectations and could impact the company’s ability to execute going forward,” Stankey said in a statement at the time.

Tsujihara was the last of the old Time Warner guard to leave the company since the AT&T acquisition. First to depart was Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes, followed by former Turner CEO John Martin, Plepler and Levy.

“If you’re Time Warner, your original power structure is gone,” said the media executive who asked not to be named. “I think it’s going to be a tough time, because they [AT&T] don’t understand that business. They do not understand what they have done.”

Under the new WarnerMedia structure, HBO and Turner will be subsumed, along with news and sports, into the larger unit, headed by Stankey and former NBCUniversal and Showtime executive Robert Greenblatt. Greenblatt, a Chernin protegé, has a strong track record in content development: he greenlighted shows like Dexter, Nurse Jackie and Weeds for Showtime and This Is Us for NBC.

The new WarnerMedia structure is said by some in the company to be a lot like NBCUniversal Entertainment — more strategic and designed around particular areas of business instead of having separate silos of distribution and revenue for each division — which should suit Greenblatt well.

But according to people familiar with both companies, the climate around HBO and the former Turner networks is understandably edgy. Employees worry their jobs may either be eliminated or transformed beyond recognition.

For some, the fear isn’t that there is going to be a huge round of layoffs. That already happened to some extent back in June 2018, when AT&T first closed the Time Warner deal. Rather, they are worried about what comes next. Turner on March 29 offered a buyout package to employees at least 55 years of age and with 10 years or more at the company. It will take some time to see how many workers accept and whether further layoffs are needed.

“I think everybody is anxious and looking toward what does the road ahead look like, what’s the direction,” one person familiar with the company said. “You have the top executives now in place, but what does it mean now for the next few layers and how will it all work and be integrated?”

That person added that most employees don’t seem to be worried about Stankey and his leadership style for now, although they believe the CEO will be more hands-on than former Time Warner chief Bewkes. For the present, they’re more concerned with how changes will affect them personally.

“‘The next question for every single employee is always the same: ‘What does it mean for me?’ ” said the person familiar with both Turner and HBO. “Sometimes people get too caught up in, ‘If this person is leaving, it’s going to mean a mass exodus.’ Plepler is a great guy. Levy is a great guy. But you’re not going to see a tremendous amount of people leaving just because the two of them left. If people elect to leave, that’s going to be one of many contributing factors.”

The Plepler and Levy departures may have more of an impact on talent at the networks, some people familiar with Turner and HBO say. With competitors like Netflix, Amazon, Apple and others offering established producers hundreds of millions of dollars to defect and develop original shows for their respective services, loyalty could be a deciding factor. And Plepler in particular cultivated an unprecedented devotion from artists.

An example: In a late February issue of Vanity Fair, The Wire creator David Simon remembered pitching two shows to HBO, one about federal housing policy and one about prostitution. Plepler picked the housing policy series — which became 2015’s Show Me a Hero.

“It kind of made me love him more,” Simon told Vanity Fair. Simon later also produced the prostitution series for HBO, The Deuce, which debuted in 2017 and has been picked up for two more seasons.

Needs Content Creators’ Support

That kind of relationship between artists and network brass becomes increasingly important in today’s TV landscape. While AT&T reportedly increased HBO’s original content budget by about 50% — it is now in the range of $2.5 billion a year — that is still dwarfed by the $13 billion Netflix and the $5 billion Amazon are expected to spend on programming.

Sources confirmed reports that Stankey had HBO president of programming Casey Bloys — who had been Plepler’s chief lieutenant since 2016 — call agents and producers to let them know he wasn’t going anywhere after the HBO CEO announced his resignation.

Bloys, who started at HBO in 2004, is quickly becoming the most irreplaceable executive in the WarnerMedia lineup. As president of programming he has greenlighted hits like Big Little Lies, The Night Of, Insecure and others. As one media executive said, if HBO hasn’t given Bloys a new deal to make sure he sticks around, it had better do it soon.

At the same time, AT&T has about $2.5 billion in synergies to extract from the former Time Warner in the next few years, must service about $180 billion in debt (having committed to paring down about $20 billion of that total this year) and still has to ensure that its $14 billion annual stock dividend remains intact.

MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett said in a research note that even though AT&T brass have acknowledged they don’t have the same media experience and promised not to interfere with Time Warner culture, there is a huge burden on the telco to meet the financial and strategic synergies it has said are inherent in the deal.

“They can’t just ‘not even try,’ ” Moffett wrote.

In the end, it will all come down to how the two disparate corporate cultures ultimately mesh.

Attempts to create telco-media companies in the past have “all ended badly” according to Moffett, who has first-hand experience as an adviser in attempts by Baby Bells NYNEX and Bell Atlantic to join hands back in the 1990s. Others are cautiously optimistic.

“Everyone’s hoping that they will find a way to get what they need in terms of more production without diluting HBO’s brand,” Simon told The Economist earlier this month. “It’s going to require a lot of finesse.”

In the wake of a big regulatory victory clearing its purchase of Time Warner, AT&T unveiled a major restructuring that sent two well-respected executives packing, could lead to “significant layoffs” and sets the media giant on a path lined with uncertainty as it tries to reinvent its content business.

AT&T seemed to close out February on a high note, with a federal appeals court rejecting the Justice Department’s second attempt to block the Time Warner merger on Feb. 26. But by Monday, the company had a new head for its WarnerMedia division, industry veteran Robert Greenblatt, and lost two top executives, HBO CEO Richard Plepler and Turner president David Levy.

A third executive, Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara, who earlier last week was given added responsibilities in the new corporate structure, is on thin ice after a report surfaced that he had conducted an inappropriate sexual relationship with an actress whom he had pressured Warner casting directors to hire. AT&T said it is investigating the allegations.

AT&T made the Greenblatt hire official on March 4, naming him chairman of WarnerMedia and Direct To Consumer. AT&T plans to launch a third direct-to-consumer offering, in addition to DirecTV Now and AT&T Watch, by the end of the year.

AT&T named CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker chairman of WarnerMedia News & Sports, gave added global kids and young adult business responsibilities to Tsujihara and tapped Turner International president Gerhard Zeiler as WarnerMedia’s chief revenue officer.

AT&T Makes Its Mark

The moves were not entirely unexpected. AT&T had been hinting for months after it closed the Time Warner deal in July that its newly acquired content businesses were in need of an overhaul. At a town meeting with HBO employees in June, WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey told workers that the premium channel was in for “a tough year.”

AT&T has said that to compete in the new streaming video, skinny-bundle, on-demand media environment, WarnerMedia needs to drive engagement with consumers. Time Warner should harness the combined power of brands like Turner and HBO under one service to compete on a global scale with the likes of Netflix and Disney. The service, Stankey said, needed hours of engagement per day with consumers, not hours per week.

It will be up to Greenblatt, who has a strong media track record, to bring continuity and stability to the brands. He joined Showtime in 2003 and is credited with bringing in hits like Weeds, Nurse Jackie, Dexter and Shameless, leaving in 2011 to become head of Comcast’s NBC Entertainment. There, Greenblatt inherited a weakened primetime lineup but quickly led a turnaround with hits like The Voice, The Good Place and This Is Us. He left NBC in September.

The departure of Plepler and Levy was nonetheless shocking, given the two executives have had an enviable string of successes at their respective businesses. Plepler, who had been at HBO since 1992, became CEO of the premium channel in 2012 and launched several iconic hits, including Game of Thrones. He has also cultivated a strong relationship with top talent like Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese, The Sopranos creator David Chase, The Wire creator David Simon and GoT writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Losing Plepler could have an impact on HBO’s ability to attract and keep talent.

Levy took the helm of Turner in 2013 after several successful years at Turner Sports, helping to engineer its landmark deal for “March Madness” — the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament — with CBS in 2010.

There are likely to be more defections in the wake of the shakeup and reports said that there will be “significant layoffs” at both HBO and Turner as AT&T tries to lower costs.

In a blog post, MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett said the changes at AT&T are a double-edged sword. On one hand, both Turner and HBO generated tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in excess costs.

“The glass-half full version is that Time Warner needed to be shaken up,” Moffett wrote.

The glass-half empty view, according to Moffett, is that WarnerMedia has set the stage for a major talent drain at the company, just when experienced hands are needed the most.

Broadband providers and content companies are teaming up on a digital media campaign (#LeadWithMore) to mark the 40th anniversary of Women in Cable Telecommunications. The companies are committing more than $6 million in airtime to the campaign, as well as social media support.

Comcast NBCUniversal, Cox Communications, Discovery, Inc., Spectrum and Turner joined with WICT to announce the campaign at the National Press Club Monday (March 4) in Washington, with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Michael O'Rielly scheduled to be on hand to recognize the effort.

WICT unveiled a PSA, backed by those companies and "designed to build awareness of the vast career opportunities available for women in the media industry, specifically in technology, science and engineering roles."

The PSA highlights the following points:

• "Companies with women in top management have higher staff morale (Harvard Business Review).
• "Gender diversity fosters greater innovation (Pfizer and AstraZeneca).
• "Gender diverse companies are more profitable than their competition (McKinsey and Company).
• "Across the board, women in leadership roles enhance a company's performance (Peterson Institute for International Economics)."

“At a time when we can all recognize that time’s up, there’s truly no better time than now to make diversity and inclusion a central part of a competitive business strategy," said WICT Global Chair Marva Johnson.

The #LeadwithMore campaign began Monday (March 4) and continues through June 4.

In his remarks, Chairman Pai borrowed from "one of the greatest female characters ever on cable"--Mad Men's Peggy Olson. "During a job interview," he said, "a male candidate for a writing position once disrespected Peggy, assuming she was a secretary. Peggy replied simply and accurately: "I am the person you need to impress right now.' Like Peggy Olson, WICT demands our attention and deserves our respect."The chairman provided some supporting material: "First, WICT opens doors. Noted television writer Nell Scovell has said that the lack of gender diversity in parts of the media and tech sectors is 'not a pipeline problem. It’s a broken doorbell problem. There’s so much talent that’s on the doorstep ringing the bell. And no one’s opening the door.' For 40 years, you’ve been working to fix that doorbell in the cable industry.  "Second, WICT develops talent. A lot of people may get a foot in the door. But they may not know how to walk all the way in, even with a lot of hard work and aptitude. WICT’s work to create mentoring opportunities helps women turn potential into power. "Third, WICT creates role models. When you open doors for women in the cable industry, and then enable their talents to shine so they can rise to leadership positions, it has a ripple effect far beyond the careers of the women you touch directly.  When talented young women see people who look like themselves holding senior positions in the cable business, they are more likely to see those jobs as a possibility for themselves."

Having marketed itself as a virtual MVPD focused on sports programming, start-up fuboTV announced an important acquisition Wednesday, Turner Networks.

The deal with Turner’s corporate parent, AT&T and its newly christened WarnerMedia division, brings TNT, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, truTV, TCM and HLN to fuboTV’s $45-a-month base package. Boomerang and CNN International are available in fubo’s $50-a-month Extra package, which includes more than 90 channels.

Related: FuboTV Poaches Warner and Tidal Execs for Engagement, Product Design

With the addition of TNT and TBS comes national coverage of the NBA, Major League Baseball, pro golf and NCAA March Madness.

The fuboTV base tier has now grown to include 75 channels. Still missing, of course, is a deal with Disney for the most expensive channel in the bundle, ESPN and its associated networks.

“With today’s launches, fuboTV is hands down the best choice for fans to stream the live sports, entertainment and news programming they demand,” said Ben Grad, fuboTV head of content strategy and acquisition. “Adding Turner Sports’ world-class programming builds upon our heritage in soccer while expanding our strong sports offering with more MLB, NBA, PGA and college sports. Plus, the addition of Turner’s iconic news, entertainment and kids brands will continue to drive engagement with viewers, while reinforcing our commitment to offering a premium, high quality cable replacement.”

FuboTV’s latest programming expansion comes after the start-up announced a $75 million funding round in April, led by AMC Networks and 21st Century Fox. 

Turner has tapped former AT&T executive Peter Knag as EVP and chief financial officer, reporting to WarnerMedia CFO and Turner administrative officer Pascal Desroches, who was elevated to that position shortly after the merger of AT&T and Time Warner Inc. was completed.

Related: AT&T Completes Time Warner Purchase

“This is an important time of transition for Turner, as the merger with AT&T will allow us to innovate even more quickly and create more value for fans, distributors, content creators and advertisers,” Desroches said in a statement. “Peter was instrumental during the integration process, and I am confident that he will continue to bring his expertise and leadership abilities to the Turner portfolio in this role.”

Knag was previously the vice president of AT&T merger planning, leading financial planning and analysis for the AT&T-Time Warner integration process. Prior to that role, he was managing director of corporate development for AT&T. Prior to joining AT&T, Knag worked for Lehman Brothers and First Albany Corp.

For AT&T and Time Warner, now comes the hard part.

In the months leading toward U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon’s rejection of the federal government’s attempt to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger, both companies made a lot of promises. Now, with the $108.7 billion deal having closed last Thursday (June 14), they will have to make good on them.

On June 12, Judge Leon rejected the U.S. Department of Justice’s claims that the deal was anticompetitive, calling into question the DOJ’s math and its assertions that the combined company would restrict access to programming or raise prices.

He also attempted to nip any thoughts by the government of appealing his decision, adding any moves toward a stay would “cause irreparable harm to the defendants in general and AT&T in specific” and would be a “manifestly unjust outcome of this case.” The DOJ agreed, but still has the right to appeal.

Related: AT&T, Time Warner Cleared to Merge

Agreeing to Arbitration

Though Judge Leon imposed no conditions on the deal, AT&T and Time Warner pledged a few things they hoped would smooth the approval path. Perhaps the pledge with the biggest impact across the industry was the promise to offer “baseball-style” arbitration in carriage disputes between its networks, such as TNT, TBS, CNN and Cartoon Network, and other distributors.

In baseball-style arbitration, a third party arbitrator receives sealed proposals from both parties in the dispute, and after a hearing selects one of those proposals without modification. During the arbitration period, no networks could be blacked out.

AT&T-Time Warner had promised to extend the arbitration offer for seven years after the deal closed. According to AT&T, the arbitration offer still stands.

The American Cable Association, which was against the merger, said although the arbitration offer is flawed — it doesn’t include HBO — it is an essential part of the deal.

“If there is any saving grace in the Court’s opinion, it is that the Court recognized that the offer made by AT&T-Time Warner (via Turner Broadcasting) to agree to commercial arbitration to settle program access disputes ‘will have real-world effects,’ helping to prevent ‘new’ AT&T from raising prices to its rivals,” the ACA said in a statement.

AT&T made some other promises for after the deal closing, including launching a sports-free video bundle that will cost $15 per month for non-wireless customers, but will be free to AT&T Wireless subscribers with unlimited data plans. AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said the service, called AT&T Watch, would include Turner channels and others, but would only come to life if the Time Warner merger were approved.

AT&T also promised to offer a broadband-delivered DirecTV product, priced at between $80 and $90 per month, but details on that product were sketchy. Still, analysts saw AT&T Watch — and the telco’s aggressive discounting strategies (wireless customers get the $35 DirecTV Now package for $10 per month) — as a critical look into how AT&T views the content business going forward.

Related: AT&T to Introduce Broadband-Delivered OTT DirecTV Product

Bundles and Other Promises

In a blog titled “AT&T Wants to Give Video Away for Free,” BTIG Media analyst Rich Greenfield wrote that creating another sports-free bundle is nothing new.

“What makes AT&T Watch so significant is that AT&T is planning to give this package of video channels to AT&T wireless unlimited plan subscribers at no cost,” Greenfield wrote, adding that with an estimated 15 million AT&T Wireless customers on unlimited data plans, uptake should be high.

All of these moves appear to be in line with what Stephenson has been saying all along — the days of high-priced, fat packages of linear TV are over.

“If you’d asked me seven years ago what this world would look like today, I would have missed it so far,” Stephenson said during the April DOJ trial, according to a court transcript. “The need for people, for content creators, to go through cable companies and satellite companies to get their content to the consumer, that is a thing of the past.”

While networks fret that they’ve been abandoned by younger viewers, Nielsen said they’re watching linear TV content, but they’re not sitting in the living room while they're watching.

It’s true that younger viewers are among the most active video streamers, but the relatively affluent members of the millennial generation and Generation Z are also watching linear TV content in out-of-home locations, according to a new Nielsen report.

With Nielsen measuring out of home viewing more thoroughly, and more ad buyers accepting out-of-home viewing among the impressions they pay for, the finding could mean extra dollars for TV networks.

Related: Nielsen Offers Quicker Data on Out-of-Home Viewing

ESPN was one of the first networks to subscribe to Nielsen’s Out-of-Home reporting service and use those extra viewers in negotiations with advertisers. Adding viewing in bars, health clubs, offices and mass transit lifts ESPN’s viewership by 8.5%, the network said.

Turner and CBS have also signed up for Nielsen’s Out-of-Home service.

Related: ESPN Touts Effectiveness of Commercials Seen Out of Home

In its new report, Nielsen looked at all out-of-home viewing during 2017. It found that 39% of all out-of home-viewing came from Gen Z and millennials, or 14% more than their national in-home viewing.

News viewing is usually thought to be largely confined to older viewers, but when looking at out-of-home consumption, the share represented by millennials and Gen Zers nearly tripled. Gen X’s share was also higher out-of-home (23%) than in-home (18%).

Nearly half of the out-of-home viewing for sports came from Gen Z and millennials.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

When it comes to getting TV advertisers to shift their spending to data-targeted audience buying, Turner president David Levy isn’t messing around anymore.

Turner was one of the pioneers in offering data-based products and selling ads based on audiences rather than broad Nielsen demographic ratings, but audience buying remains a fraction of TV ad sales.

Levy wants that to change this upfront and is calling on all advertisers who haven’t yet adopted it to shift 5% of all their TV budgets — not just those spent at Turner — into audience-based buying.

The 2018 Upfront:Sales Execs Claim Strong Hand Going Into Upfront | Top Broadcast Sales Executives | Buyers Want Better Measurement, But Will Use Old Metrics in Upfront | The CW Brings a New Night to the Market | Pitching Hispanic Buying Power | Broadcast Networks Take Center Stage

Levy also wants to get rid of TV metrics that have been used since the 1950s. “You can start collecting your full benefits at 67 years old,” he said. “Nielsen’s TV metric is 67 years old. It’s time for the Nielsen TV metric to retire.”

Related: Fox, Turner, Viacom Team Up to Push Data-Driven TV Ads

The benefits to audience buying are clear to the hundreds of clients.

“We’re seeing incredible double-digit incremental results on return on investment,” he said.

If a consumer packaged goods client shifts 5% of its TV budget to audience-based targeting, it will see a 6% increase in return on investment compared to a 100% demo-based campaign. If 10% is audience-based, ROI rises 12%. If 20% is audience-based, ROI is 24% higher; and going 50% audience buying results in a 60% higher ROI.

On top of that, Turner has begun guaranteeing the outcomes of its audience-based campaigns. “And by the way, all of them have been successful,” Levy said.

There are benefits to TV networks in the shift to audience buying. For one thing, it eliminates dayparts. In TV, some advertisers won’t run ads in daytime or late night, even if that’s where their consumers are watching.

That doesn’t happen in the digital world that TV competes with. “You don’t say to Facebook, ‘Don’t put me on at 8 o’clock in the morning.’ When you log on to Facebook, or I log on to CNN.com, they don’t say what time did you log on, because I’m going to pay a different price for late night versus primetime,” Levy said.

Turner also gets a premium price. “If I’m guaranteeing you get those auto intenders, that’s going to be more expensive” than guaranteeing adults 18-49.

Levy stressed that he’s not looking for advertisers to just shift 5% of their spending at Turner.

Related: Attribution Data Points to TV Ads Driving More Sales

With Fox and Viacom, Turner is one of the founders of the OpenAP consortium, which aims to make audience buying easy by offering standardized definitions of audience segments and third-party post campaign reports.

“It’s an industry call-out,” he said. “This industry has to start spending 5% of their dollars on audience buying. As an industry we’re not getting enough clients to come in.

“This is the time, this is the year, when audience buying is a must. People are going to start getting left behind if they don’t start doing it.”

Levy’s 5% harkens back to the early days of cable, when ad agency Ted Bates decided to spend 5% of its TV budget on cable.

“Back then, people knew cable worked,” he said. “They knew it was going to help build reach and frequency. Now, if you want to build ROI, you need to get into audience-based targeting.”

Turner will launch the live sports streaming service Bleacher Report Live (B/R Live) on April 7.

Turner described the service as “the central hub for both the discovery and consumption of live sports content,” allowing fans to “find and watch their favorite sports content anywhere, anytime and on the screen of their choice.”

Starting this summer, B/R Live will implement flexible pricing options, with direct access to live games for purchase on an a la carte or subscription basis.

The platform helps users find and watch live sports with the ability to scroll through a feed of real-time sports events, and offers personalization features that aggregate live sports content.

Sports on the platform include soccer’s UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, NBA League Pass games, 65 NCAA Championships and the PGA Championship, as well as the National Lacrosse League, The Spring League, Red Bull Global Rallycross and World Arm Wrestling League.

“As viewing habits continue to evolve, Turner is well positioned to provide fans with direct access to premium live sports content that is highly coveted by audiences of scale, including a high concentration of millennials,” said David Levy, president of Turner. “When we first acquired Bleacher Report in 2012, we knew the definition of a network was changing and we anticipated a time when B/R would become a virtual network. Today is a significant step in that direction and we will fully leverage the reach of B/R and its deep connection with passionate sports fans to provide compelling experiences for them across this new, exciting platform.”

NBA League Pass will allow fans to purchase and watch live NBA games in progress at a reduced price.

“For us, it’s really a question of bringing fans what they want,” said Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, offering the example of a fan tuning in as a star player goes for a historic point total.

Lenny Daniels, president of Turner Sports, called B/R Live "a game-changing product that will serve as the ultimate destination for the sports fan."

On Thursday (March 15) CBS and Turner Sports tip-off their eighth year of March Madness coverage, airing and streaming live every game of the popular men’s college basketball tournament.

On TV, fans can watch every play of every game through a mix of channels including broadcast network CBS, as well as cable networks TNT, TBS and truTV. If you don’t want to scroll up and down the channel lineup looking for those channels, the NCAA March Madness Live streaming app will provide easy switching from game to game on a single screen and can be accessed on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Roku the Xbox One gaming console and other platforms.

RELATED: Turner's David Levy and CBS Sports' Sean McManus discuss coverage of the 2018 'March Madness' Tournament (Video)

If you’re at work, in the car or at the mall, the games are also available on your mobile phone via NCAA March Madness Live. For hardcore fans, Turner/CBS will offer Fast Break, a live streaming “whip-around” service that will switch between every tournament game during the first two days as well as provide real-time analysis and social media reaction.

With so many platforms available to watch the games, it’s hard to imagine a time when only one or two games were available to watch at a time during the first two rounds of the tournament. TNT and CBS have helped revolutionize the way viewers experience the tournament, according to sports consultant Lee Berke.

“The demand has always been there to see more and more of these games on a live, real-time basis on multiple platforms, but the technology hadn’t caught to the demand,” Berke said. “Finally the technology and the platforms have caught up to what the fans want to see.”

With this year’s version of March Madness generating $1.28 billion in advertising revenue – up 3.3% from last year according to Kantar Media – sponsors continue to make a fast break toward the tournament and are not overly concerned about potential audience splintering due to the various platform offerings.

“From a media company standpoint and from a sponsor standpoint nobody loses out,” Berke said. “All  the eyeballs and revenue are captured, and it leads to a great business model that works well for the rights holders, the sponsors and the sports fans.”

All that’s left is to sit back and watch the madness unfold.  

In a deal that will add hundreds of Hollywood classics to its library, FilmStruck, the Turner-owned SVOD service for film aficionados, has inked an exclusive streaming deal with Warner Bros. Digital Networks (WBDN) that adds hundreds of Hollywood classics to its subscription VOD library, including Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and An American in Paris. 

FilmStruck also announced TCM Select, a new curated collection of “iconic films from the Golden Age of Hollywood” that will be complemented by introductions from Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz, along with archival content and other bonus materials. FilmStruck is also pushing ahead with new curated themes around classic Hollywood such as Rogers & Astaire: The Complete Collection, Neo-Noir, and a Star of the Week theme featuring Bette Davis, Hepburn & Tracy and Ava Gardner, among others.

Amid the new content and distribution partnership, Warner Archive, an SVOD service that was launched in April 2013, will be sunset, and current customers will be transitioned to a FilmStruck subscription.

Warner Archive has been selling for $9.99 per month or $94.99 per year. By comparison, FilmStruck’s baseline service starts at $6.99 per month (and now includes TCM Select), or $10.99 per month or $99 per year when FilmStruck is combined with The Criterion Channel. FilmStruck is adding the new Warner Bros. titles without raising the price on the service

WBDN said the decision to team up with FilmStruck made sense on several levels as it mulled whether to have Warner Archive continue on as a stand-alone service.

“We had a decision to make -- we were either going to get really serious about it and put our iconic films to work and put more films on the service and build a better consumer experience or we were going to partner with Turner,” Craig Hunegs, president of WBDN and president, business strategy for Warner Bros. Television Group, said.

Following discussions with Turner, including with Coleman Breland, president of Turner Classic Movies, FilmStruck and Turner Content Experiences, “We realized that rather than having two services that overlap with each other [with respect to the fan base], let’s put them together and make on undeniable film service for fans who love the greatest movies…It made all the sense in the world to partner on this.”

“It is the absolutely right step to take,” added Breland, noting that FilmStruck has been building up its library through partnerships with a wide range of studios, including Sony, MGM, Lionsgate, Universal and Paramount.

The streaming content deal marks the latest partnership between Turner and Warner Bros.

Last month, they formed a joint venture that will extend FilmStruck internationally, starting in the U.K. They are also partnered on an OTT-delivered SVOD version of Boomerang that launched last April.

RELATED: FilmStruck Sets International Expansion

Breland said the new partnership will help FilmStruck adds films from the Golden Age of Hollywood and help it continue to focus on what it views as an underserved category of independent and arthouse films, and expand that content slate without raising the price on the service.

He estimates that FilmStruck will now be offering more than 1,800 titles per month via a curated library that will be rotated and refreshed each month.

He said the addition of TCM Select will focus on 26 “iconic” titles, plus the bonus elements. “The titles are critical,” Breland said. “It’s not just the titles; it’s how they are actually positioned.”

FilmStruck, which launched its U.S. offering in November 2016, has not announced subscriber numbers, but Breland said he likes the trajectory of those numbers so far and that retention on annual subscriptions to the service have been “incredibly high.”

Warner Archive likewise doesn’t disclose specific sub numbers, but Hunegs said the size of the service’s base is in the tens of thousands.

To help with the transition, existing Warner Archive customers are being offered two free months of the FilmStruck + The Criterion Channel offering. After April 26, Warner Bros. will no longer support subscribers on the Warner Archive platform, though all current subscriptions to that service will be honored on FilmStruck.

The content partnership between FilmStruck and Warner Bros. and the sunsetting of the Warner Archive service also follows a wider trend in the exploding SVOD sector, which is undergoing a correction of sorts as some services get shut down while others, as in this case, continue on via newly formed partnerships.

For more on that trend, please see this week’s cover story in Broadcasting & Cable.

RELATED: SVOD Market: Survival of the Fittest (subscription required)

Meanwhile, Breland believes FilmStruck’s approach and focus is well-positioned for the long term. “We don't think of FilmStruck as just an SVOD service,” he said. “It’s not about taking a linear brand and forcing it into an SVOD slot. This is about serving the fans in a way that they want it." 

YouTube TV confirmed Wednesday that it’s adding several channels from the Turner stable of networks and will raise the price of its baseline service by $5 per month for new customers starting March 13.

YouTube TV, an OTT TV service that debuted last April in a handful of markets, has added TNT, Adult Swim, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network, truTV, and Turner Classic Movies. With those additions, YouTube TV expands its programming slate while also giving sports fans access to several nationally televised NBA games, MLB postseason games, and coverage of the coming March Madness men’s college basketball tournament.

YouTube TV will also “soon” add NBA TV and MLB Network, and will also, in the coming months, enable subs to purchase two out-of-market packages – NBA League Pass and MLB.TV – via the OTT TV service, Heather Moosnick, director of content partnerships at YouTube TV, noted in this blog post.

She also confirmed that, along with the expanded lineup, YouTube TV will also be raising the price of its contract-free baseline package to $40 per month for new subs, starting March 13. Existing YouTube TV customers and those who sign up before March 13 will be able to keep the original price of $35 per month.

RELATED: Watch MCN: vMVPDs by the Numbers

YouTube TV hasn’t disclosed subscriber numbers (CNBC recently put it at about 300,000), but the service continues to expand its geographic reach.

The service, Moosnick said, will be available in the nation’s top 100 markets (about 85% of all U.S. homes) in the coming weeks, following additions that include Lexington, Dayton, Honolulu, Richmond, Mobile and Syracuse.

In addition to traditional pay TV providers, YouTube TV tangles with a mix of other OTT TV services that include Sling TV, DirecTV Now, fuboTV, Hulu, Philo and CenturyLink Stream. The Diffusion Group estimates that the current array of virtual MVPDs ended 2017 with about 5.3 million subscribers.

RELATED: Virtual MVPDs Ended 2017 with 5.3M Subs: Study

Magic Leap, the well-funded augmented reality/spacial computing startup, has formed a partnership with the NBA and Turner that, they promise, will usher in “the next generation of sports viewing and interactivity.”

Magic Leap’s first sports-focused partnership will center on the Magic Leap One, the startup’s augmented/mixed reality system, and a new NBA App that’s optimized for that platform to transform a flat, 2D experience into one that’s in 3D.

“This partnership will allow us to bring fans a completely new, intimate experience that has never been seen in sports,” Jeff Ruediger, managing director of Magic Leap Screens, explained in this blog post.

By way of example, NBA fans will be able to use that combo, in tandem with Magic Leap’s Screens system, to summon multiple, virtual screens into their field of view, he noted.

“When paired with Magic Leap’s Digital Lightfield technology [which enables digital objects to look lifelike when blended with the real world] and spatial computing, these screens can be shown at any size, and in any location combined with supplemental graphics that allow fans to enjoy their favorite stats, replays and commentary — all without missing the game action,” Ruediger said. “We’ve even used volumetric capture to bring a life-size Shaquille O’Neal presence right into your living room.”

The launch of the new app for Magic Leap’s platform will feature a curated list of archived NBA games and some highlights and clips of teams and players. The NBA, Turner and Magic Leap are also working to bring this experience to live games.

Magic Leap said the new NBA App for its platform is in development, but didn’t announce when it would become available.

The trio made the announcement at Recode’s Code Media conference in Huntington Beach, Calif. A video with O’Neal was also shown with the former NBA great and current analyst with Turner donning Magic Leap specs and explaining how he was able to watch multiple full-court games appear on either side of him in a mixed reality environment.

“It was the most amazing thing,” he said. “I think the NBA, once it gets a hold of this technology, and some of the players … they’re really going to want to integrate their material.”

O’Neal also talked up Magic Leap’s attempt to render him in the MR environment. “When I saw it, it made me feel like I had a twin brother.”

The partnership also comes almost two months after Magic Leap introduced a “Creator’s Edition” version of its platform.

That initial system is composed of Lightwear (the AR glasses/headset); the Lightpack (a device that works with the headset and powers the system’s spatial computing platform); and a controller with haptic feedback.

Recent investments in a startup called Vizbee by two major programmers and broadcasters present more proof that extending a link between smartphones and the TV has become a key focus as consumers continue to divide their attention between those screens.

Following Epix’s deployment of Vizbee’s mobile-to-TV casting technology last year, Turner and Tegna have since followed, backed by strategic investments in Vizbee.

Vizbee is focused on crossplatform casting and data. Using its technology, a publisher’s mobile app can auto-detect connected TVs with one tap, and install and launch apps that stream content to the TV, where engagement is generally higher than it is on a smartphone.

Vizbee has also developed DeviceGraph, which helps advertisers promote targeted “tap-to-TV” direct-response campaigns that are capable of supporting interactive ads.

App, Ad-Sales Opportunities
Turner has been tapping Vizbee’s platform for a couple of its apps, while Tegna believes the company’s technology could create more ad inventory for Premion, its expanding local ad network for over-the-top content.

Turner added Vizbee’s technology in its TBS and TNT (pictured) apps during a digital upgrade undertaken in May 2017. That upgrade enables users of those apps to cast content from their mobile phones to connected TVs without the need for a plug-in. Turner said it now allows casting of TBS and TNT programming via Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and Samsung smart TVs.

That ease of use “drove greater interest in application downloads,” as Turner also saw a 30% month-over-month gain in the number of “casts” between June and October 2017, accumulating 1.7 million casts during that period.

Epix is also using Vizbee’s technology to power an “Epix Cast” feature introduced last year.

With its OTT-facing Premion product, Tegna’s been focusing on content creation, aggregation and distribution, as well as advertising technology that enables targeting and automation, as well as content discovery.

Tegna sees Vizbee’s technology playing a role in both content discovery as well as some elements tied to its ad-tech platform. Further, Tegna sees Vizbee as a way to seamlessly link the smartphone and the smart TV, a process that has sometimes proved to be a bit elusive.

Generally, Vizbee will help Tegna deepen its relationship with publishers and create more OTT ad inventory for Premion, according to Ed Busby, Tegna’s senior vice president of strategy. Vizbee’s data solution will also create opportunities to implement ad targeting and boost overall performance, he added.

Tegna has started to embed Vizbee’s technology in its publisher apps and is exploring how to possibly use Vizbee in its own mobile apps.

Vizbee was founded in 2014 by Darren Feher (former CEO of Conviva and chief technology officer of NBCUniversal) and Prashanth Pappu (former senior vice president of product marketing, Unicorn Media, and head of products at Conviva).

Vizbee didn’t disclose the amount of those investments nor the amount of its latest round of funding, which also included participating from existing investors Core Capital, Armory Square Ventures, Kinetic Ventures and NEA. An SEC filing on Dec. 27, 2017, from Vizbee shows a total offering amount of $5 million, with $3.59 million of that amount sold at the time of the filing.

NAME: Jennifer Mirgorod
TITLE: Executive VP of Content Distribution & Strategic Partnerships
COMPANY: Turner Content Distribution

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Named TCD senior VP of brand revenue and account management in 2005; later elevated to TCD executive VP of content distribution and strategic partnerships.

QUOTABLE: “Mentoring is so important … I like teaching and imparting what knowledge I have and have learned over the years. It’s something that I’ll continue to seek out and hopefully have the opportunity to do more of in the future.”

Looking at at the successful career of Turner Content Distribution executive Jennifer Mirgorod, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say she was destined for cable television excellence.

As executive vice president of content distribution and strategic partnerships for TCD — which encompasses cable networks TBS, CNN, HLN, TNT, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), truTV, CNN International, CNN en Español and Boomerang — Mirgorod leads a team responsible for bringing in more than 50% of Turner’s annual revenue. That’s more than any other division, which says a great deal about her influence in a more than two-decade career at the company.

“Jennifer is an incredibly smart, talented and strategic executive,” Turner Content Distribution president Rich Warren said. “While she sets high standards for her team and holds them accountable, she also mentors and coaches them along the way, which is a trait of a true leader.”

Watch MCN: 12 Takeaways From MCN's Wonder Women Class of 2018

While growing up, though, a TV career was the furthest thing from the Charlotte, N.C., native’s mind. She had watched her father — veteran broadcast TV station executive Mark Keown — work long and hard hours in the industry, and decided after high school to major in foreign affairs at the University of Virginia with the hopes of landing a government job overseas.

Looking For a Job, Just Not In Television

“I did not want to follow in my father’s footsteps. I saw that and thought, ‘I don’t want to be like Dad; I don’t want to turn into a workaholic,’ ” she said. But a media-based internship eventually led to her first job at a local broadcast station in Charlotte.

“Even after that job I thought to myself, ‘I’ve got to get out of this — this is what my dad had done,’” she said. “But I kept finding it a little more interesting and getting better opportunities that moved me into something even more interesting, so here I am, 20-plus years later, still in television.”

After a year at the Charlotte station, Mirgorod would eventually move to Atlanta, where Turner is headquartered, but she wouldn’t actually begin with the company for another five years — in Hong Kong.

Mirgorod said she moved to Hong Kong without a job, but was again determined not to join the media industry, yet her work experience was so vested in the industry that she would eventually settle into an entry-level sales position at Turner in 1995. She thrived at Turner in Hong Kong, but soon realized her future growth in the business meant moving back to the States.

“I’d been gone for eight years and I had missed this whole period of cultural history in the U.S. There were shows I’d never even heard of, and there were things that didn’t make their way to Asia,” she said. “I knew I was hitting that point where — at least in what I was doing in television — it would be hard to move back in if I didn’t do it pretty quickly at that point; I’d been gone for so long.”

Mirgorod returned to Atlanta in 2003 and found a job at Turner Content Distribution in affiliate marketing. By 2005, she would transition into account management, negotiating carriage deals for Turner’s burgeoning stable of cable networks.

“I was experienced in sales and marketing, but I guess I liked to be a little bit closer to the money and the fire, so to speak, and I wasn’t really feeling that in marketing and strategy,” she said. “When the opportunity came up where I could start working on some distribution accounts, I took advantage of it, and that changed the course of my career once again.”

As TCD’s senior vice president of brand revenue and account management, she said negotiations with distributors in the mid-to-late-2000s were less difficult than they are today, given the evolution of technology over the past decade.

“We had some pretty difficult deals [then], but I think the difference now is that because of all the technological changes that have occurred over the last seven years or so, they’ve become much more complex, and that makes them harder,” she said.

Yet Mirgorod has risen to the challenge. In 2014, she was named TCD executive vice president of brand distribution, and three years later assumed the expanded role of TCD executive VP of content distribution and strategic partnerships, where she was instrumental in closing a number of major multiplatform negotiation deals with top distribution clients throughout 2016 and 2017.

Extending Influence as a Mentor

Her influence within Turner extends beyond the negotiating table. She is the executive sponsor of Turner Asia, a companywide business resource group aimed at leveraging the talents of Asian-Pacific American employees. She also mentors young professionals through the Turner Women Today Circle Mentoring program, and is an active member of Women in Cable Telecommunications.

“She is a fantastic colleague to many people throughout the company, and she cares deeply about helping others advance their careers,” Warren said. “She takes the time to listen, and provide feedback, no matter how busy she is.”

Mirgorod also said she has effectively balanced work and family life, spending quality time with her husband George and her two kids, Mary, 12, and Kate, 9. “I didn’t want to turn into a workaholic, and I don’t think I actually have,” she said. “So maybe that’s what I really wanted to avoid [instead of the industry].”

Vizbee, a startup focused on cross-platform casting and data, said it has received strategic investments from both Turner and Tegna.

Vizbee didn’t disclose the amount of those investments nor the amount of its latest round of funding, which also included participating from existing investors Core Capital, Armory Square Ventures, Kinetic Ventures and NEA. An SEC filing from December 2017 from Vizbee shows a total offering amount of $5 million, with $3.59 million of that amount sold at the time of the filing.

Tegna made note of its investment in Vizbee earlier this week when it announced it had acquired a piece of TubiTV, a company that runs a free, ad-supported VOD service.

RELATED: Tegna Makes Strategic Investment in Tubi TV

Turner, meanwhile, noted that it's been using Vizbee’s technology in its TBS and TNT apps during a digital upgrade undertaken in May 2017. That upgrade enables users of those apps to cast content from their mobile phones to connected TVs without the need for a plug-in. Turner said it now allows casting of TBS and TNT programming via Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and Samsung smart TVs.

RELATED: TBS, TNT Add App Upgrades, Expand Device Support

That ease of use “drove greater interest in application downloads,” as Turner also saw a 30% month-over-month gain in the number of “casts” between June and October 2017, accumulating 1.7 million casts during that period.

Epix is also using Vizbee’s technology to power an “Epix Cast” feature introduced last year.

"As we continue to shape the future of television, Vizbee's focus on fan engagement as well as data and advertising will help us grow our OTT efforts from both a business and technology standpoint," Jeremy Legg, Turner’s CTO, said in a statement.

Tegna believes that Vizbee’s technology will provide a boost for Premion, its local ad network for OTT content.

Vizbee said it combines “universal casting” with a household device data graph to enable content owners to segment the best prospective OTT viewers and reach them through mobile marketing channels via “tap-to-TV” campaigns.

Vizbee was founded by Darren Feher (Former CEO, Conviva; and CTO, NBCU) and Prashanth Pappu (former SVP product marketing, Unicorn Media; and head of products, Conviva).

The timetable for the government's suitagainst the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is taking shape.

Related: DOJ Suing to Block AT&T-Time Warner Deal

There will be a Dec. 21 status hearing before Judge Richard Leon to go over scheduling issues, procedures and the like.

No big news is expected out of that hearing.

The trial is scheduled to begin March 19, 2018, unless the sides can settle before then.

Justice wants AT&T to spin off the Turner programming assets, arguing they give the combined company the incentive and opportunity to disfavor competitors.

AT&T and Time Warner have signaled such a spinoff is a nonstarter and offered up what amounts to their own behavioral conditions, though Makan Delrahim, who heads the antitrust division signaled Justice would be looking for more divestitures and fewer behavioral conditions, suggesting the latter remedy was over-regulatory, as well as essentially allowing an illegal merger under conditions that were hard to monitor.

Analysts say AT&T’s declaration that it would offer distributors arbitration when Turner carriage deals expire—and its promise of no blackouts for seven years—if its acquisition of Time Warner goes through answers one of the government's biggest objections to the deal.

AT&T disclosed the offer on Tuesday in response to the Justice Department’s suit looking to block the merger on antitrust grounds.

Related: AT&T, Time Warner Accuse DOJ of Selective Enforcement

In a research note Wednesday (Nov. 29), MoffettNathanson Research analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson called AT&T's arbitration and no-blackout gambit clever.

“In a single commitment, AT&T has gotten to the very heart of the DOJ’s case,” the analysts say. "This commitment captures the very essence of the so-called 'non-exclusivity provisions' of the erstwhile Program Access Rules about which we have written so frequently in the past.

“And by making the commitment irrevocable, they have alleviated the take-it-or-leave-it nature of the decision that would otherwise have faced Judge Leon,” Moffett and Nathanson say. “This both reduces pressure on Judge Leon – he no longer has to consider the deal as if it has no behavioral remedies whatsoever, as would have been the case absent this commitment – and increases it, as it now becomes much harder to reject the deal when AT&T is committing to exactly the same behavioral remedy to which Comcast committed (and for the same amount of time).”

The analysts say it would be tough for the Justice Department to argue that AT&T would be able to raise the wholesale price of its content to competitors when it is agreeing not to use the weapon that gives it the most leverage, and most hurts consumers.

Amazon Web Services said it has locked in a deal to be the “preferred” cloud provider for Turner, which will move “thousands” of virtual machines to AWS to create cloud-native apps for networks and partners such as TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, CNN, NCAA and the NBA.

Tied in, Turner will move “decades of content” to the cloud, including a 15-petabyte sized library or CNN archive videos.

Turner, which acquired iStreamPlanet in 2015, will also use AWS for services spanning compute, storage, networking, databases, developer tools, analytics and machine learning.

RELATED: Turner Snaps Up iStreamPlanet

Turner is also tapping into AWS’s cloud as it embarks on an IP and virtualization migration/strategy that will enable the programmer to be more agile and launch a mix of more personalized services.

RELATED: Turner’s Unification Theory (subscription required)

“We’re going through the largest technology transformation since Ted Turner started the company, and the advancements we’re making today are enabling us to reimagine what television can be for our viewers,” Jeremy Legg, Turner’s CTO, said in a statement. “We’re changing our broadcast technology stack to a fully digital, cloud environment built on AWS, which will enable us to adapt to new video delivery models, as well as provide our viewers with more personalized content and advertisements.”

Examples of other AWS partners include corporate cousin Amazon Video, AOL, BBC, C-SPAN, Discovery Communications, Hearst Corporation, Hulu, Lionsgate, Netflix, and PBS.

AWS this week introduced a new suite of media services for its streaming video partners.

RELATED: AWS Unit Introduces Media Services Suite

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s new antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, may not have talked specifics during a speech discussing his theory of antitrust merger reviews, but he sent clear signals that divestitures are a cleaner, more deregulatory fix for problematic deals. That ultimately could translate into a trip to court by AT&T.

Delrahim did not talk about the AT&T-Time Warner deal in a speech he gave to the American Bar Association in Washington on Nov. 16, though he did mention Time Warner Cable.

He signaled he is more partial to applying structural conditions such as divestitures than to imposing behavioral conditions before allowing a merger that, absent those conditions, would be illegal.

That could indicate the department is indeed planning to seek structural conditions in the AT&T-Time Warner deal, of divesting either the Turner programming assets or DirecTV, rather than allowing the combined company to keep all assets but agree not to use its clout of owning and distributing high-value content to disadvantage competitors.

Related > AT&T-Time Warner: Missed Connection?

The approach could also be a way to publicly justify divestiture requirements outside of the heated political context of President Donald Trump’s attacks on Turner’s CNN and suggestions that a DOJ divestiture requirement would stem not from reasonable antitrust theory and the facts of the merger but from political retaliation by proxy.

One veteran attorney told Multichannel News he had no doubt that if Delrahim or others at the department felt such political pressure, they would resign rather than bow to it, and that there were indeed solid reasons for a divestiture.

“[A]t times, antitrust enforcers have experimented with allowing illegal mergers to proceed subject to behavioral commitments,” Delrahim said, citing the Comcast-NBCU deal as one example, according to a published transcript of his remarks. “That approach is fundamentally regulatory, imposing ongoing government oversight on what should preferably be a free market. And, as 11 senators wrote to the Attorney General earlier this year, the ‘lack of enforceability and reliability of such conditions [can] render them insufficient’ to protect consumers. As we reduce regulation across the government, I expect to cut back on the number of long-term consent decrees we have in place and to return to the preferred focus on structural relief to remedy mergers that violate the law and harm consumers.”

Delrahim suggested that behavioral conditions, though justifiable in some circumstances, are particularly tough to craft and enforce. “[H]ow can antitrust lawyers hope to write rules that distort competitive incentives just enough to undo the damage done by a merger, for years to come? I don’t think I’m smart enough to do that.”

He also invoked the would-be Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, which collapsed in April of 2015 despite the reigning wisdom that both the DOJ and the Federal Communications Commission would approve it with behavioral conditions.

AT&T has vowed to fight any divestiture. It has likely already signaled to the Justice Department it wants to close the transaction — it must give the government 30 days’ notice — which would force the DOJ’s hand.

Former Turner programming chief Michael Wright has been named president of Epix, assuming his new role on Dec. 4.

Wright was appointed to his new role by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, which completed its purchase of the remaining interest in Epix it didn’t already own in April.  He will report to MGM chairman and CEO Gary Barber, who had served as interim president of Epix after former Epix president and CEO Mark Greenberg left in September, and will lead creative and marketing efforts for the channel.   Business operations will continue to be overseen by Monty Sarhan, Epix executive vice president & general manager. Sarhan will also work closely with Chris Ottinger, MGM’s president, Worldwide Television Distribution & Acquisitions on all distribution matters. 

Wright has a long history in the entertainment business. He most recently served as CEO of Amblin Partners, a content creation company he launched with director Steven Spielberg in 2015 and was named CEO of DreamWorks Studios in 2014. Wright served as president and head of programming for Turner, TBS, TNT, and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) from 2002 to 2014, when he left the company amid a voluntary buyout of more than 500 employees.  

“We are thrilled to welcome Michael into the MGM family,” Barber said in a statement. ”His television industry experience and creative instincts are the perfect combination to help us execute on our original content strategy for Epix and drive additional value creation for MGM overall.”

Epix has recently gotten more aggressive on the original programming front, expanding its lineup to include The Truth About the Harry QuebertAffair, currently in production in Montreal and starring Patrick Dempsey in his return to television, Ben Schnetzer, Virginia Madsen and Damon Wayans Jr..  Early next year, MGM Television will begin production on the second season of Get Shorty, starring Ray Romano and Chris O’Dowd. Those series join existing Epix originals like Berlin Station and Golden Globe nominated Graves, docu-series America Divided, Danica, about racing superstar Danica Patrick, and big movie franchises James Bond, Rocky, and Star Trek.

“Epix, under MGM’s ownership, is strongly positioned to excel as a provider of engaging, entertaining original content,” Wright said in a statement. “This is an exciting time in our business, and I'm looking forward to working with Gary, the EPIX and MGM teams, to bring the best storytelling voices to the network and move EPIX into the next phase of its growth.”

‘‘Winter is coming” may be the ominous tagline for HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones, but for parent Time Warner’s pending merger with AT&T, winter is already here. More than a year after the two corporate giants unveiled their $108.7 billion merger plans, a distinct chill has enveloped the union of the largest pay TV distributor and the second-largest content provider, brought on by what many perceive as strong signals from the White House that the deal, once expected to be a shoo-in through the regulatory approval process, is now facing very real hurdles just steps from the finish line.

Media outlets were abuzz last week as reports flooded in that the U.S. Department of Justice, charged with determining whether the AT&T-Time Warner merger would violate antitrust laws, was asking that the combined company divest either its Turner cable network unit or its DirecTV satellite-television operation. The Turner request was most curious, or perhaps revelatory, because it is the home of CNN, the cable news network that President Donald Trump has excoriated in public statements and on his Twitter account as “fake news.”

While the focus is on CNN and Turner, the broader implications — that a sitting president is trying to negatively influence a merger involving a news organization that has been critical of him — are even more chilling. While much of the recent media focus has been on CNN, if the merger is successfully blocked it would send a strong message to media companies that have been waiting for this deal to close to open the merger floodgates.

In a research note, Barclays media analyst Kannan Venkateshwar noted that if AT&T walked away from the deal, other companies such as The Walt Disney Co. or technology companies like Apple would be logical suitors. Even 21st Century Fox, which attempted an $80 billion hostile takeover of Time Warner in 2014, only to be rebuffed, could make a new deal pitch. But the government’s stance may put a damper on any of that. (Last week, Fox was considered to be a takeover target by Disney; read Would a Mouse Eat a Fox?)

The government, in theory, is concerned about media companies becoming too big. AT&T could raise the price of HBO for rivals, create exclusive programming or even refuse to sell to rivals such as Dish Network.

“There are good reasons for the Justice Department to be concerned about this merger,” Columbia Law professor Tim Wu wrote in The New York Times. But “the unfortunate fact is that Mr. Trump has engendered so much distrust in government that everything that any federal agency does these days seems questionable,” he added. Wu said the Justice Department should do a better job of “explain[ing]its concerns about the merger to the public and to Congress.”

Chilling Effect
If a vertical deal such as this (distribution and content) is blocked by the Justice Department, analysts don’t see how other media companies would get comfortable pitching a horizontal deal (content plus content or distribution plus distribution).

“Technology companies in theory could increase competition in the distribution market by acquiring media companies,” Venkateshwar wrote. But if the AT&T-Time Warner deal implodes, all bets are off. “Therefore, while we could see multiple buyers in theory, it is tough to believe such a transaction would be attempted without greater regulatory clarity.”

Most analysts see the new conditions as a message from the Justice Department that it will block the merger. Without Turner and its stable of pay TV networks — like TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, TCM, CNN and truTV — there is little reason to do a deal. And owning content without the distribution that comes from the DirecTV satellite assets — which have more than 20 million subscribers across the country — flies in the face of the original reasoning for the transaction.

AT&T is apparently ready to draw a line in the sand. When reports surfaced that the DOJ claimed that AT&T offered to spin off CNN to get the deal approved, which the DOJ rejected, AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson fired off what was for him a heated denial.

“Until now, we’ve never commented on our discussions with the DOJ,” Stephenson said in a Nov. 8 statement. “But given DOJ’s statement this afternoon, it’s important to set the record straight. Throughout this process, I have never offered to sell CNN and have no intention of doing so.”

At The New York Times’s Dealbook conference in New York on Nov. 9, Stephenson doubled down on his insistence that CNN was not for sale. He also said he has not felt pressure from the government to sell the network, which may be a case of carefully selecting his words. Early reports on the DOJ’s demands centered on selling Turner, CNN’s parent, or DirecTV.

Related: AT&T’s Stephenson: 'No Intention' to Sell CNN

But Stephenson echoed what others have said regarding a sale of CNN, Turner or DirecTV to win approval of the deal: It makes little sense.

When AT&T officially announced the merger on Oct. 22, 2016, the telco saw huge opportunity in pairing Time Warner’s content with AT&T’s distribution. Stephenson brought home that point again at the Dealbook conference.

“One of the key benefits of putting these two companies together is to stand up a new advertising capability,” Stephenson said. “We have built an amazing distribution platform — 150 million mobile subscribers, the largest pay TV base in the United States, a huge broadband base. There’s a lot of information and data that we think can be used to stand up a new advertising business. Pairing that with the Turner advertising inventory is a really powerful thing, we believe. That’s what we aspire to do. Selling CNN makes no sense in that context.”

But despite Stephenson’s protestations — he also said the Nov. 6 meeting with the DOJ, the fulcrum of all the recent controversy, was “productive” — Time Warner stock continues to sink.

In just the past two weeks, Time Warner shares have dropped nearly 15% from $102.20 per share on Oct. 19 to $87.05 per share on Nov. 9, precariously closer to their price just prior to the deal announcement ($82.99 each) and nearly 20% below the $107.50 per share at which AT&T valued the company for the deal.

Related: Wall Street Looks at Options for Time Warner Assets

If the DOJ decides to block the deal — and indications are that, unless the agency has a dramatic change of heart, it will — the first step will be for the government to file a suit stating that the deal violates antitrust rules. Stephenson said if that is the case, AT&T wants the case expedited to further accelerate the process.

“We are prepared to litigate now,” Stephenson said at the Dealbook conference.

A Justice Department suit to block the deal would be nearly unprecedented: Stephenson said the agency hasn’t challenged and defeated a vertical merger in more than 40 years. It is even more surprising given that the new head of DOJ’s antitrust division, assistant attorney general Makan Delrahim, said months ago that he didn’t see any problems with the merger.

“It reinforced what we thought about the transaction,” Stephenson said of Delrahim’s earlier comments. “He made comments that were exactly what we thought about this transaction going in.”

He added that the Nov. 6 meeting with DOJ was more of a “getting to know you” session, and the next step is to continue the process.

“As you might guess, when you’re doing a big negotiation, you spend a lot of time just getting to know each other,” Stephenson said. “You spend a lot of time trying to understand what the bid/ask is in a transaction like that. I think we had a very productive meeting on Monday. I think we both learned a lot about where each other are. Now we continue this process to see if we can get to a negotiated settlement.”

If the DOJ is pushing for asset divestiture, it would appear to be more in line with the president’s stance on big mergers than the head of the agency’s.

At a speech at the New York University School of Law on Oct. 27, Delrahim said that competitive impact was the main focus for the agency when reviewing mergers.

“That’s an important part of the process, because blocking a procompetitive transaction can be as dangerous as clearing an anticompetitive one,” Delrahim said, according to a transcript on the DOJ website. “The goal should be to promote, not stifle, competition.

“Our role in the antitrust division is the pursuit of justice in the marketplace,” he continued. “When we do our jobs correctly, we protect the competitive process around which our economy is organized and on which the American Dream is premised. And we do so through law enforcement consistent with limited government and the rule of law. It’s a compelling mission.”

Related: FCC's Pai Says DOJ Will Do Right Thing With AT&T-Time Warner

Delrahim’s boss, Trump, has made his stance on CNN clear since his campaign, when in a speech in Gettysburg, Pa., last October he said he would block the AT&T-Time Warner merger because it created “too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.”

Perhaps even more chilling would be implications on past and future deals if the government sues to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger and is successful. Trump has vowed to dismantle Comcast’s 2011 purchase of NBCUniversal. In the same Gettysburg speech, he said that deal created “one massive entity that is trying to tell the voters what to think and what to do.”

Stephenson also downplayed Trump’s role in influencing the DOJ, adding that he has only had contact with Justice officials throughout the merger process. But no one is suggesting that Trump is actively involved in the approval process. Several reports have said that DOJ officials are well aware of the president’s feelings toward the deal, and especially CNN, through his countless Twitter posts and comments criticizing the network.

Shifting Political Winds
But any presidential opposition to the deal could also have the reverse effect. Already several organizations that have publicly opposed the merger because it concentrates too much media power in one entity are beginning to rethink that position.

Free Press, which in the past has said it would back a requirement that AT&T spin off CNN or Turner to decrease media concentration, said it doesn’t approve of such moves if they are merely a manifestation of Trump’s apparent hatred of the news media.

“While there are plenty of good reasons to oppose AT&T’s Time Warner takeover, punishing CNN for trying to hold this administration accountable isn’t one of them,” Free Press president Craig Aaron said last week. “No matter where you come down on this merger, everyone should agree that the government shouldn’t base antitrust decisions or FCC rulings on whether it likes a newsroom’s coverage.”

For its part, AT&T is forcing the government to either go big or go home. In a research note, BTIG media analyst Richard Greenfield noted that AT&T certified compliance with the DOJ on Nov. 6, which started a 30-day shot clock for the government to make a decision either way. If litigation is filed, it could go on for at least four to five months even at an expedited rate, meaning AT&T would miss its earlier target of a year-end close and would be hard pressed to complete the deal by April 22, the official termination date for the merger — and Stephenson’s birthday.

The AT&T chief claimed he didn’t know about compliance certification, but expressed his frustration with the process.

“We need this to move along,” Stephenson said. “This has been well over a year for a vertical merger, and we each need to take actions that will get this to closure. Either we settle or we litigate, one of the two. I think we’re both aligned on that.”

Washington bureau chief John Eggerton contributed to this report.

The path to an AT&T-Time Warner merger got even murkier Wednesday after The New York Times reported that the U.S. Department of Justice would seek a divestiture of either Turner Broadcasting or DirecTV as a condition for its approval of a deal.

UPDATE (4:15 p.m.):AT&T’s Stephenson: 'No Intention' to Sell CNN

The Times, citing sources familiar with the companies, said the DOJ has asked that AT&T sell either Turner Broadcasting – Time Warner's group of cable channels that includes CNN, the news network President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused of airing “fake news” – or DirecTV, the satellite TV giant that AT&T purchased in 2015.

The possible conditions of the merger would appear to remove any purpose for doing the deal. When it announced the pairing in October 2016, AT&T said the inclusion of the Time Warner cable channels would fuel future over-the-top video offerings. DirecTV also is a core part of that strategy, with its more than 20 million pay TV subscribers. Its programming deals also were the foundation for AT&T’s over-the-top service DirecTV Now, which currently has about 1.5 million subscribers.

Once thought to be a relative shoo-in for regulatory approval – neither company has overlapping businesses – the path toward the finish line has been less clear in recent weeks. Earlier today, AT&T chief financial officer John Stephens said the timing of the Time Warner deal’s approval, once expected before the end of the year, is “now uncertain.”

AT&T said it had no comment on the Times story. But in a statement today, AT&T came out in support of President Trump’s tax plan, which is facing stiff resistance in Congress, stating that it will invest an additional $1 billion in its U.S. operations in 2018 if the plan currently before the House is signed into law.

“With a rate of 20% combined with provisions for full expensing of capital expenditures for the next five years, we’re prepared to increase our investment in the United States,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in a statement. “If the House bill is signed into law, we’d commit to increase our domestic investment by $1 billion in the first year in which the new rates are in place. And research tells us that every $1 billion in capital invested in telecom creates about 7,000 good jobs for the middle class.”

AT&T and Time Warner will most likely sue if the government puts such onerous conditions on the deal.

Candidate Donald Trump had threatened that a President Trump's Justice Department would block an AT&T/Time Warner deal as too much consolidation.

But a condition requiring a spin-off of CNN, which is part of Turner, would bring the President's attacks on the news media into play since CNN has been the President's favorite whipping-outlet in Tweets slamming it as fake news, though it has plenty of company including the New York Times and Washington Post and broadcast network news operations.

Even deregulatory Democrats have warned against blocking or hobbling the deal if it is seen as retribution for news coverage the President disagrees with.

An AT&T source said, without comment on whether the report about Justice was accurate, that the company’s lawyers could find no legal justification for requiring a CNN spin-off.

Given that, if Justice did sue to block the merger without a spin-off, AT&T might just take its changes and litigate the suit.

Justice can’t nix a merger, but it can file suit to block it in court as a violation of antitrust laws.  That case is harder to make with a vertical merger like AT&T—primarily combining distribution and content assets—than other combos.

Time Warner shares were down 5.5% ($5.20 per share) to $89.46 each in afternoon trading, while AT&T shares were down 12 cents each (0.4%) to $32.95 per share.  

Washington Bureau Chief John Eggerton contributed to this report

Growing Time Warner’s direct-to-consumer business will be a key priority after it is acquired by AT&T.

Speaking at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference Thursday (Sept. 7), AT&T senior executive vice president John Stankey, who will run AT&T's media business, said getting the importance of getting direct-to-consumer rights should not be underestimated.

RELATED: AT&T, Time Warner Reach Deal 

AT&T brings to the combined company expertise with scaled consumer relationships, Stankey said.

AT&T has “the experience, the history and the advantage of having a lot of those through our distribution business,” he said. “The Time Warner Company clearly has the ability to make great content, great intellectual property that can be extended and used to differentiate brand and experiences. And our belief is, bringing those two together is extremely important in the future.”

Related: AT&T Entertainment Chief Touts Content

Stankey noted that the media business is approaching an inflection point. The pay TV business “is at peak and it’s going to decline. I think the question is, what is the rate and pace?”

At the same time customers are experimenting with over-the-top streaming products, including AT&T’s DirecTV Now.

“A lot of folks are round-tripping and coming back into the core bundles afterwards,” Stankey said. “I think they’re still searching for what the solution is. The solution is more on-demand capabilities, better user interface and higher value for the current amount people are paying. And I do believe the industry will react to that, albeit a little bit slow because of some of the licensing constructs that are out there.”

Stankey wants Time Warner’s units — Turner, HBO and Warner Bros. — to continue to make great content.

“My goal is not to go in and try to explain to creatives how they can do their job better," he said. "That is not what I’m good at nor is it my training or my expertise.

“What I do understand are things like industry structure, I understand the application of technology and distribution," Stankey added. "I understand data and customer relationships, I understand integration and getting people to build business models effectively around the marriage of content and technology. And so my goal and my focus will be on facilitating that."

Stankey said that on its own, Time Warner recognized the changes in the industry and was looking at ways to be more collaborative. It was also getting into direct-to-consumer businesses, including Filmstruck with classic films, a Boomerang kids business and an upcoming sports service built around European soccer.

Related: Turner Building Sports Streaming Service With UEFA Soccer Rights

But in the first year after the AT&T-Time Warner merger is completed, Stankey expects the company to be able reach a number of goals.

With AT&T's platform, “you should expect to see experimentation and piloting content that's available today in traditional means that we can start to innovate on top,” he said. "And we have got a great customer base to experiment with.

“We want more engagement, especially in an ad-supported business,” he added. “So there are other variants you should see on what I would call embedded content models that will be in the first year.”

AT&T will be using data to build up its ad business, he said.

“And even before we have full infrastructure on data and what I would call programmatic-driven placement of advertising in the premium space, there's data that can help us sell existing ad inventory differently and more effectively, and we will be doing that as we get through that first year,” Stankey said.

Without adding subscribers, using data to build new ad models should increase ad rates and open up new inventory.

But Stankey said AT&T wants to have a business with two healthy revenue streams.

“If customers really like a broad plethora of content, broad choice, you need both subscription and advertising to have the maximum amount of content being built," he said. “And we think that's the right thing for the industry and it's the right thing for the consumer.”

NATPE has named executive producer Greg Berlanti (Arrow, Flash), Telemundo and NBCUniversal International chairman Cesar Conde, award-winning actress Jane Fonda (Grace and Frankie), TBS and TNT president Kevin Reilly, and award-winning actor Tom Selleck (Blue Bloods) as recipients of the 15th Annual Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award.

They will receive the prestigious award at a special reception on Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2018, at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, Fla.

The Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award is presented each year during the annual NATPE Miami Market and Conference, which will next take place under the new theme “A Changing Industry in a Changing World,” Jan. 16-18, 2018, at the Fontainebleau & Eden Roc hotels in Miami Beach.

“Each of the Tartikoff honorees is a leader in their field and a legend in the industry," said Andy Kaplan, president of Sony Pictures Television Networks and chair of NATPE. "We are thrilled to celebrate the substantial achievements of Greg Berlanti, Cesar Conde, Jane Fonda, Kevin Reilly and Tom Selleck at this year’s event in Miami."

The 2018 Tartikoff Legacy Award recipients are recognized for exhibiting their extraordinary passion, leadership, independence and vision through their diverse work in being a part of the creation and distribution of content for the world’s traditional and digital marketplaces. Named in honor of Brandon Tartikoff, one of the most esteemed programmers in the history of television, the Award was created to acknowledge a select group of television professionals who have demonstrated the highest degree of excellence in their field.

“These five extraordinary individuals have had such distinct, significant impacts on the entertainment industry,” said Lilly Tartikoff. “In choosing to honor those with careers defined by the same zeal and dedication that Brandon held dear, this event continues to be one that he would have found so meaningful. I am honored to congratulate each of these brilliant recipients of the Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award.”

Time Warner, preparing for its acquisition by AT&T, said its second-quarter profit was up 11% as subscription revenue rose at Turner and HBO.

Net income rose 10% to $1.06 billion, or $1.34 per share, from $952 million, or $1.20 per share, a year ago. Revenue rose 5% to $7.3 billion.

The results topped Wall Street forecasts.

Time Warner said it continues to expect the AT&T deal to close before the end of this year. The company also reaffirmed its full-year earning guidance.

At Turner, revenue rose 3% to $3.1 billion. Subscription revenue was up 13%. Operating income was down 7% to $1.1 billion because of higher expenses. Programming costs were up 12% mostly because of the new licensing deal with the NBA.

Turner's advertising revenue was down 6%, and content revenue was down 8%. The company said not having the NCAA Championship and Final Four games this year cost it 8% worth of ad revenue. It also had two fewer NBA playoff games and lower ratings at its domestic entertainment networks. Ad revenue increased at CNN and Turner’s international networks.

Related > Turner’s Martin: ‘We Need Fans, Not Viewers’

At HBO, operating income increased 10% to $531 million as programming costs declined 3%. Revenue rose 1%, with subscription revenue up 8%, while content and other revenue was down 44%.

“We’re very pleased with our first-half results, which keep us on track to achieve our objectives for the year,” said CEO Jeff Bewkes. “Our performance is a result of the continued successful execution of our strategic objectives – with the strong subscription revenue growth at Home Box Office and Turner a great example of this – along with the investments we’re making in our brands and high-quality video content.”

Related > TCA17: Turner’s Kevin Reilly Says Consolidation Will Whittle Down Cable Channels

Warner Bros. operating income was down 28% to $233 million from last year when Flixster was sold. Adjusted operating income was up 20% to $261 million. Revenue rose 12% to $3 billion as higher theatrical revenues were partly offset by lower TV revenue.

Bewkes noted the box office numbers for the films Wonder Woman and Dunkirk, and the Emmy award nominations earned by HBO and Warner Bros.

“These results and accolades reflect strong execution and the investments we’ve been making, both in the best content and in ensuring that we deliver our content across platforms to offer engaging experiences for our audiences,” he said. “Accelerating our pace of innovation and being able to connect more directly with consumers are among the exciting reasons for our proposed merger with AT&T, which remains on track to close before year-end, pending regulatory review and consents.”

Turner has named Richard Warren president of Turner Content Distribution, replacing Coleman Breland who remains president of Turner Classic Movies and FilmStruck while taking on a new role as head of content experiences. Both execs are based in Atlanta and will report to Turner president David Levy.

Warren, in his new role, will oversee all brand distribution, affiliate marketing, interactive television and business development for Turner's 10 domestic entertainment, news and kids networks as well as continued oversight of TCD’s strategic planning, business operations, and legal and business affairs. Previously, he served as executive vice president of content negotiations & strategy and associate general counsel, where he led the company’s efforts in structuring and negotiating Turner’s linear and digital content agreements with its distribution partners, as well as oversaw the strategic planning, operations, distribution technology and TCD legal and business affairs teams.

“Rich is a tremendous leader and has played an integral role in the growth and success of Turner’s content distribution division for the past 17 years,” Levy said in a statement “I have tremendous respect for Rich and I’m confident his extensive experience in the distribution space, and his relationships in the industry, as well as his strong and strategic deal-making abilities, will steer Turner to continued growth in the distribution space.”

In the newly created positon of president, content experiences, Breland will lead a cross-functional, company-wide initiative to explore new content strategies for business models both inside and outside traditional TV. Breland will work with business leaders across the company to develop an approach for the company’s content portfolio that reflects rapidly shifting consumption behaviors, technology advancements, set-top-box evolution and disruption. He will remain responsible for oversight of TCM and FilmStruck, including the development of new distribution opportunities, digital brand extensions, e-commerce and direct-to-consumer engagement opportunities for both brands.

“For more than 23 years, Coleman has played a vital role in the growth and success of Turner, leading one of the industry’s most dynamic and creative divisions and, together, they have delivered outstanding results for our partners and company,” Levy said in a statement. “There is simply no one better than Coleman to lead this new effort in developing innovative content-driven strategies and initiatives for our company so we can remain agile, keep our competitive edge, and be poised for success in the future.”

For all the hand-wringing about cord cutting and commercial avoidance, it’s hard to top TV advertising as a medium, according to the findings of a new report.

A study by Neustar commissioned by Turner Broadcasting and Horizon Media found that for a $1 million investment, television’s lift is consistently 7 times better than paid search and 5 times better than online display ads across a broad list of advertising categories.

The study comes as advertisers, through their media agencies, and the networks are negotiating upfront ad deals for the next TV season. During this year's upfront presentations, networks bashed digital advertising for an array of issues, including viewability, bot fraud and ads landing near content that isn’t brand-safe.

Related: ANA: Fight Against Bot Fraud Is Winnable

The new study also found that the lift from TV ad campaigns from 2010 to 2016 provided a lift 5 times better than online display ads.

“Dollar for dollar, TV provides the most scale and delivers the highest return on ad spend from both a sales and awareness perspective,” the report said. “It’s important to note that even TV will reach a saturation point, and the next marketing dollar should be spent elsewhere. To ensure an optimized marketing mix, advertisers should adopt a data-driven approach that can inform the ideal media allocation across all channels based on all internal and external market conditions to meet their performance goals.”

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

NEW YORK — Amid all the new shows being launched at upfront presentations last week, there were some announcements made about the way advanced advertising techniques could help networks sell products.

At ESPN, big data about the emotions of sports fans and real-time information about what’s happening in games are being tapped to create more effective advertising.

ESPN’s analytics team broke down games into emotional triggers, said Vikram Somaya, senior vice president and global data officer. More than 700 triggers can happen over a single NFL game, he said. That data was overlaid on the millions of fans who connect with ESPN.

ESPN mapped those fans and all of the emotions they could be feeling during a game — triumph, happiness, anticipation, dismay and more. Then it got together with its sponsors. Coors Light tapped into fans’ moments of anticipation, running emotion-related, tailored messaging, before, after and during games. The ads drove a 16% lift in brand consideration, including a 31% increase during pregame.

Ed Erhardt, president, global sales and marketing at ESPN, said emotional databased sales are a small part of ESPN’s business, but with 30 advertisers now employing it, it is likely to grow.

At Turner, ad sales president Donna Speciale talked about the need to improve advertising. “Television is still the most powerful medium for your marketing message,” she said. “But I think we can agree our industry was in need of a reinvention.

“Helping our partners thrive starts with creating the right experiences for our fans, so two years ago we announced reduced commercials in primetime, first on truTV and later on TNT,” Speciale said. “That investment is paying off with powerful results in three key areas: deeper engagement, increased brand awareness, and increased sales versus the traditional pods. Now I understand you’re tired of paying more for less. Well now, consider paying more for more.”

Turner’s TBS and TNT this week have issued major big updates to their streaming apps for some mobile and TV-connected platforms, and have added other platforms to their streaming mix.

As for the legacy, the updates arrive on their apps for iOS and Android mobile device, and Apple TV and Amazon Fire devices, as well as the TBS.com and tntdrama.com websites.

Their digital footprint is expanding with launches on Roku devices, the Google Chromecast and Vizio SmartCast products. TBS and TNT plan to extend support to gaming consoles and connected TVs later this year.  

Among those “top-to-bottom” updates, include integration of Vizbee technology that lets users cast content from a mobile device to any connected screen. Epix recently added Vizbee technology. 

TNT and TBS are also adding “instant-on” access and pre-login “freeviews” for major programming events. The freeviews will let viewers watch up to five minutes of any VOD program or 10 minutes of any live event, including sports, before being required to authenticate.

Other app and website enhancements include Spotlight, which allows for limited sampling across the two networks and the ability for users to switch easily from one device to another without losing their place in a program.

"Our digital and mobile upgrades reflect TBS & TNT's renewed commitment to transform traditional TV viewing into an experience that truly redefines what it means to 'watch TV,'"  Jesse Redniss, chief innovation officer for TBS and TNT, said in a statement. "By including industry-leading casting technology and instant-on previews, as well as an overall premium environment, we're creating better experiences for both our fans and advertising partners."

Turner named Jennifer Dorian executive vice president of Turner Portfolio 360 Brand Strategy, a newly created position she will assume in addition to her current role as general manager of Turner Classic Movies and FilmStruck.

Dorian will now have a dual reporting structure into Coleman Breland, president of Turner Content Distribution and Turner Classic Movies, and Doug Shapiro, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Turner.

In this newly created position, Dorian will lead a company-wide initiative to identify new opportunities for revenue growth from 360-degree brand extensions across Turner networks, franchises, talent and characters.  She will oversee a strategic planning process to formulate the strategy, vision and approach to launching new businesses in a coordinated effort across the portfolio, while providing support to the individual business units.

“Jennifer is a branding expert with a great track record of turning creative ideas into real businesses and she has broad and deep relationships within Turner.” Shapiro said in a statement. “She’s perfectly positioned to work with brand managers across the Turner portfolio to develop innovative monetization opportunities and enhance the value of our key franchises.”

Dorian will continue to oversee the day-to-day operations of TCM including all strategy, business development, marketing, branding, digital initiatives, programming and on-air campaigns for both brands, as well as the strategic planning, marketing and operations for subscriber growth and retention at FilmStruck. 

“Jennifer’s many accomplishments since assuming the role of general manager of TCM speaks volumes, and she has expertly navigated the rapidly changing industry to set TCM on a path for substantial growth,” Breland said in a statement. “As the leader who led the ideation, planning and execution of Turner’s first SVOD service in the U.S., her strategic thinking and expertise are invaluable to our company, and I’m confident in her ability to advance these businesses in 2017 and beyond.”

Dorian previously served as chief strategy officer for Turner Entertainment Networks, overseeing strategic business planning and brand identity development and image marketing for TBS, TNT, truTV and TCM.

Prior to joining Turner, she held leadership positions in marketing at The Coca-Cola Co., and Pizza Hut, Inc.

CTAM: The Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, has elected Turner senior vice president of brand distribution marketing Heather Baldino to serve a two-year term as chair of its board of directors.

CTAM also said named the following officers to two-year terms: Rick Lang, SVP, Marketing and Sales, Comcast, and CTAM Vice Chair; Jon Hargis, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Charter Communications, and CTAM Secretary; and Jamia Bigalow, SVP, Distribution Marketing, Fox Networks, and CTAM Treasurer. 

In addition to her role on the CTAM Board of Directors, Baldino also serves on CTAM's Advanced Products Council, its TV Everywhere initiative and its Content Provider Council. Most recently, she advised on the strategic integration of CTAM and the former Association of Cable Communicators.

"Heather is a consummate leader, with the experience and insight needed to guide CTAM's success during this era of constant change and new opportunities," CTAM president and CEO Vicki Lins said in a statement. "Her keen understanding of the power of cooperation across member companies to deliver best-in-class consumer experiences makes her an ideal chair." 

The Board also elected the following new members to two-year terms:

• Dylan Jones, EVP, Chief Communications Officer, Scripps Networks
• Leigh Woisard, SVP, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, Cox Communications

A complete list of the CTAM Board of Directors can be found at ctam.com.  

Over-the-top video still doesn’t scale to the lofty levels of traditional broadcast television, but online video’s ability to support major live sporting events continues to evolve and improve.

The latest example stems from the recently concluded NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. TV coverage of the tourney was complemented by “NCAA March Madness Live,” a live-streaming product developed by Turner Sports in partnership with CBS and the NCAA. That product, underpinned by iStreamPlanet (the online video infrastructure company Turner acquired in 2015), streamed games to more than a dozen platforms, including smartphones, tablets and Web browsers, as well as TV-connected Roku players, and Apple TV and Fire TV devices.

RECORD AUDIENCES
NCAA March Madness Live netted a record 98 million live video streams during the tournament, while the national championship game drew a record 4.4 million live streams, and a 29% increase from last year.

Traditional TV still dominates the viewing landscape, as the tournament averaged 10.82 million viewers, up 16% from last year’s average of 9.37 million. The championship game, won by North Carolina, netted an average of 22.99 million viewers, up about 30%.

While those OTT numbers still have a ways to go before reaching TV-like viewing levels, the partners involved in the streaming project tied together disparate systems to pull it off.

A big difference this year was the shift from the legacy world of SDI/baseband video distribution to IP.

That move “gave us a lot more flexibility on how we structured the workflow” while also optimizing ad insertion and ensuring the associated metadata was supported, Mio Babic, founder of iStreamPlanet, said.

When pulled together, the shift “connected the dots as video flowed from the actual arenas down to the consumer devices,” Babic explained.

Using an IP-based workflow also gave iStreamPlanet and its partners clearer visibility into the video streams themselves and a way to better monitor and understand their performance, so adjustments could be made as needed. That helped all parties involved to deal with traffic spikes in a specific region, for example, Babic said.

The overall aim was to deliver an HD-quality signal regardless of device, whether a smartphone or a 60-inch TV. Multiple streaming profiles were created for each type of supported device, Babic said.

iStreamPlanet and its partners delivered tournament video via unicast streaming delivery. Multicast streaming — the delivery of a stream that is accessible by multiple users — might eventually provide a way to reduce bandwidth requirements.

(STILL) GOING MOBILE
As for surprises during the tournament, Babic said viewing on mobile devices continues to strengthen. “The growth [for mobile] is not stopping … it’s accelerating,” he said. “These devices are now part of our lives. It’s almost like an extension of our hands.”

OTT will continue facing challenges as more viewers veer away from traditional TV and more devices enter the mix. “You don’t build it once,” Babic said. “You have to keep up with the changes … changes in features, changes in requirements, changes in security, changes in monetization.”

Looking ahead, Babic said he expects machine learning to take on a greater role not just in helping to personalize content, but to tap into the workflow in a way that can quickly spot anomalies and trends and make adjustments before they manifest into larger issues.

Time Warner, understandably preoccupied with its pending $108.7 billion acquisition by AT&T, still managed to lap its media company peers on the affiliate-revenue front last year and is on pace for more of the same in 2017, according to UBS media analyst Doug Mitchelson.

That growth, especially during a period when programmers are pressured by falling ratings, skinny bundles that lock them out of millennial-focused packages and over-the-top distribution, could be a key reason why the programmer was so attractive to AT&T in the first place.

AT&T has said repeatedly that content will drive the future — and Entertainment Group chief John Stankey reiterated that point at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, Spain, last week, telling the audience that programming is what will make AT&T relevant.

“Content that is compelling matters,” Stankey said at the conference.

Content that is compelling also makes money.

‘TIMING WAS GOOD’
In a recent deep dive into the programming industry, Mitchelson pointed out that Time Warner’s affiliate fee growth in Q4 of 2016 was 15%, more than double that of its closest peer, 21st Century Fox, at 7.4%.

Affiliate-fee growth actually declined for other programmers last year, according to Mitchelson, as 2016 was marked by declining subscriber rolls as customers cut back on various distribution cords in favor of OTT services and skinnier bundles.

Time Warner’s Turner division in fact has seen similar declines — the company averaged about a 2% loss in subscribers last year, about the same as its peers — yet has managed to keep affiliate-fee growth humming.

Part of that is because Time Warner struck carriage deals in 2015 and 2016 with major distributors like AT&T and Dish Network that usually have higher increases in the early years.

“The timing was good,” Telsey Advisory Group media analyst Tom Eagan said. Turner had earlier issued guidance for mid-teen percentage growth for 2016, which it delivered handily, Eagan noted. He said domestic affiliate-fee growth is expected to rise another 13% to 14% at Turner in 2017, leveling off a bit to 13% growth in 2018.

Mitchelson doesn’t expect the affiliate train to slow down this year, either. He’s predicting a 12.9% increase in fees for Time Warner in 2017, while Fox is expected to grow by about 8.2% in the same period.

Credit Suisse media analyst Omar Sheikh also was encouraged by the affiliate fee increases. He expects 15% growth in 2017 followed by a 10% rise in each of the years between 2018 and 2020. At premium channel HBO, which had a 5% affiliate fee increase in 2016, Sheikh predicts fees will rise 6% in 2017-2018 and 5% in 2019-2020.

Helping out HBO’s bottom line has been its standalone OTT product, HBO Now. Launched in April 2015, HBO Now has about 2 million subscribers and growing.

“We expect growth to be driven by affiliate renewals and strength at HBO Now,” Sheikh wrote, helping to offset rising programming costs — up 7% in 2016 and estimated to rise 9% in 2017 — “and demonstrates that the company is executing well on its opportunity to grow domestic subscribers, which management has noted is HBO’s ‘most important long-term growth driver.’ ”

Just as in 2016, key to Turner’s future growth will be its ability to secure healthy increases with existing distributors as well as with new digital distributors. Turner seems to be out of the mix at least initially in Google’s new YouTube TV offering — the 30-channel, $35 monthly video service currently doesn’t have any Turner or Viacom networks in its lineup. That’s likely to change, Eagan said, but in order to keep the $35 price point, more expensive networks like Turner will likely be available on separate tiers or packages for an additional charge.

MILESTONE MOMENTS AHEAD
On the traditional carriage front, Turner’s Comcast affiliate agreement comes due in the next few months, and the programmer is expected to be part of Hulu’s live-TV streamed offering scheduled to be release later this year. Time Warner is a part owner of Hulu, along with The Walt Disney Co., Fox and Comcast’s NBCUniversal.

The Hulu deal could be key for Turner. The much anticipated but scantily described offering — expected to have a $40 monthly price point — could set the tone for similar offerings in the future.

Turner has been an enthusiastic participant in OTT services: Its AT&T distribution pact in September was one of the first for the telco’s DirecTV Now over-the-top service, which launched in December and has about 200,000 subscribers.

Eagan said that while the number of bundled-streaming services — including Sony PlayStation Vue, Sling TV and more on the way — is growing, most have been launched by existing pay TV distributors. Programmer-owned Hulu could offer a new perspective.

Eagan said channel-driven streaming services such as CBS All Access, which has about 2 million customers, have fared better than operator-led services like Sling TV, which has about 1.1 million subscribers.

“The question is what is going to happen when you get all of the individual channel OTT services and the package runs together,” Eagan said.

AMC’s The Walking Dead was the most watched cable show last week with more than 11 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

Cable’s most watched series drew 11.1 million viewers for its Feb. 19 episode, topping all cable shows for the week of Feb. 13-19, according to Nielsen. TNT’s live coverage of Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game from New Orleans was the second-most watched show of the week, averaging 6.5 million viewers, followed by the network’s Feb. 18 coverage of the NBA All-Star Saturday night festivities, which averaged 5.6 million viewers.

Fox News programming represented five of the top 10 most watched shows for the week, including four slots for the The O’Reilly Factor and one for Tucker Carlson Tonight. AMC’s Talking Dead and Discovery Channel’s Gold Rush rounded out the top 10, according to Nielsen.

Going all-Internet protocol is all the rage. Pay TV providers are doing it and over-the-top video services have already done it.

The same holds true for TV programmers looking to put all of their operations and other interworking components under an overarching umbrella of IP technology that will enable them to “virtualize” their infrastructure and develop and launch an array of new, more personalized services.

Turner is well along that path, having started its long, sometimes difficult journey about two years ago.

COMING TOGETHER

In addition to setting the stage for new types of services, migrating a legacy serial digital interface (SDI)-based infrastructure to one underpinned by IP will provide Turner with an operational link between two groups — broadcast and broadband — that have traditionally worked in relatively separate silos. The IP path extends a bridge to those two parts of the business.

“We made a decision as it related to the technology … to essentially look at our network organization function as a feed factory, and that feed factory can spit feeds out in IP , it can spit them out in SDI,” Jeremy Legg, Turner’s chief technology officer, said. “We’re largely indifferent to the format that those feeds actually go out in.”

In addition to providing an operational boost, going with an underlying IP infrastructure will enable Turner and other programmers to start to think differently about their traditional linear TV businesses that have historically been the venue of broadband and OTT.

“That gets [us] into things like personalized streams; it gets into things like personalized content and gets into the targeting of ads and promos and content, and assembling them in certain ways for certain audience segments,” Legg said.

With that as the basis, it’s conceivable that a programmer like Turner could turn one version of Cartoon Network, for example, into multiple versions targeted to different audiences based on shows specific viewers watch and with targeted, more-relevant ads.

“Ultimately, [this transition] leads you to having more versions of a network, not fewer,” Legg said.

But pulling that off using legacy broadcast infrastructure historically hasn’t been possible because it wasn’t IP -based. “You couldn’t write the software to do it,” he said, noting that Turner has begun to hook fiber cables into an IP router in its broadcast plant, and that new IP -based cameras will help to expand and unify the entire video production ecosystem.

IP REVOLUTION

Going with an IP infrastructure, he said, will enable Turner and others to develop software-based systems that can handle elements such as dynamic ad insertion, the multiplexing and personalization of networks that run on an IP -based master control and playout system. That in turn, will support the playout of personalized networks either on-premises or via the cloud.

“In many ways, I think, some of the biggest technology revolutions are actually happening in broadcast,” Legg said.

But this transition isn’t going to happen overnight. Though Turner has been at it for more than a year, there’s still at least a couple of years left to get the job done, Legg estimates.

Some big pieces of the IP puzzle have been completed, though.

Turner, for example, recently signed a deal with Amazon Web Services that moves its physical content into the public cloud, rather than storing everything on-premises. With those master files in the cloud, Turner can then determine, for example, which assets are ad-supported and contain Nielsen watermarks to satisfy a wide range of distribution and service requirements.

Last year, Turner, along with Fox Networks Group and Discovery Communications, made a strategic investment in SDVI, to help them build out media supply chains and ensure that their content is being formatted correctly. Also factoring in is Turner’s acquisition of iStreamPlanet, which plays a key role in how Turner’s content is packaged and encrypted for various streaming platforms.

Another important element was getting the organization to move in the same direction.

“Getting to a place where we had a common vision of where we wanted to go, was probably harder than the technology itself,” Legg said. “But once you get disparate groups all rowing the oars in the same direction, then you can start to move pretty fast.”

Though Turner is developing a hybrid system that relies on cloud and on-premises playout, the trend ultimately will lead to an all-cloud playout approach that could help to seed the move toward more personalized program streams.

LIVE COMES LATER

Some networks, such as Cartoon Network and TC M, don’t rely heavily on live programming or use constantly changing on-screen graphics, but instead lean on playlist-based programming schedules. That makes them possible initial candidates for cloud-based playout.

“We’ll initially look to migrate some networks out that are less complicated to play out,” Legg said. “We’re not in position to start playing CNN out of the cloud yet.”

But networks that are better suited for cloud-based playout could shift to audience-based targeting and tap into usage and viewing data that can help to “influence” the makeup of a personalized network playlist, Legg added.

SANDRA DEWEY

TITLE: President, TNT and TBS Productions and Business Affairs, Head of Studio T

COMPANY: Turner

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Early in her career, Dewey was an associate at the law firm Greenberg Glusker. She joined Turner in 1994. Prior to her last promotion in 2015, she was executive vice president, head of business affairs for Turner Entertainment Networks and Cartoon Network Originals.

QUOTABLE: “I have gone at my job, starting from when I was a junior person until now, in a way that is without artifice — in a way that doesn’t involve a lot of posturing, and is direct and truthful.”

Read More >Celebrating Media's Influential Women: The 'MCN' Wonder Women Class of 2017|Meet 2017's 12 'MCN' Women to Watch|The 'MCN' Wonder Women Online Archive

Sandra Dewey makes no bones about her “most pressing” personal and professional challenge right now.

“I’m absolutely determined to make every effort to help break through the obstacles that still prevent women from moving forward in our business in the way they should,” said Dewey, who is president of TNT and TBS productions and business affairs, as well as head of Turner’s original programming unit, Studio T.

“I’m really motivated to be an agent of force and change. That’s at the top of my agenda,” she added.

It’s an agenda with a whole lot of other responsibilities and challenges, not the least of which is raising two teenage girls as a single parent. One of her biggest at Turner is preparing TBS and TNT for the future, alongside Kevin Reilly, president of the two channels. “Our industry is extremely challenged to find out our next iteration of the entertainment model,” Dewey said. “I spend a lot of time thinking about that. It’s daunting but exciting.”

CULTURE SHIFT AHEAD

Part of that future-building involves Time Warner Inc.’s pending merger with AT&T, and how Turner’s parent will meld into the telecommunications giant, noted Brett Weitz, executive vice president of TBS original programming. Culturally, AT&T is quite different than Time Warner and its Turner programming unit.

“She’s got a lot on her plate, but when you sit down with her, you’d never know that any of that exists,” said Weitz, who has worked with Dewey for about eight years and admires her coaching skills.

“She’s an inspiring leader to everybody, from the receptionist, to the guy that restocks the toilet paper, to executive vice presidents in the company,” he added. “There’s a lot of superficial conversations that occur in this business, but every time you have a conversation with Sandra, it’s a real conversation. You’re left feeling moved, inspired and ready to roll.”

One of Dewey’s biggest accomplishments in recent years has been creating Studio T, which currently has 15 shows in production. “It’s become one of the most prolific studios in the entire business,” Weitz said. “Three or four years ago, TNT and TBS weren’t producing any of their own content.”

Sarah Aubrey, TNT’s executive vice president of original programming, described Dewey as an agitator. “She’s always pushing us to keep our eyes constantly on the horizon.”

There’s a running theme in how Dewey is described by agents and other people who do business with her, Aubrey said: “Sandra’s tough but fair, and always keeps the big picture in mind about what we want and need. She’s a hardnosed negotiator, but at the same time, she’s someone that people enjoy talking to.”

As Turner’s lead dealmaker, Dewey has created ongoing relationships with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Conan O’Brien. She oversaw deals with Samantha Bee and Jason Jones for their two series, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee and The Detour, as well as for Steve and Nancy Carell’s Angie Tribeca, which is also produced by its star, Rashida Jones. Those shows, among cable’s top-ranked new comedies, are key to TBS’s rebranding.

On the TNT side of the house, Dewey oversaw deals for the series Animal Kingdom from John Wells Productions and an upcoming international coproduction with the U.K.’s Channel 4, Foreign Bodies.

Dewey said she doesn’t carry around any of those accomplishments as a “badge of honor.” But she’s particularly proud of her promotion to president, which occurred about two years ago — around 20 years after she joined Turner.

“I’m really keenly aware of what it takes to make that happen,” she said. “It is a really long and difficult road, particularly for women.

“I know that if I sit on that perch, I can talk to other people about what it means to be there. And I can think of it as a place where I can help and lead and encourage other people to be there too. And that means a lot to me.” One of her outlets for doing that is leading the Los Angeles division of a mentoring program called Turner Women Today.

The people aspect of running a business tends to get glossed over, Dewey said. Oftentimes, profits and losses, not exceptional staff members, are the focus of attention when measuring success. Dewey said she takes pride in getting the best people and encouraging them to do remarkable work.

“It takes a real eye and understanding to bring that out in people,” she said. “I pay a lot of attention to that. It’s a hugely satisfying part of my job.”

LEARNED FROM FIELDS

There was nothing about her childhood that suggested Dewey would become president of an entertainment company. She was raised in a small town in Northern California in the foothills below Lake Tahoe. But she ended up going to law school, and eventually worked for Bert Fields, the well-known entertainment lawyer.

Fields taught her some profound lessons. “He never was ill-mannered, under any circumstances,” Dewey said. “He won his cases and arguments by being well-prepared and well-spoken and presenting the right arguments.”

Women are often underestimated at the negotiating table, she noted, especially when they are well-mannered or gentle. She doesn’t do as much direct deal-making today as she once did, but in earlier years, “I could always tell when people were underestimating me. It was really easy for me to tease them along until the moment when I would be able to show my hand,” she said.

“You can’t confuse politeness with strength,” Dewey added. “But now I’ve been around a long time, and everyone knows me. There’s no mystery.”

Two online video units of NBC Sports Group and Turner have come together on an expanded  “long-term” partnership to use OTT to deliver live and VOD solutions for major sports leagues, pro team franchises, “emerging leagues,” regional and national sports networks, and others holders of premium sports rights.

The agreement, which also factors in Olympics streaming, teams Playmaker Media, the live and VOD streaming service launched last year by NBC Sports Digital (while naming the International Olympic Committee as its first client, and iStreamPlanet, the OTT company acquired by Turner in 2015.

RELATED: NBC Sports Digital Launches ‘Playmaker Media’

iStreamPlanet, along with Adobe, Akamai and Microsoft, were among the partners Playmaker Media identified when the unit was introduced.

RELATED: It's Still Game On for Live TV Sports

The expanded partnership, which will seemingly compete with companies such as Disney-backed Bam Tech and Neulion, will provide tech and services for and “end-to-end” consumer experience, touching areas such as signal acquisition, content management, rights enforcement, advertising and analytics.

RELATED: Disney Buys One-Third of BAMTech for $1 Billion

Playmaker Media and IStreamPlanet have previously collaborated on events such as the Olympics, including the 2016 summer games in Rio, and the Super Bowl. Playmaker Media streams several events  from the NFL, NHL, NASCAR, the Premiere League and Triple Crown horse racing, while iStreamPlanet’s technology is used, for example, for NBA League Pass, Eleague, and the coming NCAA March Madness and PGA Championship.

“We have a long history of working with iStreamPlanet and have collaborated with them to successfully stream some of the biggest events in sports, including multiple Olympics and Super Bowls, to massive audiences,”  Eric Black, CTO, NBC Sports Group Digital, said in a statement. “This is a natural fit as the assets of each company complement the other, providing the most robust offering for customers. We look forward to better serving the growing marketplace through this partnership.”

iSteamPlanet founder and CEO Mio Babic added: “This deal delivers on a shared core value – that end users should be delighted, and premium sports content should be complemented with compelling, innovative viewing experiences. We are just beginning to scratch the surface on the types of innovative solutions we can provide to our customers, and we will continue to expand the amazing work we are doing across the sports industry.”

Turner CTO Jeremy Legg said the partnership reflects "another step in Turner’s strategy for iStreamPlanet to commercialize solutions and bring them to market in ways that are valuable for consumers and customers."

"We’re excited iStreamPlanet’s industry-leading cloud video streaming platform joined with NBC Sports Digital’s capabilities and success in digital sports streaming business," Legg said. "This will bring a new level of excellence to the market.” 

After halting sign-ups temporarily during an apparent high volume of interested consumers, FilmStruck, the new subscription VOD service from Turner for movie aficionados, said Tuesday (November 1) that its provisioning system was back online.

RELATED: Turner to Go OTT With ‘FilmStruck’

FilmStruck went live yesterday on Web browsers, Android and iOS mobile devices, and Fire TV devices. Consumers can get a 14-day free trial of FilmStruck, which starts at $6.99 per month, and $4 more per month for FilmStruck plus the Criterion Channel. An annual FilmStruck/Criterion Channel subscription is $99. 

Sign-ups resumed last night:

#FilmStruck fans, we're up & running for you. Head to https://t.co/mlA2ts1hoA to check out our spotlight on Akira Kurosawa & more. pic.twitter.com/0ZxeA5aXfi

— FilmStruck (@FilmStruck) November 2, 2016

FilmStruck said it was experiencing a high volume of concurrent sign-ups soon after going live, but that it had resolved the issue on Tuesday evening.

In responses to questions posed by consumers via Twitter, FilmStruck noted that the service will become available on Apple TV (fourth generation) in December, and on Roku’s platform in “early 2017.”

FilmStruck had originally expected to launch on Oct. 19, but decided to delay the debut so it could  complete work on a “seamless registration process for subscribers”

FilmStruck, Turner’s new OTT subscription VOD service for film aficionados, is set to launch to launch on October 19 on multiple platforms and start at $6.99 per month, the company announced Thursday.

The service, which will feature a large library of contemporary and classic arthouse, indie, foreign and cult films, will initially be offered on Amazon Fire TV devices, Web browsers, and iOS- and Android-powered mobile devices. It will also be available via Apple TV and other platforms and devices in the coming months, Turner said.

Plans for FilmStruck, a service developed and managed by Turner Classic Movies in partnership with the Criterion Collection, were announced in April.

RELATED: Turner to Go OTT With ‘FilmStruck’

FilmStruck, which will serve as the exclusive streaming home to the Criterion Collection library and The Criterion Channel (starting November 11), will be available in three pricing tiers: 

-A $6.99 per month subscription with “hundreds” of films along with exclusive fare and originally-produced pieces that will be refreshed frequently.

-A FilmStruck + The Criterion Channel Subscription that runs $10.99 per month, featuring the baseline FilmStruck service plus access to Criterion’s full streaming library of films and features, as well as original programming such as filmmaker profiles and curated series featuring “celebrated guests from the film world and beyond.”

-An annual subscription to FilmStruck + The Criterion Channel for a reduced price of $99.

Consumers will also have a chance to try out the service with a 14-day free trial.

FilmStruck's library will feature a library of curated, refreshed films indie studios such as as Janus Films, Flicker Alley, Icarus Films, Kino, Milestone, Zeitgeist, Film Movement, Global Lens, First Run Features, Oscilloscope Laboratories and Shout Factory, along with titles from majors such as Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Examples of individual titles to be featured include Babette's Feast, Blood Simple, Blow-Up, Breaker Morant, A Hard Day's Night, Mad Max, Metropolis, Moulin Rouge, My Life as a Dog, Paths of Glory, The Player, A Room with a View, Seven Samurai, The Seventh Seal, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Stardust Memories, The Trip to Bountiful, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Woodstock.

FilmStruck will also feature more than 70 curated and constantly refreshed programming “themes,” such as The Beauty of Italy (collection of films highlighting the country); Cinema Passport (a monthly showcase of the work of “countries rich in film history and culture); and Early Kubrick (early films from the renowned director Stanley Kubrick); and Panic Room (a monthly franchise that explores cult and indie horror film, hosted by actor-comedian Lucky Yates). 

The service will also include hosted introductions from film critics, actors and others, including Yates, actor Bill Hader, and film reporter, critic and TV host Alicia Malone. 

"Turner smartly identified a strategic way to move into the direct-to-consumer business by creating an over-the-top offering that was additive to the TV landscape, with programming not readily available in the streaming marketplace and that was completely differentiated from what TCM already offers," said Coleman Breland, president of Turner Content Distribution and TCM, in a statement. "FilmStruck super-serves a niche and devoted audience of film fans and will be a strong addition to Turner's portfolio of leading brands."

"FilmStruck is a departure from the timeless Hollywood classics that we offer at TCM and a genuinely distinct offering for the streaming marketplace, focusing on a thoughtfully curated experience around hard-to-find, critically acclaimed, independent films from the most celebrated libraries in the world," added Jennifer Dorian, general manager of TCM and FilmStruck."By combining the expertise at TCM and the Criterion Collection – two of the leading authorities in film preservation and history – we have created something really special that is a must-have for passionate film lovers."

Turner has acquired the rights to the complete Star Wars movie franchise as part of a multi-year licensing agreement with The Walt Disney Studios and 20th Century Fox, the company said Wednesday.

The agreement calls for TNT and TBS to air 10 Star Wars films -- five of the original six Star Wars films, along with the cable network premiere of 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (the movie is currently running on pay tv service Starz), the upcoming Rouge One: A Star Wars Story set to debut in theaters this December, and the next three yet-to-be-created Star Wars films -- according to Turner.

In addition, Turner through a separate deal with 20th Century Fox secured deals to the inaugural 1977 Star Wars film A New Hope. Terms of the agreement were not revealed. 

TNT will air the original Star Wars films over six consecutive nights beginning Sept. 20, said the network.

"The Star Wars movies and characters are beloved across generations, captivating audiences and breaking box office records around the globe for nearly four decades," said Deborah Bradley, executive vice president of networks optimization, content strategy and commercialization for Turner in a statement. "Through this deal, TNT and TBS will be the exclusive basic cable home of one of the most iconic, enduring and valuable movie franchises of all time, giving viewers the chance to watch this amazing collection from the very beginning."

TNT presents the original six Star Wars films over six consecutive nights, starting Tuesday, Sept. 20

Tuesday, Sept. 20

8 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

11 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Wednesday, Sept. 21

8 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

11:05 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

Thursday, Sept. 22

8 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

11:05 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Friday, Sept. 23

8 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: A New Hope

10:45 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: A New Hope

Saturday, Sept. 24

10:45 a.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

1:45 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

4:55 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

8 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

10:45 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Sunday, Sept. 25

5:15 a.m. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

8:15 a.m. Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

11:20 a.m. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

2:25 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: A New Hope

5:10 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

8 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

11 p.m. (ET/PT) – Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

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Turner has led a $45 million round of funding for Refinery29, a digital media company focused on women.  

The round, which includes additional participation from legacy investor Scripps Networks Interactive, follows earlier investments from a group that also includes WPP, Stripes Group, Floodgate, Lead Edge Capital, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures and Hearst Corporation.

Turner did not disclose the amount of its equity investment, but did note that it and Refinery29 will collaborate on content creation and development tied to programming that appeals to Refinery29’s core audience of millennial women.  Additionally, they’ll work together on cross-platform ad sales partnerships. Christina, president and manager of Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Boomerang, will join Refinery29’s board.

Refinery29 said it will use the new influx of funds to “supercharge” its video production business across a variety of new formats and channels, and also to accelerate its international growth initiatives (it opened offices in Germany and the U.K. last year).  Of recent note, Refinery29 has launched thematic channels such as Brawlers (sports), Short Cuts (beauty) and RIOT (comedy), and its first first podcast and app.

Refinery29 said it hosts more than 27 million unique visitors on its website and touts a reach of more than 225 million users across all of its platforms.  It also claimed that video views have jumped 19 times across platforms since launching its R29 Originals unit in April 2015.

"In order to achieve success in today's quickly evolving digital environment, we believe in partnering with brands that have distinct voices and loyal, engaged audiences,"  David Levy, president of Turner, said in a statement."Refinery29 certainly fits the bill, bringing with it a highly coveted following of millennial-minded women, strong capabilities in digital products, event marketing and content creation, as well as an attractive advertiser base.”

Turner’s investment is the latest in its efforts to shore up its digital-facing efforts, and follows a similar, recent investment in Mashable and its 2015 acquisition of iStreamPlanet.

Turner said it will soon launch additional network apps for several platforms, including Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku and the Google Chromecast. 

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.

Time Warner reported mixed second quarter results, as lower revenue at its Warner Bros. movie studio offset gains at its Turner Networks and Home Box Office units.

Overall revenue dipped 5% to $7 billion in the period, as sales at Warner Bros. were down 19.4% to $2.7 billion. At Turner, revenue increased 6.5% to $3 billion and increased 2% at HBO to $1.5 billion.

Operating income was flat at Turner in the period at $1.1 billion and down 5.3% to $481 million at HBO. Warner Bros. OI fell 9.7% to $308 million in the quarter.

Related:Time Warner Snares 10% Stake in Hulu

Tough comps to last year, which was a record quarter for the content company, and unfavorable foreign exchange rates for its international operations impacted results. Time Warner said despite those headwinds, it managed to keep operating income margins stable at about 25%.

“We had a strong first half of 2016, which puts us ahead of our original goals for the year,” Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes said in a statement. “Our performance reflects the creative excellence resulting from investments we’ve been making in the very best content. At the same time, we’re capitalizing on new distribution opportunities to take advantage of the growing demand for high-quality video content around the world.”

Warner Bros. is expected to benefit from strong expected box office from alternative superhero movie Suicide Squad, slated to open this week and recent successes like Central Intelligence and The Conjuring 2.