Anyone who has spent any time in the TV business has heard the mantra before: This year is advanced advertising’s year. But unlike the past two decades, in which many a promising ad-tech initiative has stumbled, cable and broadcast executives may finally have the incentive to make targeted ads reality.

For advanced advertising — using the torrent of data from set-top boxes, digital and mobile devices to target messages to specific households and individuals — the erosion of the traditional TV model could be the force that frees the technology. As viewing habits have shifted away from linear TV, distributors, networks and advertisers themselves all have a vested interest in reaching that elusive market.

“When models reach the breaking point, that’s when breakouts happen,” Tom Rogers, chairman of TRget Media LLC and the former TiVo CEO, said in an interview. “It’s been clear for some time that the traditional linear TV model has had its challenges. We’re really beginning to see some things happen that are very, very significant accelerations.”

And networks, distributors and ad buyers alike are buying in, with distributors like Comcast and Altice USA snapping up small ad-tech companies, networks forming consortiums like OpenAP to identify opportunities and set standards, and even, in the case of NBCUniversal, devoting a growing piece of their ad budgets to targeting.

Related: The Future of Television Is Now

In March, NBCU said it would offer about $1 billion in inventory to targeted ads this year. And at the recent upfronts, NBCU chairman of advertising sales and client partnerships Linda Yaccarino slammed the questionable reach of some digital ads.

“Has a ‘view’ ever bought any of your products?” Yaccarino asked at NBCU’s May 15 upfront event. “Has a ‘like’ ever walked into a store? … Viewers buy products.”

Related: Data Drives Some Talk at Upfront Presentations [subscription required]

First-Quarter Slippage
Exacerbating the need for more focused ads is the mounting evidence that cord-cutting, cord-shaving and skinny programming bundles are gaining steam. In the first quarter, the pay TV distribution market fell by 762,000 subscribers, the single largest first-quarter decline ever, according to MoffettNathanson. And once indestructible brands, like The Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN, have seen their subscriber bases shrink as viewers move to other venues and devices to fill their content needs.

ESPN has lost between 12 million and 13 million subscribers from its peak and plans to launch a direct-to-consumer service targeted at younger viewers later this year. At the same time, ratings stalwart the National Football League saw its ratings fall 9% last year (double that for the coveted 18-24 year old demographic), while other sports are getting older. Meanwhile, younger viewers are staying away from the living room TV set.

According to TechCrunch, viewers are watching 1 billion hours of YouTube video clips per day.

Related: OTT Players Poised to Win TV’s Future [subscription required]

Traditional distributors and programmers are taking notice. Comcast has purchased several ad-tech companies over the past few years, including FreeWheel, StickyAds.tv and Visible World. Altice USA bought advanced ad company Audience Partners in March, and in April programmers Viacom, Turner and 21st Century Fox formed consortium OpenAP to standardize the way targeted audiences are defined and measured.

The TV industry still has some time before the ad model completely disintegrates, Pivotal Research Group senior analyst Brian Weiser said.

“To me, it’s evolutionary, not revolutionary,” Wieser said. “Ratings can fall by double digits, yet traditional TV is a source of premium video content with adjacent advertising opportunities. It continues to dwarf everything else.”

Industry group the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) pegged digital video ad revenue at about $9.1 billion in 2016, compared with $69 billion for TV ads.

Wieser said a dramatic shift in viewers could sway the market, but it would have to be very dramatic.

“For TV to find itself in a position where advertisers would all of a sudden make radical changes, you would have to find a good core of the audience evaporate,” Wieser said. “And by evaporate I mean reach goes away.”

The emergence of groups like OpenAP are more a means to show the industry that programmers are not out of step with the times, Weiser said, adding that perception is a bigger force of change in the ad market than reality.

“Decisions end up getting made based on the perception of how things are going, and fear,” Wieser said. He pointed to the TV ad market in 2015, which to some was the indicator that the traditional TV ad model had broken, but was, Wieser said, merely a bad year made to look worse by unfavorable comparables to the prior year. In 2016, when heavy ad spending by such daily fantasy sports sites as FanDuel and DraftKings spurred the TV market, the problem appeared to be solved. Now in 2017, the ad market is in decline again.

“What’s happening now is what people feared would happen a couple of years ago,” Wieser said. “Cost constraints are more pronounced than they have ever been. Now we’re at a place where I’m feeling doubtful that national TV will grow again. But it’s not because of digital, per se.”

At TVSquared, an ad-tech company that tracks brand traffic and helps advertisers choose how to target their messages, chief technology officer Kevin O’Reilly agreed fears the TV ad model is dead are overblown.

O’Reilly said the TV apocalypse has been coming for the past 15 years, and this wave is being fueled by the emergence of the second screen.

“If the apocalypse is coming, it’s coming slowly,” he said. But he added that ad buyers and sellers are realizing that both traditional and advanced models can coexist.

“Advertisers are saying, look, I know linear TV works, it really does drive efficient traffic. And one of the big benefits of efficiency is if I can find a way to be slightly more efficient in an efficient marketplace, I’m going to make money,” O’Reilly said. “There is major value in still reaching a very large audience, I just want to make sure I’m reaching the right part of that audience. And when I’m not reaching the right part of the audience, I can change my buy and optimize it into parts where I’m seeing it perform better.”

Getting to that point will probably take a round of consolidation in the business, Rogers said, creating one-stop shops for participants to access the expertise they need.

“The problem is, there are so many silos, so many companies, that it is a bit of a mess,” Rogers said, adding that there is an increasing need to put ad-tech solutions under a single roof. “Until that is solved, it’s going to be difficult for a massive breakthrough.”

The convergence of ad tech and distribution has been a long time coming with the inherent convergence of data-driven advertising and those who compile the data, said Waller Capital Partners managing director Roddy Moon, who leads the boutique investment bank’s digital media practice and who has covered the ad-tech sector since its early days.

Related: Waller Capital's Video Services Consolidation Chart

Helping to spur along that convergence is the dominance of digital behemoths Google and Facebook in the digital ad space. Morgan Stanley estimates that about 85 cents of every new online ad dollar goes to those two companies.

“There are still a tremendous number of companies chasing that remaining 15 cents,” Moon said. “But that’s just digital ad spend; the 800-pound gorilla is still TV ad budgets.”

To address that market, Moon said, the industry is beginning to realize it needs a common, integrated data-driven platform. With scores of small, medium and large ad-tech companies out there, many are realizing that creating a one-stop shop for distributors, content owners and advertisers can help the development along.

“It used to be that it was an ‘either-or’ mentality,” Moon said of the ad-tech business. “You were either digital or traditional television. Now there is more of a mindset from the marketing side that it should be holistic.”

Cable Jumps In, Too
At the same time, cable and telco distributors are trying to dispel the notion that others are taking over this emerging business. Comcast started buying ad-tech firms in 2005, with Strata Marketing, followed by Seattle-based thePlatform in 2006. In the past three years, Comcast has purchased video ad startup FreeWheel (2014), This Technology (2015), Visible World (2015) and StickyAds (2016), all with a view toward offering more targeted ad product.

Earlier this month, Comcast named Marcien Jenckes, a former ad-tech entrepreneur, as president of advertising. Jenckes has held several roles at Comcast since joining the company in 2010 — he was most recently executive vice president of consumer services at Comcast Cable, where he oversaw its video, internet, voice and Xfinity Home businesses.

The newest entry to the U.S. cable space — Altice USA, a unit of European telecom company Altice N.V. — has also dipped its toes in the ad-tech space. Altice USA purchased Suddenlink Communications in December 2015 for $9.1 billion and in June 2016 bought Cablevision Systems for $17.7 billion, making it the fourth largest cable operator in the country with 4.6 million residential and business services subscribers.

Cablevision had been a pioneer in taking a digital-like approach to advertising, Altice USA chief data officer Paul Haddad said. Haddad had served as senior vice president and general manager of advanced data and analytics at Cablevision, playing a key role in its advanced advertising strategy.

That expertise and experience now in demand in the business, Haddad said, and advertisers and networks, who may have given advanced ads short shrift in the past, are getting a lot more serious.

“We’re being asked to discuss our strategy with major players,” Haddad said. “In previous years, people were assessing the value proposition, versus today I can sense they want to test, they want to discuss business plans. To us, this is the real sign that, yes, we think it’s going to start gaining major traction starting this year. In 18 to 24 months I could see it becoming a standard request when it comes to advertising in the industry.”

Already, some early aggregators are beginning to emerge. In 2016, former Cablevision CEO James Dolan and his wife, former cable company chief operating officer Kristin, formed Dolan Family Ventures, an investment company focused on the ad-tech space. Dolan Family Ventures formed data analytics company 605 shortly after its purchase of Analytics Media Group, a New York-based data analytics specialist. The idea behind 605 is to combine AMG’s analytics and technology platform with set-top box data to provide clients with the kind of information that can help them develop targeted, optimized ad campaigns.

Kristin Dolan serves as CEO of 605, overseeing a management team that includes several former AMG and Cablevision ad executives, including former Cablevision Media Sales president Ben Tatta.

As ad buyers, distributors and networks become increasingly frustrated over how ads are sold, targeting will gain traction, Kristin Dolan said in an interview.

“In order to continue selling television advertising, the advertisers and the brands are expecting that they will get the same capability to target people that they have been experiencing on digital for years,” she said. “The time has come.”

And with NBCUniversal committing $1 billion to targeted inventory and consortiums like OpenAP emerging, she added that she sees the light at the end of the targeting tunnel.

“Television advertising is a great medium; [it’s] the best way to reach large audiences,” Dolan said. “Coupled with targeted calls to action, it really allows the brand to be more effective. Hopefully in the next 12 to 18 months, you will see significant increase in utilization to drive the industry forward. Buyers are demanding it, and the sellers like NBC are responding, as are the MVPDs. Everybody seems finally ready to move on this.”

That buyers are finally stepping up to the advanced ad plate is a significant development. In the past, as cable companies and data firms touted their ability to pinpoint homes via set-top box data, buyers have dismissed the technology as not being specific enough. An age-old argument against targeted ads was that just knowing a household buys dog food isn’t enough; advertisers wanted to know who was buying it and what they were watching.

Getting Real
But advances in data have made what was once the Holy Grail of targeted advertising a reality.

“Now you can do that,” One2One Media president Michael Bologna, a 20-year veteran of the advanced advertising business, said. “Media marketers are getting pressure from CMOs, and they are now pushing their buyers and their agencies and they are now changing the conversation.

“Will there be a time when an advertiser will say, ‘I completely don’t care what the program is as long as I know it’s the audience?’ We’re definitely headed down that road in certain ways, but content will always play a factor,” Bologna added. “But now that the advertisers are seeing first hand that they can target these granular segments, and they see that targeting these granular segments is generating sales, they are becoming less focused on ‘I have to be on this particular show at this particular time.’ That’s a really interesting and fulfilling trend.”

Bologna said advanced ad addressability won’t take over the TV ad market — he estimated that when fully deployed, 25% to 35% of an advertiser’s ad budget will go to addressable — but it will balance it.

“No major advertiser is ever going to put 100% of their budget toward addressability,” Bologna said. “If you wait until someone is 40 years old to show them a Mercedes ad when they can afford to buy a Mercedes, you’ve missed them. What addressability will ultimately do, in the long run, is help balance the frequency of messaging to the mass audience versus the very niche audience. And between now and then, every advertiser is going to have their own allocation methodology.”

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.”

After attending last week's network television upfronts, it is hard not to recognize how advanced the business really is and how much of what we have been talking about for so long has become reality. Television is no longer just about ratings, units and GRPs, but rather about the ability to effectively utilize data and technology to target and measure more specific, granular audiences within best-in-class content and an array of alternative distribution formats.

The concept of buying audiences and hyper-targeting is not new. It has been a standard practice in digital marketing for some time and has more than proven its value to the market. However, we are now lifting these trends and tactics and applying them to television at full scale, thereby demonstrating the value with metrics far beyond impression delivery.

RELATED COVER STORY > Breaking Point: Advanced Ads Emerge as Traditional Linear Models Erode [subscription required]

Five years ago, targeting in television consisted of standard demography, and reaching those identified demos was heavily based on using the content as the surrogate for the audience.

Today, every major TV network has incorporated the necessary data sets into their portfolio that allows advertisers to understand how the content they are aligning their brands with delivers against highly customized, handpicked segments.

In many cases, the transaction is based on the delivery of the commercial to those specified audience segments. These are valuable tools but, more importantly, it gives advertisers choice and options, which is critical in this ever-changing, highly connected and fragmented marketplace.

While data may be the backbone of this television evolution, it is not the only contributing factor. Technology now has a seat at the table. Measurement is no longer limited to our standard sources and delivered in confined buckets. Advertisers have true crossplatform reach and frequency understanding available to them, which allows for the application of technology towards near and soon-to-be-real-time optimization.

When thinking about television, it’s easy to keep the conversation focused on national networks and mass reach; however, it is important to recognize the role multichannel video programming distributors play in the transformation of TV.

Looking back again those five years, the notion of “addressable” targeting and campaign-level attribution were somewhere between a dream and a test. Today, more than 50% of U.S. TV households can receive a highly segmented message to the individual set-top box, with the results tied back to a sale.

Yes, we finally can identify households based on the type of car they drive, what brand of soup they purchase, what they watch on TV and even those who suffer from seasonal allergies. The identification and messaging to these homes is made possible through technology, data management and innovative business planning by many of our country’s largest pay TV providers. `

This mechanism of targeting an attribution is right out of the digital playbook, but without the concerns surrounding fraud and viewability.

The most exciting part of the television business today is that nothing is off the table.

Applications that we thought would never surface are being built as we speak, and the vision of a data-driven, majority addressable and semi-automated marketplace is within our grasp.

When I speak to advertisers and they tell me they have moved beyond the “test and learn” stage, and are truly vested in a data and technology market, it only increases my confidence in the future of our business.

Nick Troiano leads a family of Cross MediaWorks companies focused on addressing the current and future needs of television advertisers. Those companies include Cadent, a leading provider of media, advertising technology and data solutions for both advertisers and pay TV providers; TCA (The Cross Agency), a data-driven performance-based marketing agency; and one2one Media, a newly formed company focused on expanding and streamlining the addressable video marketplace.

Image by John Lund/Getty Images.

Turner’s TNT and TBS gave greenlights to six new series as it head into its upfront presentation Wednesday.

The networks are being rebranded and 100% of the series that were put on the air last year by Kevin Reilly, president of TBS and TNT and chief creative officer for Turner Entertainment, were renewed.

Related: Turner’s Levy Thinks Audience Buying Will Grow in Upfront [subscription required]

TBS’s new series are: Miracle Workers, a Heaven-set workplace comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe and Owen Wilson and executive-produced by Lorne Michaels; Close Enough, a brand-new animated series from Regular Show creator J.G. Quintel; An update of of the classic game show The Joker's Wild, hosted by Snoop Dogg; and a new untitled series from the comedy trio The Dress Up Gang.

TNT has greenlit two non-fiction series: Michael Moore Live From the Apocalypse from Oscar and Emmy winner Michael Moore; and 
Who Run the World? from Sarah Jessica Parker, Morgan Spurlock and Refinery29.

TNT is working with Ridley Scott to develop a night of original science-fiction programming. Initial plans call for the block to serve as a showcase for hour-long series, short-form programs and other formats to be developed in collaboration with Scott.

TNT has also ordered a pilot for Highland, a scripted drama written by Liz Sarnoff and starring actress-comedian Margaret Cho; and Daveed Diggs, who earned a Tony for the Broadway hit Hamilton, will star in the network's drama pilot Snowpiercer.

Univision is set to host its upfront Tuesday (May 16) in New York City, with Colombian singer Shakira on board to perform. 

The Spanish-language U.S. media conglomerate said in a release it will highlight five "passion points:" soccer, news, family, music and drama. The soccer news will include Univision's first access to UEFA Champions League contests in summer 2018 on Univision Deportes, along with UEFA Europa League and UEFA Nations League contests. 

More details about Univision's upfront announcement are in the release linked here. 

It’s upfront week, when the Big 5 broadcast networks and a few bold cable outlets take over New York’s most splendid stages to show off their new programs. The upfront presentations are often derided as too expensive and too inefficient, but none of the major broadcasters seems to want to break from tradition and step off the stage.

Related: Abruzzese’s Guide to the Upfronts [subscription required]

Here’s what to expect this week.

MONDAY (May 15)
NBC takes over the Radio City Music Hall stage Monday morning. It holds a joint upfront for its NBCUniversal networks, including Syfy, Telemundo and USA Network. NBC itself has a fair amount to brag about, including Sunday Night and Thursday Night Football, unscripted stalwarts such as The Voice and the rarest of creatures on TV these days: the hit network show in This Is Us. Telemundo’s evening party entertainment is Enrique Iglesias.

Later on Monday, Fox sets up at the Beacon Theatre. Fox has a lot to prove, without the ratings-hogging unscripted franchise on which broadcast nets rely so heavily, and with an unproven track record of turning old shows and movies into new series.

One old show that will play a key role once again for Fox: The X-Files, which has 10 episodes in the works for 2017-2018.

TUESDAY (May 16)
ABC takes the stage Tuesday at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center. Entertainment president Channing Dungey essentially inherited ABC’s shows from her predecessor last year, but the current batch is all her own.

ABC’s reboot of American Idol is major news. The show averaged 11.5 million viewers in its final season on Fox — a far cry from Idol’s heyday, but a pretty robust number in this day and age.

Rookies American Housewife and Designated Survivor earned renewals, while veterans Modern Family, Black-ish and Once Upon a Time are also returning.

ESPN also takes its turn Tuesday, presenting from the Minskoff Theatre, as does Spanish-language media conglom Univision, at the Lyric Theatre, with Shakira set to perform.

WEDNESDAY (May 17)
CBS is hungry for a breakout comedy, and is hopeful that Big Bang Theory offshoot Young Sheldon, about 9-year-old Sheldon Cooper growing up in Texas, can bust out.

Other pilots include Instinct, which stars Alan Cumming and is based on a soon-to-be-published James Patterson novel.

CBS will talk up its stable schedule. The network announced early renewals for 18 series, including five rookie shows.

Wednesday also sees Turner, parent of Cartoon Network, CNN, TBS, TNT, truTV and other cable networks, take over The Theater at Madison Square Garden for its presentation.

Related: Turner’s Levy Thinks Audience Buying Will Grow in Upfront [subscription required]

THURSDAY (May 18)
The CW takes its turn Thursday at New York City Center. Some CW shows win over the critics, but grabbing big bunches of Nielsens is a different story. “There’s a lot of critical acclaim,” says one industry watcher. “There’s not a lot of ratings.”

Perhaps Dynasty, The CW’s reimagining of the ’80s primetime soap, will change that.

BET tonight (April 27) will hold its network upfront presentation in New York as it looks to further cement its position as the industry’s leading brand for African American viewers. Recently named one of Viacom’s six core brands that the company will put its resources behind, BET is focused on creating quality, original scripted series and movies that it hopes will help thwart increased competition from entertainment-based cable networks looking to reach an African-American audience that watches more television than any other group.

Overall the network plans to increase its original programming lineup by 40% in 2017 with projects like The Bobby Brown Story, a  limited series inspired by the network's successful The New Edition Story mini-series.

BET CEO Debra Lee recently spoke to Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about the network’s brand and its programming strategy heading into the upfronts.

MCN: What does Viacom’s naming of BET as one of its six core brands mean for the network’s brand?

DL: It's really great to be named as one of the six flagship brands for Viacom, and I think that just speaks to the fact that we're the premiere destination for African-Americans, and we have been for a long time. We have been the number one cable network for African-American viewers 18 to 49 for 16 consecutive years, and a top 20 ad-supported cable network for people 18 to 49, so I think that’s part of the recognition by Viacom as to how important our brand is and what it means. I think it's important what BET Networks is to our culture -- we're relevant, radically bold and we're fun -- and I think our audience expects that from us. Our audience sets the trend for not only black culture but culture in general. We are the most social and more engaged audience, so it's a great recognition by our parent company. We've done several upfront presentations in smaller venues and people are responding to us.

MCN: With a number of mainstream audiences developing content to reach African-American viewers, is this one of the most competitive environments in which to reach your target audience?

DL: It gets more competitive every year. I mean 37 years ago when BET started, we were the only network targeting this audience and I'm very proud of that. And over the years other networks have learned what we've always known; that our audience is engaged and are big TV watchers and they are very social. They set the trends and define pop culture, so you know we've seen more competition year in and year out. But competition makes the leaders stronger and that continues to happen. We see what other people are doing -- a network may have a black-targeted night once a week, or a couple of hours of black programming. We're one of the few networks that targets this audience 24 hours a day.

MCN: The network has stepped up its development of scripted programming in recent years. How important has that been in defining the BET brand?

DL: Twelve years ago when I took over as CEO of BET I promised our audience premium scripted programming, and I kept that promise with shows like The Game, Being Mary Jane, Real Husbands of Hollywood. This year we launched The Quad and Rebel, as well as [limited series] Madiba and our huge success with New Edition. So I've kept I've kept my word and now our audience expects high quality scripted programming from us. We also do some unscripted, but scripted really gives us a chance to be authentic and create drama from a storyline as opposed to a reality setting. And so we're going to continue to do that -- we're going to double down on biopics given the success of The New Edition Story with 29 million viewers over three nights.We're going to do The Bobby Brown Story with the same writing that we did New Edition. We have something called Death Row Chronicles which is a six-part look at Death Row Records, so we’re going to continue to tell these authentic stories. Overall we're going to have over 40 percent more original hours of programming going into this upfront. Viewers always wanted us to look like ABC or NBC and have high quality scripted programming, but we will also have talk shows and game shows and everything else so I think you'll see a nice mix.

MCN: Amid the success BET has had recently on the programming side, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask about recent network programming executive departures. Can you talk about what happened and what’s happening within the department going forward?

DL: Well you know there are always changes and so we did have some changes in our programming leadership. [BET senior vice president of specials, music programming and news] Connie Orlando is the head of programming -- she's been here a long time and she's done scripted and unscripted programming. She was put in charge of our tentpoles so she's been doing that for a couple of years running the BET Awards and some of our other big tent poles. So I'm really excited about Connie's new leadership and what she brings to the team.

MCN: What is your sense as to how strong the upfront will be for BET and for cable?

DL: People realize how important our audience is, and you mentioned how many other networks are aiming for this audience. So I think it’s going to be a strong upfront -- [advertisers] are excited to hear about the new Viacom and about the six flagship brands, and to hear what our individual strategies are. So I think it's going to be a good year for cable and especially for BET. One thing I haven’t mentioned is Centric TV. It’s being refreshed as BET Her, which will be the name of it going forward. We think this better aligns Centric with the BET flagship brand. It’s been a destination for African-American women 25 to 54 and we’re going to continue to service her through this channel. So now we’re going to have BET, BET Her, BET Jazz, BET Soul as our network portfolio. I’m really excited about that.

MCN: Will you look to build on BET’s presence on the digital front in 2017?

DL: Yes. We’re always looking at OTT and other digital opportunities because we want to be everywhere our audience is. The technology is changing so much that we always try to keep up, whether that's on iTunes, Netflix or other OTT offerings. We’re doing our first ever Black Twitter impact study. Black Twitter is such an important part of conversation and it really drives mainstream culture, so we've joined forces with Twitter to look at this more carefully and we're going to release the findings with Twitter. We just know it's such a powerful mechanism for our audience and there's a strong correlation between tweeting and watching live TV. So digital is really important to us and along with Viacom -- we're looking at ways to produce more digital content and how to service that audience better.

At a time when many smaller networks are getting winnowed out, Pop says it is thriving.

Nearly three years after being rebranded from the TV Guide Channel, Pop says it is adding distribution, viewers and advertisers in its upfront presentation. The network is also upgrading its programming, working with well-known talent, emphasizing scripted shows and dropping low-budget reality shows.

RELATED: Revamped Pop sets January 2015 launch date, new slate

The network is also adding some high-profile acquired programming. It is making its first first-run off-network acquisition with the ABC comedy The Goldbergs. It's brought back E.R., the mega-hit, which hasn’t been on the air or on subscription VOD for seven years.

All of this is made possible by the backing of owners CBS and Lionsgate. For both companies, Pop represents their biggest play in basic cable and Pop has been able to leverage its parents assets in a pay-TV environment in which linear networks such as Pivot and Esquire Network have been terminated and more are likely to meet a similar fate.

“It’s been a great little three-year run for us since we changed from the TV Guide Network,” Pop president Brad Schwartz said.

The network is now on all the major traditional distributors and is also being added to all the new digital distributors’ lineups, including YouTube TV and Hulu’s new live product.

Read more at B&C

New York -- Azteca America, the broadcast network and Spanish-language programmer, dug into the headlines for its first U.S.-based original series. It's called El Muro, or The Wall. Set along the Arizona-Mexico border, the drama will break up into 10 blocks of five episodes around a central narrative -- "a love story between Adriana, an undocumented immigrant, and Calixto, the immigration officer in charge of her deportation." Network CEO Manuel Abud said the show, in early production and slated to premiere in 2018, would entertain and "tap into issues that are of extreme interest to our audience."

At an upfront event for advertisers at the Times Center, Azteca America (owned by Mexican broadcaster TV Azteca) executives said its mix of entertainment shows and events like the Miss Universe pageant, back for a third year in a row and with new "Camino a la Corona" backstage buildup programming, led to sizable gains in total viewers (33%), adults 18-49 (28%) and adults 18-34 (29%) in primetime for 2015-16, citing Nielsen.

Another new primetime original is El Manicomio (Mental Hospital), a thriller series about a reporter who goes undercover in a psychiatric hospital. The network is adding boxing (Knockout, a U.S.-produced reality series) and mixed martial arts in the form of Combate Americas Azteca fare. A deal for more than 1,000 hours of Turkish drama series from KANAL D adds to a stockpile of action fare.

On the sales and digital fronts, Azteca America said it had new digital TV slash programmatic pacts, with Videology for programmatic buys and with Zype to spread its original news and entertainment content on OTT platforms including Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku.

TLC will look to build on its property and home improvement lineup with the return of its classic series Trading Spaces, the network said.

The series, which ran on TLC from 2000-2011 and helped usher in the popular home improvement genre on cable, will make its return to the network in 2018, according to TLC president and general manager Nancy Daniels. She added the network is “open” to having the stars from the original series return in the reboot -- including former host Paige Davis -- although no deals have been reached. 

The announcement comes on the heels of the network’s recent launch of home improvement series Nate & Jeremiah bBy Design.

“We are thrilled to expand in this space, and what better way to do that than to bring back Trading Spaces, the series that put property on the map,” Daniels said.

The network also said it will launch later this year, This Is Life Live, a four-day live event that will follow the personal journeys of families experiencing an extraordinary circumstance, said network officials. 

In other TLC news, the network will spin off its relationship-themed series 90 Day Fiancé with the development of 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days and a digital series 90 Day Fiancé: What Now?Also in the genre, the network will develop new series Hear Me, Love Me, See Me, said network officials.

The network will also develop several documentaries, including The Fall, which relives the controversy surrounding the collision between Olympic runners Mary Decker and Zola Budd during the 1984 Olympics, and Diana: Tragedy or Treason, focusing on the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death.

OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network will add two new documentary series to its Saturday night lineup, network officials said.

The series include Released, which is executively produced by Winfrey and chronicles the lives of formerly incarcerated men and women, said the network. Checking Inn follows former Essence Magazine editor-in-chief Monique Greenwood and her successful Bed & Breakfast business, said OWN officials.

Checking Inn is produced Trooper Entertainment and Lionsgate Television and executively produced by David Caplan (Monica The Medium), while Lucky 8 TV produces Released, said OWN.

“OWN’s Saturday night lineup features entertaining and thought-provoking docu-series focused around conversations our audience is having in their everyday lives,” said Erik Logan, OWN president in a statement. “We think both of these shows will connect with our viewers and we’re pleased to be able to continue to serve up great new content.” 

OWN will officially present the two shows tomorrow morning as part of Discovery Communications' upfront presentation. 

Nickelodeon leads off the cable-network upfront season this Thursday (March 2) on a ratings and brand identity roll. Viacom’s recent naming of Nick and Nick Jr. as two of the six core brands that the company will put its resources behind follows the programmer’s strong 2016 performance: It finished as the top kid-targeted cable network on a total day basis in all major kids demos. Nickelodeon Group president Cyma Zarghami spoke with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about Nickelodeon’s brand value within a crowded and competitive kids’ content marketplace. Here’s an edited transcript of their conversation.

MCN:From your perspective, what does Viacom’s choice of Nickelodeon as one of its six core franchise network brands mean for the network’s operational strategy?
Cyma Zarghami: One of the things that’s most exciting about it are the global opportunities for the network, because the two places where Nickelodeon has been able to really differentiate itself are global, and our success theatrically in our partnership with Paramount. So with the [Teenage Mutant Ninja] Turtles movies and the SpongeBob [SquarePants] movies — as well as four or five [movies] that we are pretty certain are coming in the next four years — along with the global opportunities to take all this IP even further around the world is exciting.

Also when [Viacom CEO Bob Bakish] called out the flagship brands, Nick Jr. was one of them. I would just add that the preschool success that we’ve had really is a testament to why Nick Jr. is one of those flagships. The success of Paw Patrol, Blaze and The Monster Machines, Shimmer and Shine, Bubble Guppies, Umizoomi and Mutt & Stuff has been an incredibly fruitful and creative journey for us. That’s one of the places where we see a great future.

MCN:How have you adjusted to new competitors like Amazon and Netflix playing aggressively within the kids TV marketplace?
CZ: Well there’s no doubt about it — in the entire industry, there is much more content than ever was before. We are not strangers to the idea that our partners are our competitors, our advertisers and our distribution partners. It’s a complicated web that we weave, but the great thing that remains true about the ecosystem that we’ve been able to create is that it features great content and has a brand identity.

When you think about some of the newcomers in the competitive space, there is a whole lot of content there that fits under one branded identity. I think what still remains true about Nickelodeon is that it stands for something to the audience, and I think that it’s our mission to make sure that brands still means something as the world becomes more commoditized and on-demand.

MCN:What should we expect to hear from Nickelodeon at the upfront?
CZ: One of the things we’ll be talking about at the upfront is the big change in the world that kids are living in, and their response to the world that they’re living in. It really has been a pretty seismic shift when you put it all together, and I think what we have been able to do is really figure out how to connect and be relevant to a new generation of kids. That shift has been going on for about five years, so it’s taken a little while for it to settle, but what we know about the audience now and how we’ve applied that to the content that we’re making has really made all the difference.

So you’ll hear things like authenticity is important to them, family is incredibly important to them, and having friends who are from different backgrounds and religions is important to them. If you look at the content that we’re making, all of those things are seeping their way into the storytelling and the character development in a very organic way, and that’s really making a difference.

MCN:Will Nick be creating new and original programming for digital platforms to reach kids where they are watching video content?
CZ: One of the great things about linear television is that in addition to still [being] the most-watched place for all content, it’s also the biggest marketing tool for new content. Extensions of things that kids see on television that make it to the other platforms rise to the top every single time.

Original content that starts on the other platforms don’t necessarily rise to the top at the same rate or level — it’s just harder. One of the things that still rings true about linear television is that if you are successful you get mass simultaneous reach, and you can’t get that any other way. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be developing for all those other platforms and we shouldn’t make our apps the best they possibly can be, but first you have to build an audience for it.