WASHINGTON—In the wake of ABC's efforts to combat an Federal Communications Commission probe into whether “The View” deserves a “news exemption” from equal political time rules, fan have been flooding the regulator with comments. The agency's website had 27,885 of them, mostly in support of the show, as of 6 p.m. ET June 23.

ABC reported that most of those came in following ABC’s public push to mobilize fans to defend the show. During the Monday June 22 episode of "The View" ABC began airing an ad calling for viewers to file comments with the FCC. The ad encourages viewers to scan a QR code which directs them to the FCC site where they can file comments.

The case stems from a wider policy by the agency to enforce public interest rules on broadcasters deemed to be airing biased news coverage. That has led to ongoing investigations by the FCC into coverage of President Trump by stations owned by ABC, CBS and NBC.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr has repeatedly defended the agency’s authority to sanction stations and possibly even yank their licences for violating public interest standards even though a number of former FCC commissioners and staffers have called the policy “unconstitutional.”

Separately, the Media Bureau issued an advisory in January casting doubt on the 20-year-old exemption classifying late-night programming and talk shows as news programs, which means that they are not subject to equal time rules. The advisory said that stations airing `partisan' talk shows and late night programs must comply with equal time rules.

In May, the FCC’s media bureau issued a public notice asking for comments on whether ABC’s “The View” is a “bona fide news interview program” exempt from its equal time rules.

The FCC is also investigating Disney’s ABC for its DEI practices and has also ordered the ABC- owned stations to file for early renewal of their licenses. ABC blasted the early renewal demand as “unconstitutional retaliation” for news coverage that has been critical of the Trump administration.

So far the public comments to the FCC’s inquiry into `The View’ indicated significant opposition to Chairman Carr’s policies across the ideological spectrum, including free speech advocates, civil rights groups, conservative groups, journalism organizations, and consumer advocates. Many warned that revisiting the FCC's longstanding precedent amounted to an attack on free speech, with implications far beyond a single TV show.

ACLU, Center for Democracy & Technology, Future of Free Speech, National Coalition Against Censorship argued that the Commission is abandoning 40 years of precedent and that “this proceeding violates the constitutional rights of all our nation’s broadcasters, as well as the public who relies upon them for their access to news and information.”

Likewise, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) noted that “no living former FCC Commissioner has endorsed Chairman Carr’s current view of his regulatory authority, while a bipartisan group of former Chairmen and Commissioners, along with other high-level staff, have condemned it.”

Free Press complained that the “Commission’s actions have poisoned the well, depriving KTRK of a fair enforcement process, and depriving ABC of fair administration of Section 315(a) as it pertains to The View. Carr’s agency’s actions have been capricious, selective, and corrupt. The Commission is targeting KTRK and ABC with punitive action for its lawful speech, in order to chill ABC’s and other broadcaster’s First Amendment-protected speech.”

The group also stressed that while “Carr claims that he’s simply looking out for the public’s interest, and not carrying out a politically motivated vendetta against ABC and the President’s enemies…this claim quickly falls apart when considering Carr’s explicit efforts here to exclude right-wing talk radio broadcast programs from his review of the equal opportunities rule.”

New data from Nielsen shows the New York Knicks triumph over the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals attracted the largest audiences since the Michael Jordan era in 1998, with all five games averaging 20.6 million for ABC and ESPN. That was up 157% over last year.

Saturday’s NBA Finals Game 5 on ABC delivered an average audience of 24.5 million viewers and peaked with 33 million viewers watching the closing moments of the New York Knicks Championship victory, the teams first in 53 years. It was the most-watched NBA Finals Game 5 since 1998 as well.

Game 5 also generated the largest viewing audience of the day across all of television and in every key male and adult demo, according to Nielsen Big Data + Panel.

The Game 4, which saw the Knicks make a record breaking comeback from a 29 point deficit, was up 123% from last year’s Game 4 with 20.9 million viewers and peaked with 23.2 million viewers at 11:15 p.m. ET.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has set dates for filings in the early renewal of licenses for eight ABC-owned stations.

The FCC has set deadlines for comments filed in its MB Docket No. 26-131, with petitions to deny due on June 29, opposition on July 29 and replies due Aug. 5.

On April 28, the Video Division of the Media Bureau issued an order directing The Walt Disney Co., ABC and its subsidiaries to file license renewals for all of their licensed TV stations.

On May 28, Disney’s ABC filed renewal applications for its eight television licenses along with comments saying the “Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades. And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here.”

“The Order is inconsistent with a legitimate exercise of investigative authority and is plainly incompatible with the First Amendment,” the letter said. “Worse, the Order opens the door to an assault on the Station’s license, while the Commission searches for a legal pretext to achieve its desired goal. This effort to suppress speech under the guise of bureaucratic process must not prevail. WABC files this application without waiving any rights, and calls on the Commission to rescind the Order.”

In the filing setting deadlines for comments, the FCC noted that generally broadcast TV stations are given eight-year licenses and none of Disney’s ABC licenses would ordinarily be due for renewal until 2028 at the earliest.

In its order demanding the early renewals, the agency noted that “the FCC has been investigating Disney’s ABC stations for possible violations of the Communications Act of 1934 and the FCC’s rules, including the agency’s prohibition on unlawful discrimination.”

“Specifically, the FCC has been investigating whether Disney’s ABC engaged in prohibited practices by hiring, promoting, compensating, and/or providing workplace opportunities to people based on race, gender, or other protected characteristics in violation of federal nondiscrimination laws,” the FCC said in the June 1 filing setting deadlines for comments. “In the course of conducting that investigation, the FCC determined that calling in Disney’s ABC licenses for early renewal was necessary to the proper conduct of that ongoing investigation.”

“Calling the licenses in now for early renewal also provides the FCC the opportunity to determine whether the ABC Stations have been operating in the public interest, as required by their FCC licenses,” the regulator added.

The decision to investigate the stations for possible violations of public interest standards, including the airing of“biased news coverage,” has drawn criticism. Democratic FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, broadcasters, the National Association of Broadcasters, former FCC members and staff and public-interest groups have said the investigation is outside the agency's authority and is an unconstitutional attack on free speech.

The licenses up for renewal are:

• KFSN-TV, Fresno, Calif.
• KABC-TV, Los Angeles, Calif.
• KGO-TV, San Francisco, Calif.
• WLS-TV, Chicago, Ill.
• WABC-TV, New York, N.Y.
• WTVD, Durham, N.C.
• WPVI-TV, Philadelphia, Pa.
• KTRK-TV, Houston, Texas

The FCC document setting filing procedures in this case is available here.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission’s push to enforce political equal time rules on late-night TV and network talk shows deemed to be airing “biased” news content has moved into a more formal phase, as its Media Bureau hgas issued a public notice asking for comments on whether ABC’s “The View” is a “bona fide news interview program” exempt from its equal time rules.

The FCC announced the move in response to a Petition for Declaratory Ruling by KRTK-TV Houston and its parent company, Disney’s ABC, asking it to give the daytime TV talk show “The View” an exemption from the rules requiring equal time for political candidates as a news program.

“By this Public Notice, the FCC’s Media Bureau seeks comment on the Petition,” the FCC noted. “Does The View qualify as a bona fide news interview program? Does the federal equal opportunities statute pass relevant constitutional scrutiny, either as a general matter or as applied here? Are the relevant decisions on ‘The View,’ including on format and participants, based on newsworthiness or on an attempt to oppose or support particular candidates within the meaning of FCC precedent? We welcome comment on these and any other relevant points.”

FCC Chair Brendan Carr had previously acknowledged that the FCC was investigating “The View” for violating equal time rules. The agency has separate ongoing investigations into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and has made the highly unusual move to require Disney’s ABC to file for early renewal of the licenses for its owned-stations.

The case stems from an advisory by the FCC’s Media Bureau in January casting doubt on the 20-year-old exemption classifying late-night programming and talk shows as news programs, which are not subject to equal time rules.

“Late-night programming and daytime talk shows have been exempt from that [equal time for political candidates] requirement since 2006, when an exemption was given to Jay Leno because he was conducting bona fide news interviews,” the FCC noted in its latest guidance. “Importantly, the FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late-night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption…Moreover, a program that is motivated by partisan purposes, for example, would not be entitled to an exemption under longstanding FCC precedent. Any program or station that wishes to obtain formal assurance that the equal opportunities requirement does not apply (in whole or in part) is encouraged to promptly file a petition for declaratory ruling that satisfies the statutory requirements for a bona fide news exemption.”

Critics have complained that this is an attempt to regulate broadcast news content and accused the FCC of selectively applying its standards for bias because it has not opened a similar campaign against conservative talk shows that are widely aired on radio.

FCC Commmissioner Anna Gomez responded:

“The FCC is once again targeting an administration critic by mob rule," she said.
"Let's not pretend this FCC hasn't already made up its mind. All they want is for their pro-censorship partisan allies to nod in agreement.

"My message to Disney: Don't flinch. Fight,” she concluded.

In late January, at the FCC’s monthly press conference, Carr responded to a question about why the agency wasn’t using the same standard to investigate bias in radio by saying “there wasn’t a relevant precedent that we saw that was being misconstrued on the radio side.”

In terms of “The View,” the FCC opened its investigation into possible violations of equal time rules after it aired an interview with Democratic Texas State Rep. James Talarico, now a nominee for U.S. Senate.

This revised guidance on equal time rules also led to a controversial incident in which Stephen Colbert, the former host of CBS’ “The Late Show,” said he was told by the network not to air an interview with Talarico. CBS has denied it issued such an order.

The full Public Notice seeking comments is available here.

WASHINGTON—In what may be the strongest pushback by any broadcast network against attempts by the FCC and the Trump administration to regulate broadcast content, The Walt Disney Co.’s ABC has filed a sternly worded petition arguing that the “Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to ‘The View’ and more broadly.”

The network made the filing on behalf of KTRK Television, Inc. and American Broadcasting Companies in response to an Federal Communications Commission probe into ‘The View’ for potential violations of equal time rules for political candidates. KRTK-TV is the ABC-owned station in Houston; daytime talk show ‘The View’ had aired an interview with Democratic Texas State Rep. James Talarico, now a nominee for U.S. Senate.

In January, the FCC’s Media Bureau issued new guidance telling broadcast stations airing certain late-night and daytime talk shows that they are required to give equal time to rival candidates and that programs "motivated by partisan purposes" would not be given a news exemption, as they had beeen for the past two decades.

“Late-night programming and daytime talk shows have been exempt from that [equal time for political candidates] requirement since 2006 when an exemption was given to Jay Leno because he was conducting bona fide news interviews,” the FCC's Media Bureau noted in the new guidance. “Importantly, the FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late-night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption…Moreover, a program that is motivated by partisan purposes, for example, would not be entitled to an exemption under longstanding FCC precedent. Any program or station that wishes to obtain formal assurance that the equal opportunities requirement does not apply (in whole or in part) is encouraged to promptly file a petition for declaratory ruling that satisfies the statutory requirements for a bona fide news exemption.”

This revised guidance on equal time rules quickly led to a controversial incident in which Stephen Colbert said he was told by CBS not to air an interview with James Talarico, who was running in the Democratic party primary for the Texas Senate. CBS has denied it issued such an order and Colbert ended up running the interview on YouTube, where it racked up more than 9.4 million views.

Subsequently, Carr announced that the FCC had opened an investigation into ‘The View' for running an interview with Talarico.

The petition for declaratory judgment with the FCC complains that “narrowing the Commission’s long-established approach to bona fide news exemptions, however, would risk restricting political discourse exactly when it is needed most. While candidates are always able to connect with voters on cable, podcasts, and social media, specifically requiring broadcast airtime for all qualified candidates does not expand speech; rather, it makes coverage infeasible, which ultimately reduces it.”

“The government does not get to decide `what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion,’” the filing argued. “Or which `ideas and beliefs [are] deserving of expression [and] consideration.’ The danger is that the government will simply decide which perspectives to regulate and which to leave undisturbed. In fact, while the Commission now questions The View’s decades-long exemption, it has not expressed any inclination to apply a similar interpretation of the equal opportunities rule to other broadcasters, including the many voices—conservative and liberal—on broadcast radio. And as a broad array of voices, including many conservatives, have recognized, if the government is allowed to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint in a Republican administration, there is little preventing it from doing so when the Democrats are in charge.”

“Until now, it has never been disputed that The View qualifies as a bona fide news interview program,” the petition noted. “In 2002, ABC requested and obtained a Declaratory Ruling from the Mass Media Bureau confirming that status. That Declaratory Ruling remains in full force and effect. The Commission has taken no action over the last two decades to modify or overturn the Declaratory Ruling and there is no basis for doing so now. Given that KTRK Television acted in good faith reliance on the Declaratory Ruling and the consistent guidance provided by the Commission for decades, the Commission cannot find now that KTRK Television violated any of the Commission’s rules with respect to appearances by legally qualified candidates on The View.”

The filing also noted that at the end of March, the Media Bureau ordered KTRK Television to file another petition for declaratory ruling regarding The View’s status as a bona fide news interview program. In parallel, on April 28, the Media Bureau issued an extraordinary order demanding the early filing of all of ABC’s license-renewal applications, including for KTRK-TV.

“Combined with the Commission’s other recent actions, including publicly announcing its investigation concerning ‘The View’ and presaging an outcome, this suggests that the Commission is implementing major shifts in policy and practice, including how the Commission intends to apply the equal opportunities requirements. Such an abrupt and substantial change in long-established policy requires the action of the full Commission and the oversight of the courts.”

The filing also included a statement from the show’s executive producer saying, “I do not select potential interview subjects with the intent to advance or harm any individual’s candidacy for any office or any other partisan purpose.”

Brian Teta, executive producer of “The View,” also stressed that “interview subjects are not given any option to edit or otherwise influence or control the broadcast of the interview, and do not see the final interview until it airs.”

Teta said after U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a candidate in the Texas Democratic primary for Senate, appeared on ‘The View’ Jan. 6, co-hosts Alyssa Farah Griffin and Whoopi Goldberg suggested to him that Talarico should be a potential interview guest. Talarico eventually defeated Crockett in that primary.

“In deciding whether to invite Mr. Talarico to appear on ‘The View,’ I considered the facts that, at that time, Talarico’s campaign had been receiving national attention and that Talarico had gained a significant following on social media,” he added. “These factors, along with the newsworthiness of the Texas senate primary elections and potential audience interest in Mr. Talarico, informed my judgment that Mr. Talarico was a newsworthy subject. My decision to invite Mr. Talarico to appear on the program was not motivated by any intent to advance or harm any individual’s candidacy.”

In response, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said:

The full ABC filing is available here.

WASHINGTON—A key group of Democratic senators has sent a stern letter to the Federal Communications Commission calling its investigation into The Walt Disney Co. and its recent order requiring early license renewals for its eight ABC-owned television stations “an egregious abuse of power and a clear violation of the First Amendment.”

“The campaign against Disney and its editorial decision-making, culminating in last week’s early-renewal order, is an egregious abuse of power and a clear violation of the First Amendment,” the letter to FCC Chair Brendan Carr said. “Although the FCC has the authority to ensure broadcasters operate in the public interest, it cannot serve as President Trump’s roving censor, threatening to revoke licenses against broadcasters whose editorial content—including a comedian’s jokes—displeases the President. In fact, before serving as chairman, you frequently recognized the importance of the First Amendment and the freedom of speech, including for comedians. As you previously explained: ‘From Internet memes to late-night comedians, from cartoons to the plays and poems as old as organized government itself - Political Satire circumvents traditional gatekeepers & helps hold those in power accountable. Not surprising that it’s long been targeted for censorship.’ Now, you are doing exactly that — targeting political satire for censorship.”

The letter also laid out a number of questions that the senators wanted answered, including about contact between FCC staff and the White House and prior instances of the FCC asking for early renewals.

The letter was signed by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, along with Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Commerce Committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), and Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.).

Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also signed the letter.

The senators also requested answers by May 21 to these questions:

• ”What internal legal review, including by the Office of General Counsel, was conducted before the order was issued?
• ”Did you consider, but reject, any less aggressive enforcement steps prior to issuing the order?
• ”The Commission issued a procedurally similar early-renewal order against Bridge News, LLC on April 27, 2026 — one day before the Disney order. Did you intentionally time the orders so that the Bridge News order would precede the Disney order in the public record?
• ”What is the status update on each open FCC investigation into Disney or its ABC stations?
• ”What is the FCC’s justification for issuing the early-renewal order amidst these ongoing investigations?
• ”Between April 22, 2026, and April 28, 2026, did you, your staff, or any other FCC personnel communicate with the White House, any other component of the Executive Office of the President, or any individual acting on their behalf regarding Disney, ABC, Jimmy Kimmel, or the early-renewal order?
• ”What are the prior instances in which the Commission has invoked 47 CFR § 73.3539(c) to call in the licenses of a broadcaster for early renewal, including a summary of the grounds for each instance?”

WASHINGTON—The National Association of Broadcasters has joined a chorus of voices criticizing the Federal Communications Commission's decision to force The Walt Disney Co.’s ABC-owned TV stations to quickly apply by May 28 for an early renewal of their TV station licenses.

The “FCC’s broadcast license renewal process must be grounded in predictability, fairness and transparency, principles reflected in the license terms Congress established and later extended,“ NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt said in a statement. “The Media Bureau’s nearly unprecedented request for one company to quickly reapply for all of its licenses—rather than utilize its traditional enforcement process—runs contrary to these principles and creates significant uncertainty for all broadcasters.”

“Broadcast stations already face intense challenges as they work to deliver trusted journalism, lifesaving emergency services, community programming and election coverage,” LeGeyt said. “The FCC must be careful to avoid actions that create further instability for the local stations viewers and listeners depend on."

The NAB statement did not address the reasons for the FCC’s decision, which remain somewhat opaque. In an order requiring ABC to apply for license renewals by May 28, the FCC cited its ongoing investigation into DEI practices at the Walt Disney Company as the reason for the move.

Denying licenses on the basis of racial discrimination is rare and has not occurred since the Civil Rights period, when the FCC revoked the license of WLBT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi.

The early renewal order for the ABC O&Os also followed months of criticism of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” by President Donald Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr, both of whom have threatened Disney’s broadcast TV licenses.

The ABC and the stations also face a complaint from the NRB, which filed a April 28 complaint about a Kimmel monologue given two days before a gunman attempted to attack Trump and other officials at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

WASHINGTON—NRB has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting that the regulator investigate ABC Television regarding controversial remarks made on the April 23, 2026 national broadcast of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” that the NRB said, “raise serious concerns about the normalization and potential incitement of political violence.”

The broadcast was presented as a parody of the upcoming White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The actual dinner, which occurred two days later, was interrupted when a gunman attempted to attack President Trump and other government officials.

During the parody, Kimmel quipped, “our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have the glow of an expectant widow.”

In the complaint the NRB noted that the incident represents the third attempted attack on the President’s life in the current period and follows a series of other violent acts, including high‑profile political assassinations and multiple school shootings across the country.

“NRB respectfully suggests that Mr. Kimmel’s statement could well be interpreted as an instigation of violence against the life of the President of the United States,” the FCC filing said. “Incitements to kill or inflict bodily harm on the President of the United States are serious felonies.”

Michael Farris, NRB general counsel, issued a separate statement saying that “while the FCC is bound by the First Amendment of the Constitution and federal law (47 U.S.C. § 326) to respect freedom of speech, Supreme Court precedent makes clear that speech which incites violence is not protected. Under Brandenburg v. Ohio speech loses constitutional protection when it encourages lawless action, is intended to produce such action, and is likely to result in imminent harm.”

The complaint asks the FCC to “investigate and sanction, as warranted by evidence discovered thereby, ABC Television” but does not cite any specific rules that the broadcast may have violated.

Nor does it say whether the FCC should use the incident to investigate Disney’s TV station licenses or if the regulator should impose fines for the content of the program. In addition, it did not supply any specific link between Kimmel's comments and the opinions, statements or motivation of the man who attacked the Correspondents' Dinner.

The complaint comes at a time when the FCC is already investigating The Walt Disney company for DEI practices. On April 27, the regulator significantly escalated that investigation by issuing an order for Disney to file for an early renewal of the ABC-owned TV station licenses.

Historically, it is unusual for the FCC to open up an early renewal process and TV Tech is unaware of it doing so in the case of a network-owned station.

In a statement, NRB president and CEO Troy A. Miller said “We should be relieved that lives were spared Saturday evening; but relief can’t become complacency. We’re seeing a pattern of violence in this country that didn’t appear overnight. When influential voices joke about death or treat political opponents as disposable, it contributes to a culture where violence feels thinkable to the already unstable. National platforms carry real weight, and with that comes responsibility. That’s why this warranted action.”

WASHINGTON—In the wake of ongoing calls by President Trump for ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, the Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau has significantly escalated its ongoing investigation of the Walt Disney Company by issuing an order that Disney’s ABC-owned stations must file for an early license renewal by May 28.

Asking for an early license renewal is extremely rare and almost never involves network-owned stations.

In a order issued on April 28, 2026, the FCC referred to its ongoing investigation of Disney DEI policies but the move follows months of comments by President Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr suggesting that the ABC stations should lose their licenses over comments made by ABC’s late night host Jimmy Kimmel.

In the last 14 months, The FCC has also launched highly controversial investigations of ABC-, CBS- and NBC-owned stations into allegations of “biased” news coverage of President Donald Trump. Since becoming FCC Chair, Carr has repeatedly argued that the regulator has the power to punish broadcasters and potentially even remove broadcast licenses from stations violating “public interest” and “news distortion” rules. (TV Tech’s coverage of that petition is available here.)

The order subjecting the ABC owned stations to an early license renewal process came the same day that the RTDNA and a number of former FCC officials filed court papers attacking the FCC to attempting to chill free speech by threatening licenses of broadcast stations who provided critical coverage of the Trump administration.

Carr has also made a crackdown on DEI one of his signature policy pushes. In an April 27 interview he called Disney's DEI policies "pretty bad. There’s evidence suggests that Disney literally was dividing and categorizing employees based on race and gender."

Carr has also opened up DEI investigations of Comcast and required companies seeking regulatory approval for major deals to end their DEI policies. To obtain approval of mergers, Verizon, Paramount, Nexstar, Charter, AT&T and others have all agreed to abandon their efforts to promote diversity.

In the April 28 order, The FCC said that it has “been investigating The Walt Disney Company, its American Broadcasting Company, and its subsidiaries for compliance with its obligations as a licensed broadcaster. Specifically, the FCC has been investigating Disney’s ABC stations for possible violations of the Communications Act of 1934 and the FCC’s rules, including the agency’s prohibition on unlawful discrimination. While Disney’s ABC has purported to respond to two FCC Letters of Inquiry (LOIs) as part of this investigation, the FCC has determined that additional actions are appropriate at this time.”

The agency also said that “FCC rules provide that whenever the FCC regards an application for a renewal of a license as essential to the proper conduct of an investigation, the FCC has the authority to call the broadcaster’s licenses in for early renewal. Doing so both allows the FCC to conduct its ongoing investigation and enables the FCC to ensure that the broadcaster has been meeting its public interest obligations more broadly.”

In a statement, ABC told the Guardian that “ABC and its stations have a long record of operating in full compliance with FCC rules and serving their local communities with trusted news, emergency information and public‑interest programming. We are confident that record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the first amendment and are prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels. Our focus remains, as always, on serving viewers in the local communities where our stations operate.”

The regulator said the license renewals would have to be filed by May 28.

In a post on X, Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency's only Democrat, blasted the order as a "political stunt."

In a statement, Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González complained that “Carr will try to dress up this latest attack like a legitimate FCC procedure, but his motivations are clear. He is using his position of power to silence dissent at the president’s beck and call. This extraordinary and unconstitutional attack on the media is nothing more than another favor to the most fragile president in U.S. history. The FCC’s ongoing attack on lawful and important diversity, equity and inclusion programs is immoral. The timing of this move suggests unconstitutional retribution for a joke Donald Trump didn’t like. Either way, this dangerous attack on free speech won’t stand up to any First Amendment test. We’ve seen Carr violate his oath to uphold the Constitution again and again. It’s time for Congress to impeach him."

She also stressed that "for its part, ABC and Disney leadership need to stand strong on behalf of their First Amendment right to air content without government intrusion and censorship. Buckling in advance to pressure by this administration and its obsequious FCC chairman didn’t work for the broadcaster when it suspended Kimmel last year. It would be a grave mistake to buckle in advance again to these kinds of chilling government threats from Trump’s censorship czar.”

TV Tech will be filing more comments and details as they come in.

Associations representing ABC, CBS, FBC and NBC have filed reply comments with the Federal Communications Commission arguing that the ongoing shift of major sporting rights from broadcast to streaming service is not in the “public interest” because it is forcing consumers to sign up for expensive streaming services and threatens the economy viability of the local TV stations who use the profits from sports to fund local news.

The filing also laid out a series of policy recommendations that would preserve major sports on broadcast TV. Those include: ending station ownership caps, speeding up the transition to NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0, changing the rules on how retrans fees are negotiated with vMVPDs, and giving local stations more power to preempt network programming so they can air local sports and ensuring that

Changing rules regarding station ownership caps and the ATSC 3.0 transition were also major policy recommendations made by the NAB and other broadcasters.

“[W]hile live sports have never been so critical to local broadcasting, the Public Notice comes at a time when the continued availability of marquee national live professional and collegiate sporting events on local broadcast television faces unprecedented uncertainty,” the associations stressed in their filing. “The Affiliates Associations echo NAB’s observation that Internet streaming of sports content threatens to completely upend the system of local sports distribution that has served America so well. The increasing placement of major sports programming behind paywalls on multiple different streaming platforms, including those owned by the Big 4 Networks themselves, threatens to further fragment audiences while forcing consumers to spend more and more just to watch what used to be and should remain free. Sporting events can’t unify Americans if the cost of watching them turns us into a nation of haves and have-nots. And those sporting events locked up behind paywalls won’t help fund local television service because, quite simply, none of the streaming platforms is required to operate in the public interest and none provide any local service to any local communities.”

Like the NAB, the affiliates also blasted the Consumer Technology Association and others who argued the rise of sports on streaming media has given consumers more choice and that the FCC does not have the authority to dictate where those sports air.

“in 2025, NFL games appeared on 10 different paywalled platforms, and the cost of the subscriptions necessary to watch every NFL game approached $1,500,” the affiliates contented. “These developments threaten to get worse because streaming platforms owned by Google/Alphabet, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and the like have nearly limitless budgets and face no regulations that would check their growth. Indeed, they are already increasingly outbidding Big 4 Networks for major sports rights and cutting local broadcasting out of the picture entirely.”

“When the Big 4 Networks are forced to outbid streaming platforms for sports rights, those Networks inevitably pass those costs on to their Affiliates in the form of spiraling and unsustainable affiliation fees,” the filing said. “Since these affiliation fees grow more quickly than local station revenue, local Affiliates have no choice but to cut costs and reduce local service. Marquee sporting events must remain on local broadcast television to sustain important, but costly, local news operations, but the more sports rights cost and the higher affiliation fees rise, the less local news and fewer jobs will remain.”

“The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) argue that this is nothing more than the marketplace providing more and better choices to consumers and that the Commission is powerless to step in,” the affiliates complained. “Consumers know better, which is why thousands of individuals have filed comments in this proceeding urging the Commission to take action to help keep national sports programming on local broadcast television. The Commission should reject the arrogant and simplistic `free market’ rhetoric of CCIA and CTA. Despite the claims of CCIA and CTA that all of this `competition’ among streaming platforms will increase choice and lower prices, the reality is that consumers always end up paying more for less, and they’re sick of this same old song and dance.”

The filing did highlight the fact that the decline of pay TV and regional sports networks has allowed local stations to successfully acquire sports rights in recent years. “Even here, however, there are hurdles to local stations acquiring local sports rights,” the affiliate reported. “In particular, Big 4 Network preemption policies can make it impossible for stations to air more than a handful of games of local sports programming on their main channels, forcing them to instead broadcast that programming on multicast channels or commonly owned independent channels.0 These alternate channels are carried less frequently by traditional MVPDs and even less frequently by virtual MVPDs. The combination of Network preemption

policies and vMVPDs’ refusal to negotiate directly with local television stations significantly complicates local stations’ efforts to acquire sports programming on local broadcast stations.”

“The Commission must recognize that additional steps must be taken in order to preserve – and grow – sports on local television stations while at the same time helping ensure stations are financially healthy enough to afford that programming and are positioned to acquire that programming when certain rights become available,” the affiliates stressed in one of their major policy recommendations.

“That requires the Commission to address two pressing issues that the Affiliates Associations’ members face every day," they said. "First, the Commission should ensure that local television stations, including Network Affiliates, have the right to negotiate for local sports programming without third-party interference. In support of this right, the Commission should make clear that local stations’ preemption rights under the Commission’s rules extend to preempting Network programming for local and regional sports content. Existing rules require that broadcasters must have the right to preempt Network programming in favor of programming that a licensee deems, in its mandate to serve the local community, of greater importance to its local community than Network programming. The Commission should clarify unequivocally that this right applies when a local station rejects Network programming in favor of airing local and regional sports programming. This step will allow local broadcasters to compete for local sports rights without the fear that doing so could negatively impact their relationship with their affiliated Networks.”

The full filing is available here.

The 8,600 plus filings received by the FCC in it "Sports Broadcasting Practices and Marketplace Developments" proceeding (Docket 26-45) is available here.

BRISTOL, Conn.—ESPN is reporting data showing a strong start to its 2025-26 NBA regular season, with its first 21 games through Christmas Day producing the second-highest NBA viewing levels the network has ever seen.

According to Nielsen Big Data Plus Panel, the NBA on ESPN networks is averaging 2.6 million, up 35% from last season.

ESPN said viewership for the 2025-26 regular season trails only the 2010-11 campaign. That ranking excludes the 2011-12 and 2020-21 seasons, which were shortened by a player lockout and the pandemic, respectively, and had nontraditional schedules.

ESPN’s coverage of the NBA has also delivered significant year-over-year growth in key demographics this season. Through 21 games, viewership among P2-17 is up 45%, while viewership among women is up 47%. Additionally, Hispanic viewership is up 37%.

Overall, ESPN networks have carried seven of the top 10 most-watched NBA games this season according to Nielsen, including all five Christmas games – three of which averaged more than 6 million viewers for the first time ever.

The data is important for the league, which negotiated significant increases in media rights in 2024 for a new round of contracts with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Prime Video that began with the 2025-26 season. Those deals totaled $76 billion for media rights over an 11 year period.

ESPN has also generated substantial viewership for its NBA studio programming this season. Through Christmas, TNT Sports import “Inside the NBA” is averaging 1.2 million viewers across ESPN and ABC. “NBA Countdown” is averaging 582,000 viewers so far this season, up 20% from last year’s regular-season average. In addition, “NBA Today,“ ESPN’s weekday studio offering, is averaging 361,000 viewers this season, an increase of 26% from this time last year.

LOS ANGELES, Calif.—In a notable example of how major programming rights have been shifting towards streaming, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and YouTube have signed a multi-year deal that will give YouTube the exclusive global rights to the Oscars, beginning in 2029 with the 101st Oscars ceremony and running through 2033.

The Academy reported that the Oscars, including red carpet coverage, behind-the-scenes content, Governors Ball access, and more, will be available live and for free to over 2 billion viewers around the world on YouTube, and to YouTube TV subscribers in the United States.

“We are thrilled to enter into a multifaceted global partnership with YouTube to be the future home of the Oscars and our year-round Academy programming,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor. “The Academy is an international organization, and this partnership will allow us to expand access to the work of the Academy to the largest worldwide audience possible — which will be beneficial for our Academy members and the film community. This collaboration will leverage YouTube’s vast reach and infuse the Oscars and other Academy programming with innovative opportunities for engagement while honoring our legacy. We will be able to celebrate cinema, inspire new generations of filmmakers and provide access to our film history on an unprecedented global scale.”

“The Oscars are one of our essential cultural institutions, honoring excellence in storytelling and artistry,” said Neal Mohan, CEO, YouTube. “Partnering with the Academy to bring this celebration of art and entertainment to viewers all over the world will inspire a new generation of creativity and film lovers while staying true to the Oscars’ storied legacy.”

The partnership also will include worldwide access for film fans to other Academy events and programs exclusively on the Oscars YouTube channel. This will include the Governors Awards, the Oscars Nominations Announcement, the Oscars Nominees Luncheon, the Student Academy Awards, the Scientific and Technical Awards, Academy member and filmmaker interviews, film education programs, podcasts, and more.

In addition, through this partnership, the Google Arts & Culture initiative will help provide digital access to select Academy Museum exhibitions and programs and help to digitize components of the Academy Collection—the largest film-related collection in the world, with more than 52 million items.

The Academy said that its U.S. partnership for the Oscars will continue with Disney ABC through the 100th Oscars in 2028, as will the international partnership for the Oscars with Disney’s Buena Vista International.

WASHINGTON—The National Association of Broadcasters took aim at YouTube TV and its owner Google in a blog post for its “heavy hand in deciding what viewers can and cannot watch.”

Specifically, the Nov. 3 post by Michelle Lehman, NAB’s chief of staff and executive vice president of public affairs, objected to Google’s unwillingness “to fairly compensate ABC stations” for programming and to Big Tech’s market power, which gives it “enormous control” over what viewers can access.

Negotiations for a new carriage deal between YouTube TV and ABC parent Disney proved to be fruitless by the midnight Oct. 30 deadline for renewal. ABC, ESPN and other Disney-owned networks were dropped from the virtual multichannel video programming distributor’s lineup on Oct. 31. Google also is resisting Disney’s demand for price increases on other non-broadcast channels, such as ESPN, because it says increasing what it pays for the right to carry those channels will raise consumer prices.

As a result of the drop, Lehman said, YouTube TV subscribers who rely on local ABC stations for “important news, emergency information, entertainment and live sports” have been “in the lurch” and “at the mercy” of Google, which the blog said annually generates revenue totaling “hundreds of BILLIONs [blog’s all caps].”

The situation, she wrote, is reminiscent of last month’s retrans dispute with NBCUniversal, which nearly left YouTube TV subscribers without access to NBC stations and has shut them off from Univision stations.

The NAB executive vice president urged readers to act “before it’s too late” by reaching out to Washington to modernize broadcast ownership rules.

“[W]hen local broadcasters are sidelined, it is not just sports fans who lose. It is every community” that relies on broadcasters for emergency notifications, “fact-based news,” and a connection with others who reside there, she wrote.

Two analysts from Needham Securities think Disney should move all of its TV content onto the Disney Hulu and ABC apps and shut down its broadcast operations, citing increased pressure by the FCC; the kind of pressure that resulted in the suspension of the Jimmy Kimmel Show two weeks ago.

Needham Securities analysts Laura Martin and Dan Medina, in a note released last week recommended that Disney keep its broadcast licenses but shut down broadcast operations. Putting the licenses up for sale just puts Disney at risk of more FCC interference into its affairs, the analysts said in an article on Forbes.

“We calculate that shutting down (not selling) ABC would force (Disney) to write off about $1.7 (billion) to $2.7 (billion) of free spectrum value, plus about $1.4 (billion) of lost (free cash flow) per year, which is worth about $8.3 (billion) of value based on current TV trading comps,” Martin wrote.

The analysts think it would be worth more for ABC to stop broadcasting in order to avoid threats associated with the current political climate amidst a changing media environment spurred on by artificial intelligence.

"GenAI collapses time frames, thereby making the delays, distractions and headaches of regulation more expensive, so jettisoning regulatory risks is increasingly valuable,” they wrote.

Although it’s highly unlikely that Disney would follow their advice—particularly given its lucrative live sports contracts—the fact remains that revenues from local stations, an estimated $4 billion in revenues in 2024 continue to decline, Martin and Medina wrote.

IRVING, Texas—Sinclair and Nexstar Media Group, Inc. have announced that they will no longer preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and that the late night talk show will air on the ABC affiliates owned by the two station groups on Friday, Sept. 26.

Sinclair first announced that it was ending its preemption of the show and Nexstar followed about three hours later.

The program returned to ABC on Sept. 23 after a controversy over Kimmel’s remarks about the assassination Charlie Kirk but Nexstar and Sinclair continued to preempt the show. The show’s return produced ratings not seen since 2015 even thought it was blackout in markets covering 23% of the country. As of 6 p.m. ET on Sept. 26, the monologue was also viewed by more than 21 million people on YouTube.

“We have had discussions with executives at The Walt Disney Company and appreciate their constructive approach to addressing our concerns,” Nexstar said in a statement. “As a local broadcaster, Nexstar remains committed to protecting the First Amendment while producing and airing local and national news that is fact-based and unbiased and, above all, broadcasting content that is in the best interest of the communities we serve. We stand apart from cable television, monolithic streaming services, and national networks in our commitment – and obligation – to be stewards of the public airwaves and to protect and reflect the specific sensibilities of our communities. To be clear, our commitment to those principles has guided our decisions throughout this process, independent of any external influence from government agencies or individuals.”

In a statement, Sinclair said: "Our objective throughout this process has been to ensure that programming remains accurate and engaging for the widest possible audience. We take seriously our responsibility as local broadcasters to provide programming that serves the interests of our communities, while also honoring our obligations to air national network programming. Over the last week, we have received thoughtful feedback from viewers, advertisers, and community leaders representing a wide range of perspectives. We have also witnessed troubling acts of violence, including the despicable incident of a shooting at an ABC affiliate station in Sacramento. These events underscore why responsible broadcasting matters and why respectful dialogue between differing voices remains so important."

"In our ongoing and constructive discussions with ABC, Sinclair proposed measures to strengthen accountability, viewer feedback, and community dialogue, including a network-wide independent ombudsman," Sinclair added. "These proposals were suggested as collaborative efforts between the ABC affiliates and the ABC network. While ABC and Disney have not yet adopted these measures, and Sinclair respects their right to make those decisions under our network affiliate agreements, we believe such measures could strengthen trust and accountability."

Sinclair also stressed that "Our decision to preempt this program was independent of any government interaction or influence. Free speech provides broadcasters with the right to exercise judgment as to the content on their local stations. While we understand that not everyone will agree with our decisions about programming, it is simply inconsistent to champion free speech while demanding that broadcasters air specific content."

Both Sinclair and Nexstar have been criticized for preempting the program after FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened to yank broadcast licenses from affiliates airing the program. Critics pointed out that both station groups have been pushing the FCC to eliminate ownership caps that limit the size of station groups.

The return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to ABC not only produced some of the best ratings for the show in a decade, it also highlighted growing audiences on social media that could play an important role in the business decisions ABC parent The Walt Disney Co., Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair will make during their discussions over its future.

After suspending the late-night talk show following Kimmel’s controversial about murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 17, ABC resumed airing the show on Sept. 23. However, two of the nation's largest station groups, Nexstar and Sinclair, continue to preempt the program.

The show returned to air with a preliminary 0.87 rating among adults aged 18 to 49. That was the best rating for a regularly scheduled episode in a decade since March 12, 2015, ABC reported.

It also had more than 6.26 million total viewers, despite significant preemptions across 23% of U.S. TV households in markets where Nexstar and Sinclair stations did not air the show.

Perhaps even more notable in terms of its future were stats from social media. ABC reported on Sept. 24 that Kimmel’s monologue garnered more than 26 million views across YouTube and social media.

By 11:30 a.m. ET on Sept. 25, the monologue had more than 19 million views on YouTube alone, indicating that a lot of the audience was now bypassing regular broadcast to watch.

These large audiences could play an important role in the ongoing discussions between Nexstar and Sinclair in restoring the show to broadcast in their markets.

The show's YouTube channel currently has more than 21.4 million subscribers, up significantly from the 20 million sub mark passed on Feb. 3 by the program.

If Nexstar and Sinclair decide to continue preempting the show that could prompt even more viewers in their markets, particularly younger audiences, to move their viewing from broadcast TV, where the stations control ad sales, to social media, where YouTube has a very profitable ad business.

.

The Walt Disney Company has issued a short statement saying that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return to its standard late night time slot on ABC on Tuesday Sept. 23 after being “indefinitely” suspended last week by the network.

Last week Kimmel’s comments on the assassination of Charlie Kirk prompted severe criticism from FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who called Kimmel’s comments “sick” and threatened to remove broadcast licenses of affiliates who carried the show. Following Carr's comments, Nexstar and Sinclair ABC affiliates announced they would preempt it. ABC suspended the show soon thereafter.

Like last week’s statement, the Disney statement on resuming production was relatively brief. It did not address specifics about the incident and made no mention of whether all the ABC affiliates will resume airing the show.

“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the statement said. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”

Nexstar declined to comment on whether it will air the show when it returns or continue to preempt it.

In response to an inquiry from TV Tech, Sinclair said "beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting `Jimmy Kimmel Live!' across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming. Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return."

When the show was first suspended, Sinclair issued a statement that the FCC and ABC needed to take further action against Kimmel beyond simply suspending the program.

FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, who had called ABC's decision to suspend the show a “cowardly corporate capitulation” to threats from the FCC, applauded the decision to bring the show back.

“I am glad to see Disney find its courage in the face of clear government intimidation," Gomez said in a statement. "More importantly, I want to thank those Americans from across the ideological spectrum who spoke loudly and courageously against this blatant attempt to silence free speech. It will continue to be up to us as citizens to push back against this Administration’s growing campaign of censorship and control. As this FCC considers steps that would let the same billion-dollar media conglomerates that caved in to government pressure grow even bigger, we must combat these efforts to stifle free expression."

WASHINGTON—A letter from Democratic Senators to the Federal Communications Commission sharply criticized the agency for acting as a “roving press censor” and demanded that the FCC submit documents and answer questions about its role in the decision by ABC to indefinitely suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

“We are outraged by your comments yesterday on a podcast suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would take action against ABC, its parent company Disney, and its affiliates, over comments made by comedian Jimmy Kimmel on his late-night show,” the Senators wrote. “It is not simply unacceptable for the FCC Chairman to threaten a media organization because he does not like the content of its programming—it violates the First Amendment that you claim to champion. The FCC’s role in overseeing the public airwaves does not give it the power to act as a roving press censor, targeting broadcasters based on their political commentary. But under your leadership, the FCC is being weaponized to do precisely that.”

In response to the criticism of FCC Chair Brendan Carr, President Donald Trump praised him, as a “patriot” and “tough guy” while repeating his previously expressed views that broadcasters airing criticism of him should lose their broadcast licenses.

"They give me only bad publicity or press," Trump said on Air Force One on Thursday in comments reported by ABC News and others. "And I mean, they're getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away. It will be up to Brendan Carr."

U.S. Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Ranking Member of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which oversees the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), senior member of the Committee, Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ranking Member of the Telecommunications and Media Subcommittee, and all Democratic members of the Committee sent the letter to FCC Chair Carr.

The letter was also signed by Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Senators Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the Senators reported.

“Under your leadership, the FCC appears to be discarding Congress’s clear directive in the Communications Act to ensure broadcasters act in the ‘public interest’—and is instead requiring them to act in ‘Trump’s interest.’” the letter continued. “This approach is an anathema to the Constitution. The consequences of your comments were quickly apparent. Hours later, Nexstar—a major owner of ABC affiliates that has a significant merger pending before the FCC—announced that it would take Kimmel off the air. Soon thereafter, Disney announced it was indefinitely suspending his show altogether. This is precisely what government censorship looks like.”

The letter also demanded answers to three questions by Sept. 25:

1. "How is the FCC defining the “public interest” standard to which broadcasters must adhere? To the extent that the FCC has adopted some new ideological or political neutrality test, how is the FCC defining ideological or political bias?"
2. "Did you, your staff, or any FCC staff have any communication with Disney, ABC, or their affiliates about Jimmy Kimmel, his Monday monologue, or his show between Monday, September 15, and today? If yes, we expect you to produce copies of all such communications.
3. "You publicly stated that ABC and Disney could “do this the easy way or the hard way.” Please detail the “easy way” and the “hard way” you were referencing in making this statement."

In an Sept. 18 interview reported on by Policyband, Carr denied that he had called Nexstar, Sinclair and ABC and said he had not put any personal pressure on them.

In a Sept. 17 interview, he did threaten to take away licenses of ABC affiliates who aired the show.

MIAMI—Sunbeam Television has reached a multiyear agreement with Findal Media & Technology Group to broadcast the new ABC Miami beginning Aug. 4.

The agreement comes months after Disney Entertainment and Sunbeam announced a new affiliation agreement, bringing ABC’s lineup of network shows, live sports and national news to a new home in South Florida, a multicast channel (Channel 7.2) of Sunbeam-owned Fox affiliate WSVN. ABC Miami will now be simulcast over Findal-owned low-power TV station WDFL-LD on Channel 18.1.

WSVN’s current newscasts, branded as 7 NEWS, will air on both WSVN and ABC Miami.

“We want to give viewers every possible avenue to watch ABC’s powerhouse programming along with the No. 1 local news, 7 NEWS,” said Paul Magnes, co-president of Sunbeam Television. “The agreement with Findal Media & Technology Group Inc. provides the perfect opportunity to grow the audience in our new home on Channel 18.”

Viewers will be able to watch ABC over-the-air in high definition on Channel 18.1 or 7.2 and on Channel 18 on cable and digital television providers in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale market, including Xfinity (Comcast), DirecTV, AT&T and Breezeline. ABC Miami will also be available on YouTube TV, Hulu, Fubo and DirecTV Stream.

“This agreement presents a natural alignment for our media company, as we too are locally owned and operated,” said Francois Leconte, chairman of Findal. “The opportunity to be associated with a trusted, known entity such as Sunbeam Television serves to strengthen our commitment to the community at large.”

Sunbeam Television will simulcast 7 NEWS on both ABC Miami Channel 18 and WSVN Channel 7. ABC Miami will air “Good Morning America (GMA)” and “World News Tonight with David Muir.” Viewers can continue to watch Fox programming and WSVN’s 13 hours per day of local news programming on Channel 7.1.

WPLG, the Berkshire Hathaway Media-owned station that has been Miami’s ABC affiliate for 70 years, will become an independent.

“We are excited about the opportunity to serve the Florida market and bring fresh, community-focused programming to viewers across the region,” Don Wiggins, president and director of operations at Findal, said.

ESPN said ABC’s telecast of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s victory over the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 of the NBA Finals on June 22 was the most-watched finals game in six years, since 2019.

According to preliminary data from Nielsen, the winner-take-all Game 7 averaged 16,353,000 viewers and peaked with 19,281,000 viewers from 9:45-10 p.m. ET across ABC and ESPN+.

The seven-game series averaged 10,266,000 viewers and delivered the seven most-watched broadcasts on all of television since the first week of May, ESPN reported. The audience for the 2025 NBA playoffs across ESPN and ABC—34 games—averaged 6,118,000 viewers, up 10 percent from 2024.

But other reports indicated the average audience for the seven-game NBA Finals was down from last year, with an average of 10.66 million viewers in 2025 compared to 11.3 million average viewers during the five-game 2024 series between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks.

The final viewership figures from Nielsen will be available on Tuesday, June 24.

The conservative group Center for American Rights has filed another “news distortion” complaint with the Federal Communications Commission. The newest complaint, filed April 21, alleges ABC, NBC and CBS offered “false or misleading information” during their coverage of the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, which the group alleged “is a failure of their responsibilities under the public interest standard.”

The filing, which the group called an “informal consumer complaint,” came shortly after FCC Chair Brendan Carr escalated his complaints regarding NBC's owner, Comcast with an April 16 social media post blasting Comcast’s cable news channel MSNBC for inaccurate coverage of the controversy surrounding the deportation of the Salvadoran immigrant.

In that post, which racked up more than 1 million views, Carr weighed in on the dispute over the deportation of the El Salvadoran immigrant by writing: “Comcast outlets spent days misleading the American public—implying that Abrego Garcia was merely a law abiding U.S. citizen, just a regular ‘Maryland man.’ ”

Critics interpreted the post as a threat that the FCC chair, who has already openly criticized Comcast’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, might open an investigation into the broadcast station licenses owned by Comcast’s NBCUniversal.

The Center for American Rights (CAR) had previously filed complaints against stations owned by ABC, CBS and NBC for “news distortion” of their coverage of Donald Trump during the presidential race. Those complaints were dismissed by the FCC and then reinstated by Carr.

In the newest complaint, CAR argued: “Going back decades, this Commission has insisted that a licensee may not ‘distort or suppress the basic factual information upon which any truly fair and free discussion of public issues must necessarily depend.’ … Yet that is precisely the situation regarding the deportation of illegal alien Kilmar Abrego Garcia. NBC, ABC, and CBS have all done a grave disservice to the basic facts of the controversy by consistently referring to him as a ‘Maryland father’ and in some instances even presenting false information, like calling him a ‘legal resident.’ The actual facts—that he is an illegal alien and that an immigration judge has found he is a member of a violent gang—are not reported or are treated as unconfirmed rumors. The story is slanted in a way that distorts, misrepresents, or simply incorrectly reports the basic facts.”

It is not clear from the complaint what sort of penalty CAR wants the FCC to impose on the networks or even what entity should be penalized.

The FCC does license broadcast stations and regulate the broadcast networks, but it does not license the networks. CAR’s other “news distortion” complaints were made against specific FCC-licensed broadcast stations owned by the networks. The newest filing does not mention any specific stations.

In the filing, CAR outlines various conditions that would allow the FCC to remove licenses and lays down legal arguments supporting the idea the regulator could remove a license for “news distortion” and failure to offer news coverage and information that meets the “public interest” standard.

While the complaint focuses on the network news operations, it does not mention the fact that the FCC does not license the networks. Instead, it urges the FCC to act to restore the public’s faith in traditional media and broadcast news by investigating operations that violate the “public interest” standard.

“When the American people no longer trust broadcast news media’s good faith, this Commission needs to exercise more vigorous enforcement of the public-interest standard,” the complaint noted.

“The integrity of news broadcasting is crucial to an informed, responsible electorate and the Commission has stressed the continuing duty of licensees to take adequate measures to insure such integrity,” the complaint concluded. “NBC, ABC and CBS have not acted with journalistic integrity in their reporting on Mr. Abrego Garcia. Quite the opposite, in fact. Their extreme and evident bias on this story is just one more reason [why] ‘[m]ore Americans trust gas station sushi than the legacy national media.’ @BrendanCarrFCC (Feb. 26, 13 2025). That sort of self-evident news distortion, providing ‘false or misleading information concerning the basic facts' of the story, is a failure of their responsibilities under the public-interest standard.”

The NAB has in the past argued that these arguments for denying broadcast station licenses are “unconstitutional” on First Amendment grounds and go far beyond the legitimate powers of the FCC. In addition, former FCC commissioners have accused the FCC of acting as the `White House’s personal censor’ by investigating news organizations providing critical coverage of the administration.

The full CAR complaint is available here.

News and sports programming, which are the biggest drivers for broadcast revenue and audiences, were also the central topic of the first panel at the TV Tech Summit, where executives at stations and networks discussed newer technologies that are helping them engage viewers and streamline operations.

When asked about the future of technologies for news and sports, panelists were particularly bullish on advances in virtual sets, remote production, standardized interoperable solutions, hybrid cloud archives and infrastructures that help streamline the delivery to multiple platforms.

During the panel, “New Tech for the Next Generation of News and Sports” Tim Hinson vice president, technology, at ABC13 KTRK in Houston Texas at the ABC Owned Television Stations, stressed that a key tech priority at the station group has been to standardize and centralize technologies. This, he said, has helped them improve quality and more efficiently produce massive amount of local news each week.

That effort, he added, also produced a number of important benefits during the L.A. wildfires.

“Over the past few years, we've been really focusing on technology and operations, centralization and standardization,” he said, adding that he wasn’t “necessarily referring to just a people or a hub, for example, even though we do some of that. Really what we're talking about is centralization of technology [in terms of] reducing costs and also workflow optimization. And we're also hyper focused on making sure our common systems and workflows are standardized across the group, especially from a technology perspective, because that really, really promotes the sharing of data, content and personnel.”

Covering Wildfires with Better Tech

During the wildfires, he explained, “a lot of our other stations sent reporters, photographers and other support staff to L.A. to help out with the coverage….Because of our standardization efforts mentioned earlier, people were able to jump right in and begin working…We were able to easily provide live shots to any station around the country from any bonded cell packing unit with just a touch of a button.”

They were also able to get them working without having to “learn the station systems first…They were just able to go straight out in the field and start contributing right away,” he said.

Hinson and the other panelists also stressed the importance of engaging viewers with new ways of telling stories that can help them stand out from a crowded news and sports landscape.

One example of that is virtual sets or augmented reality technologies.

Jason Wormser, senior vice president, CW Sports noted that their production partner NASCAR Productions has recently unveiled a new virtual set in Studio 43, their state-of-the-art production facility that NASCAR uses to produce the CW NASCAR coverage.

“They’ve invested in a 57 foot LED wall,” he said. “They are using AR camera tracking technology with a [ARRI] Alexa 35 studio camera system…We really think this is kind of the next stage, the next step of these virtual systems" that will provide enormous flexibility and quality for the studio production.”

During the panel, Scott Warren, president and general manager, CBS Bay Area (KPIX/KPIX+) discussed a ground-breaking case study of how the CBS-owned stations were able to deploy virtual sets, which until relatively recently, required the kind of large budgets and engineering staff that only large networks could afford.

Warren said the project began in 2023 as part of a push to find better ways to tell stories and provide better, more engaging weather coverage. “We wanted to make an immersive experience, because weather is more than two dimensional,” he explained. “It's more than a person in front of a map, it's cloud stacks, it's elevation, it's wind, it's rain, it’s precipitation…We felt like we could tell the weather story in a better way in an immersive environment, and that's where this all started.”

In the development process of the system, they worked with Myreze, a branding and virtual production company from Norway. Other vendors included Zero Density’s virtual solution, rendering from the Unreal Engine, camera tracking from stYpe and Baron Weather for integrated weather data.

The Secret Sauce for Immersive Local News

A key component, however, was their inhouse tech talent, Warren stressed. “We had to challenge them [all the vendors], as well as ourselves, because we couldn't add bodies…We really had to do it with the existing team…We had to do something different and bring all of this in house and have it hook up into an automated control room with just one director.”

"And…that was the where the secret sauce comes in, [the station’s inhouse tech talent],” he added. “Our coders and our engineers have worked feverishly to pull all the pieces and parts [together] and to get inside all of the third party vendors’ engines and reconfigure things to make it work.”

The result, he said, is “TV in a box. We've created a system that does work with just one director driving the whole thing, and one operator, and that's it.”

The system is so streamlined they’ve been able to since install it at other CBS owned stations in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Colorado and Miami. It has also been expanded for additional types of coverage, including breaking news and sports, with the CBS stations using it for their March Madness Coverage.

In San Francisco, they’ve become so comfortable with the solution that they’ve discarded all the hard sets.

The system is particularly appealing for breaking news. “The magic of the weather system is that everything is in real time and real time data,” Warren said. “The big challenge at the very beginning of building this was, how do we bring all that weather data from the National Weather Service and other partners into our system at every single elevation in the atmosphere, to show every different kind of condition, pressure, wind, precipitation and temperature, all the things that factor into what makes weather. How do we bring that digital information into the system in real time and create the visual representations of what that is doing?”

The resulting system “does exactly that,” he explained. “It builds graphics in real time.”

This has also been important for breaking news like wildfires. “We're able to watch fires and fire lines develop with these virtual maps,” he said, adding that it has also been a great tool for covering “earthquakes...We're able to locate and show the magnitude as it ripples out across an area, and all of this is driven by the meteorologists in real time who have an iPad.”

The Remote Production Game

During the panel, CW’s Wormser also highlighted the growing importance of remote production tech advances in cutting the costs of sports production.

“Our system is a little bit different than everybody else's, because we are using third parties,” that are producing events for us,” Wormser explained, using remote production technologies. “With REMI, with COVID…it just accelerated so many things in our business [so that remote production]...is kind of the next step” in sports production.

Wormser noted that remote productions have given them more flexibility in the way they’ve produced events, while reducing costs and freeing up money to improve the productions.

“It just saves so much, and it also gives you flexibility in the future of trying new things, trying different ideas, spending more time on pre-produced or post-produced elements,” he said. “It gives you a little bit more flexibility at a lower cost.”

“All the networks are doing it,” he added. “ESPN has been doing it with basketball. Fox has been doing this for years…It goes back into the early 2000s basically, they were bringing games in from across the world, and they were voicing and doing all the graphics in their studios in Los Angeles, and calling him off the monitor because they don't have the money to go around the world. So it's only going to get better. The technology is unbelievable, and will enable networks to put the money into rights and yet still have high quality, innovative production and content for the viewers.”

The TV Tech Summit had a full separate panel on remote productions discussing those developments in more detail.

The full TV Tech Summit, including this panel and keynotes, can be viewed on demand here.

Disney announced this week that WPLG, its long-time ABC station in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale market, will be ending its affiliation with Disney and become an independent station.

Under the terms of the new, multi-year agreement, the new ABC affiliate—owned by Sunbeam—will begin broadcasting as “ABC Miami” on channel 7.2 over-the-air beginning Monday, August 4, moving from Berkshire Hathaway Media’s WPLG Local 10. Disney will continue to provide WPLG with uninterrupted access to its ABC network programming until that date. Sunbeam’s other local TV station, WSVN-TV will continue to broadcast Fox programming on its primary channel (7.1), adding ABC programming to its subchannel (7.2).

The news comes after Disney and WPLG failed to reach an agreement, according to the Hollywood Reporter. WPLG is Berkshire Hathaway Media’s only local TV station.

“We are incredibly excited to join forces with Sunbeam Television in South Florida moving forward as they not only share Disney’s enduring commitment to serving local communities, but they also recognize the value of ABC’s esteemed brand and the significant investments we’re making to our world-class network content,” said Susi D’Ambra Coplan, SVP, Affiliate Relations, Disney Entertainment. “We would also like to thank Berkshire Hathaway Media and everyone at WPLG Local 10 for their partnership—we are very proud to have brought some of the most compelling programming to our highly-valued, mutual viewers over the years.”

“When the opportunity to affiliate with ABC became available, we knew that our combined resources would allow us to develop an extremely strong partnership. Sunbeam Television Corporation has a proven track record as a competitive broadcaster. Adding ABC programming to our stations’ portfolio will only strengthen our footprint. As a family-owned company, we have been embedded in this community for nearly 70 years, with a commitment to local news and supporting non-profit organizations across South Florida, “ says Paul Magnes, Co-President of Sunbeam Television Corporation.

ATLANTA—Gray Media has announced that it has finalized deals with The Walt Disney Co. that extend and renew the network affiliations for all of its ABC-affiliated television stations across 25 markets through Dec. 31, 2028.

“We are pleased to announce the further extension of our decades-long relationship with Disney for ABC station affiliations,” Gray President and Co-CEO Pat LaPlatney said. “These agreements recognize our ABC affiliates’ commitment to public service and will help them continue to serve their communities.”

“Disney/ABC is incredibly proud of our long-established partnership with Gray to serve 25 outstanding communities across the country,” Disney Senior Vice President, Affiliate Relations Susi D’Ambra-Coplan said. “With this new agreement, we couldn’t be more pleased to pair our best-in-class network shows, news and sports with their invaluable local programming for many more years to come.”

The ABC affiliates covered by the new agreements are:

• WWSB, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida (Sarasota)
• WBAY-TV, Green Bay-Appleton, Wisconsin
• WTVG, Toledo, Ohio
• KSPR-LD, Springfield, Missouri
• KCRG-TV, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
• KOLO-TV, Reno, Nevada
• KTRE-KLTV, Tyler-Longview,v Texas
• WPTA, Fort Wayne, Indiana
• KSF-KPRY, Sioux Falls, Iowa
• WGGB-TV, Springfield-Holyoke, Massachusetts
• WEEK-TV, Peoria, Illinois
• WTVM, Columbus, Georgia-Opelika, Alabama
• KNOE, Monroe-El Dorado, Louisiana
• KSWO, Wichita Fall-Lawton, Kansas
• WALB-D2, Albany, Georgia
• WLOX, Biloxi-Gulfport, Mississippi
• WCJB-TV, Gainesville, Florida
• WDAM-D2, Hattiesburg-Laurel, Mississippi
• KOTA-TV, KHSD-TV, KSGW-TV, Rapid City, South Dakota
• WHSV-TV, Harrisonburg, Virginia
• KAIT, Jonesboro, Arkansas
• WBKO, Bowling Green, Kentucky
• KGNS-TV, Laredo, Texas
• KJCT-LD, Grand Junction-Montrose, Colorado
• WTOK-TV, Meridian, Mississippi

’Twas the month before Christmas, and all through the Mouse House—also known as the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida—there were a lot of creatures stirring. It was time to shoot portions of “Disney Parks Magical Christmas Day Parade,” a special that will air on Dec. 25 on ABC and Disney+ (and Hulu the next day).

My family happened to be in the park on Nov. 9, so I skipped Space Mountain and went into reporter mode on Main Street. And while many park guests were enamored with what co-host Julianne Hough was wearing, I was talking to members of the crew about their gear.

According to the crew members who spoke with me briefly (they were in the middle of production, after all), it was a 10-camera shoot. The cameras were a mix of Sony VENICE and VENICE 2 digital cinema cameras equipped with Fujinon and Canon lenses. I was also seeing Sachtler tripods and some OConnor heads. The crew was also a blend of employees and freelancers.

One camera was mounted on a crane to provide a bird’s-eye view of the parade. Others were positioned on the route to provide coverage of the parade as well as Hough and co-host Alfonso Ribeiro, who were positioned below a large Christmas tree in the Town Square area of Main Street (a popular spot for photographs). While the duo was shot in the early afternoon, two large ARRI lots were positioned to provide more consistent lighting throughout their segments.

By the way, the parade itself included appearances by Mickey and Minnie Mouse, plus a variety of other well-known Disney animated and live-action characters. Yes, that included several Disney Princesses. The parade concluded with an appearance by Santa Claus and his wife. Check out a short segment of the hosts in action below.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Systems Contractor News.

Fox News Channel easily led broadcast and cable networks in audiences for its primetime election coverage with an average of 9.8 million viewers in the 8-11 p.m. (ET) time slot, while ABC attracted 5.7 million viewers 2-plus and MSNBC pulled in 5.5 million.

NBC earned the fourth largest audience at 5.3 million, followed by CNN at 4.7 million and CBS at 3.5 million.

While the election night coverage was highly anticipated, following the most expensive campaigns in history, early indications are that viewing averaged 36.6 million viewers across the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and three biggest cable news channels (CNN, FNC and NBC), according to The Hollywood Reporter. That is way down from the 50.7 million who tuned into those outlets four years ago during primetime.

Fox News Media properties (FNC, Fox Business Network, the Fox broadcast network and Fox News Digital) had 13 million viewers 2-plus, according to the division. About 4 million of those were in the adults 25-54 demo used to sell advertising, with FNC getting about 2.9 million of its 9.8 million viewers from the 25-54 age group.

ABC has about 2.2 million in that demo, followed by NBC (2.1 million), CNN (2 million) and CBS (1.2 million).

In its first coverage of a presidential election, NewsNation attracted 257,000 P2+ and about 65,000 in the 25-54 demo.

In the six p.m. to 3 a.m. ET time slot, FNC had an average of 8.2 million P2+ and 2.4 million in the 25-54 demo while CNN had 3.5 million P2+ and 1.5 million in the 25-54 age group and MSNBC has 3.9 million P2+ and 1.1 million viewers aged 25-54.

Disney has signed a new deal with the Recording Academy to move the Grammy Awards from CBS to ABC starting in 2027.

The move leaves CBS with only one of the four major entertainment awards shows—the Tony Awards—and gives ABC the Oscars and now the Grammys (the Emmy Awards rotate yearly among the four major commercial networks).

CBS has been home to the Grammys for 54 years.

Financial terms of the 10-year deal, which also calls for the telecast to stream live on Hulu, were not disclosed. The deal also calls for the Recording Academy to produce multiple Grammy-branded specials and additional new programming for audiences around the world across Disney’s platforms, Disney said.

Disney Entertainment co-chairman Dana Walden and Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. announced the deal on Thursday.

“As The Walt Disney Co. combines forces with the Recording Academy to open this exciting new chapter in the history of the Grammys, we do so with pride and gratitude,” Walden said. “Live events have never been more important to our culture and industry, and we just acquired one of the crown jewels, adding to our portfolio of world-class programming across all genres.”

Said Mason: “We are completely thrilled to be bringing the Grammys and other new music programming to the Disney ecosystem. We are grateful to our long-standing partners at CBS and now honored to be joining with Disney, an iconic company where creators have always been at the forefront. This partnership represents another important milestone in the Academy’s transformation and growth, and strengthens our ability to fulfill our mission of uplifting and serving music people around the world.”

NEW YORK—The ABC News Presidential Debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump drew an estimated audience of 67.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen. The debate aired live on 17 television networks reported by Nielsen

The 67.1 million viewers was significantly greater than “CNN Presidential Debate” (51.266 million) in June between President Biden and Trump, based on Live + Same Day Data from Nielsen Media Research. 

Reported networks include: ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Merit Street, Scripps News, Telemundo, Univision, BET, CNN, CNNe, FOX News Channel, FOX Business, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation, PBS.

About 26.4 million viewers tuned into Disney and ABC’s linear and streaming platforms making the debate ABC’s most-viewed multiplatform program of the year      

With 19 million total viewers on ABC, the debate the most-watched debate on any network in 16 years. 

ABC News live on streaming and digital platforms, including Hulu, Disney+ and ABC Owned Television Stations, had 7.4 million viewers in early reporting, boosting the total multiplatform audiences to 26.4 million. The debate was also most-viewed live event by hours streamed on Disney+ in the U.S. to Date.

The debate ranked No. 1 in total viewers and adults 25-54 in each of ABC’s top 6 owned TV stations.

In terms of total viewing across all networks, the audience skewed older, with 41.3 million over the age the age of 55. Nielsen reported the following: 

• Persons 2+ (67,135,000, 21.2 rating)
• Households (45,571,000, 36.2 rating)
• Persons 18-34  (6,470,000, 9.0 rating)
• Persons 35-54  (16,880,000, 20.6 rating)
• Persons 55+ (41,349,000, 41.0 rating)

In terms of individual breakdowns by networks, Fox reported these final Nielsen figures, with Fox News being the top cable network and ABC toping the broadcasters: 

• Fox New Channel: 9,062,000 People 2+; 1,942,000 Adults 25-54
• Fox: 4,845,000 P2+; 1,901,000 A25-54
• FBN: 295,000 P2+; 62,000 A25-54
• CNN: 4,389,000 P2+; 1,575,000 A25-54
• MSNBC: 6,381,000 P2+; 1,236,000 A25-54
• ABC: 19,049,000 P2+; 6,596,000 A25-54
• NBC: 10,075,000 P2+; 3,744,000 A25-54
• CBS: 6,189 ,000 P2+; 1,904,000 A25-54

The official kickoff to the college football season provided another reminder of how football can boost audiences across all platforms, with ESPN and ABC reporting hefty increases in audiences for both linear TV and engagement on social media. 

ESPN’s Nielsen-rated networks airing college football – ABC, ESPN and ESPNU – averaged 3.1 million viewers in Week 1, up 44 percent over 2023. That was the largest audience for Kickoff Week across ESPN platforms since 2016, according to a ESPN blog. 

Both ABC and ESPN were up double digits over 2023, ESPN reported. ABC scored its most-watched Kickoff Week since 2016 and the second best on record, finishing up 83 percent year-over-year. Meanwhile, ESPN was up 23 percent for Week 1 over the 2023 edition. Saturday, Aug. 31st was the most-viewed day of college football ever on ESPN+, and Week 1 included the top 3 regular season college football games ever on the platform.

ESPN platforms also scored the top six games across all networks in Week 1, hitting multi-year viewership highs in key windows. Additionally, this is the first time since Week 1 in 2016 that ESPN platforms have had six games in one weekend all surpass 4.0 million viewers.

Week one’s top performer was USC vs. LSU, which pulled in 9.2 million viewers on ABC. It was ABC’s third best Sunday Opener on record and ABC’s most-streamed college football game on record. Other highly rated games included Notre Dame at Texas A&M (8.2 million viewers on ABC), Clemson vs. Georgia (8.0 million viewers on ABC) and Miami at Florida (6.7 million viewers on ABC.)

In addition “College GameDay Built by The Home Depot” delivered one of its most-watched regular season episodes in the 37-year history of the show. 2.5 million viewers watched as the sport’s premier pregame show made its stateside season debut in College Station, with 3.2 million viewers tuning in for the final hour. Week 1 from Aggieland is the most-watched episode to air outside of Thanksgiving Weekend and was the most-watched regular season episode since November 2016. The audience was up 47 percent year-over-year and demolished the previous Week 1 audience record by double digits.

ESPN’s social media team created more than 1,200 pieces of content across all platforms, registering 58 million engagements – up 68 percent year-over-year – and scored 554 million video views for Week 1. The team’s viral video featuring new teammates Nick Saban and Pat McAfee is College GameDay’s most-viewed TikTok ever with 24 million views and climbing, and boasts a total of 50 million views across all ESPN platforms, ESPN noted in a blog post.  

Disney and DirecTV are reporting they were unable to reach a new distribution deal. As a result of the dispute, Disney-owned stations, ESPN and other channels went dark on DirecTV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse at 7 p.m. ET, Sept. 1. 

The services went dark just the featured USC vs. LSU primetime game on Sept. 1 and the presidential debate produced by ABC News approaches. It would leave subscribers without access to key college football contests in the upcoming weeks.

As is often the case in these disputes, both sides are blaming each other for failing to offer sensible terms that would allow both parties to grow their businesses. It leaves nearly 11 million households around the country without access to ESPN, Disney-owned ABC affiliates and other services. 

Key sticking points seem to be the cost of programming, the inclusion of Disney streaming services in the agreement and the ability to drop channels and craft more flexible low-cost packages. These issues have become particularly thorny as pay TV operators continue to hemorrhage subscribers and consumers spend more time with streaming services. In Nielsen’s July snapshot of TV view, streaming captured a record 41.4% share of TV viewing outside mobile.  

Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, co-chairmen, Disney Entertainment, and Jimmy Pitaro, chairman, ESPN issued this statement regarding the impasse: “DirecTV chose to deny millions of subscribers access to our content just as we head into the final week of the US Open and gear up for college football and the opening of the NFL season. While we’re open to offering DirecTV flexibility and terms which we’ve extended to other distributors, we will not enter into an agreement that undervalues our portfolio of television channels and programs. We invest significantly to deliver the No. 1 brands in entertainment, news and sports because that’s what our viewers expect and deserve. We urge DirecTV to do what’s in the best interest of their customers and finalize a deal that would immediately restore our programming.”

In response, DirecTV complained that Disney pulled all its content from DirecTV moments before the feature USC vs. LSU primetime game tonight and the presidential debate produced by ABC News approaches. 

Disney is demanding that customers pay for channels they don’t watch and pony up for Disney’s streaming services, whether they want them or not, DirecTV said. 

“The Walt Disney Co. is once again refusing any accountability to consumers, distribution partners, and now the American judicial system,” said Rob Thun, chief content officer at DirecTV. “Disney is in the business of creating alternate realities, but this is the real world where we believe you earn your way and must answer for your own actions. They want to continue to chase maximum profits and dominant control at the expense of consumers – making it harder for them to select the shows and sports they want at a reasonable price.”

In a press release regarding the dispute, DirecTV also alleged “just hours before today’s expiration, Disney demanded that to reach any licensing agreement or to extend access to its programming, DirecTV must agree to waive all claims that Disney’s behavior is anti-competitive. Moreover, any future lawsuits resulting from DirecTV/Disney licensing agreements would be adjudicated in California – and not New York – because – as Disney counsel specifically stated – SDNY Judge Garnett `didn’t understand the issues’ when granting a preliminary injunction against Disney’s Venu Sports. Disney’s last-minute demands to foreclose upon any legal accountability for its growing pattern of anti-competitive actions should be troubling to all pro-consumer advocacy groups, regulators, and Department of Justice attorneys alike. And even more frustrating and incredulous is that, earlier today, Disney demanded that to reach a deal, we must waive all future legal claims that its behavior is anti-competitive.”

The American Television Alliance (ATVA), an advocacy for pay-TV providers, lambasted Disney for its move.

“This is the third major blackout by Disney in recent years as they seek to raise rates and force distributors to carry an unwieldy ‘one-size fits all’ bundle of more than a dozen channels to the vast majority of their subscribers," said Michelle Bowling, ATVA spokesperson. "These ‘fat bundles’ force consumers to pay for programming they don’t watch and the resulting high prices cause many consumers to ‘cut the cord’ from linear pay-TV, hurting programmers and distributors. Ironically, Disney itself is trying to partner with two of its competitors to launch a skinny sports bundle, which was blocked by a federal judge because they don’t allow distributors to do the same.”

Bowling went on to accuse Disney of hypocrisy: “Disney claims that local broadcast is an essential service, but they have repeatedly blacked out local stations in the name of higher licensing fees and penetration rates,” she added. “This also comes at a time when many rely on broadcast news related to hurricane season, amidst record-high heat waves across the country and as we approach a highly contested presidential election.”

9/3/2024: This article was updated to add ATVA's response.

HOUSTON—KTRK-TV, the ABC O&O here, added to its Brightline lighting lineup in June with new L1.2 and L1.4 fixtures under DMX control in its Studio B. 

In late June, KTRK added the new Brightline complement and DMX control in Studio B. The station was eager to add functionality to Studio B, including expanding its chromakey capability to enable virtual set production. A large chromakey corner, lit by Brightline, is the start of a complete upgrade. Plans include an interview set and possibly a talent stand-up area, it said.

The Studio B lighting updates include:

• Brightline L1.2X variable white with DMX control (2x)
• Brightline L1.4 variable white with DMX control (17x)
• Wide control screens on back lights
• Fixture mounted intensifiers on front lights
• ETC Element console

Lighting designer/director Chris Boyd installed the fixtures. Rob Kreps with Barbizon Lighting Company programmed the DMX console based on settings supplied by Boyd.

“Thanks to the daisy-chain ability of the Brightline fixtures, we only used three 20A relay circuits to power the entire rig. Control was provided by DMX cable from an ETC Element console,” said Boyd. “The set was lit to 3200k tungsten but can go up to 5600k daylight when needed.”

The station, a long-time Brightline customer, with more than 60 Brightline fixtures in its Bissonnet St. last year purchased 37 Brightline L1.2 variable white fixtures, eight L1.4 fixtures, and five Brightline Lupo fresnels to replace existing fluorescent soft fixtures and augment its LED fresnel inventory in the main news studio, the company said.

“KTRK has always been a true partner with Brightline,” said Kathy Katz, managing partner at Brightline. “We’ve worked closely with them for several years and look forward to many more. They truly understand the transformative power of great broadcast lighting.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—As declines in linear TV viewing make the ongoing popularity of live sports, particularly football, central to financial success of the TV industry, the NFL has released details of its 2024 regular season that will play a major role in the success of broadcasters, networks and streaming companies in the last four months of 2024. 

The league schedule includes specific details on the specific regular season games that will be aired or streamed by CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN, ABC, Prime Video, Peacock, Netflix and The NFL Network during the 18-week, 272-game regular-season schedule for 2024, which kicks off on Thursday night, September 5, in Kansas City and concludes with 16 division games in Week 18 – two on Saturday, January 4, and 14 on Sunday, January 5. 

For the 2024 NFL regular-season schedule by week, click here.

For the 2024 NFL preseason schedule, click here. 

More specifically, the NFL released these details about the schedule, which it described as follows: 

The 2024 NFL schedule, powered by AWS, will feature each team playing 17 regular-season games and three preseason games for the fourth consecutive year. The 17th game will feature teams from opposing conferences that finished in the same standing within their respective divisions the previous season. The NFC will be the home conference for the 17th game in 2024. For how opponents were determined for the 2024 season, click here. 

The NFL uses the power of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to power its schedule-making process. There are approximately a quadrillion possible schedule combinations each NFL season and over 26,000 factors to take into consideration such as stadium availability, travel requirements, primetime games, competitive fairness and division rivalries. The NFL uses AWS to run high performance computing workloads to find the best possible schedule each year. For more information, click here. 

The NFL's 105th season begins with the league's annual primetime kickoff game, as the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs host the Baltimore Ravens at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday, September 5 (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC) in a rematch of last season's AFC Championship Game. 

The two most recent winners of the Most Valuable Player award, Baltimore's Lamar Jackson (2023) and Kansas City's Patrick Mahomes (2022), are scheduled to face off for the sixth time in their careers, including the postseason. Should both players start as expected, Jackson (two-time MVP) and Mahomes (two-time MVP) would become the seventh different pair of quarterbacks to meet in a regular-season game after both players had won multiple MVP awards. 

The NFL's primetime kickoff game – which has been an annual tradition since 2002 – will feature a rematch of one of the previous season's conference championship games for only the third time and first since 2010, when New Orleans defeated Minnesota in a rematch of the NFC Championship. The other instance was 2004, when New England defeated Indianapolis in a rematch of the AFC Championship.

On Friday, September 6 (8:15 p.m. ET, Peacock), the Green Bay Packers will meet the Philadelphia Eagles at Corinthians Arena in São Paulo, Brazil, the first-ever regular season NFL game to be played in South America. It will mark the first time the NFL has played a game on Friday of their opening weekend in over 50 years, when the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams met on September 18, 1970.

Week 1 continues on CBS at 4:05 PM ET, with two head coaches making their Week 1 debut with their club as Antonio Pierce and the Las Vegas Raiders visit Jim Harbaugh and the Los Angeles Chargers in an AFC West showdown, while Super Bowl-winning head coach Sean Payton and the Denver Broncos travel to Seattle to face the Seahawks, where Mike Macdonald will make his NFL head coaching debut. On FOX at 4:25 PM ET, the Dallas Cowboys visit the Cleveland Browns in a matchup of two 2023 playoff teams and the Washington Commanders, under new head coach Dan Quinn, travel to take on the reigning NFC South champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 

Later that day, NBC's Sunday Night Football begins with Mathew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams visiting Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions (8:20 p.m. ET), in a rematch of last season's NFC Wild Card round, in which the Lions earned their first playoff victory since 1991. NBC will televise one game each Sunday night in Weeks 1-17. Additionally, NBC will feature Miami at Green Bay (8:20 p.m. ET) on Thanksgiving night as well as Houston at Kansas City (1 p.m. ET) on Saturday in Week 16. 

Kickoff Weekend concludes on Monday, September 9, with ESPN/ABC's Monday Night Football, featuring Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets visiting Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers (8:15 p.m. ET). YouTube TV is the presenting sponsor of Kickoff Weekend, inclusive of the entire Thursday through Monday slate. 

ESPN will televise one game each Monday night in Weeks 1-17 and will be simulcast on ABC in Weeks 1, 8, 14 and 17. In Weeks 3 and 4, there will be two Monday night games with broadcasts at 7:30 p.m. ET and 8:15 p.m. ET. In Week 7, there will be two Monday night games, with Baltimore at Tampa Bay on ESPN at 8:15 p.m. ET and the Los Angeles Chargers at Arizona on ESPN+ at 9 p.m. ET. In Week 15, the two Monday night games begin 30 minutes apart, with Chicago at Minnesota at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and Atlanta at Las Vegas at 8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN. 

Additionally, ESPN/ABC will air two games with playoff implications on the Saturday of Week 18, January 4, at 4:30 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET. These games will be selected following the conclusion of Week 17. There will be no Monday night game on the final regular-season weekend (Week 18) to provide more flexibility for the scheduling of the opening weekend of the NFL playoffs. 

Thursday Night Football will air exclusively on Prime Video, kicking off its slate in Week 2 with an AFC East matchup as the Miami Dolphins host the Buffalo Bills (8:15 p.m. ET). Prime Video will broadcast 15 Thursday Night Football games between Weeks 2-17 (excluding Thanksgiving night) and exclusively stream the second-ever NFL Black Friday game when the Kansas City Chiefs host the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 13 (3 p.m. ET). 

The first-ever NFL games streamed on Netflix will be played on Christmas, Wednesday, December 25, in Week 17, as the Kansas City Chiefs visit the Pittsburgh Steelers (1 p.m. ET) and the Baltimore Ravens travel to face the Houston Texans (4:30 p.m. ET). Additionally, Netflix will stream at least one holiday game in 2025 and 2026. 

NFL Network will exclusively televise seven games – four international games and three games in Week 17 on Saturday, December 28. 

The NFL schedule features five international regular-season games – three in the UK, one in Germany and one in Brazil, marking the first-ever regular-season NFL game to be played in South America. As part of the league's expansion of the regular season to 17 games, it was determined that, beginning with the 2022 season, teams from the conference whose teams were eligible for a ninth regular-season home game would be among the designated group to play a neutral-site international game each year. 

The international slate begins in Week 1 in Brazil with Green Bay and Philadelphia (8:15 p.m. ET, Peacock) and follows with games in three consecutive weeks, beginning in London at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in Week 5 with the New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network). In Week 6, Jacksonville meets Chicago (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network) at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium before the London action shifts to Wembley Stadium in Week 7, when the Jaguars will meet the New England Patriots (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network). The Jaguars are scheduled to play two regular-season games outside of the United States for the second-consecutive season. 

As part of the league's commitment to playing regular-season games in Germany, the NFL will conclude the international slate of games in Munich in Week 10 as the New York Giants meet the Carolina Panthers (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network). It will mark the league's second game in Munich at Allianz Arena – Home of FC Bayern Munich and the fourth international regular-season game to be played in Germany. 

The Madden Thanksgiving Celebration will feature a tripleheader on Thursday, November 28. The first game will feature a pair of NFC North foes, as the Bears travel to Detroit to face the Lions (12:30 p.m. ET, CBS). The late afternoon game will match two NFC East rivals, as the New York Giants visit the Dallas Cowboys (4:30 p.m. ET, FOX). The Thanksgiving Day festivities end with the Miami Dolphins traveling to Green Bay to face the Packers on NBC (8:20 p.m. ET). 

The regular season will conclude with Week 18 on Saturday, January 4, and Sunday, January 5. For the 15th consecutive year, all 16 games scheduled for the final week of the season are division contests, enhancing the potential for more games with playoff ramifications. 

The NFL's 32 teams will each play 17 games over 18 weeks. Byes will begin in Week 5 and end in Week 14. 

Additional 2024 schedule notes:

• Fourteen games will be Super Bowl rematches and nine 2024 games are rematches from the 2023 playoffs, including Super Bowl LVIII (Kansas City at San Francisco in Week 7), both Championship Games (Baltimore at Kansas City in Week 1; Detroit at San Francisco in Week 17) and all four Divisional playoff games (Tampa Bay at Detroit in Week 2; Kansas City at Buffalo in Week 11; San Francisco at Green Bay in Week 12; Baltimore at Houston in Week 17).
• The top-two picks in the 2024 NFL Draft, Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels, are scheduled to meet in Week 8 when the Chicago Bears visit the Washington Commanders (1 p.m. ET, CBS). Should both players start, it would mark the sixth game in NFL history between rookie starting quarterbacks selected with the first and second overall picks in the NFL Draft. Williams and the Bears are also slated to play against No. 3 overall pick Drake Maye and the New England Patriots in Week 10 (1 p.m. ET, FOX) and No. 4 overall pick Marvin Harrison and the Arizona Cardinals in Week 9 (4:05 p.m. ET, CBS). 

The NFL will continue to use “flexible scheduling" this season to ensure exciting and meaningful games are available for viewing by the largest number of fans. For up-to-date information about “flexible scheduling" for the 2024 season, please visit https://www.nfl.com/schedules/flexible-scheduling-procedures. 

As in prior seasons, for Week 18, the final weekend of the season, the scheduling of the Saturday, Sunday afternoon, and the Sunday night games is not assigned. In Week 18, two games will be played on Saturday (4:30 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET) with the remainder to be played on Sunday afternoon (1 p.m. ET and 4:25 p.m. ET) and one matchup to be played on Sunday night (8:20 p.m. ET). Specific dates, start times, and networks for Week 18 matchups will be determined and announced following the conclusion of Week 17. 

Introduced in 2020 and continuing for a fifth-consecutive year, a total of 14 teams – seven each in the American and National Football Conferences – will make the postseason. The No. 1 seed in each conference will receive a bye in the Wild Card round. The remaining division champions in each conference with the best records will be seeded 2, 3, and 4, followed by the next three teams per conference with the best records seeded 5, 6, and 7. 

Since 1990 – a streak of 34 consecutive seasons – at least four new teams have qualified for the playoffs that missed the postseason the year before, including seven of the 14 playoff teams in 2022. 

AFC and NFC Wild Card games will feature the 2 seed hosting the 7 seed, the 3 seed hosting the 6 seed and the 4 seed hosting the 5 seed. 

Super Wild Card Weekend presented by Verizon for the 2024 season will feature six games, starting on Saturday, January 11.  

Wild Card winners join the top seeds in each conference in the Divisional Playoffs, presented by Intuit TurboTax, on Saturday and Sunday, January 18-19. The AFC and NFC Championship Games, presented by Intuit TurboTax, will be played on Sunday, January 26. The winners meet two weeks later on Sunday, February 9, in Super Bowl LIX at New Orleans' Caesars Superdome (FOX), marking the 11th time the league's final game will be played in New Orleans. 

The NFL is the only sports league that presents all regular-season and postseason games on free, over-the-air television in local markets. All postseason games are distributed nationally. 

Westwood One will broadcast on radio all NFL primetime games, the three Thanksgiving Day games and the entire NFL playoffs. SiriusXM subscribers will have access to every live NFL game, as well as exclusive 24/7 talk channel coverage on SXM NFL Radio. All live and local prime time games will be available to stream on mobile devices with NFL+. 

An extensive new analysis of the news segments in the broadcast evening news programs of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS has found that broadcasters devoted most of their economic coverage to the stock market (40% of all economic coverage) and inflation (22%) during Q1 2024 while devoting very little time to many other important economic issues like wage growth, national economic growth, economic inequality, unions, national debt, taxes, corporate profits and social security. 

The study, which did not cover cable news, found that broadcast evening news by commercial broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC “offered relatively sparse coverage of the state of the American economy in the first three months of the year — the flagship news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC only registered a combined 88 segments featuring significant discussions of economic policy or macroeconomic conditions over the period from January through March.”

In contrast, viewers of “PBS’ NewsHour were offered a far more detailed perspective of the economy, with that program alone providing 122 qualifying economic news segments during the same period" the researchers said. 

The researchers noted that the NewsHour benefitted from its hour-long format versus its commercial broadcast competitors, which each air 30-minute evening news programs and leave less time for news reporting. But unlike its broadcast competitors, PBS does not air its flagship news program on weekends.

The study also found that “[a]ll four major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS) covered positive economic news sparingly during the first quarter of the year — job creation was covered in 28 segments, or just 13%; continued wage growth was covered in 12 segments, or 6%; and the nation’s economic growth was covered in just 8, or 4%, of all segments. Corporate profits, which reports have shown were growing faster than the rate of inflation in recent years, were mentioned in just 4 of all 210 qualifying segments, or 2%, and were never mentioned in tandem with inflation.”

The study also chided the networks for sparce coverage of "government spending and, in particular, repeated Republican threats to shut down the federal government" by noting that “a regular viewer of any of the three major [commercial] broadcast outlets (ABC, CBS, and NBC) would be forgiven for not realizing that the federal government was on the verge of partial shutdown twice during the first quarter of the year alone. Coverage of government spending — inclusive of budget proposals, continuing resolutions, and major legislation affecting federal spending — only drew coverage in 15 segments across those three networks in the first quarter of 2024.”

In addition, “none of the corporate broadcast networks discussed the national debt and federal budget deficit during their coverage” and they also failed to note that “the annual federal budget deficit has decreased under President Joe Biden in each of the past two full fiscal years, after spiking under former President Donald Trump in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The full study, with a detailed breakdown of the economic coverage by network, is available here. 

To analyze the content of the newscasts, Media Matters said that it searched transcripts in the SnapStream and Kinetiq video databases for all original episodes of ABC's World News Tonight, CBS' Evening News and Weekend News, NBC's Nightly News, and PBS' NewsHour, including any weekend editions, for any of the terms “debt,” “deficit,” “growth,” “inequality,” “inflation,” “jobs,” “tax,” “revenue,” “supply side,” “trickle down,” “GDP,” “GNP,” “income,” “labor,” “union,” “trade,” “tariff,” “Social Security,” “Medicare,” “Medicaid,” “Affordable Care Act,” or “retirement” or any variations of any of the terms “economy,” “spend,” “wage,” “wealth,” “unemployment,” “product,” “employ,” “Obama care,” or “health care” from January 1, 2024, through the first quarter of the year ending March 31, 2024.

ABC is reporting that the early start for the 96th Oscars on ABC helped push the average audience to 19.5 million total viewers, a four-year high. It also scored a 3.81 rating among adults 18-49 based on Fast National Live+Same Day program data from Nielsen. 

The four-year high in total viewers (19.5 million), the biggest since the 2020 broadcast, also meant that “The Oscars” grew for the 3rd straight year in Total Viewers, improving over last year’s broadcast by nearly 1 million viewers (19.5 million vs. 18.8 million), ABC said. 

ABC’s broadcast of the 96th Oscars peaked in the final half-hour (10:00-10:29 p.m.) with 21.9 million Total Viewers.

ABC also reported that the 96th Oscars stood as the strongest awards show telecast on any network in 4 years in Total Viewers (19.5 million) – since ABC’s broadcast of the 2020 Oscars on 2/9/20. 

The 2024 Oscars also ranked as the top entertainment special in primetime on any network in 4 years in Total Viewers (19.5 million). With 5 million total viewers, “The Oscars” on ABC outdrew “The Grammys” on CBS by 14% (17.1 million on 2/4/24) and “The Golden Globes®” by 105% (9.5 million on 1/7/24) and “The 75th Emmy Awards” on Fox by 333% (4.5 million on 1/15/24).

The 96th Oscars also ranked as the No. 1 most social program on Sunday, generating 28.5 million total social interactions and growing 4% from last year’s ceremony (27.4 million).

“The Oscars” stood as the 1 entertainment program of the year to date in terms of social video consumption with 71.8 million video views.

ESPN and the NCAA have reached a new, eight-year agreement beginning Sept. 1, 2024, for NCAA championships media rights. The deal—valued at $920 million, or $115 million annually—includes domestic rights to a record 40 NCAA championships—21 women’s and 19 men’s events—and international rights to those same NCAA championships plus the Division I men’s basketball tournament.

The new agreement expands the sports network’s longtime relationship with the NCAA, which has broadcast NCAA games since ESPN’s inception in 1979.

“ESPN and the NCAA have enjoyed a strong and collaborative relationship for more than four decades, and we are thrilled that it will continue as part of this new, long-term agreement,” said ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro. “The ESPN networks and platforms will exclusively present a record number of championships, including all rounds of several marquee events that, together with the NCAA, we have grown over time. This unprecedented deal also further strengthens The Walt Disney Company’s industry-leading commitment to women’s sports and will help fuel our continued growth, including in the critical streaming space.”

The agreement continues exclusive coverage of sports included in the previous ESPN agreement—including all rounds of marquee NCAA Championship events (women’s basketball, softball, volleyball, gymnastics, baseball, FCS football, and more)—and adds coverage of the Division I men’s and women’s tennis team championships and the national collegiate men’s gymnastics championship. It also includes full rights for the men’s National Invitation Tournament (NIT) and Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT), as well as international rights for the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship. Division II and Division III also add coverage on ESPN platform of championships in men’s and women’s basketball and women’s volleyball.

“The NCAA has worked in earnest over the past year to ensure that this new broadcast agreement provides the best possible outcome for all NCAA championships, and in particular women’s championships,” said Charlie Baker, NCAA president. “Over the past several years, ESPN has demonstrated increased investment in NCAA championship coverage, and the Association is pleased to continue to provide a platform for student-athletes to shine. Having one, multi-platform home to showcase our championships provides additional growth potential along with a greater experience for the viewer and our student-athletes.”

NCAA says its members “will explore revenue distribution units” for the women’s basketball tournament. The Division I Board of Directors Finance committee began discussion of revenue distribution philosophies and new models this year, and those discussions will continue with membership in the coming year, NCAA said.

“Finalizing this agreement ushers in yet another milestone for the NCAA positioning student-athletes first,” said Linda Livingstone, chair of the NCAA Board of Governors and Baylor University president. “Concurrent with the terms of the new media rights, several enhancements to student-athlete benefits across all three NCAA divisions will take effect, and this deal will help fund those important programs. And the national, integrated platform the family of ESPN networks provides will help grow the visibility of many NCAA sports, particularly for our women student-athletes.”

The 40 NCAA events included in ESPN’s new eight-year agreement include:

• Men’s Championships – soccer, football (FCS, DII & DIII), cross country, water polo, indoor track & field, swimming & diving, wrestling, ice hockey, gymnastics, fencing, volleyball, lacrosse, outdoor track & field, tennis, baseball and basketball (including DII semifinals & DIII semifinals and championship).
• Women’s Championships – soccer, field hockey, volleyball (including DII & DIII), cross country, indoor track & field, swimming & diving, basketball (including DII & DIII), ice hockey, bowling, gymnastics, fencing, beach volleyball, lacrosse, outdoor track & field, tennis, softball, and water polo.
• Also: men’s National Invitation Tournament (NIT) and Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT); NCAA Div I Men’s Basketball Championship (international rights).

ESPN agreed to guarantee that broadcasts of the national championship game in Division I women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, women’s gymnastics, and the Football Championship Subdivision will air on ABC annually, as well as provide additional ABC coverage of softball and baseball championships. The agreement also includes a guarantee that at least 10 of the championships will have selections shows distributed on linear ESPN networks.

Select rounds of NCAA championships will be exclusively available on ESPN+, which includes 24,000 college games each year spanning more than 20 conferences. In total, ESPN says that more than 2,300 hours of championships will be presented on ESPN’s linear and digital platforms annually, with more than 800 hours of NCAA championships on ESPN linear networks each year.

The agreement also includes enhanced broadcast sponsorship and footage rights for ESPN across its full portfolio of championships and platforms.

LOS ANGELES—As broadcasters look for ways to better engage audiences and reverse declining ratings, VersusGame and ABC are reporting some of the results of their collaboration to offer “gamified content” for the 20th Season of The Bachelorette. 

The effort was created to bring a new layer of excitement and engagement to the hit reality show, by allowing fans to immerse themselves in the drama like never before, the network and Versus Game said. 

The heart of this partnership was the introduction of exclusive interactive games posted weekly and available from the official show page. These games were designed to not only capture the essence of the show, but also encourage the audience to act on their predictions and opinions throughout the entire season. Fans were encouraged to participate in predicting outcomes, analyzing cast members' choices, and voicing their opinions on leading lady Charity's journey in a fun and competitive environment, VersusGame said. 

This produced some notable engagement metrics. 

The first-click engagement rate reached 94.5%, underscoring the immediate appeal and captivating nature of the interactive games. Moreover, the partnership achieved a peak average session time of 6 minutes and 57 seconds, which highlighted the appeal of the interactive experience as they indulged in predicting the unfolding drama of The Bachelorette, VersusGame reported. 

In addition, the sign-up to gameplay rate reached an hefty 54.49%, highlighting the strong desire of fans to actively put their predictions to the test. A staggering 45% of viewers who encountered the interactive games actually participated, VersusGame said. 

"The response to our collaboration with ABC for Season 20 of The Bachelorette has been nothing short of extraordinary," said John Vitti, CEO of VersusGame. "The integration of gamified content within the already impressive Bachelorette ecosystem has added an appealing layer of interactiveness to the show for its dedicated audience. We're thrilled to have contributed to providing ABC viewers with a unique opportunity to be a part of the action."

On the Bachelorette-branded Minigames hub, viewers could dive into the relevant and intriguing games. The game environment became a valuable additional part of the viewing experience, with its seamless integration into the show's main page on ABC's official website, abc.com/shows/the-bachelorette. The partnership's innovation extended beyond the screen, as fans eagerly embraced the opportunity to become active participants in the unfolding narrative, VersusGame said. 

All of the Disney-owned stations, ESPN and cable networks were removed from Charter Communications on August 31 after Charter and Disney were unable to come to terms on a new carriage deal. 

The dispute left Charter pay TV subs without ESPN and other services at the opening of the college football season on Memorial Day weekend.

“We offered Disney a fair deal, yet they are demanding an excessive increase,” Charter said on a website it had set up to explain its side of the dispute. “They also want to limit our ability to provide greater customer choice in programming packages forcing you to take and pay for channels you may not want. Spectrum is on your side and fighting to keep costs down while protecting and maximizing customer choice. The rising cost of programming is the single greatest factor in higher cable TV prices, and we are fighting hard to hold the line on programming rates imposed on us by companies like Disney.”

Charter is also framing the dispute as part of its larger effort to rein in costs of sports programming. 

In July Charter announced a new strategy for reducing sports costs by splitting up its packages in much of its foot print into a Spectrum Select Plus package that includes sports channels and a lower-cost Spectrum Select Signature will exclude the RSNs and many sports channels.

Charter also stressed that in the linear video industry, including both traditional and virtual multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), has lost nearly 25 million customers, almost 25% of total industry customers while programmers have been moving some of their best content to streaming platforms. 

Disney, Charted claimed, was ignoring “the realities of a shifting marketplace” by demanding higher license fees and that “we pay for customers that do not receive its services, leading to more price increases.”

Overall, Charter said that it had expected to pay Disney $2.2 billion in 2023 to carry its content. “[W]e have reached a precipice and must chart a path to change," the operator said. 

As part of its proposed solution, Charter said it would accept The Walt Disney Company’s “market” rates in exchange for:

• Lower penetration minimums to deliver package flexibility for our customers
• Inclusion of their ad-supported DTC apps within our packaged linear products so the customer does not have to pay twice for similar programming
• Charter’s commitment to market their DTC products to our broadband-only customers 

In response, Disney said they were offering a fair deal for their highly valued content, noting that: 

• “Losing ESPN is a major issue for consumers since it’s one of the most popular channels. In fact, ESPN aired more than half (53) of the top 100 telecasts in Charter homes during the past year, per Nielsen, the leading audience measurement, data and analytics company. That includes all 5 of the top 5,” Disney said. 
• “In the average month, 71% of Charter subscribers tune into Disney’s networks or stations. In fact, Charter subscribers watched more than 3.3 billion hours of content on Disney networks and stations over the past year, according to Nielsen.”
• “Although Charter claims that they value their customers, they declined Disney’s offer to extend negotiations which would have kept Disney-owned networks up for consumers in the middle of perennial programming events like the US Open and college football.”
• “Even though Charter also claims to value Disney’s direct-to-consumer services, the cable company is demanding these different services for free—as they have stated publicly—which does not make economic sense. Moreover, it does not make sense for consumers who desire the flexibility to have our streaming platforms as standalone services," Disney said. 

NEW YORK—ABC has released Nielsen data showing that 2023 NBA Finals Game 5 viewership was up compared to last year’s Game 5 between the Golden State Warriors and the Boston Celtics, averaging 13,084,000 viewers. 

The Denver Nuggets NBA Championship-clinching win over the Miami Heat peaked with 17,883,000 viewers in the final minutes of the ABC broadcast. Last year’s Game 5 averaged 13,016,000 viewers.

ABC’s NBA Finals Game 5 broadcast easily won the night across all of television and in every key demographic. Overall, viewership for the 2023 NBA Playoffs on ESPN platforms was up two percent from 2022 and was the most-watched in four years. After 36 postseason games, ESPN platforms averaged 6,397,000 viewers.

NEW YORK—ABC has released Nielsen data showing that the 2023 NBA Finals on ABC continues to generate strong viewership. Wednesday’s Game 3 averaged 11,237,000 viewers, and peaked with 12,389,000 viewers at 10:45 p.m. ET, according to Nielsen.

ABC said that game 3 of the NBA Finals on ABC tripled its competition and handily won the night across all of television, including in all key demographics.

In addition, viewership for the 2023 NBA Playoffs on ESPN platforms is up seven percent year over year, averaging 6,090,000 viewers through 34 games, ESPN reported. 

NEW YORK—ABC has released Nielsen data showing that its coverage of the second game of the 2023 NBA Finals attracted an average of 11,910,000 viewers and that the broadcast of the Miami Heat victory over the Denver Nuggets peaked in the 10:15 p.m. ET quarter hour with 15,256,000 viewers.

Coverage of game 2 easily won the night across television in viewership and in all key demographics, including P18-34; P18-49; P25-54; M18-34, M18-49 and M25-54, ABC said. 

For the second consecutive NBA Finals game, the broadcast was up year-over-year in the P18-34 demo. Game 2 was up three percent from last year.

NBA Finals Game 2 on ABC was the highest-rated Denver Nuggets game ever on any network in the Denver market. It averaged a 22.3 rating locally. The other top five local markets included Miami (15.2 market rating), West Palm Beach (11.5), Milwaukee (9.2) and Memphis (8.7)

NEW YORK—The first game of the NBA finals averaged 11,580,000 viewers across ABC and ESPN2 and peaked with 12,784,000 viewers in the 10:30 p.m. ET quarter hour, according to Nielsen data supplied by ESPN. 

ABC and ESPN also reported that The Denver Nuggets victory over the Miami Heat in Game 1 more than tripled its competition on television for the night of June 1, easily winning the night in viewership and in all key demographics, including P18-34; P18-49; P25-54; M18-34, M18-49 and M25-54.

Game 1 on ABC delivered an average audience of 11,036,000 viewers, while the NBA in Stephen A’s World alternate presentation on ESPN2 added 544,000 viewers to the total audience.

Top five local markets were: Denver with a 19.9 market rating, followed by Miami (13.5), West Palm Beach (11.8), Richmond-Petersburg (9.7) and San Antonio (8.7). 

LOS ANGELES—Disney is marshaling its broadcast and cable network assets to promote the upcoming March 1 launch of season three of "Star Wars: The Mandalorian" on Disney+ streaming by simulcasting episode one, season one of the series on ABC, Freeform and FX.

The series first episode will air on Friday, Feb. 24, at 8 p.m. EST/PST on the broadcast and cable networks. Season three will be available to stream beginning Wednesday, March 1 on Disney+.

"The Mandalorian" is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order and follows the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy, far from the authority of the New Republic.

The show offers a pioneering example of the use in virtual production and has been one of the Disney+’s most popular series.  

NEW YORK—ABC and ESPN are reporting that viewership for the 2022 NBA Draft Presented By State Farm (Thursday, June 23), was up 33 percent from last year, according to Nielsen. 

The first round across ABC and ESPN averaged nearly four million viewers (3,988,000), up 32 percent from last year’s NBA Draft first round, which also aired on ABC and ESPN.

Overall, the 2022 NBA Draft averaged 3,047,000 viewers for both rounds (round two aired on ESPN only), ESPN reported. 

The first round of the NBA Draft across ABC and ESPN was the most-watched program for June 23 across all of television and in all key demos, the networks said. 

The event peaked with 4,500,000 viewers at 8:15 p.m. ET.

NEW YORK—Viewing for the first three games of the 2022 NBA Finals on ABC continues to outpace last year, averaging 11,777,000 viewers, which is up 28 percent from last year, according to Nielsen. 

Game 3 of the NBA Finals, in which the Boston Celtics defeated the Golden State Warriors 116-100, averaged 11,522,000 viewers, peaking with 13,245,000 viewers at 11:15 p.m. ET. 

Overall, NBA Finals game 3 was up 25 percent from game 3 in 2021, propelling ABC to win the night across all of television once again, including in every key demographic: M18-34, M18-49, M25-54, P18-34, P18-49 and P25-54.

NEW YORK—ABC and ESPN have announced that the audience for the NBA Finals Game 2 was up 24% from 2021 and that viewing for the first two games was up 30% from last year. 

NBA Finals Game 2, in which the Golden State Warriors defeated the Boston Celtics 107-88, averaged nearly 12 million viewers (11,911,000) on ABC, up 24% from last year’s Game 2, according to Nielsen. Through two games, NBA Finals viewership is up 30 percent from 2021.

The Game 2 audience peaked with 14,144,000 viewers at 9:45 p.m. ET. when the Warriors opened up a significant lead over Boston for the remainder of the game. 

Due to the strength of Game 2, ABC once again won the night across all of television – broadcast and cable – and in every key demo, including P18-34, P18-49, P25-54, M18-34, M18-49 and M25-54.

The game 2 average audience was slightly ahead of Game 1, which also had an average audience of nearly 12 million viewers (11,901,000) across ABC and ESPN2 on June 2.

The peak viewing for Game 2 at 14.1 million was also higher than the peak numbers for Game 1 (12,963,000).

NEW YORK—ABC and ESPN announced today that NBA Finals Game 1, in which the Boston Celtics defeated the Golden State Warriors 120-108, averaged nearly 12 million viewers (11,901,000) across ABC and ESPN2 on June 2. 

It was up 37 percent from last year’s Game 1, according to Nielsen.

Game 1 peaked with nearly 13 million viewers (12,963,000) at 10:45 p.m. ET and was the most-watched NBA Finals Game 1 in three years. It also propelled ABC to win the night across all of television – broadcast and cable – and in every key demo, including P18-34, P18-49, P25-54, M18-34, M18-49 and M25-54.

The broadcast generated a 19.6 rating in the Boston market, making it the highest-rated NBA game in the market since Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals in 2018. 

In the San Francisco market, Game 1 drew a 22.5 rating, making it the highest-rated NBA game in the market since Game 6 of the NBA Finals in 2019.

SEATTLE—As the tourist locomotive in Seaside, Ore. blew its whistle and brought its steam engine to life, I was using the Sachtler aktiv14T head for the first time, documenting Oregon coast life for ABC News and a series on “Good Morning America” called “Rise and Shine.” We were on the first day of the shoot, with two crews tasked with profiling fun and interesting things to do in Oregon.

The train pulled away from the station and my hand instinctively reached underneath my tripod head to loosen the knob and level my Sony z750 XDCAM, but I wasn’t using my older Sachtler 18. I had the new aktiv14T, which meant that with one quick release of the aktiv series SpeedLevel, I was “bubbled up” in no time, capturing some great sequences of the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad locomotive leaving the station. 

Then I spent the rest of the day on the beautiful Oregon coast shooting b-roll with my aktiv14T and flowtech100 tripod. The ease of use and speed of the Aktiv series leveling system was really fun, especially in a setting where finding great shots was easy.

Simplified Leveling
Our shoot soon moved inland and the next morning required a three-camera setup at a winery, interviewing the local NBA celebrities that invested and brought the label to some prominence. My main camera for this was my Sony FX9 with a 70-200mm lens. I was also running a 7-inch SmallHD monitor and an Anton/Bauer Titon 240 battery. 

The aktiv handled the weight with ease and finding the right amount of drag for the movement I needed between iso shots of three guests was easy. Even in the blazing mid-day June sun, the illuminated prism bubble was easy to read as we leveled up our cameras, doing final checks before we rolled. One simple push of the prism bubble and it lit up with a pleasing blue color that was visible from the top and side, depending on how high the camera was positioned. 

Throughout the long day—and profiling a second winery that also included some “run and gun” interviews—I was really impressed with the weight of the aktiv14T, especially when paired with my flowtech100. Moving around quickly was so much easier with a lightweight system that was quick to set up. By this time, on the second day, my tripod instincts were reconditioned, and I was really enjoying how fast the 14T was leveling up for different scenarios.

Going Live
Our third and final day meant live shots for GMA, fronting the stories we’d shot. We set up along a lookout point with the Columbia River Gorge in the background, and with the rising sun making a perfect entrance as our segment, went live on ABC. I was again using my Sony Z750, Fujinon 23x HD lens, SmallHD monitor, and Anton/Bauer Titon 240 battery, a fairly heavy setup that the aktiv14T handled without an issue. We wrapped our live hits after a couple hours and the production moved on to Alaska and elsewhere.

My experience with the aktiv14T went beyond what I expected. My favorite feature is SpeedLevel—which will change the way you work as a camera operator—and I was impressed with the weight capacity of the 14T as it handled all the camera setups and accessories I could throw at it.

I think the three fast-paced days we spent with ABC and GMA were the perfect “trial by fire” for what I was used to in terms of tripod systems and the new aktiv14T. For someone who’s been using Sachtler support for 24 years, the aktiv series was a fun and efficient way to usher in a new way of shooting and new era of tripod head technology. 

Geoff Nelson is a lighting cameraman at Full Nelson Video, Inc. and has won many awards including Emmys and NPPA Photographer of the Year titles. He can be reached at seattletvcrew@comcast.net.

For more information on Sachtler camera support systems, visit www.sachtler.com.

NEW YORK—ABC would be back in the lineup of Super Bowl broadcasters if a new media rights deal between the NFL and The Walt Disney Company is agreed to, according to reports.

Sports Business Journal reports that the NFL and Disney have reached a broad agreement for a new rights deal, which would keep “Monday Night Football” on ESPN and have ABC once again broadcast the Super Bowl, something the network has not done since 2006. While a deal is not done, SBJ cites sources that one is “very close at hand.”

The terms of the deal would see Disney pay around $2.6 billion for the right to broadcast "MNF" games and use NFL highlights for in-house studio shows. That equates to about a 30% increase from the current deal Disney has with the league. The NFL said SBJ’s report was incorrect and ESPN declined to comment.

The broadcast deals for CBS, Fox and NBC are also being redone ahead of their expiration in 2022, but all Sunday games are expected to remain as they have been in recent years with these networks. While CBS, Fox and NBC will see increases in their rights fees, SBJ says that Disney still will pay more for its package.

For more information, read SBJ’s full story. 

NEW YORK—fuboTV has expanded its channel offerings, announcing the addition of 12 Nexstar-owned local ABC affiliates that cover 12 different markets.

Here is the breakdown of the new stations and markets they cover:

• WKRN, Nashville, Tenn. 
• WVNY, Burlington, Vt.-Plattsburgh, N.Y. 
• WTNH, Hartford-New Haven, Conn. 
• WHTM, Harrisburg, Pa. 
• WRIC, Richmond, Va. 
• WTEN, Albany, N.Y. 
• WATE, Knoxville, Tenn. 
• WSYR, Syracuse, N.Y. 
• WGNO, New Orleans 
• KTVX, Salt Lake City 
• WJHLDT, Tri-Cities (Kingsport), Tenn. 
• WOTV, Grand Rapids-Battle Creek, Mich. 

fuboTV customers in these markets will now have access to the local news, weather and other ABC programming from these stations.

At the end of 2020, fuboTV, which bills itself primarily as a sports-focused live TV streaming platform, reportedly had 545,000 subscribers. 

IRVING, Texas—Nexstar-owned ABC TV stations will be once again available to viewers using Hulu + Live TV, as the company announced the channel’s restoration on the streaming service as part of a broad-ranging deal.

Twenty of Nexstar's ABC-affiliate stations had been off the streaming service since October, replace by ABC's network national feed in affected markets. Among the stations returning to Hulu +Live TV are WKRN (Nashville), WTNH (Hartford, Conn.), WOTV (Grand Rapids, Mich.), WHTM (Harrisburg, Pa.), WGNO (New Orleans) and WRIC (Richmond, Va.) 

In addition to Nexstar’s ABC stations, the agreement with Hulu will also bring Nexstar’s wholly-owned cable network WGN America to Hulu as of Jan. 19, 2021, making it available for 4 million Hulu + Live TV subscribers.

This is the third agreement with a subscription-based streaming service Nexstar has made recently. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Nexstar still is in a retrans dispute with Dish, which has resulted in a blackout of 165 stations across 115 markets.