PLYMOUTH, Mich.—Graham Media’s WDIV Local 4, NBC affiliate in Detroit has taken the unusual step of establishing what the station calls a "first-of-its-kind coffee shop and satellite newsroom" in downtown Plymouth, Mich.

The coffee shop/newsroom, which opens to the public on Wednesday, July 22, is designed to expand the station’s local news coverage into Plymouth and the surrounding Western Wayne County communities and to establish closer ties between its news operations and the communities it serves.

"Journalism only works if a community trusts you enough to hand you their stories," said Stephanie Slagle, vice president, chief revenue officer and general manager of WDIV Local 4. "Fourgrounds gives our reporters and anchors a place to earn that trust in person — to sit down with the people of Plymouth and the surrounding communities, hear what matters to them, and go tell those stories the way they deserve to be told."

In announcing the opening, the station noted that journalism, at its best, is a promise to a community — to show up for it, to advocate for it, and to tell its stories honestly and well. That promise is harder to keep from behind a camera and a desk alone.

The new satellite newsroom embedded into a neighborhood coffee shop will make it easier for reporters and anchors to sit down in local residents, listen to them, and carry their stories forward.

The real coffee shop is being done in partnership with Great Lakes Coffee, a Detroit-based roaster.

Fourgrounds is “a model few, if any, local TV newsrooms in the country have tried: not a pop-up, not a one-time event, but a permanent space where journalism and daily life share the same room,” the station reported in announcing the opening. “Bring us the story you think Southeast Michigan needs to hear. Tell us who in your neighborhood deserves recognition, what issue deserves a spotlight, what's changing on your block that the rest of the region should know about. That's the job — and now there's a table for it.”

The grand opening will take place on Wednesday, July 22 at Fourgrounds, 995 W. Ann Arbor Trail, Plymouth, Michigan. Foreground’s hours are: M-Sa 7am-5pm, Su 9am-5pm.

DETROIT—Graham Media Group has appointed Stephanie Slagle to vice president, chief revenue officer and general manager of WDIV Local 4, Detroit's NBC affiliate.

Slagle, who has served as the company's vice president and chief revenue officer, expands her leadership to include full oversight of the Detroit station.

"Stephanie has built a digital agency from the ground up inside a traditional broadcast company — and made it work," said Catherine Badalamente, president and CEO of Graham Media Group. "She understands legacy media's greatest strengths — trusted journalism, deep community roots, and loyal audiences — and she knows how to layer digital capability and innovation on top of that foundation in ways that create real business results. WDIV Local 4 is in extraordinary hands."

During a career spanning more than 30 years, she has held roles ranging from research director and new media sales director to director of digital strategy and chief innovation officer.

In 2017, while at Dispatch Broadcast Group, Slagle founded and launched Pixelent Digital, a full-service digital agency embedded within WBNS-TV that delivered data-driven results across brand strategy, programmatic display, connected TV, native advertising, search, social, and more.

During her nine years with Dispatch Broadcast Group — acquired by Tegna in 2019 — Slagle built and managed digital departments across WBNS-TV, WBNS Radio, and The Columbus Dispatch. Among her milestones: leading WBNS to become the first station in the Columbus market to launch an OTT channel, years before streaming became a boardroom priority across the industry.

Since joining Graham Media Group in 2019, Slagle has led revenue-generating strategy for the company, advancing key strategic initiatives and building a scalable, high-performing sales organization that leverages data, technology, and an integrated approach to audience engagement.

"I believe deeply in local media — in its purpose, its power, and its future," said Slagle. "WDIV Local 4 is one of the great local news brands in this country, and I am honored to help lead it forward. The opportunity in front of us is to take everything that makes this station trusted and essential — and build the digital infrastructure, the revenue innovation, and the team culture that ensures it remains that way for the next generation. I can't wait to get to work."

Slagle resides in Michigan with her husband, Jay Slagle.

As the death toll continues to mount, with at least 120 killed and more than 170 people still missing on July 10 from devastating Texas floods, a number of broadcast station groups have announced efforts to raise money for those impacted by the disaster.

Gray Media, Graham Media Group, E.W. Scripps and Sinclar are among the broadcast station group owners who have announced efforts to raise and donate money as their stations and other broadcasters continue to provide critical information about the disaster.

A few highlights of those efforts include:

• Sinclair has launched Sinclair Cares: Texas Tragedy Relief, a national fundraising campaign in partnership with the Salvation Army, to support those affected by the devastating flooding across Texas. It said 100% of funds raised will provide critical emergency assistance including mobile feeding units, meals, hydration, shelter, clean up kits, hygiene kits and emotional care to survivors and first responders. Sinclair noted that its stations in San Antonio (KABB and WOAI) and Austin (KEYE) have been reporting on the story since the flooding began on July 4, delivering continuous coverage on Friday and Saturday, expanding newscasts into Sunday, with KABB and WOAI airing 52 hours of live coverage and KEYE also adding extended live coverage. To further support the ongoing effort, Sinclair has deployed 10 journalists and additional resources from other markets to assist with comprehensive coverage across all platforms. More information is available at SinclairCares.com.
• In response to the devastating floods that swept through Central Texas and the Hill Country, Graham Media Group and Gray Media have joined forces to launch an urgent donation drive supporting local relief and recovery efforts. The campaign raised more than $120,000 in donations in its first 24 hours, including a $25,000 donation from Gray. Graham is making an additional $15,000 donation to the campaign. Through this collaborative campaign, Graham ’s KSAT in San Antonio and KPRC in Houston and Gray stations across 113 U.S. markets aim to generate donations that deliver vital resources—including food, housing and financial aid—to impacted communities. The station groups said 100% of funds raised will support on-the-ground efforts in flood-affected regions Donate at www.togetherfortx.com
• The Scripps News Group and the Scripps Howard Fund have raised more than $75,000 to provide relief for those impacted by the devastating floods in Central Texas. Scripps reported that since its campaign launched on July 7, support has poured in from across the nation, with more than $50,000 donated by hundreds of people from more than 25 states. E.W. Scripps has also contributed $25,000 to bolster the relief efforts. Scripps reported that the floods are now the deadliest instance of inland flooding in the U.S. since 1976, when Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon flooded, killing 144 people, according to a new report. To give: Text FLOODING to 50155 or visit scrippsnews.com/relief.
• The Broadcasters Foundation of America is also making one-time, emergency grants to broadcasters who need financial help recovering from a natural disaster or acute emergency is extending that help to broadcasters impacted by the Texas flood. It said there are two ways to apply for an emergency grant: Personal Application - Broadcaster applying for themselves following an emergency or an Employer Application - General Manager, Market Manager, or HR representative applying on behalf of your employees following an emergency. Applications can be submitted here.

TV Tech will add more examples as we collect them.

NEW YORK—Nielsen has announced that the Graham Media Group has renewed and expenaded its multi-year agreement for Local TV measurement across their six markets (Detroit, Houston, San Antonio, Orlando, Jacksonville, Roanoke).

The expanded agreement also includes Scarborough, which provides consumer insights that connect the dots between media consumption and local brands, retailers, and consumer behaviors.

New to the agreement is Nielsen’s Local Over the Top (OTT) measurement, which captures incremental impressions to Local TV and reports them with comparable metrics for the benefit of buyers, sellers, and content producers, and Digital Content Ratings (DCR), which Graham Media will use in their Jacksonville market.

These solutions will provide Graham Media stations with cross-platform insights to drive new content and revenue opportunities, the two companies reported.

“We are excited to continue working with Nielsen as our measurement provider and are encouraged by their commitment to innovation that matches our own,” said Catherine Badalamente, president and CEO at Graham Media Group. “Trusted audience insights are critical to understand our audience across all platforms and equip our advertisers with data to inform their strategies.”

“Nielsen is proud to expand our partnership with Graham Media Group and deliver the most comprehensive view of their Local Linear, Digital, and Streaming audiences,” added Paul LeFort, managing director of Nielsen’s Local TV business. “Our commitment to innovation, including enhanced insights backed by our comprehensive Big Data + Panel Local TV measurement, empowers broadcasters, publishers & advertisers with accurate, representative & cross-platform measurement to drive the Local TV business forward.”

Traditional news media is under increasing scrutiny, critique, and often attack from administrations on both sides of the aisle and an ever-more distrusting and distracted populace.  

Even small mistakes are highly visible, but news directors don’t have the luxury of slowing down. Not unlike riding a motorbike across a tightrope, broadcast news production requires speed, efficiency, and accuracy — and now more creativity than ever. 

Ross Video works with some of the top news producers around the world to produce engaging, immersive, highly efficient news productions.  

These are the top three strategies we use to help top-tier media studios like NBC and Fox balance creativity, speed, accuracy, and efficiency in their newsrooms. 

Strategy 1: Empower Reporters to Wear Many Hats 

As the media landscape evolves, the role of reporters is evolving as well. 

The desire for more regional, on the ground content from audiences and the growing number of distribution platforms is putting increasing strain on reporters and newsroom teams. Reporters must wear a variety of new hats, which often requires them to spend hours fighting unintuitive and inefficient workflow and creative software. That’s time they could be finding great stories or simply recovering from fieldwork.  

Many reporters now shoot their own interviews and add graphics to their stories from the field. This creates a new challenge for newsrooms: finding video production, media asset management and broadcast graphics software that’s easy to use, so reporters can spend their time reporting, not learning how to use new tools and wrangling with graphics software. 

The right production tools can make high-quality, dynamic visuals and storytelling accessible to even the smallest local newsrooms.  

Strategy 2: Enable Consistency and Creativity 

Consistent branding conveys credibility and professionalism, which can help increase retention and boost ratings. Templates and automated workflows go a long way to ensuring consistency.  

For example: are the titles of over-the-shoulder graphics always in the same font? Are lower-third graphics consistent with your brand’s visual identity? Templates help live video producers avoid idiosyncrasies that can distract viewers. 

Workflow automation tools and graphics templates boost creativity by freeing up creative professionals’ time. By using deeply integrated tools (like XPression, Streamline Pro, and Inception), news broadcasters can develop polished, reuseable graphics that allow reporters to make last-second updates with the confidence that they are ready-for-air and error-free. 

Local news network Graham Media Group uses ‘super-templates’ to create and distribute high-fidelity, on-brand graphics for their network of stations from a single creative hub. 

This video shows how Graham Media uses XPression to enable more creativity and better storytelling with fewer resources.

Strategy 3: Virtually Expand Studios 

In a traditional newsroom studio, most on-camera elements are also present in real life, on a physical set. Virtual studios use chroma keying to blend real-life elements (such as reporters and news desks) with interactive and digital multimedia visuals, and augmented reality elements. 

This strategy is already popular in sports broadcasting and weather reporting, where meteorologists frequently present the weather in front of a greenscreen, with visual elements like graphical representations of weather, maps, and real-time data being added digitally. However, this technology isn’t limited to the weather — it can enhance election coverage, sports stories, and other segments with sophisticated graphics that would be impossible to replicate on a real-life set. 

News stations like Servus TV/Red Bull Media have achieved incredible results using virtual studios powered by Ross Video’s technology, including XPression, Voyager and Lucid.  

Learn more about how virtual studios can be a strategic advantage for modern newsrooms in this article.

Balancing an Adaptive, Creative, Competitive Newsroom 

One thing is constant in news production: change. 

There is no playbook for succeeding in news because success is not static; the bar for quality is always rising. To rise above the competition, your station must be able to adapt to and embrace change. Consumer behavior and audience patterns are short-lived, so appealing to viewers has less to do with a one-time change and more to do with having the agility to change constantly. 

Ross Video’s newsroom solutions are designed to work together seamlessly (together or as part of a multi-vendor stack) to help stations create the accurate, compelling news broadcasts audiences expect, without crushing their teams. 

You do more than just deliver news. The ‘fourth estate’ is responsible for educating and engaging a population that is swamped with misinformation and propaganda, from often very questionable resources with far less integrity or concern for accuracy.   

The only way to keep up with that media tidal wave, newsrooms must invest in technology that allows them to be flexible, efficient, and creative, without crushing their teams.  

To learn more about how Ross Video solutions help news broadcasters big and small find the right technology to bring their stories to life, reach out to one of our production experts here.

Keeping Pace in the Election Race

2024 is a big year for newsrooms with a record number of elections taking place around the globe. For advanced insights on how newsrooms can get ahead in addressing their elections needs with cutting-edge graphics, download our guide.  

DENVER—Video streaming infrastructure provider Bitmovin has announced that the Graham Media Group has selected Bitmovin Playback to enhance its viewer experience. 

Since deploying Bitmovin Player, Graham Media Group said it had doubled its online viewer engagement time. The solution is being used in Graham’s  Houston, Detroit, Orlando, San Antonio, Jacksonville, and Roanoke markets.

The Bitmovin Player ensures video playback across a wide range of devices. Bitmovin Analytics provides real-time monitoring, optimizes playback performance, and enables data-driven decisions to improve content and advertising strategies.

Graham Media, which operates seven local TV stations and digital hubs, chose the solution, which includes the Bitmovin Player and Bitmovin Analytics, to free its developers from the time-consuming task of maintaining playback quality. This allows them to focus on innovative user experience features to boost engagement and deliver local journalism to their communities.

Kenny Elshoff, senior web engineer at Graham Media Group, explained that “The speed to get the player into our codebase and extensibility of the SDKs made this the best player for us for now and the future.” 

Graham Media Group also deployed Bitmovin Analytics alongside the Bitmovin Player for real-time monitoring and to help optimize playback health. 

Before Bitmovin, Graham Media Group did not have integrated playback analytics, so the team didn’t have detailed insights into the quality of streams. Bitmovin Analytics ensures each stream's reliability by analyzing real-time user session data and sharing it with the player. Bitmovin Analytics reports any playback issues so they can be fixed before they impact the viewer, the company said. 

“Bitmovin is a well-known player in the video streaming industry and our top choice for a technical partner as we seek to expand our audience reach by offering game-changing viewing experiences powered by high-quality streams that drive viewing engagement,” said Michael Newman, director of transformation at Graham Media Group, “We can't wait to see the positive impact that Bitmovin's solutions will continue to have on our operational efficiency and viewer satisfaction as we continue on our quest to deliver content that informs and celebrates local communities.”

“Graham Media Group is a trusted local voice, and we are deeply honored that Bitmovin’s solutions will help deliver content that helps nurture community spirit,” added Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin “The combined power of the Bitmovin Player and Bitmovin Analytics meets Graham Media  Group’s need for flawless playback for its millions of viewers with real-time analytics that resolves any playback issues and always optimizes for the best streaming experience.

NEW YORK — The Independent Streaming Alliance (ISA) has announced that FilmRise, Gusto TV, Gunpowder & Sky, DangerTV, and Graham Media have joined the group.

The new members join Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, Cineverse, Future Today, kweliTV, Revry, The E.W. Scripps Company, Tastemade, TMB (Trusted Media Brands), and Vevo who together founded the ISA in June 2023.

The Independent Streaming Alliance (ISA) is an industry forum made up of independent streaming providers focused on working collaboratively with a broad range of external stakeholders, including platforms, advertisers, regulators, and other industry participants, to address the key challenges facing our membership and the CTV industry, the ISA explained. 

"The ISA is thrilled to add five new independent streaming publishers to its roster of members," said Tim Ware, senior vice president of programmatic sales and partnerships for Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment. "Each new member delivers unique content offerings and illustrates the value and importance of independent content creators to its millions of viewers, which is a primary objective of the Independent Streaming Alliance."

"FilmRise has been a programmer of premium Connected TV inventory since the earliest days of AVOD & FAST, " said Danny Fisher, CEO of FilmRise. "As the CTV space continues to evolve, we are excited to join the ISA to help advance initiatives that will allow us all to continue to provide great programming to a rapidly expanding audience."

In October, an independent study by iSpot revealed that the founding ten ISA members reached 17.9 million US TV households – with the addition of FilmRise, Gusto TV, Gunpowder & Sky, DangerTV, and Graham Media that number would exceed 20 million. This scale further validates the value independent streamers and content creators represent and the reason the ISA was formed – to develop and propose solutions to some of the challenges facing the CTV industry, such as measurement, demand, distribution, and inclusion.

For more information and/or to apply to join the ISA visit www.independentstreamingalliance.com.

NEW YORK—A favorable shift in the winds buffeting TV broadcasters lent some much-needed optimism to a candid front-office discussion at NAB New York that underscored the gravity of the challenges faced by station owners.

Fresh on everyone’s mind was the potential for an improved outlook resulting from the recent bundling agreement worked out in early September between Charter Communications and The Walt Disney Co. The deal, among other things, provides Charter’s Spectrum TV Select subscribers free access to Disney+ Basic and the ESPN direct-to-consumer (DTC) service when it launches sometime over the next two or three years.

The agreement was widely welcomed as a win/win for both companies by M&E analysts at UBS, Bank of America, MoffettNathanson, and other Wall St. firms, most of whom viewed it as a sign of things to come on a broader scale. As noted by Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley during TV Newscheck's "TV25: Monetizing the Future" conference at NAB Show New York last week, TV station owners see the precedent set by the deal as a win for them as well. 

Ripley suggested the agreement portends movement toward “a great re-bundling” that could counter the marginalization of local broadcasting threatened by over-the-top (OTT) disruption. With a shift back to an emphasis on “a communal offering” where linear and on-demand services with and without ad support “all have a place,” everyone “benefits from being inside that bundle,” Ripley said.

Moreover, he added, the cross-platform bundling gets away from the DTC exclusivity that has drawn some of the best in episodic entertainment away from broadcast lineups. It’s important that serialized dramas “be put back into the bundle,” he said.

In fact, he noted, broadening access to such content isn’t just beneficial to broadcasters and their viewers. “DTC is a very expensive business model,” he said, which means getting into the communal flow is a boon to the OTT distributors as well.

These views echoed the take on the Disney/Charter pact expressed by Nextstar, the revenue leader in the station O&O market. In an investor report issued shortly after the agreement was announced, Nextstar said, “With DTC re-bundled, networks will be incentivized to add content to the broadcast network to maximize audience and advertising revenues versus making it exclusively available on DTC.” And TV stations will benefit from the likelihood that “providing more content that viewers want at a competitive/better price than the DTC bundle” will reduce cord cutting and high churn.

Disney also figures in another broadcast-affirming development involving the potential sale of the company’s eight ABC-affiliated TV stations, which stirred interest in the summer after Disney CEO Bob Iger publicly suggested Disney’s linear TV assets “may not be core” at a moment when the company is falling well short of investor expectations. Disney has since said it’s keeping its strategic options open but isn’t ready to commit to a sale.

Allen Media founder and CEO Byron Allen has confirmed his firm is willing to pay $10 billion for the stations packaged with Disney’s FX and National Geographic channels. “We believe broadcast is still a very viable business,” said Allen Media Broadcasting president Princell Hair, another participant in the NAB New York discussion. 

Indeed, since launching the broadcasting division in 2019, Allen Media has acquired 27 ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox network station affiliates in 21 markets. But Hair, like the other speakers, wasn’t shy about enumerating the challenges station owners are confronting. 

Top of mind is the need to add broader appeal to the programming lineup, especially when it comes to reaching younger viewers. Catherine Badalamente, president and CEO of Graham Media Group, which supports programming operations at seven stations in four states, cited a shortage of good syndicated content as a key issue during the NAB panel discussion. 

“We have to figure out new ways to program stations,” Badalamente said. “Adding more news isn’t the solution.” Getting better programming into the mix might require new partnerships with other broadcasters, she added, commenting, “Nothing is off the table.”

While more news as currently presented may not be the answer, Chris Ripley said he sees a need for local news programming that has greater appeal to younger audiences with availability through a diversity of platforms. While “there’s nothing wrong” with Sinclair’s approach to delivering news to people who grew up watching television, “the reality is our audiences have changed over time,” he said. Young people want news, but they don’t “want to consume it the way we’re producing it.” 

As for Allen Media Broadcasting, “The level of engagement is not what I’d like it to be in our markets,” Hair said. Like Ripley, he said the answer isn’t just a matter of battling for eyeballs with tweaks to the traditional programming lineup. “We have to keep an eye on where the consumer is,” he said, which means creating content that’s “unique to specific platforms.”

Both Sinclair and Allen Media are forging ahead along several paths in the multi-platform space, including new programming ventures and online services that offer news tied to local markets along with dozens of free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels and on-demand access to movie archives. Sinclair, which operates in 86 markets through 185 owned or affiliated stations, also runs NewsOn, a streaming service solely devoted to offering aggregations of local news content.

But anxieties centered on the core business persist as, in Ripley’s words, “every distributor becomes a virtual distributor.” With the marginalization of local TV threatened as MVPDs go to cloud-based national distribution, “we’re worried about getting knocked out of the bundle,” Badalamente said.

The panelists were unanimous in calling for stronger FCC support for preserving the role of local TV stations in the face of what Ripley described as the inevitable MVPD transition to virtualization. “This needs to be figured out,” Ripley said. Without federal support, he asserted, “there will be no broadcast industry in a world where every distributor is virtual.” 

Hair called for more NAB lobbying pressure on behalf of protecting local TV against virtualization. “The NAB is the voice of the industry,” he said. “It has to be involved to help us resolve that.”

LAS VEGAS—In a move that will notably expand the availability of NextGen TV interactive applications to consumers, Verance has entered into agreements with Sinclair Broadcast Group, Gray Television, Graham Media Group, and Capitol Broadcasting Company to  implement the Verance Aspect audio watermark on stations across the station groups. 

Aspect is Verance’s high-performance implementation of the ATSC open watermarking standards.  The Verance Aspect watermark launches broadcast applications by carrying metadata and triggers  associated with NextGen Broadcast experiences through all distribution paths (including ATSC 1.0 over-the-air, ATSC 3.0 over-the-air, cable/satellite, and over-the-top services) to reach 100% of  connected televisions. Without the Verance Aspect watermark, approximately 80% of households are  unable to receive NextGen capabilities.  

As a result of the implementation, each  of the broadcaster’s NextGen Broadcast (ATSC 3.0) applications, which offer the opportunity to drive  new business models and revenue through interactive applications, can now reach up to five times the  number of homes by specifically enabling all homes that receive their television signals through the  NextGen TV’s HDMI connection via a cable/satellite set top box or media adapter.  

This announcement of major broadcaster agreements builds on the momentum that Verance  announced at NAB last April that LG Electronics was the first television manufacturer to implement  ATSC 3.0 watermark detection on NextGen TVs. Verance expects additional television manufacturers  to follow in LG’s footsteps. 

“Bringing Verance’s Aspect watermarking to all of our stations accelerates our NextGen Broadcast  applications strategy to better understand our viewers and to provide them with personalized  broadcast experiences,” said Mike Kralec, CTO, Sinclair Broadcast Group. “We believe that Verance’s  watermarking technology substantially enhances use of the NextGen Broadcast standard that we hope  that all the television manufacturers will adopt quickly.” 

A demonstration of the Verance Aspect watermark application will be on display at the NAB Show in  Las Vegas, April 16-19. As part of the ATSC Booth (#W3443), Sinclair will be showing how viewers can  have access to Broadcast App functionality by embedding the watermark in the audio signal that  launches the interactive experience on a NextGen TV for any pay TV or ATSC 1.0 over-the-air  viewer. The Broadcast App is then available to all NextGen T viewers who want to take advantage of  this new capability, regardless of how they receive the TV signal, gaining access to both broadcast and  broadband content. 

“NextGen TV is a game changer for broadcast television, and it is exciting to see interactive experiences  powered by Verance watermarking on Gray’s stations,” said David Burke, senior vice president and CTO of Gray Television. “With Verance watermarking, Gray can now proceed with confidence, knowing that  our applications can be received by the largest number of viewers across all of our signals and can help  Gray with our business objectives.” 

“Verance’s Aspect watermarking will enable Graham to reach our HDMI viewers with interactive  experiences,“ said Anthony Plosz, vice president and CTO, Graham Media Group. “This capability enables Graham  and other broadcasters to better understand and serve our audiences and to better support our  NextGen TV business opportunities.” 

“We are excited to rollout Verance’s Aspect watermarking across our stations to help drive the  distribution of our NextGen TV apps to a larger audience and to allow us to bring new NextGen  experiences to our viewers,“ said Peter Sockett, director of engineering and operations, Capitol Broadcasting Company. “This opportunity will help us to better scale the broadcaster application  opportunity.” 

“Sinclair, Gray, Graham, and Capitol are at the forefront of a broadcaster movement to establish a direct  connection with their viewers to drive engagement and revenue, and Verance is excited to have these  innovative broadcasters as partners. As interactive applications deploy across the United States with the  broader deployment of NextGen TV, we are excited for enhanced viewing experiences, such as sports  betting and dynamic advertising, that drive new revenue opportunities for broadcasters,” said Nil Shah, CEO of Verance.

CINCINNATI – A group of local broadcasters led by The E.W. Scripps Company has launched a new effort to attract and better serve political advertisers on connected TV platforms. 

The Scripps Political CTV Consortium is being launched in what promises to be a record election-spending year, the broadcasters said.

Led by Scripps, the effort also involves Cox Media Group, Capitol Broadcasting Company, Graham Media Group and other broadcasters.

Samantha Osborne has been named senior director of national sales for the Scripps Political CTV Consortium in Washington, D.C.

“Collectively, we have a wall of inventory, and we’ve found a way to work together to make it easy for agencies to access that,” said Samantha Osborne, senior director of national sales for the Scripps Political CTV Consortium in Washington, D.C. “They can reach a high percentage of voters while making their own decisions but without having to work through numerous sales reps from different organizations. With the broadcasters we’ve assembled, we have billions of monthly premium connected TV impressions available for political advertisers.”

Experts project roughly $9 billion in spending in 2022, matching the presidential cycle of 2020, with as much as $1.8 billion of that expected to go to internet-delivered television platforms, or CTV, the group said. 

In 10 states alone – Florida, California, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan – $3.9 billion is projected to be spent on political advertising, the group said. 

The Scripps Political CTV Consortium allows agencies to work with one representative to reach multiple publishers who have premium, guaranteed owned-and-operated inventory. 

Osborne said Scripps is exclusively working with Magnite, the world’s largest independent omnichannel sell-side advertising platform, to make CTV inventory available to agencies and programmatic buyers.

“Magnite is excited to be powering the technology for the Scripps Political CTV Consortium,” said Mike Laband, senior vice president of CTV Platform for Magnite. “Working closely with Scripps and the consortium media owners, we are providing the market with a unique, scaled offering for political CTV ad investment.”

The broadcasters will be pitching the idea that local news is where voters go to be informed during election seasons and that objective local broadcast journalism provides access to audiences that political advertisers are trying to reach.

“There are times when it makes sense to work together to produce a new and innovative product for the best interest of customers,” said John Conway, vice president of WRAL Digital for Capitol Broadcasting. “This is one of those times when we can provide industry-leading service by collaborating.”

DETROIT—Graham Media Group's stations KPRC-TV (Houston) and WDIV-TV (Detroit) launched an additional hour of their morning local newscasts on April 4 that are streaming exclusively on digital platforms and OTT apps.

"We've reimagined our streaming news products to meet the needs of our viewers,” said Bob Ellis, WDIV vice president and general manger.  “They've clearly told us they want more local news from the brands they trust most and we're providing that with our original news programs on Local4+. The streaming numbers on our app continue to grow rapidly and we're committed to serving these new audiences now and in the weeks and months ahead with much more quality content coming."

KPRC-TV's morning newscast will stream from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. on KPRC2+, and will feature the morning news team of Owen Conflenti, Lisa Hernandez, meteorologist Anthony Yanez and Anavid Reyes following rush hour traffic.  Amy Davis and Anavid Reyes will expand their consumer and transit stories to include angles not covered on broadcast, and the hour will feature live guests to give depth and perspective on the big stories of the day.

WDIV-TV's morning newscast will stream from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. on Local4+, and will feature the morning news team of Rhonda Walker, Evrod Cassimy, meteorologist Brandon Roux, traffic reporter Kim DeGiulio and reporter Nick Monacelli and will feature live guests, the day's top stories, weather and traffic reports from across Metro Detroit. WDIV added a 10 p.m. nightly newscast streaming exclusively on Local4+ earlier this year.

KPRC2+ and Local4+ television apps are available for free download in the Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Google TV app stores.  The live streams also can be viewed on the stations' mobile apps and online at Click2Houston.com and ClickOnDetroit.com.

The new live streams are part of a larger effort by Graham Media Group stations to innovate in streaming local news beyond broadcast, the company reported. 

Earlier this year, KSAT-TV (San Antonio) launched a daily 11 a.m. digital stream exclusive newscast, "KSAT News Now", and "KSAT Explains", a weekly deep-dive news feature program available on KSAT Plus, and WSLS-TV (Roanoke) launched "The Sprint", a daily digital-only news brief.  

WKMG-TV (Orlando) has pioneered a "Choose Your View" director's chair digital stream for coverage of space launches from Kennedy Space Center and with 25 live cameras covering the Orlando 4th of July Fireworks in 2021. 

WJXT-TV (Jacksonville) debuted the "Choose Your View" stream in covering the implosion of a downtown skyscraper in March.

Matrix Solutions, a provider of media revenue management technology, announced today that it has signed partnerships with Gray TV, CoxReps, Graham Media and Heast Television to use its Media Sales Gateway platform.

Cox Enterprises’ Videa software will serve as the initial back-end technology for traditional linear spot and all future development will be built on Azure with an open architecture. The Media Sales Gateway, named Admiral, will be a sell-side tool that provides both the infrastructure and workflows to automate converged advertising sales, from demand through order fulfillment, including digital and OTT inventory, traditional spot, and impression-based/dynamic ad insertion for live linear.

Accommodating multichannel, omni-platform selling, Matrix says Admiral will provide a viable path for media companies to transition to converged, impression-based workflows, without needing to change the underlying traffic system. Its dynamic interoperability will ensure that orders are routed automatically to the appropriate inventory, regardless of a company’s current execution system.

“Emerging revenue platforms have introduced significant opportunities for us, but only if we can effectively optimize them,” shared Pat LaPlatney, Co-CEO and President, Gray Television. “Matrix has proven to be a trustworthy partner with in-depth media sales expertise and a shared goal of advancing our industry through collaboration.  We look forward to exploring how Admiral will enhance our operational workflow.”

• Buy-Side Aggregation: a portal for agencies to transmit requests for proposals.
• Inventory Management: provides visibility to all available inventory assets across digital (OTT, CTV) and linear platforms.
• Proposal/Negotiation: originates and builds converged proposals to electronically negotiate with the agency/buyer.
• Order Management: converts accepted proposals into orders and automatically propagates the required information to the underlying execution systems.
• Make-Goods and Campaign Management: once the initial orders are sent; make goods and campaigns will be managed through the system until the final order requirements are completed.

Admiral will be developed and released in several phases. The first phase will include the Buy-Side Aggregation platform and a primary workflow for traditional linear ad sales, with a target for completion in early fourth quarter of 2022. The second phase will include a fully converged experience for traditional linear, digital, and OTT workflows, with a completion target of second quarter 2023. Development will continue to include impressions-based linear with dynamic ad insertion workflows, including a push to ATSC 3.0 execution systems, as well as advanced reporting and analytics.

“I am a huge believer in the potential that can be achieved when media and technology companies partner. It leverages shared knowledge and expertise in a transparent way and produces expedited outcomes and solutions that are both economical and effective while generating maximum results,” commented Mark Gorman, CEO, Matrix. “We are grateful and honored by the partnerships of Gray Television, CoxReps, Graham Media, Hearst Television, and Cox Enterprises as we come together to develop this leading-edge solution that will support local, network, and more, around the globe. It will allow our industry to collectively sell more efficiently while also increasing the revenue to empower each media company to better create, inspire, inform, and entertain.”

ARLINGTON, Va.—Emily L. Barr, president and chief executive officer of Graham Media Group, has announced that she will retire from that position later this year. Catherine Badalamente has been named her successor.

Barr has won numerous awards over the years for her work in broadcast TV and local media, including being named the Broadcaster of the Year in 2020 from Broadcasting & Cable magazine. Later this spring, she will be inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame.  

“Emily’s leadership has been critical to the Company’s success,” said Timothy J. O’Shaughnessy, chief executive officer of Graham Holdings Company, which owns Graham Media Group. “Graham Media Group has continued its tenure as a best-in-class operator, and Emily has led the organization to receive numerous awards and achieve record earnings. Her deep commitment to the communities we serve has been unparalleled. But perhaps the greatest element of her legacy is the excellence of the team she has built, as evidenced by her successor, Catherine Badalamente. On behalf of everyone at Graham Holdings, I want to thank Emily for her decade of service to the Company.”

Barr’s successor Badalamente joined Graham Media Group (formerly Post-Newsweek Stations) in 2000. She has served in a number of executive leadership roles, spearheading the organization’s digital efforts since 2009. Most recently, she served as vice president and chief innovation officer.

Graham Media Group and Graham Digital have received numerous awards under Badalamente’s management, recognizing the organization for excellence in digital, podcast, and local news production. Under her direction, the company has been at the forefront of developing NextGen TV monetization strategies and models for both digital and broadcast, the company said. 

Badalamente is active in several industry forums including serving as chair of the board of directors of the Local Media Association, treasurer of the board of directors of the Local Media Foundation, and immediate past chair of the National Association of Broadcasters Digital Officers Committee. She earned a BA in communications from John Carroll University.

“I could not be more pleased to appoint Catherine the new CEO of Graham Media Group,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Catherine has helped keep GMG ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing industry, including her leadership in growing each of our digital news sites to be Comscore ranked #1 in their local markets. As the next generation of Graham Media Group unfolds, we have a next generation leader to help steer the ship.”

Barr joined Graham Media Group, then Post–Newsweek Stations, in 2012. Under her leadership, she has transformed the organization from a broadcast based model to seven local media hubs — each in a top-71 market, representing just under 7% coverage in the U.S. The television stations, web and mobile platforms are recognized as news leaders across the media spectrum. During her tenure, Graham Media Group acquired Social News Desk, a leading provider of social media software utilized by thousands of newsrooms around the world. Barr is also responsible for the creation of Graham Digital, a digital media and technology development group based in Detroit.

Graham Media Group was named the 2021 Broadcaster of the Year by TV News Check, the 2016 Station Group of the Year by Broadcasting and Cable Magazine, and has received numerous accolades during Barr’s tenure.

Honored for her civic involvement, Barr is also the 2018 recipient of the Golden Mike Award from the Broadcasters Foundation of America, and was inducted into the 2016 Silver Circle of the Chicago/Midwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She was also awarded the 2014 Vincent T. Wasilewski Broadcaster of the Year by the Illinois Broadcasters Association. Most recently, Barr was elected to the 2021 class of the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation’s Giants of Broadcasting and Electronic Arts.

DETROIT—Between the 24-hour news cycle, abundance of social media platforms and proliferation of digital technology, the delivery of information is nonstop. From significant current events to live entertainment to a friend sharing their daily activities, a wide range of content is available at the consumer’s fingertips at all hours of the day via the simple click of a button. 

With so much content readily accessible, and so many audio and video streaming platforms, it’s vital for broadcasters to develop a digital delivery strategy that can cut through the noise to capture the audience’s attention and keep them up to speed, and also generate ad revenue. As we’ve experienced at Graham Digital—a Graham Media Group (GMG) team serving seven GMG stations throughout the U.S.—this requires a highly efficient production and delivery workflow and a deep understanding of digital platforms. 

To keep pace with the proliferation of OTT content, we’ve built 24/7 live OTT news channels for each of Graham Media Group’s seven stations that play a combination of live and pre-recorded content. Earlier this year, we were looking to revamp our monetization strategy and gain centralized control of these channels and found our solution in the cloud. 

Having worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on a number of projects, we knew they’d be the ideal partner to help transform the majority of our media workload for these channels from on-premises to the cloud. Today, our control and distribution pipeline for these channels includes AWS Elemental MediaLive for broadcast-grade video processing, AWS Elemental MediaStore for live content ingest and origination, AWS Service Manager for remote management of the Elemental Live encoders, AWS Fargate to run applications for SCTE35 monitoring and, through programing data, content aware input switching for MediaLive and finally Amazon CloudFront for content delivery.

Switching from the ground to the cloud has given us the flexibility to drive all of these channels remotely, from live switching to dynamic ad insertion, which has proven essential to operations this year. With AWS Media Services powering centralized control of the workflow for all seven 24/7 content channels, our stations no longer have to manage their individual channels or the hardware driving them. The cloud-based infrastructure and live switching for each channel is all centrally managed here in Detroit in the Graham Digital office, or in the case of the last few months, by our team members working from home.  

Making the switch from on-prem to cloud was ideal, and the beauty of it is that we’re no longer constrained by the local on-premises network and disparate control, so we can manage these channels from virtually anywhere we can get an internet connection. We can easily scale to meet the needs of each station and its audience to ensure the delivery of high-quality video. It’s made the transition to working from home much easier across our teams and stations and is opening up new opportunities to move even more of our workflow into the cloud, such as editing. 

Part of the decision to use AWS also came out of a need to enhance our management and monetization strategy for each channel. With AWS Elemental Live, we can contribute 35 markers from on-premises encoders to AWS Media Live, and use a combination of station programming and the ad markers available in the HLS stream. Leveraging our existing ad platform, this workflow allows us to bring viewers more personalized content at a broadcast quality caliber, while automated reporting allows us to better measure ad impressions and viewer behaviors. It’s been a huge boon to our monetization strategy.  

The media landscape is constantly evolving, and we’re confident that by tapping into AWS services in the cloud, we’ll be able to innovate more rapidly to improve the audience experience as new trends emerge and better monetize our content, while streamlining operations behind the scenes. 

Adam Simpson is the DevOps lead for Graham Media Group.

Emily Barr, president and CEO of Graham Media Group, is TV Technology's sister publication B+C’s Broadcaster of the Year. Barr has led the broadcast TV division of Graham Holdings Group since 2012. Its stations include KPRC Houston; WDIV Detroit; WSLS Roanoke, Va.; KSAT San Antonio, Texas; WKMG Orlando, Fla.; and WJXT-WCWJ Jacksonville, Fla. Graham Media Group also has Graham Digital and Social News Desk in its portfolio. 

Graham Media Group was named B+C’s Station Group of the Year in 2016. Barr came to Graham after a long run as president and general manager of ABC-owned WLS Chicago. She will be honored as Broadcaster of the Year at TVB’s Alt Forward Conference on Oct. 1. 

Barr spoke with B+C about the stations’ coverage of COVID and racial equality, how they reach younger viewers and what the future looks like for local broadcast. “I have great faith in local television,” she said. “I believe it’s incredibly important, maybe more important today than ever.” An edited transcript follows.

B+C: In terms of COVID coverage, any stories at the Graham stations that stood out for you?

Emily Barr: We have been covering COVID, obviously, from the very beginning, and we’ve been really trying to make it clear to people what is factual versus the rumors and the misinformation that seems to run around social media. We’ve done a lot of work to try to make it clear what’s going on and what people can do to stay safe. 

In Jacksonville, one of our reporters actually contracted COVID and did a whole series of reports on what it’s like to go through it and how sick he was. He chose to do this, we didn’t ask him to. It was met with a lot of incredible responses because it was a very personal point of view of living through this. 

We’ve had about 23 people across the group contract COVID. Everyone has recovered, which is very much a blessing. One employee’s spouse, unfortunately, passed away from it. Early in April, we were feeling the weight of it just from that one incident. Since then, the people who have contracted COVID have all recovered. A couple landed in the hospital for a day or two, but nobody had to be put on a ventilator. 

We’ve been trying to really get at the misinformation and give people really good facts so they can make informed decisions.

B+C: Any Graham stories on the fights for racial equality that stood out?

EB: WSLS in Roanoke, our smallest station, just did an amazing report, a primetime special and a series of news reports and online reports called “2020 Focus: The Push For Equality.” It was really, really well done. They went back and looked at the history of Roanoke, they looked at redlining, some of the housing issues that came up, things that were done with the development of the communities around Lynchburg and Roanoke that caused neighborhoods to become cut off. They explained all that history and where the inequity has grown from. 

What I really thought they did a particularly good job on was, they talked to leaders in the community about what they’re trying to do going forward. It wasn’t just a historical piece, but a look forward. There was quite a bit of hope in the information we provided. It felt more positive as a result. 

Every station has gotten involved and has been doing reporting on this. The way we work as a company, we never tell our stations what to report on and how they should do their work. They will occasionally get together and share the stories they do when it is something larger than a single community. In the push for racial equity and inclusion and justice, our news directors have gotten on the phone with each other and really tried to wrap their arms around it, look at the fault lines, look at the issues that have plagued so many of these cities. They’re doing a series of ongoing reports, they’re not just doing one-and-done. This has become part of the fabric in each newscast in each of these communities. 

B+C: With so many workers showing they can do their jobs from home, how do you see the Graham stations—the actual buildings—looking in a year?

EB: I think there’s going to be a little more room in all of these TV stations. What we have discovered is that we’ve been able to do our work really efficiently and without any interruptions, with probably about 80% of our staff working remotely. The one thing you lose when you work this way is that serendipitous meeting in the hallway, the idea that might get shared between one person and another just because they happen to be talking to each other. That has to be more formalized because you have to get on teams or get on Zoom or whatever video platform you are using and it becomes less by chance and more by direct connection that you have to make. 

I think that the buildings themselves will feel a little more spacious, because some people that work for us will not be coming back on a regular basis other than maybe for meetings. We have a couple of hubs. We have a traffic hub out of Jacksonville; I think 17 people work in that hub. What we found is that they’re really working well from home and there may not be a need to bring them back in full time. With some of the hubbing you find station groups doing these days, it may make more sense to allow them to work from home. 

It also gives you the flexibility to hire from other cities if that is what you choose to do. If you’re looking for someone, you don’t have to limit yourself to someone who lives in Jacksonville. 

I think what will happen is, when we can safely allow people to come back into the buildings, we will probably have a fairly large percentage of them come back. But there will be more flexibility in terms of working from home a few days a week. Salespeople have much more flexibility to go to sales calls directly from home; maybe they’ll work a day or two from home every week. It’s just not as critical that all these people reside in the buildings at the same time.

When it comes to things like news, there’s an energy loss when everyone is coming in on Zoom. I suspect that most of our newsrooms prefer in the long run to have everybody come back in. But for right now we have no plans for that, because we don’t feel like it’s safe enough. 

B+C: What is the Graham plan for young consumers and making sure the local brands are part of their media consumption?

EB: Under [VP and chief innovation officer] Catherine Badalamente’s leadership, the digital team is taking that on as a huge challenge, and I think we’re doing really well. We obviously reach out online and on mobile and OTT. We’re also in the podcasting business. We produce a number of podcasts that have gotten quite a bit of attention and listeners as a result, and we’re really proud of that. That is a way that we can connect with a younger audience. It may not be, strictly speaking, straight news of the day, but it is an entrée for them to understand our brand and what we do and then get them used to looking at our websites. 

Our online usage has really skyrocketed through all of this. Our on-air viewership obviously spiked a lot in April and May when we were at the height of COVID. Those numbers have come back to reality but the online usage has been really incredible—it’s way, way, way past where we were a year ago, double and sometimes triple the numbers. That is not abating, that is continuing. 

B+C: Do all the stations have podcasts?

EB: We just rolled out a new podcast in Orlando called “Space Curious,” which is about everything going on in NASA and the space race. Emilee Speck, a reporter there, is the leader of that podcast. That rolled out [in late August], and it’s great if you are into space-related stories.  

We have a number of podcasts out of Detroit. The big one last year, about Jimmy Hoffa, was very well received and really well done. We have an interesting podcast called “The Best Advice Show” that our podcast manager, Zak Rosen, produces. It’s probably the shortest podcast you’ll ever listen to, each episode four to five minutes long. He talks to different people and gets their best advice. It just got written up in The New York Times—that was pretty cool. 

Houston has had a few podcasts, and San Antonio. Everyone is trying different things. You just have to put them out there and see how the audience reacts. This is a relatively new area for us so we keep trying, keep feeding different ideas. To some extent we allow reporters and anchors to go off in an area they’re interested in, because clearly one of the rules of podcasting is, you need a host who is really engaged. So it’s important to let them help create that. 

B+C: Are the podcasts money makers, or more a content play?

EB: I would say they are nominally making some money. We have had some sponsors involved with all our podcasts. I’m not going to claim we’ll get rich on them right now, but I do think it’s really important to seed this kind of medium because more and more people connect to us through their phones. A podcast is one way to stay connected because people listen in their cars or wherever they happen to be traveling about or when they’re at home. It’s just a different, more intimate kind of engagement.

B+C: Tell me about Social News Desk. 

EB: Social News Desk is doing well. They’re working with around 2,500 newsrooms worldwide, most in the U.S. and a number in other parts of the world — Canada, Australia, South America. They are doing a really, really good job right now of not only providing a dashboard for all their clients, but they have created something called “SND On Air” that gives stations an easy way to take their social media, put it on air and explain what is going on socially to viewers. There’s something called “SND Campaign Manager” which helps television and radio and newspapers generate revenue with their social media efforts. That has been really well received. 

I think they’re virtually in every market in the country. They work with all the major broadcasters and seem to be very well received by newsrooms, whether it’s radio or TV or newspapers, because they’ve made it very easy. It’s kind of a one-stop for managing your social media. 

B+C: Do you look to acquire stations?

EB: Gee, no one ever asks me that question! [Laughs.] We kick the tires quite often. We’re always very conscious of the cost. We’re in somewhat volatile times in our industry, so it would have to be just the right deal for us to make a purchase. But we certainly have made it known that we’re interested. If the right opportunity comes along, I’m sure we’ll take a very close look at it. 

B+C: Do would-be buyers still approach you about selling stations?

EB: Not so much anymore. That was a few years ago. I think most people have come to understand that we’re not interested in selling. That’s not to say that a banker doesn’t try! We’re very fortunate because Graham Holdings is very fond of what we do and what we help deliver to the company. As a result, there hasn’t been any thought to selling us, which I’m very happy about.

B+C: How do you feel about local TV long-term?

EB: I think local television is incredibly important and valuable in our society right now. There are some headwinds. I do worry about the growth of streaming and what impact that could have on our business. It’s challenging when you’re a network affiliate and the networks are both maintaining their network operation but also putting a lot of effort into streaming. I understand conceptually why they’re doing it, but we’re essentially helping them build these businesses because they use network airtime to help promote these streaming platforms. It’s really important that we be connected to those in a financial way. What happens there and how that will come to pass, it depends. In some cases we are. We have a relationship with CBS All Access, but in other cases we’re not—not yet, but I hope to be. 

I’m optimistic about the continued value of local television, particularly because local television news has become in some ways the de facto place to go for information in a community where newspapers have really waned. I’m sorry to see that because the ecosystem is always better when you have multiple sources of news. With that being the case, local television news is really, really important to keep us focused and as a country making sure we know where we’re supposed to be in terms of all the misinformation out there that confuses people. Someone needs to be the voice of record who says, ‘No, no, no, this is true and this is not true.’ It’s getting harder because of social media—the many, many things on the internet that make it hard for the average person to know the source they’re reading from is accurate and fair. 

I have great faith in local television. I believe it’s incredibly important, maybe more important today than ever. I do think it has a future in this big ecosystem that is evolving every day. I hope I’m right. 

B+C: What are the Graham stations doing for the election that’s different from what they did four years ago?

EB: We have always tried to provide as much solid information and get to the key stakeholders in every one of our communities when it comes to elections. We have always done town halls and debates, and we’ll continue to do those. I wouldn’t necessarily say we are doing more of them, but it’s something we have always taken very seriously and will continue to do so.

B+C: Do you miss being a general manager? 

EB: Sometimes I do. I really loved running television stations. I got to do it for 18 years. I love the energy and the fast pace of a TV station and not knowing from day to day when you walk in what you are going to be dealing with at that moment. There is a kind of quietness working in corporate. It’s been more than a little bit strange working from home. 

I have a small office in Chicago in a high-rise. They keep sending us emails — this person has COVID, that person has COVID. Most of us have been working from home since March and it’s incredibly quiet working in your own house.

I probably see our GMs more now than I did before because we are using video conferencing. But I do miss the energy that comes from working in a television station and watching what goes on in the newsroom and being the first to hear about something when it breaks. I love the people that work in TV stations because they’re very committed to what they do and they have a great deal of loyalty to where they work. Our group is very much of that ilk. I’m really proud of the work they do. 

We had a power issue in Detroit a couple of days ago that threatened to take WDIV off the air. This was like 10 p.m., 11 p.m. Marla [Drutz, WDIV VP/GM] called me and said, All the engineers came rushing in, everybody came rushing in. They had to do a lot of moving things around very quickly, making sure the generator works properly, all the things you have to do when you’re suddenly without power. Nobody watching us knew what was happening, it was all behind the scenes. It was a mad scrabble. 

Marla said to me, ‘I just got in my car and went downtown at 10 p.m. because I just felt I had to be there.’ I understand what she meant because I had those experiences as a GM. It was not that Marla was pulling cable or could do anything to hook up the generator, I think she just felt the need to be there to just buck everybody up and make sure they knew she was there for them. Most of those guys ended up working all night to get everything duct taped-up, so to speak. It was all very successful, they did a great job. 

That’s the kind of thing as a GM that you love to do, that has a great sense of energy. That’s the part I probably miss. Other parts of the job, not so much.

NEW YORK—Emily Barr, president and CEO of Graham Media Group, is B+C’s Broadcaster of the Year, an award she will receive at TVB’s Alt Forward Conference on Thursday, Oct. 1. Barr will be profiled in B+C’s awards issue on Sept. 21. That issue of the magazine also will include recipients of the new B+C Awards.

Barr has led the broadcast TV division of Graham Holdings since 2012. Under her leadership, Graham Media Group was named B+C’s 2016 Station Group of the Year. Previously, she was president and general manager of ABC-owned stations in Chicago and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Among her individual accolades, Barr received the Golden Mike Award from the Broadcasters Foundation of America in 2018. 

She is TV Board chair for the National Association of Broadcasters and the vice chair of the NBC Affiliate Board. She also serves on the boards of the Associated Press and the Television Bureau of Advertising and has been an active member of the National Association of Broadcasters and the Illinois Broadcasters Association. She was inducted into the 2016 Silver Circle of the Chicago/Midwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. 

Chicago-based Graham Media Group comprises seven local media hubs, Graham Digital and Social News Desk, delivering local news, programming, advertising solutions and digital media tools for television, online, mobile, OTT, podcasts and audio devices. GMG operates in six states: KPRC–Houston, WDIV–Detroit and WSLS–Roanoke (NBC); KSAT–San Antonio (ABC); WKMG–Orlando (CBS); WJXT–Jacksonville (fully local) and WCWJ–Jacksonville (CW).  Based in Detroit, Graham Digital is a digital media and technology development group widely recognized as a leading industry innovator. Social News Desk, headquartered in Atlanta, provides its 2,500-plus worldwide newsroom-customers with a single dashboard to publish, measure, curate and monetize local news content on social platforms.

Previous recipients of the Broadcaster of the Year award include Hilton Howell of Gray Television (2019), Jack Abernethy of Fox Television Stations (2018) and Jordan Wertlieb of Hearst Television (2017).

WASHINGTON—Graham Media Group is licensing The Washington Post’s Zeus Performance revenue performance platform, becoming its first broadcast user, according to Zeus Technology.

“Local publishers using Zeus continue to see significant increases in speed and viewability, which translates to real revenue for those businesses. We hope to deliver on this success for our trusted partners at Graham Media Group as we optimize their ad-tech stack while collaborating on ways to expand Zeus to new formats such as video,” said Jarrod Dicker, vice president of Commercial Technology at The Post and general manager of Zeus.

Graham will implement the technology stack and rendering engine across its stations in Houston, Detroit, Roanoke, Va., San Antonio, Texas, Orlando, Fla., and Jacksonville, Fla., enabling the affiliates to reduce site latency, improve performance and drive higher viewability, the company said.

The Post built Zeus Performance in-house. It is one of three monetization tools making up the Zeus Technology Suite. 

“We are very enthusiastic about launching on the Zeus platform as their first-rate technology delivers a superior user experience as well as being uniquely suited to help local news find revenue opportunities previously unavailable,” said Graham Chief Innovation Officer Catherine Badalamente.

More information on the Zeus platform is available via email from The Washington Post. 

NEW YORK—Graham Media Group has renewed a multi-year agreement with Nielsen for its local TV ratings and Scarborough, the ratings service’s local consumer behavior data, Nielsen announced last week.

The agreement covers Graham Media’s NBC affiliates, including KPRC in Houston, WDIV in Detroit and WSLS in Roanoke, Va.; CBS affiliate WKMG in Orlando, Fla.; ABC affiliate KSAT in San Antonio, Texas; and independent WJXT and CW affiliate WCWJ in Jacksonville, Fla.

“We are pleased to continue working with Nielsen and its enhanced measurement solutions so that we may continue to demonstrate the value of our audience for our advertising partners,” said Graham Media President and CEO Emily Barr.

Graham Media also will continue using Nielsen’s Digital Content Ratings to measure mobile and PC content.

More information is available on the Nielsen website.

WASHINGTON—Arc Publishing, the Washington Post-owned video content management system, has signed its second broadcaster to utilize its services, Graham Media Group. This follows Raycom Media going with Arc Publishing in December 2018.

According to Washington Post CTO Scot Gillespie, Arc Publishing gives broadcasters technology to distribute videos in real time across different digital platforms to help reach the broadest possible audience.

Graham Media will use Arc’s video platform technology to manage broadcast content for digital distribution for its affiliates in Houston, Detroit, Roanoke, Va., San Antonio, Orlando and Jacksonville, Fla. Journalists will be able to cut and publish live video to the web, mobile, social media and other channels, as well as publish breaking news video during a live broadcast.

The Arc Publishing platform is built on Amazon Web Services, including AWS Elemental Media Services to prepare, process and deliver broadcast and OTT video from the AWS Cloud.