Weekly Roundup – Week of December 12, 2022

"For the past four years, the campaign to legalize online sports betting has appeared all but unstoppable. In recent weeks, though, some of the momentum has slowed.
In New York, a powerful state lawmaker introduced legislation to restrict some of the promotions that gambling companies use to lure new bettors.
In Kansas, the governor, an enthusiastic backer of the state’s legalization of online sports betting earlier this year, said she was now seeking to revisit aspects of the law, citing its “unintended consequences.”
In Massachusetts, gambling regulators this week unexpectedly paused consideration of an application for a gambling license by the casino company Penn Entertainment because of concerns about its partnership with the controversy-courting media business Barstool Sports.
And at some universities, administrators and students voiced concern about deals the universities had struck to promote sports betting on campus."

"The setting was an industry conference.
On stage, the cost-cutting president of a legacy media company warned that he wouldn’t overpay for the NBA in upcoming rights negotiations. If the “numbers are going to choke us, we are going to walk away.”
Was the speaker David Zaslav, president and chief executive officer of Warner Bros. Discovery, at RBC’s 2022 Global TIMT Conference last month? Nope.
It was actually former NBC president Andy Lack way back in 2001 — right before the network lost the NBA to ESPN.
Twenty years later, it could be deja vu all over again for the NBA.
Ever since Zaslav surprised the sports world by claiming, “We don’t have to have the NBA,” at an investor conference on Nov. 15, the industry has been buzzing about the implications for upcoming rights talks.
The NBA will be seeking a combined $50 billion to $75 billion or more from incumbents Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT and Disney’s ESPN, starting with the 2025-2026 season.
With a young, tech-savvy fan base, and global appeal in markets like China and India, don’t be surprised if the NBA gets it.
That would double or triple the payout from its current 9-year deals that pay a combined $24 billion, or $2.6 billion a year, from the 2016-2017 season through 2024-2025.
If the NBA doesn’t get the offers it wants from TNT and ESPN during their exclusive negotiating period, the league could open the bidding to tech giants such as Amazon, Apple or Google."

"If there is one reason that traditional television will not die anytime soon, it is sports.
But first, the bad news for linear TV. According to Nielsen, overall streaming surpassed broadcast and cable in July 2022 to claim the largest share of US TV viewing for the first time. In September 2022, streaming’s share hit an all-time high of 36.9%. Streaming usage increased almost 35% and gained 9.2 share points from September 2021 to September 2022.
More information from Nielsen. Rights holders are increasingly pursuing streaming-first deals such as Apple TV with Major League Soccer and Amazon Prime Video with Thursday Night Football. 80% of sports fans have regularly or sometimes watched streaming or online channels this year. 85% of soccer fans watch on a streaming service. NBA fans index even 6% higher in propensity to watch on a streaming service or OTT platform than sports fans in general.
Now, the good news for linear TV. According to Nielsen’s 2022 global sports marketing report, linear TV subscriptions have declined 18% since 2019. But month-over-month linear TV viewership has increased 22% because of sports programming. (And this is especially noteworthy considering that sports represents only 2.7% of total broadcasts.)
Nielsen put it to me this way: 94 of the top 100 programs shown on broadcast TV were sports. So were 69 of the top 100 viewed shows on cable TV. Most significantly, one-third of linear TV ad revenues now come from live sports programming."

"Marquette University Law School: In a poll conducted from Nov. 15 to 22, 67 percent of Republicans said they had a favorable impression of Trump, with 32 percent unfavorable. In Marquette’s previous six surveys, Trump’s favorability rating ranged from 70 to 76 percent among the same group.
The percentage of Republicans who said they would like to see Trump run for president in 2024 also declined, to 55 percent in mid-November from a high of 64 percent in July.
At the same time, Republican voters are clearly growing enamored of DeSantis. The Florida governor’s favorability rating climbed to 68 percent in mid-November from 57 percent in January. He’s now roughly on par with Trump in that respect, but DeSantis’s unfavorable number, at 10 percent, is only a third as high as Trump’s.
Charles Franklin, who runs Marquette’s poll, noted that DeSantis came out ahead of Trump, 60 percent to 40 percent, when Republicans were asked whom they would prefer as the party’s nominee for president in 2024. As you might expect, college graduates were much more likely to choose DeSantis.
“His unfavorable ratings have barely changed at all,” Franklin said of DeSantis. “Republicans are getting to know him and they’re liking what they see.”"

"For Washington insiders and people in the media, Politico publishes some of the wonkiest reporting inside the Beltway. It’s not what you’d call a mass-market publication, but it’s highly influential—it was Politico that obtained and published Samuel Alito’s draft opinion of the Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade. The German news publisher Axel Springer, led by the C.E.O. Mathias Döpfner, acquired Politico, last year, for more than a billion dollars. “I believe that journalism has a very bright future if we get some things right,” Döpfner tells David Remnick. The C.E.O. relishes taking provocative stances, but he has been a vocal critic of media outlets that he says increasingly cater to partisan audiences; he cites as an example the resignation of a New York Times editor over the publication of a right-wing opinion piece. “It is not about objectivity or neutrality,” he tells Remnick. “It is about plurality.” Politico, Döpfner says, is taking “a kind of contrarian bet: if everybody polarizes, the few who do differently may have the better future.”"

"It’s a good time to be a podcaster. Along with an ever-increasing number of creators, listenership is rising, and every media platform is looking to get into the distribution game—including visual media. In the past few months alone, YouTube released a podcast homepage and TikTok is rumored to be launching a new podcast app. What do these businesses know that others don’t, and how do advertisers capitalize on this momentum? Let’s discuss.
Younger listeners are attracted to visual media
While podcasting is rooted in audio, hosts are seeing their fanbase grow through video platforms. In fact, in a recent Voices study, 57% of respondents said that YouTube was their preferred podcast listening app. Because of this change in consumption, more and more creators are investing in video content—both long-form and short-form—so they can leverage clips and drive further engagement on social media platforms.
Rather than a change in existing listener habits, this shift is actually due to a new era of consumers—the “podcast pioneers.” This audience only started listening in the past year, and they’re typically younger than historical listeners. So, they choose to listen within apps they already know and love.
Visual programming unlocks native integrations
This net-new listener pool means an untapped audience for advertisers, and the visual element of it all is exciting. Podcasting often means that brands have to rely on what a listener hears and recalls to tell their story. Visual podcasting, however, is a whole new ballgame. It allows advertisers to integrate their logo, promo code or product in unique ways and can create an always-on presence throughout the show. Let’s call it the American Idol effect. Regardless of commercial breaks, viewers return to the show and always see Coca-Cola cups on the judges’ table. It transformed sponsorships for television, and we’ll see the same transformation in podcasting."

"Viewers have turned to the cable network HLN over the years for a quick-hit version of its sister, CNN; for coverage of court cases; for Robin Meade’s long-running morning news shows; and for a bevy of true-crime programs, including Nancy Grace’s primetime talk show and repeats of “Forensic Files.” What it will be recognized for over the months to come is anybody’s guess.
CNN — and, by proxy, its corporate parent, Warner Bros. Discovery — nearly gutted the cable outlet Thursday by cancelling Meade’s “Morning Express,” which has been on the air in some form or another since 2001. The company also declared that it would not longer produce new live programming for the network and that Kathleen Finch, not CNN chief Chris Licht, would take over the true-crime shows, which would be made part of another cable outlet, ID, known for similar stuff. Meade is to be replaced by a simulcast of CNN’s morning programs.
...
Licht made no comment about why the company had failed to build a business around a popular anchor, but the fact of the matter is that HLN has been in decline for some time. And the media world faces many other problems like it. NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and Walt Disney together own dozens of underperforming cable networks that are quickly losing relevance in the age of streaming.
Such properties range from Warner’s American Heroes Channel to Paramount’s MTV2. Only NBCU has taken on the problem aggressively, shutting down in recent years everything from Esquire to Chiller to NBC Sports Network. Even the bigger cable networks are in danger of falling. Just check out the bulk of the schedule of Comedy Central, which this month bids farewell to the current host of “The Daily Show.” The network’s grid is largely filled with repeats of “The Office” and “Seinfeld.”
Cable and satellite distributors lost approximately 655,000 subscribers in the third quarter, according to a recent analysis from media-research firm MoffettNathanson. The numbers represent “the largest third quarter loss ever; last year’s loss was, by our estimate, 617K, and the year before was just 91K.”"

With the holiday season well underway, we at Harker Bos Group wanted to put a Christmas spin on this week’s Media Minute. We asked over 500 radio listeners about their favorite Christmas music.