Weekly Roundup – June 11th, 2024

"The National Basketball Association is closing in on media rights deals with Comcast-owned NBC, Disney's ESPN, and Amazon.com that would generate about $76 billion in media revenue over 11 years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Rights to the widely watched professional basketball league are a prized possession for media companies. Sports content continues to attract a reliable and loyal audience at a time when traditional TV businesses are losing millions of subscribers to cord-cutting.
The WSJ report said that NBC would pay an average of $2.5 billion a year to the NBA under the arrangement and show around 100 games per season, with about half airing exclusively on Comcast's Peacock streaming service."

"Detroit is a city of firsts, and the city's latest first is an all-Black-led sports radio station that just launched on the airwaves.
"[This is] history-making," said Rob Parker. "[It's] groundbreaking, [and] we just believe that the time has come."
A former Detroit sports anchor, Parker is at the helm of this endeavor. He launched Sports Rap Radio on AM 1270 on Tuesday, and this Black-owned radio station featuring all Black hosts is a first not only for the city of Detroit, but also across the country.
"Just four years ago, there were no Black full-time sports hosts on the radio in Detroit," Parker said. "In a city that's nearly 80% black, I looked at that as a problem."

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"“It’s discussed in offices, it’s discussed in social media outlets. It’s not only allowable, but it’s promoted and advertised in popular culture,” Dr. Timothy Fong, UCLA professor of psychiatry and co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies program, said. “Sports stars who once before could never talk about gambling are now talking about what’s a good wager, what’s a good price point for tonight’s game.”
As sports betting continues to grow, so does the use of technology to provide easier ways for people to place their wagers.
“The larger question is is our society better for having things like gambling and regulating gambling?” Fong said. “Gambling is a human condition, it’s part of human nature, and we’ve now created technology that brings that experience that you can never erase. We’ve reached a point where there is no way to do a 100% prohibition or 100% scrub these technologies from the face of the earth. So we might as well regulate to the best of our ability, figure out ways to educate people so they can recognize problems early on and how to maximize enjoyment and financial safety.”"

"Congressmen Jerry Nadler and Joaquin Castro have sent a follow-up letter to Venu Sports partners Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox and Disney seeking more information on the bundle’s impact on access, competition and choice in the sports streaming market.
The follow-up letter comes after TheWrap exclusively reported that the lawmakers’ concerns were not satisfied after their staff met with representatives from the media giants on March 31.
“Although we appreciate your prompt reply and willingness to meet with our staff, your responses so far are insufficient,” the new letter stated. “Overall, we still have not received answers about the firewalls your companies may implement to prevent collusion; the precautions you may take to ensure consumer privacy; or the methods you may use to determine pricing of the new service.”
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Nadler and Castro argue that the companies “exert unmatched control over the entire sports media ecosystem” and that without care, Venu has the potential to “reshape this already-concentrated space to the detriment of consumers, sports leagues, and third-party distributors.”
“Considering the competition concerns, we urge your companies to reconsider your plans to forego a commitment to submit licensing negotiations to binding arbitration, as previous parties to vertical integration transactions (e.g., Comcast-NBCU, AT&T-Time Warner) have done,” the pair’s letter concluded. “We ask that you see to efficiently and thoroughly address and answer these concerns promptly. We look forward to your response.”"

"On Friday, United Airlines announced that it is bringing personalized advertising to the seatback entertainment screens on its flights. The move is aimed at increasing the airline’s revenue by leveraging the data that it has on its passengers.
To do this, the airline formed Kinective Media, a media network that will handle the passenger data and sell ads to brands. Already United’s Kinective Media has made ad deals with brands including Norwegian Cruise Line, Macy’s, Chase, TelevisaUnivision, and IHG Hotels & Resorts.
United believes its advertising network will be appealing to brands because “there is the potential for 3.5 hours of attention per traveler, based on average flight time.” In other words: United passengers are a captive audience. Most turn to the seatback screen in front of them to help pass the time in the air—what else are they going to do?
To help assuage passenger fears that United ad partners will have free rein over their data, the airline has clarified that advertisers will not be able to access the personally identifiable information of passengers. Instead, the company will aggregate and anonymize the data of passengers over the age of 18 and supply that to advertisers."

"Washington Post Chief Executive Officer William Lewis wanted the focus this past week to be on his plans to turn around the publication’s business. Instead, he is trying to quell a newsroom uproar.
Lewis is seeking to mend fences with staffers after a turbulent few days that included the abrupt departure of the publication’s top editor, a contentious town-hall meeting, and press reports suggesting he tried to quash stories that cast him in a negative light.
“I know trust has been lost because of scars from the past and the back-and-forth from this week,” Lewis wrote in a memo to employees Friday evening. “Let’s leave those behind and start presuming the best of intent.”
Members of the Post newsroom were taken aback by some of Lewis’s responses to staff questions during a Monday morning meeting in which he introduced Matt Murray, a former Wall Street Journal editor in chief who is taking over as executive editor on an interim basis from the departing leader, Sally Buzbee."

"From its ownership restriction to an “infatuation with paperwork,” the National Association of Broadcasters says the Federal Communications Commission has for the past 25 years failed to address in any meaningful way its antiquated broadcast regulatory regime. That NAB assessment is part of the government’s biannual review of the communications marketplace. It says radio and television broadcasters have become burdened by “highly asymmetric” regulations, and face unprecedented competition for audiences and advertising revenues from Big Tech. But rather than address how broadcasters will be able to continue to provide local programming, including news, sports, weather, and emergency information, NAB says the FCC has been more focused on compliance burdens that serve to “check political boxes” than ensuring broadcast content remains free and widely available."