Paige Albiniak

Paige Albiniak Paramount executives had to skirt the questions most on analysts' minds in its first quarter 2026 earnings call on Monday, all

The advertising picture came in better than expected for Gray Media in the first quarter of this year, with the Super Bowl, Winter Olympics and early political spending providing an overall boost, executives said during the company’s earnings call on Thursday. Gray was up 2% in core advertising in the first quarter of this year, “with a boost from the Winter Olympics,” Pat LaPlatney, president and co-CEO, said. Core advertising hit $352 million in the quarter, the company reported. LaPlatney noted that there is “some softness in core advertising” due to the situation in the Middle East and sky-high oil …

TV station ownership groups’ Q1 2026 earnings reports revealed that broadcasters are trending toward stable financial footing when it comes to balancing retransmission consent fees from pay TV providers with reverse compensation paid to the networks. But they are gearing up to resist the networks’ call for more, more, more as the NFL works behind the scenes to renegotiate its deals with media rights’ holders. Rumors and reporting have persisted all year that the NFL has begun renegotiating its 11-year, $110 billion deal with Paramount, Fox, Comcast NBCUniversal, Disney, Amazon Prime Video, NFL Network, Netflix and YouTube that’s set to expire …

Leaders from Sinclair, Hearst Television, Graham Media Group and more unpacked advertising’s biggest pain points — and the viable prospect of finally eliminating them — in a TVNewsCheck webinar last week.

Come Aug. 31, Nielsen will institute a substantial change to the way local linear television is measured, altering the rule that a viewer must watch a program for five consecutive minutes during a specified quarter-hour period in order to be counted to just one minute per quarter hour, a rule known as the one-minute qualifier. “This is probably one of the biggest things that Nielsen has done since the retirement of diaries close to 10 years ago,” says Kevin Stuart, VP, research, Hearst Television. The change may not seem like much due to the fact that digital and streaming counts an …

With no Olympics, World Cup or midterms on the schedule, TV stations look to 2027 as a building year.

TelevisaUnivision’s third-quarter earnings were a tale of two markets, scoring highs in Mexico with the FIFA World Cup but falling to lows in the U.S. where it didn’t have that pivotal tournament. Revenue in Mexico climbed 51% (or 43% factoring in foreign exchange) to $665 million, driven by the World Cup, while total revenue in the U.S. declined 14% to $715 million, as Spanish-speaking World Cup audiences headed to Telemundo to watch their favorite sport. TelevisaUnivision’s overall advertising revenue in the U.S. declined 24% to $327.5 million from $428.2 million in the same quarter last year, “reflecting cyclical headwinds primarily from …

Fox’s strategy of focusing on live sports and news paid off in spades in its fiscal Q1 2027, with revenue up 22% to $4.57 billion, driven by the performance of the FIFA Men’s World Cup and skyrocketing political advertising. Similarly, quarterly adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) shot up 54% from the same quarter last year to $1.64 billion. Total advertising revenue across the company’s platforms climbed 47% compared to the same period last year to $2.08 billion with advertisers flocking to the World Cup. Fox’s television side alone delivered 32% growth in total revenue to $2.7 billion …

NEW YORK ­— While political advertising and major sports events have provided TV stations with a substantial short-term boost in 2026, stations must pivot to a long-term strategy centered on technology, innovation and cultural adaptation in order to survive and grow over the next several years, said industry executives on a panel at TVNewsCheck’s Local TV Strategies conference at the NAB Show New York last week. The panelists highlighted the steps that local television stations must take to remain profitable in an increasingly competitive digital media ecosystem. A central challenge facing local broadcasters is overcoming an outdated but firmly entrenched industry …

Company also benefited from the many television station acquisitions it has made in the past two years.