Since its 1996 debut, Access Hollywood has aired nearly 12,000 episodes. Yet its most infamous segment was one that never made it to broadcast: in October 2016, weeks before the presidential election, The Washington Post obtained footage of then-candidate Donald Trump making lewd comments about women to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush.
Following our last World Series game that averaged more than 51 million viewers globally, these partnerships build on MLB's growing momentum that includes generational stars setting new standards for excellence, new rules which have improved the game on the field, and increases in important fan engagement metrics like viewership, attendance, participation and social media consumption. We're looking forward to tapping into the unique areas of expertise that ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix each bring to the sport for the benefit of our fans.
Of the $43.9 billion that advertisers in the U.S. are expected to spend on creator marketing in 2026, most of that money - 55% - will go towards ads amplifying the creators' content, not to the actual creation and posting of content by the creators themselves. And that spend is only increasing as creator content becomes a more popular choice for ad creative and paid amplification provides brands with the analytics to be able to more effectively gauge the impact of creators' content.
From Nielsen's perspective, "we think this is a big opportunity to improve person-level measurement" and give buyers and sellers a more accurate picture of who's actually watching what, said Brian Fuhrer, SVP of product strategy and thought leadership at Nielsen.
Viewers are no longer distinguishing between linear and digital - they are choosing to tune in to what they want, where, when and how they want to watch. We must now embrace a multi-currency future, and jointly drive innovation that ensures more accurate and complete measurement approaches. Measurement needs to accurately reflect the reality of audience trends for marketers to effectively allocate their advertising investments and serve the entire ecosystem. And that will require more than one solution.
Hours before the episode went live, however, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss made the decision to pull the report. The move sparked outrage within CBS News and across the media industry, with some accusing Weiss of yanking the segment because it would make President Donald Trump look bad. In a company memo, Weiss explained that her decision was motivated by the fact that the segment did not include voices from the Trump administration.
Weiss originally postponed the segment because she believed, at present, we do not present the administration's argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who reported on the story, was furious slamming the move as a political decision and arguing that Weiss's reasoning was flawed. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story, Alfonsi wrote, in an internal memo of her own.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, pickup order to lack of renewal. Here we bid farewell to the canceled shows of 2026. Less than a month into the year (and last lunar year not even over) and shows are already starting to drop. This post will serve as living tribute to the TV we're going to miss in 2027. Don't cry because they're over, smile because hopefully there are some sort of residuals in place for the workers.
Donald Trump wants CNN sold. He has said so repeatedly and publicly, demanding it should be sold in any deal involving Warner Bros Discovery. Now one of America's largest media companies is racing to oblige him, while another looks to consolidate its power. Wednesday's House judiciary hearing on streaming competition where lawmakers voiced concern over the Trump administration's influence and a potential merger's toll on consumers made clear just how dangerous both options are for free speech, audiences and democracy itself.
As he explained, programmatic standards like the OpenRTB protocol have enabled computer programs to buy ads on behalf of humans. But the ad formats and inventory types purchased by those programmatic tools have been pretty simplistic, relatively speaking. By that I mean when compared to the complexity of a traditional TV ad buy, where the audience has to be forecasted ahead of time and there are all kinds of rules regarding which advertiser gets what ad slot in which program.
But that's unlikely to put a hold on M&A activity among major TV and streaming companies. The first question becomes what do WBD's spurned suitors do in response? Paramount and Comcast's NBCUniversal are unlikely to pair up given the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's broadcast ownership rules (and the U.S. government's antagonistic relationship toward Comcast). But there are (much) smaller targets on the market: A+E Global Media, AMC Networks, Lionsgate, Starz, etc.
It's been one blunder after another during the early days of the Tony Dokoupil era at CBS Evening News. From night one, the flagship broadcast of the Eye's news division has been marred by technical mess-ups, bizarre attempts to suck up to the Trump administration, low-key humiliation by President Trump, and an anchor who seems to think he has earned the right to pontificate at the end of the show like he's a latter-day Cronkite.
When the final viewership data became available for the NFL's three Thanksgiving games this season, the numbers were so staggering that an impromptu conference call among the involved networks' chief sports honchos was called to essentially bask in the success. I'd never realized back-slapping was possible over a phone call until then. There was no such collective CEO celebration this week when the NFL's final 2025 viewership numbers were released by Nielsen Media Research on Tuesday and Wednesday.
