When I opened Multicast News six months ago, I did so with an explanation that I’ve never been adept at introducing myself or explaining my ideas to others.

Well, I can’t say the same for farewells — and this is one of them. It’s time to close up shop on Substack.

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A proposal to transition America’s television broadcasters from the current digital standard to NextGen TV would allow television stations to decide when to shut off their current digital signals, according to documents reviewed by The Desk.

As part of a forthcoming Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will ad…

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Weigel Broadcasting’s retro television network MeTV is veering into more-recent, contemporary offerings with the introduction of the CBS sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond” to its prime-time schedule.

Starting October 13, episodes from all nine seasons of the sitcom will start airing on MeTV. The show will run in the 9 p.m. Eastern Time slot, with two episo…

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Advertisers are pulling back on planned spending in the second half of 2025 amid growing concerns over tariffs and broader economic challenges, according to new data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

In its “2025 Outlook Study September Update,” the IAB revised its full-year U.S. ad spend forecast down 1.6 percentage points to 5.7 percent growth, …

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Sinclair-owned multicast network Comet will start airing a documentary series focused on the most-iconic rivalries from World Wrestling Entertainment.

The show, appropriately called “WWE Rivals,” features a round-table discussion between professional wrestlers, who break down the biggest rivalry storylines and business matters to impact the WWE and other…

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Local television broadcaster Sinclair, Inc. has pulled future airings of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” from its ABC affiliated broadcast stations amid concerns over remarks the talk show host made during a monologue on Monday.

In a statement e-mailed to The Desk on Wednesday, Sinclair said it would not air the late night program on any of its TV stations until it …

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On Friday, YouTube said audience figures related to its global distribution of a National Football Game last week was off by around 2 million viewers because of an internal technical issue. It upwardly adjusted the viewership count to 19.7 million — far less than what NBC pulled in for its earlier NFL Kickoff game the prior day, which the network only offered through its broadcast channel and streaming service Peacock in the United States.

YouTube said its new numbers were provided to and validated by Nielsen. But, before the game took place, there were questions about why Nielsen was providing YouTube the ability to report and verify its data differently than other clients:

Executives in charge of data and analytics at Fox Sports and Disney-owned ESPN publicly criticized Nielsen for catering to YouTube by creating a special version of its measurement product that weren't available to other clients.

"Nielsen’s measurement of tonight’s YouTube game will not be made available to other Nielsen clients, a flagrant departure from Nielsen’s history of transparency and a slap in the face to longstanding clients," Mike Mulvihill , the President of Insight and Analytics at Fox Sports, said in a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter).

Mulvihill acknowledged that Nielsen's measurement products were not perfect — something that Nielsen has acknowledged in the past, and vowed to fix with its Big Data + Panels product, which combines its traditional household surveys with first-party data from connected TV apps and services.

But what made Nielsen the gold standard for television measurement was its commitment to transparency, something that Mulvihill said the company wasn't doing with respect to YouTube and its NFL game.

"Their value comes from impartiality and transparency," Mulvilhill said. "When they move away from those tenets they undermine what makes them the only essential data source in media."

Flora Kelly, the Senior Vice President of Research at ESPN, put it more bluntly: "Their rating is not a fair comp."

Speaking to Front Office Sports, a Nielsen spokesperson affirmed the company was using a different reporting and measurement system, because YouTube didn’t have enough time to “have proper audience inputs for its accredited workflow, particularly relating to first-party streaming data.”

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But, as I wrote at The Desk earlier today, that excuse doesn’t hold up in light of Nielsen’s monthly The Gauge reports, which apparently include enough data from YouTube to proclaim it the top streaming app on a regular basis.

On its monthly "The Gauge" report, Nielsen regularly counts YouTube as the top streaming platform in terms of time spent with TV. Over the past six months, YouTube has also ranked as the top distributor of media in a separate but related "Monthly Distributor Gauge" report published by Nielsen. In both cases, YouTube ranks higher than streaming apps from Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Paramount and other companies; on "The Gauge," YouTube's prominence helps the "streaming" category achieve a higher collective share over broadcast and cable TV.

It is clear from those reports that Nielsen does have the ability to count YouTube, though it isn't clear if the company can determine what people are specifically watching on the app. While Nielsen offers big-picture insight into the shows and genres people watch on streaming apps and linear TV through its Gauge report each month, it usually doesn't specify what content is attracting people to YouTube.

In August, The Desk sent a list of questions to Nielsen inquiring about the methodology it uses to evaluate YouTube viewership — a list that was re-sent to a Nielsen spokesperson in light of comments made by ESPN and Fox Sports executives last week. The spokesperson has not returned a request for comment.

For years, Nielsen rested on the monopoly it built in measuring broadcast and cable channels through its household panels — asking people to write down what they watched, and then using that information to gauge what the rest of the country likely watched at a given time.

In the era of streaming, that data is much easier to come by: Each streaming service collects, analyzes, measures and reports data in its own way. Nielsen has worked to streamline that effort, but it is largely beholden to each service providing access to that data or otherwise reporting it in a standard way. Some connected TV platforms and streaming apps have chosen not to do this, which only adds more confusion.

YouTube appears to be part of that problem, as evident by their special treatment over the past week and their ability to correct data that they claim — without proof — was erroneous. At a time when some industry experts and pundits claim that “YouTube is TV,” that seems like something that really needs to be corrected, rather than just accepted by Nielsen as a standard business practice.

There is one thing that is certain: Next week, when Nielsen releases its monthly “The Gauge” report for the August measurement period, YouTube will be the top streaming platform by share of time spent with TV. In light of Nielsen and YouTube’s recent missteps, it will be interesting to see whether the industry accepts the report as gospel or start to question it.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will review some of its broadcast ownership rules for radio and television station groups during its upcoming meeting this month, the agency's chairman announced on Monday.

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When DirecTV subscribers in Austin tuned in to watch the National Football League’s (NFL) kickoff game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles last Thursday, they may have noticed something a bit unusual after the game: Local news from another city.

It wasn’t a glitch — Cowboys fans in the Texas capital who subscribe to DirecTV’s new genre-based sports package, called MySports, were watching a national feed of NBC programming, part of a unique arrangement between the pay TV provider and Comcast’s NBC Universal that has been tested at least once in the past.

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Kenneth R. Weinstein, the former President and Chief Executive Officer of the right-of-center think tank Hudson Institute, has been named the first ombudsman of CBS News, parent company Paramount announced on Monday.

Under the new process, Paramount said Weinstein will accept complaints from viewers, employees and other stakeholders. Those submissions will be evaluated, and if they merit additional consideration, Weinstein will escalate them to Paramount President Jeff Shell and Chair of TV Media George Cheeks.

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From a post on LinkedIn:

NFL games account for nearly all of the top 100 TV shows watched in the U.S. each year, per Nielsen's data. So, when the NFL — the biggest benefactor of Nielsen ratings — calls Nielsen's reporting into question, that is a big deal.

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A key executive with the National Football League (NFL) has spoken publicly about the shortcomings of Nielsen’s television measurement practices, joining a growing number of broadcasters that have done the same over the past few years.

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The founder and chief executive of cable news channel Newsmax has urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reject proposals from radio and television broadcasters to eliminate its rules regarding ownership, arguing the agency lacks the legal authority to carry out those wishes even if it wanted to.

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Peacock has expanded its free, always-on channel lineup with the addition of six networks owned by the E.W. Scripps Company, the broadcasters announced on Thursday.

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Nexstar Media Group will acquire rival broadcaster TEGNA in a cash deal valued at $6.2 billion, the companies announced Monday.

Under terms of the agreement, Nexstar will pay $22 per share for all outstanding TEGNA stock, a price that reflects a 31 percent premium over TEGNA’s 30-day average stock price ending August 8, 2025. The transaction value includes TEGNA’s net debt and estimated expenses.

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The deal, which has been unanimously approved by TEGNA’s board of directors, is expected to close in the second half of 2026 pending regulatory and shareholder approvals. Financing is being provided by Bank of America (BofA) Securities, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Nexstar’s interest in acquiring TEGNA earlier this month.

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Trinity Broadcasting has filed a federal lawsuit accusing Dr. Phil McGraw and his former media venture, Merit Street Media, of fraud and breach of contract.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Texas, alleges McGraw misled the Christian broadcaster under the terms of a $500 million, ten-year agreement in which he failed to deliver on a promise that he would reboot his daytime talk show and create hundreds of new episodes each year.

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The litigation comes as Merit Street is also pursuing its own breach of contract claim against Trinity Broadcasting in bankruptcy court. The case has drawn heightened scrutiny because McGraw conditioned a loan to his company on Merit Street winning its lawsuit against the broadcaster, which the court described as anything but “routine.”

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Get After It Media, the broadcaster behind Retro TV, The Heartland Network, The Action Channel, The Family Channel and Rev’n, has entered into a partnership with Katz Television Group to handle advertising sales across its portfolio of networks.

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A decision by Congress to pull funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has resulted in a major setback for the development of an advanced emergency warning notification system that is intended to be utilized over ATSC 3.0, the next-generation broadcast television system known as NextGen TV.

On Friday, the CPB said it will close the Next…

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Sinclair said Monday it will add the acclaimed crime drama "Homicide: Life on the Street" and its follow-up "Homicide: The Movie" to the programming schedule of its multicast network Charge next month.

The show will debut September 1 across the multicast network, which is distributed nationwide and focused heavily on police procedurals. It will be the fi…

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