<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/atom10full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
   <title>In Depth: Cable</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/" />
   
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2013:/news//1</id>
   <updated>2010-10-14T17:59:27Z</updated>
   <subtitle>Formerly News</subtitle>
   <generator uri="http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/">Movable Type Pro 4.31-en</generator>


<atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/News-Cable" /><feedburner:info xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" uri="news-cable" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" /><entry>
   <title>Google, NBC Universal End TV Ad-Sales Pact Early; Agreement Allowed Google to Sell Cable Inventory</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/10/google_nbc_universal_end_tv_ad.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.44245</id>
   
   <published>2010-10-14T17:53:46Z</published>
   <updated>2010-10-14T17:59:27Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[By Brian SteinbergAdvertising AgeGoogle and NBC Universal have dissolved an intriguing ad pact they established in 2008 nearly a year before it was set to expire, dealing a setback to Google's ambition to become a big player in TV ad sales.Under terms of the pact, which was set to end in the fall of 2011, Google was allowed to sell advertising inventory on select NBC Universal-owned cable outlets -- such as Syfy, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth and Chiller -- with the potential to expand to other networks down the line. That was seen as an important step in Google's efforts to expand its reach beyond its main business, paid-search advertising on the internet, and get into TV in a significant way. For NBC, the agreement was described as a way to bring in new advertisers, particularly the local ones Google often deals with.Rather than expanding, however, the pact has ended early. &quot;We're not currently contributing inventory into the Google marketplace, but we continue to work with Google on multiple projects involving advanced advertising,&quot; NBC Universal said in a statement Wednesday.&quot;While we are no longer offering NBC Universal inventory through Google TV Ads, NBC Universal continues to be a great partner to Google,&quot; Mark Piesanen, director of strategic partner development for Google TV Ads, said in a statement. &quot;Both NBC and Google are committed to bringing more relevance to TV viewership and advertising. CNBC is an important partner in the launch of Google TV and we are working together on research studies.&quot; The two companies are also both investors in Invidi Technologies Corp., a company involved in developing the technology behind addressable TV advertising.The end of the arrangement, however, leaves Google without access to the broad inventory of a top-tier media company. It continues its TV-advertising efforts with satellite-providers DirecTV and EchoStar's Dish Network as well as some smaller cable outlets, including Hallmark Channel, Tennis Channel, Ovation and CBS College Sports.NBC and Google's ad-sales agreement was an unusual one. NBC Universal raised eyebrows by allowing Google to sell some of its cable channels' inventory. At the time of the deal's unveiling, ad-buying executives suggested Google wasn't getting its hands on prime ad inventory, but rather less desirable stuff.Under the terms of the pact, NBC was able to set a floor for pricing as well as quality standards. The company also maintained control over its inventory, so that if a Google TV ad were to pose a conflict with another advertiser on air, the Google ad would have to run in a different fashion.A person familiar with the situation said NBC Universal felt the Google ad system worked but that it added the most value to smaller, unrated TV networks. While Chiller and Sleuth were unrated when the pact was established, they are both rated now.]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Chuck Ross</name>
      
   </author>
   
      <category term="Advertising" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Digital" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Syndication" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[By Brian SteinbergAdvertising AgeGoogle and NBC Universal have dissolved an intriguing ad pact they established in 2008 nearly a year before it was set to expire, dealing a setback to Google's ambition to become a big player in TV ad sales.Under terms of the pact, which was set to end in the fall of 2011, Google was allowed to sell advertising inventory on select NBC Universal-owned cable outlets -- such as Syfy, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth and Chiller -- with the potential to expand to other networks down the line. That was seen as an important step in Google's efforts to expand its reach beyond its main business, paid-search advertising on the internet, and get into TV in a significant way. For NBC, the agreement was described as a way to bring in new advertisers, particularly the local ones Google often deals with.Rather than expanding, however, the pact has ended early. &quot;We're not currently contributing inventory into the Google marketplace, but we continue to work with Google on multiple projects involving advanced advertising,&quot; NBC Universal said in a statement Wednesday.&quot;While we are no longer offering NBC Universal inventory through Google TV Ads, NBC Universal continues to be a great partner to Google,&quot; Mark Piesanen, director of strategic partner development for Google TV Ads, said in a statement. &quot;Both NBC and Google are committed to bringing more relevance to TV viewership and advertising. CNBC is an important partner in the launch of Google TV and we are working together on research studies.&quot; The two companies are also both investors in Invidi Technologies Corp., a company involved in developing the technology behind addressable TV advertising.The end of the arrangement, however, leaves Google without access to the broad inventory of a top-tier media company. It continues its TV-advertising efforts with satellite-providers DirecTV and EchoStar's Dish Network as well as some smaller cable outlets, including Hallmark Channel, Tennis Channel, Ovation and CBS College Sports.NBC and Google's ad-sales agreement was an unusual one. NBC Universal raised eyebrows by allowing Google to sell some of its cable channels' inventory. At the time of the deal's unveiling, ad-buying executives suggested Google wasn't getting its hands on prime ad inventory, but rather less desirable stuff.Under the terms of the pact, NBC was able to set a floor for pricing as well as quality standards. The company also maintained control over its inventory, so that if a Google TV ad were to pose a conflict with another advertiser on air, the Google ad would have to run in a different fashion.A person familiar with the situation said NBC Universal felt the Google ad system worked but that it added the most value to smaller, unrated TV networks. While Chiller and Sleuth were unrated when the pact was established, they are both rated now.]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>October NewsPro: Environmental Journalism</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/10/october_newspro_environmental.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.44161</id>
   
   <published>2010-10-11T13:36:33Z</published>
   <updated>2010-10-11T13:44:42Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[An astonishing number of breaking stories so far in 2010 have been about the environment. TV viewers and newspaper readers were bombarded by dramatic pictures and accounts of the environment run amok, from the coal ash spill in West Virginia; the plume of volcanic ash over Europe; mine disasters in West Virginia, Chile and China; floods in Pakistan; the natural gas explosion in northern California; and, of course, the oil refinery explosions in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico.Challenges facing the journalists who cover these topics will be explored at the 20th anniversary conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, being held in Missoula, Mont., Oct. 13 to 17. To see the entire October issue NewsPro, which is devoted to Environmental Journalism and the SEJ event, click here.. &nbsp;]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Digital" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Syndication" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[An astonishing number of breaking stories so far in 2010 have been about the environment. TV viewers and newspaper readers were bombarded by dramatic pictures and accounts of the environment run amok, from the coal ash spill in West Virginia; the plume of volcanic ash over Europe; mine disasters in West Virginia, Chile and China; floods in Pakistan; the natural gas explosion in northern California; and, of course, the oil refinery explosions in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico.Challenges facing the journalists who cover these topics will be explored at the 20th anniversary conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, being held in Missoula, Mont., Oct. 13 to 17. To see the entire October issue NewsPro, which is devoted to Environmental Journalism and the SEJ event, click here.. &nbsp;]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title><![CDATA[CBS News Top Winner at News & Documentary Emmys; Full List of Winners Here]]></title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/09/cbs_news_top_winner_at_news_do.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.43969</id>
   
   <published>2010-09-28T04:03:21Z</published>
   <updated>2010-09-28T20:08:44Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[CBS News led the winners of the National Academy of Television Arts &amp; Sciences' 31st annual News &amp; Documentary Emmy Awards Monday night, taking a total of seven awards.CBS was recognized for &quot;60 Minutes,&quot; which notched four wins, and &quot;CBS Evening News With Katie Couric,&quot; which took three honors.NBC News  and PBS closely followed CBS, winning six and five awards, respectively.ABC, HDNet, History Channel, National Geographic Channel, Planet Green and Sundance Channel each scored two wins, and CNBC, Discovery Channel, Globeandmail.com, HBO, NYTimes.com, TIME.com and VH1 were awarded one Emmy apiece.KPIX-TV, San Francisco, KSTP-TV, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and KHOU-TV, Houston, took the News &amp; Documentary Emmys for regional reporting.The News &amp; Documentary Emmys were presented at a ceremony at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, located in the Time Warner Center in New York City. The ceremony will be broadcast Oct. 9 at 8 p.m. ET on C-SPAN.A complete list of winners follows:OUTSTANDING COVERAGE OF A BREAKING NEWS STORY IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTNBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (NBC)Miracle on the HudsonAnchor and Managing Editor: Brian WilliamsExecutive Producer: Bob EpsteinSenior Broadcast Producer: Patrick Burkey, Aurelia GraysonDirector: Brett HoleySenior Producers: Subrata De, Mary Laurence Flynn, Tracey Lyons, Albert OetgenSupervising Producer: Jay BlackmanCorrespondents: Robert Bazell, Tom Costello, Rehema Ellis, Martin Fletcher, Mike Taibbi, Chuck ToddProducers: Donna Bass, Beverly Chase, Christine Colvin, Bob Croce, Tom Dawson, Clare Duffy, Carol Eggers, Lauren Fairbanks, Andy Franklin, Anthony Galloway, Mario Garcia, Hilary Guy, Jody Henenfeld, Robert Kaplan, Maggie Kassner, Susan Kroll, Victor Limjoco, Daniel Linden, Carla Marcus, Megan Marcus, Daniel Nagin, Samuel Singal, Robin Skolnick, Christina Vallice, Kelly VenardosOUTSTANDING CONTINUING COVERAGE OF A NEWS STORY IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTNBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (NBC)Unlikely RefugesAnchor and Managing Editor: Brian WilliamsExecutive Producer: Bob EpsteinSenior Broadcast Producer: Aurelia GraysonDirector: Brett HoleySenior Producer: Mary Laurence FlynnCorrespondents: Richard Engel, Adrienne MongProducers: Maria Alcon, Bredun Edwards, Madeleine Haeringer, Maggie Kassner, Paul Nassar,Matt Softley, Rachele WebbOUTSTANDING FEATURE STORY IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTToday (NBC)Fighting GrossmansProducer: Amanda Marshall, David EmanueleCorrespondent: Bob DotsonOUTSTANDING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTCBS Evening News with Katie Couric (CBS)Rape in America: Justice DeniedAnchor and Managing Editor: Katie CouricExecutive Producer: Rick KaplanSenior Producer: Keith SummaProducer: Laura StricklerChief Investigative Correspondent: Armen KeteyianOUTSTANDING BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC REPORTING IN A REGULARY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTCBS Evening News with Katie Couric (CBS)Financial Family TreeAnchor and Managing Editor: Katie CouricExecutive Producer: Rick KaplanSenior Producer: Kim GodwinProducers: Brandon Baur, Marsha Cooke, Erin George, Chris WeicherCorrespondents: John Blackstone, Cynthia Bowers, Kelly Cobiella, Barry PetersonOUTSTANDING COVERAGE OF A BREAKING NEWS STORY IN A NEWS MAGAZINEDateline NBC (NBC)Miracle on the HudsonExecutive Producer: David CorvoExecutive Editor: Liz ColeManaging Editor: Aretha MarshallDirectors: John Libretto, Judith FarinetSenior Producers: Ellen Mason, Jim GeretySenior Producers: Liz Cole, Ellen MasonSupervising Producer: Joe DelmonicoAnchor: Ann CurryCorrespondents: Peter Greenberg, Chris Hansen, Hoda Kotb, Dennis MurphyProducers: Tim Beacham, John Block, Katherine Chan, Bradley Davis, Cameo George, Bob Gilmartin, Marianne Haggerty, Meade Jorgensen, Sarah Longden, Marianne O'Donnell, Robin Oelkers, Mary Ann Rotondi, Susan Simpson, Dan Slepian, Justin Smith, Jane EStone, Tim Uehlinger, Esther ZuckerField Producers: Falguni Lakhani, Alex Waterfield, Katie YuCoordinating Producer: Biju MathewOUTSTANDING CONTINUING COVERAGE OF A NEWS STORY IN A NEWS MAGAZINE60 Minutes (CBS)War in PakistanExecutive Producer: Jeff FagerExecutive Editor: Bill OwensProducer: Draggan MihailovichCorrespondent: Steve KroftOUTSTANDING FEATURE STORY IN A NEWS MAGAZINEHDNet World Report (HDNet)South Africa's Shame: Modern‑Day Slavery and the World CupExecutive Producer: Dennis O'BrienSenior Producer: Kathy GettingsProducer: Gareth HarveyCorrespondent: Paul BebanOUTSTANDING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM IN A NEWS MAGAZINEFRONTLINE/World (PBS)Ghana: Digital Dumping GroundExecutive Producer: David FanningSenior Producers: Ken DornsteinSeries Executive Director: Sharon TillerProducer/Correspondent: Peter KleinProducer: Sarah CarterCo-Producers: Shira Bick, Ian Bickis, Krysia Collyer, Allison Cross, Heba Elasaad, Dan Haves, Doerthe Keilholz, Jodie Martinson, Dan McKinney, Blake Sifton, Leslie YoungOUTSTANDING BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC REPORTING IN A NEWS MAGAZINEDan Rather Reports (HDNet)Iran's Manhattan ProjectCorrespondent and Managing Editor: Dan RatherExecutive Producer: Wayne NelsonSenior Producer: Elliot KirschnerProducer: Andrew GlazerOUTSTANDING LIVE COVERAGE OF A CURRENT NEWS STORY &ndash; LONG FORMABC News Special Events (ABC)Inauguration 2009 ‑ Barack ObamaExecutive Producer: Marc BursteinExecutive Director: Roger GoodmanAnchors: Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer, George StephanopoulosAnchor/Correspondents: Robin Roberts, Ron Claiborne, Chris Cuomo, Sam Donaldson, JohnDonvan, Dan Harris, Jonathan Karl, Cynthia McFadden, Terry Moran, David Muir, Martha Raddatz, Cokie Roberts, Deborah Roberts, Brian Ross, Claire Shipman, Kate Snow, Betsy Stark, Lisa Stark, Jake Tapper, Pierre Thomas, Barbara Walters, Bill Weir, Bob WoodruffSenior Producers: Bob Wheelock, Paula Cohen, Richard Sergay, Laiea Smith, Joan Preztunik, Bob Roy, Nancy Gabriner, Ricki Goldberg, Kathy O&rsquo;Hearn, Andrew MorseProducers: Annie Allen, Perita Carpenter, Teddy Davis, Jonathan Greenberger, Farnaz Haghighi, Sally Hawkins, Akilah Joseph, Lourdes Leahy, Mary Wojcik, Sunlen Miller, Eric Noll, Andrea Owen, Lana Zak, Margaret Aro, Katie Munley, Susan Archer, Ben NewmanRemote Location Producers: Stephanie Smith, Avery Miller, Dena Norland, Clayton Sandell, Quiana Burns, Matt Hosford, Kirit Radia, Drew Millhon, Courtney Chapman, Jon Garcia, Brett Hovell, Richard Coolidge, Tom Giusto, Lisa Chinn, Jen Duck, Susan Kriskey, Matt Jaffee, Jack Date, Bruno Roeber, Margaret Conley, Nick Schifrin, Ann Marie Dorning, George Pilla, Lee Alexander, Glen DacyOUTSTANDING CONTINUING COVERAGE OF A NEWS STORY &ndash; LONG FORMFRONTLINE (PBS)A Death in TehranExecutive Producer: David Fanning, Angus MacQueenSenior Producers: Raney Aronson‑Rath, Ken DornsteinProducer: Monica Garnsey, Arash SahamiOUTSTANDING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM &ndash; LONG FORMFRONTLINE (PBS)The WarningProducer/Director: Michael KirkProducer/Reporter: Jim GilmoreProducer: Mike WiserExecutive Producer: David FanningSenior Producer: Raney Aronson‑RathOUTSTANDING INFORMATIONAL PROGRAMMING &ndash; LONG FORMHBO Documentary Films (HBO)Which Way HomeDirector/Producer: Rebecca CammisaField Producers: Nina Alvarez, Eric Goethals, Lorenzo Hagerman, Alejandra Liceaga, Stephany Slaughter, Gabriela Sosa, Sascha WeissExecutive Producers: Bristol Baughan, Lianne Halfon, Bette Cerf Hill, John Malkovich, Sheila Nevins, Russell Smith, Jack TurnerSupervising Producer: Sara BernsteinOUTSTANDING HISTORICAL PROGRAMMING &ndash; LONG FORMBill Moyers Journal (PBS)The Good SoldierFor Out of the Blue Productions, Inc.Producer/Directors: Lexy Lovell, Michael UysFor Bill Moyers JournalExecutive Producers: Judy Doctoroff O'Neill, Sally RoyExecutive Editors: Bill Moyers, Judith Davidson MoyersProducer: Jessica WangOUTSTANDING BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC REPORTING &ndash; LONG FORMInside the Mind of Google (CNBC)Correspondent: Maria BartiromoSenior Executive Producer: Mitch WeitznerSenior Producer: Wally GriffithProducer: Morgan DownsContributing Producer: Lulu ChiangOUTSTANDING INTERVIEW60 Minutes (CBS)Saving Flight 1549Executive Producer: Jeff FagerExecutive Editor: Bill OwensCorrespondent: Katie CouricSenior Producer: Michael RadutzkyProducers: Lori Beecher, Tanya SimonCo‑Producers: Jenny Dubin, Andrew MetzOUTSTANDING ARTS &amp; CULTURE PROGRAMMINGAnvil! The Story of Anvil (VH1)Executive Producer/Director: Sacha GervasiProducer: Rebecca YeldhamExecutive Producers: Brad Abramson, Rick Krim, Christopher Soos, Shelly TatroSupervising Producer: Warren CohenOUTSTANDING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMMINGPOV (PBS)The English SurgeonDirector/Producer: Geoffrey SmithCo‑Producer: Rachel WexlerExecutive Producers: Simon Kilmurry, , Sally Jo Fifer, Nick Fraser, Greg SandersonOUTSTANDING NATURE PROGRAMMINGThe Last Beekeeper (Planet Green)Director: Jeremy SimmonsProducers: Fenton Bailey, Randy BarbatoBEST STORY IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTCBS Evening News with Katie Couric (CBS)The Battle of WanatAnchor and Managing Editor: Katie CouricNational Security Correspondent: David MartinExecutive Producer: Rick KaplanSenior Producer: Ward SloaneProducer: Mary WalshBEST REPORT IN A NEWS MAGAZINE60 Minutes (CBS)The Winter of Our Hardship and The Long RecessionExecutive Producer: Jeff FagerExecutive Editor: Bill OwensCorrespondent: Scott PelleyProducers: Solly Granatstein, Nicole YoungCo-Producers: Tom Honeysett, Matthew RichmanBEST DOCUMENTARYWar Dance (Sundance Channel)Directors: Sean Fine, Andrea Nix FineExecutive Producer: Susan MacLauryProducer: Albie HechtCo‑Producers: Kari Kim, Josie SwantekNEW APPROACHES TO NEWS &amp; DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMMING: CURRENT NEWS COVERAGEBehind the Veil (Globeandmail.com)Reporter: Jessica LeederPhotojournalist: Paula LernerMultimedia Producer: Jayson TaylorInteractive Designer: Chris ManzaNEW APPROACHES TO NEWS &amp; DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMMING: DOCUMENTARIESOne in 8 Million (NYTimes.com)Executive Producers: Juliet Gorman, Jodi Rudoren, Andrew De VigalSeries Producers: Sarah Kramer, Alexis Mainland, Meagan Looram, Todd HeislerInteractive Producer: Tom JacksonContributing Producers: Joshua Brustein, Jeffery DelViscio, Nancy Donaldson, Catrin Einhorn, Rogene Fisher, J. David Goodman, Lisa Iaboni, Miki Meek, Conrad Mulcahy, Emily S. Rueb, Tanzina Vega, Emily WeinsteinNEW APPROACHES TO NEWS &amp; DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMMING: ARTS, LIFESTYLE &amp; CULTUREThe Iconic Photo Series (TIME.com)Producer/Editor: Craig DuffPhotographer: Anthony SuauPhoto Editor: Mark RykoffOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: WRITINGNBC News Special (NBC)Inside the Obama White HouseWriters: Doug Adams, Marisa Buchanan, Robert Buchanan, Matt Carluccio, Katherine Chan, Bradley Davis, Subrata De, Joe Delmonico, Andrew Franklin, Annette Freeman, David Gelles, Meade Jorgensen, Mark Lukasiewicz, Amna Nawaz, Benita Noel, Meaghan Rady, Rayner Ramirez, Mary Ann Rotondi, Tim Uehlinger, Brian WilliamsOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: RESEARCHReel Impact Series (Planet Green)Split EstateResearchers: Debra Anderson, Mitchell Marti, Matt VestOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: CINEMATOGRAPHY - NATUREWild Pacific (Discovery Channel)SurvivorsCinematographers: Rod Clarke, Wade Fairley, Richard WollocombeOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: CINEMATOGRAPHY - NEWS COVERAGE / DOCUMENTARIESWar Dance (Sundance Channel)Director of Photography: Sean FineOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: EDITINGNational Geographic's Most Incredible Photos (National Geographic Channel)         Afghan WarriorEditor: Jeremy SieferOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: EDITING&ndash;QUICK TURNAROUNDNBC News Special (NBC)Inside the Obama White HouseEditors: Rob Allen, Chad Bergacs, Deb Brown, Bruce Burger, Saverio Camporeale, Sam Casalino, Justin Cece, Linda Diehl, David Emanuele, Victor Fabilli, Anthony Innarelli, Paul Nichols, Richard Platt, William Ray, Bob Spencer, Alvaro Trenchi, Irene Trullinger, David VargaOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: GRAPHIC DESIGN &amp; ART DIRECTIONStealing Lincoln's Body (History Channel)Graphic Designer: Ray DowningOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: MUSIC &amp; SOUNDWWII in HD (History Channel)Point of No ReturnSound Design and Mix: Joel RaabeAdditional Sound Design: Allison Casey, Brian Scibinico, Frank TurbeOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: LIGHTING DIRECTION &amp; SCENIC DESIGNCIA Confidential: Pakistan Undercover (National Geographic Channel)                                              Lighting Directors: Boujemaa Rassourance, Peter Schnall, Doug ShultzOUTSTANDING PROMOTIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT: INSTITUTIONAL60 Minutes (CBS)60 Minutes in 60 SecondsSenior Vice President and Creative Director: Dave McCoyDirector, Advertising &amp; Marketing: Julie HaalandDirector of Operations: Nicole FiftalProducer/Editor: Rich O'ConnellProducers: Joanne Stern, Charles HowlandSound Designers: Eric Casimiro, Daniel MaierEditor: Wes CarltonGraphic Designer: Adam SaulOUTSTANDING PROMOTIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT: EPISODICDiane Sawyer 20/20 Special (ABC)A Hidden America: Children of the MountainsExecutive Producer: Alan IvesSenior Producer: Rene Hallal-GonenProducer: Kevin SmallsArt Director: Rodrigo RedondoSound Designer/Editor: Leslie Mona-MathusOUTSTANDING REGIONAL NEWS STORY &ndash; SPOT NEWSKPIX Eyewitness News (KPIX‑TV, San Francisco)Oakland RiotReporters: Joe Vazquez, Linda YeeProducer: Brian NealPhotographers: Patrick Sedillo, Robert Moonan, Chris Mistrot, Don FordAssignment Editor: Leona WongOUTSTANDING REGIONAL NEWS STORY &ndash; INVESTIGATIVE REPORTINGKHOU News at 10 p.m. (KHOU‑TV, Houston)Soldiers at Risk: The Iraq Water InvestigationInvestigative Reporter: Jeremy RogalskiExecutive Producer for Investigations: David RaziqInvestigative Photojournalist: Keith TomsheKSTP 5 Eyewitness News (KSTP‑TV, Minneapolis)Prisoners Ride the BusInvestigative Reporter: Bob McNaneyProducer: Mike MaybayAssistant News Director: Sam ZeffBREAKDOWN BY PROGRAMCBS (7)60 Minutes (4)60 Minutes in 60 Seconds ...&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..................&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;... 1Saving Flight 1549 &hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..........................&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.... 1War in Pakistan &hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;......................&hellip;.......... 1The Winter of Our Hardship and the Long Recession &hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;....&hellip;........... 1CBS Evening News With Katie Couric (3)The Battle of Wanat &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;................ 1Financial Family Tree &hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.............. 1Rape in America &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;................ 1NBC (6)NBC News Special (2)Inside the Obama White House &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..........&hellip;...............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;... 2NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (2)Miracle on the Hudson &hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;..........&hellip;...............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;............... 1Unlikely Refugees &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;................&hellip;...............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;............. 1Dateline NBC (1)Miracle on the Hudson &hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;..........&hellip;...............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.............. 1Today (1)Fighting Grossmans &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.............&hellip;...............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;............ 1PBS (5)FRONTLINE (2)A Death in Tehran &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.....................................................................&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.. 1The Warning &hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.............................................................................&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip; 1Bill Moyers Journal (1)The Good Soldier &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;....&hellip; 1FRONTLINE/World (1)Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;...........................................&hellip;&hellip;&hellip; 1P.O.V. (1)The English Surgeon .&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;...............................................&hellip;&hellip;1ABC (2)ABC News Special Events (1)Inauguration 2009: Barack Obama &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip; 1Diane Sawyer 20/20 Special (1)A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;. 1HDNet (2)HDNet World Report (1)South Africa&rsquo;s Shame: Modern-Day Slavery and the World Cup &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;... 1Dan Rather Reports (1)Iran&rsquo;s Manhattan Project &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip; 1History Channel (2)Stealing Lincoln&rsquo;s Body (1)WWII in HD (1)Point of No Return &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip; 1National Geographic Channel (2)CIA Confidential: Pakistan Undercover(1)National Geographic&rsquo;s Most Incredible Photos (1)Afghan Warrior &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;...&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;....&hellip; 1Planet Green (2)The Last Beekeeper (1)Reel Impact Series (1)Split Estate &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.. 1Sundance Channel (2)War Dance (2)CNBC (1)Inside the Mind of Google (1)Discovery Channel (1)Wild Pacific (1)Survivors &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;............................................. 1Globeandmail.com (1)Behind the Veil (1)HBO (1)HBO Documentary Films (1)Which Way Home &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;............................ 1NYTimes.com (1)One in 8 Million (1)TIME.com (1)The Iconic Photo Series (1)VH1 (1)Anvil! The Story of Anvil (1)REGIONAL REPORTINGKHOU-TV (Houston, TX) (1)KHOU News at 10pm (1)Soldiers at Risk: The Iraq Water Investigation &hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;... 1KPIX-TV (San Francisco, CA) (1)KPIX Eyewitness News (1)Oakland Riot &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip; 1KSTP-TV (Minneapolis, MN) (1)KSTP 5 Eyewitness News (1)Prisoners Ride the Bus &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.... 1]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Digital" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Syndication" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   <category term="9624" label="awards" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="11" label="CBS" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="5536" label="documentary" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="3200" label="Emmy" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="439" label="News" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[CBS News led the winners of the National Academy of Television Arts &amp; Sciences' 31st annual News &amp; Documentary Emmy Awards Monday night, taking a total of seven awards.CBS was recognized for &quot;60 Minutes,&quot; which notched four wins, and &quot;CBS Evening News With Katie Couric,&quot; which took three honors.NBC News  and PBS closely followed CBS, winning six and five awards, respectively.ABC, HDNet, History Channel, National Geographic Channel, Planet Green and Sundance Channel each scored two wins, and CNBC, Discovery Channel, Globeandmail.com, HBO, NYTimes.com, TIME.com and VH1 were awarded one Emmy apiece.KPIX-TV, San Francisco, KSTP-TV, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and KHOU-TV, Houston, took the News &amp; Documentary Emmys for regional reporting.The News &amp; Documentary Emmys were presented at a ceremony at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, located in the Time Warner Center in New York City. The ceremony will be broadcast Oct. 9 at 8 p.m. ET on C-SPAN.A complete list of winners follows:OUTSTANDING COVERAGE OF A BREAKING NEWS STORY IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTNBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (NBC)Miracle on the HudsonAnchor and Managing Editor: Brian WilliamsExecutive Producer: Bob EpsteinSenior Broadcast Producer: Patrick Burkey, Aurelia GraysonDirector: Brett HoleySenior Producers: Subrata De, Mary Laurence Flynn, Tracey Lyons, Albert OetgenSupervising Producer: Jay BlackmanCorrespondents: Robert Bazell, Tom Costello, Rehema Ellis, Martin Fletcher, Mike Taibbi, Chuck ToddProducers: Donna Bass, Beverly Chase, Christine Colvin, Bob Croce, Tom Dawson, Clare Duffy, Carol Eggers, Lauren Fairbanks, Andy Franklin, Anthony Galloway, Mario Garcia, Hilary Guy, Jody Henenfeld, Robert Kaplan, Maggie Kassner, Susan Kroll, Victor Limjoco, Daniel Linden, Carla Marcus, Megan Marcus, Daniel Nagin, Samuel Singal, Robin Skolnick, Christina Vallice, Kelly VenardosOUTSTANDING CONTINUING COVERAGE OF A NEWS STORY IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTNBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (NBC)Unlikely RefugesAnchor and Managing Editor: Brian WilliamsExecutive Producer: Bob EpsteinSenior Broadcast Producer: Aurelia GraysonDirector: Brett HoleySenior Producer: Mary Laurence FlynnCorrespondents: Richard Engel, Adrienne MongProducers: Maria Alcon, Bredun Edwards, Madeleine Haeringer, Maggie Kassner, Paul Nassar,Matt Softley, Rachele WebbOUTSTANDING FEATURE STORY IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTToday (NBC)Fighting GrossmansProducer: Amanda Marshall, David EmanueleCorrespondent: Bob DotsonOUTSTANDING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTCBS Evening News with Katie Couric (CBS)Rape in America: Justice DeniedAnchor and Managing Editor: Katie CouricExecutive Producer: Rick KaplanSenior Producer: Keith SummaProducer: Laura StricklerChief Investigative Correspondent: Armen KeteyianOUTSTANDING BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC REPORTING IN A REGULARY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTCBS Evening News with Katie Couric (CBS)Financial Family TreeAnchor and Managing Editor: Katie CouricExecutive Producer: Rick KaplanSenior Producer: Kim GodwinProducers: Brandon Baur, Marsha Cooke, Erin George, Chris WeicherCorrespondents: John Blackstone, Cynthia Bowers, Kelly Cobiella, Barry PetersonOUTSTANDING COVERAGE OF A BREAKING NEWS STORY IN A NEWS MAGAZINEDateline NBC (NBC)Miracle on the HudsonExecutive Producer: David CorvoExecutive Editor: Liz ColeManaging Editor: Aretha MarshallDirectors: John Libretto, Judith FarinetSenior Producers: Ellen Mason, Jim GeretySenior Producers: Liz Cole, Ellen MasonSupervising Producer: Joe DelmonicoAnchor: Ann CurryCorrespondents: Peter Greenberg, Chris Hansen, Hoda Kotb, Dennis MurphyProducers: Tim Beacham, John Block, Katherine Chan, Bradley Davis, Cameo George, Bob Gilmartin, Marianne Haggerty, Meade Jorgensen, Sarah Longden, Marianne O'Donnell, Robin Oelkers, Mary Ann Rotondi, Susan Simpson, Dan Slepian, Justin Smith, Jane EStone, Tim Uehlinger, Esther ZuckerField Producers: Falguni Lakhani, Alex Waterfield, Katie YuCoordinating Producer: Biju MathewOUTSTANDING CONTINUING COVERAGE OF A NEWS STORY IN A NEWS MAGAZINE60 Minutes (CBS)War in PakistanExecutive Producer: Jeff FagerExecutive Editor: Bill OwensProducer: Draggan MihailovichCorrespondent: Steve KroftOUTSTANDING FEATURE STORY IN A NEWS MAGAZINEHDNet World Report (HDNet)South Africa's Shame: Modern‑Day Slavery and the World CupExecutive Producer: Dennis O'BrienSenior Producer: Kathy GettingsProducer: Gareth HarveyCorrespondent: Paul BebanOUTSTANDING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM IN A NEWS MAGAZINEFRONTLINE/World (PBS)Ghana: Digital Dumping GroundExecutive Producer: David FanningSenior Producers: Ken DornsteinSeries Executive Director: Sharon TillerProducer/Correspondent: Peter KleinProducer: Sarah CarterCo-Producers: Shira Bick, Ian Bickis, Krysia Collyer, Allison Cross, Heba Elasaad, Dan Haves, Doerthe Keilholz, Jodie Martinson, Dan McKinney, Blake Sifton, Leslie YoungOUTSTANDING BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC REPORTING IN A NEWS MAGAZINEDan Rather Reports (HDNet)Iran's Manhattan ProjectCorrespondent and Managing Editor: Dan RatherExecutive Producer: Wayne NelsonSenior Producer: Elliot KirschnerProducer: Andrew GlazerOUTSTANDING LIVE COVERAGE OF A CURRENT NEWS STORY &ndash; LONG FORMABC News Special Events (ABC)Inauguration 2009 ‑ Barack ObamaExecutive Producer: Marc BursteinExecutive Director: Roger GoodmanAnchors: Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer, George StephanopoulosAnchor/Correspondents: Robin Roberts, Ron Claiborne, Chris Cuomo, Sam Donaldson, JohnDonvan, Dan Harris, Jonathan Karl, Cynthia McFadden, Terry Moran, David Muir, Martha Raddatz, Cokie Roberts, Deborah Roberts, Brian Ross, Claire Shipman, Kate Snow, Betsy Stark, Lisa Stark, Jake Tapper, Pierre Thomas, Barbara Walters, Bill Weir, Bob WoodruffSenior Producers: Bob Wheelock, Paula Cohen, Richard Sergay, Laiea Smith, Joan Preztunik, Bob Roy, Nancy Gabriner, Ricki Goldberg, Kathy O&rsquo;Hearn, Andrew MorseProducers: Annie Allen, Perita Carpenter, Teddy Davis, Jonathan Greenberger, Farnaz Haghighi, Sally Hawkins, Akilah Joseph, Lourdes Leahy, Mary Wojcik, Sunlen Miller, Eric Noll, Andrea Owen, Lana Zak, Margaret Aro, Katie Munley, Susan Archer, Ben NewmanRemote Location Producers: Stephanie Smith, Avery Miller, Dena Norland, Clayton Sandell, Quiana Burns, Matt Hosford, Kirit Radia, Drew Millhon, Courtney Chapman, Jon Garcia, Brett Hovell, Richard Coolidge, Tom Giusto, Lisa Chinn, Jen Duck, Susan Kriskey, Matt Jaffee, Jack Date, Bruno Roeber, Margaret Conley, Nick Schifrin, Ann Marie Dorning, George Pilla, Lee Alexander, Glen DacyOUTSTANDING CONTINUING COVERAGE OF A NEWS STORY &ndash; LONG FORMFRONTLINE (PBS)A Death in TehranExecutive Producer: David Fanning, Angus MacQueenSenior Producers: Raney Aronson‑Rath, Ken DornsteinProducer: Monica Garnsey, Arash SahamiOUTSTANDING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM &ndash; LONG FORMFRONTLINE (PBS)The WarningProducer/Director: Michael KirkProducer/Reporter: Jim GilmoreProducer: Mike WiserExecutive Producer: David FanningSenior Producer: Raney Aronson‑RathOUTSTANDING INFORMATIONAL PROGRAMMING &ndash; LONG FORMHBO Documentary Films (HBO)Which Way HomeDirector/Producer: Rebecca CammisaField Producers: Nina Alvarez, Eric Goethals, Lorenzo Hagerman, Alejandra Liceaga, Stephany Slaughter, Gabriela Sosa, Sascha WeissExecutive Producers: Bristol Baughan, Lianne Halfon, Bette Cerf Hill, John Malkovich, Sheila Nevins, Russell Smith, Jack TurnerSupervising Producer: Sara BernsteinOUTSTANDING HISTORICAL PROGRAMMING &ndash; LONG FORMBill Moyers Journal (PBS)The Good SoldierFor Out of the Blue Productions, Inc.Producer/Directors: Lexy Lovell, Michael UysFor Bill Moyers JournalExecutive Producers: Judy Doctoroff O'Neill, Sally RoyExecutive Editors: Bill Moyers, Judith Davidson MoyersProducer: Jessica WangOUTSTANDING BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC REPORTING &ndash; LONG FORMInside the Mind of Google (CNBC)Correspondent: Maria BartiromoSenior Executive Producer: Mitch WeitznerSenior Producer: Wally GriffithProducer: Morgan DownsContributing Producer: Lulu ChiangOUTSTANDING INTERVIEW60 Minutes (CBS)Saving Flight 1549Executive Producer: Jeff FagerExecutive Editor: Bill OwensCorrespondent: Katie CouricSenior Producer: Michael RadutzkyProducers: Lori Beecher, Tanya SimonCo‑Producers: Jenny Dubin, Andrew MetzOUTSTANDING ARTS &amp; CULTURE PROGRAMMINGAnvil! The Story of Anvil (VH1)Executive Producer/Director: Sacha GervasiProducer: Rebecca YeldhamExecutive Producers: Brad Abramson, Rick Krim, Christopher Soos, Shelly TatroSupervising Producer: Warren CohenOUTSTANDING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMMINGPOV (PBS)The English SurgeonDirector/Producer: Geoffrey SmithCo‑Producer: Rachel WexlerExecutive Producers: Simon Kilmurry, , Sally Jo Fifer, Nick Fraser, Greg SandersonOUTSTANDING NATURE PROGRAMMINGThe Last Beekeeper (Planet Green)Director: Jeremy SimmonsProducers: Fenton Bailey, Randy BarbatoBEST STORY IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCASTCBS Evening News with Katie Couric (CBS)The Battle of WanatAnchor and Managing Editor: Katie CouricNational Security Correspondent: David MartinExecutive Producer: Rick KaplanSenior Producer: Ward SloaneProducer: Mary WalshBEST REPORT IN A NEWS MAGAZINE60 Minutes (CBS)The Winter of Our Hardship and The Long RecessionExecutive Producer: Jeff FagerExecutive Editor: Bill OwensCorrespondent: Scott PelleyProducers: Solly Granatstein, Nicole YoungCo-Producers: Tom Honeysett, Matthew RichmanBEST DOCUMENTARYWar Dance (Sundance Channel)Directors: Sean Fine, Andrea Nix FineExecutive Producer: Susan MacLauryProducer: Albie HechtCo‑Producers: Kari Kim, Josie SwantekNEW APPROACHES TO NEWS &amp; DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMMING: CURRENT NEWS COVERAGEBehind the Veil (Globeandmail.com)Reporter: Jessica LeederPhotojournalist: Paula LernerMultimedia Producer: Jayson TaylorInteractive Designer: Chris ManzaNEW APPROACHES TO NEWS &amp; DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMMING: DOCUMENTARIESOne in 8 Million (NYTimes.com)Executive Producers: Juliet Gorman, Jodi Rudoren, Andrew De VigalSeries Producers: Sarah Kramer, Alexis Mainland, Meagan Looram, Todd HeislerInteractive Producer: Tom JacksonContributing Producers: Joshua Brustein, Jeffery DelViscio, Nancy Donaldson, Catrin Einhorn, Rogene Fisher, J. David Goodman, Lisa Iaboni, Miki Meek, Conrad Mulcahy, Emily S. Rueb, Tanzina Vega, Emily WeinsteinNEW APPROACHES TO NEWS &amp; DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMMING: ARTS, LIFESTYLE &amp; CULTUREThe Iconic Photo Series (TIME.com)Producer/Editor: Craig DuffPhotographer: Anthony SuauPhoto Editor: Mark RykoffOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: WRITINGNBC News Special (NBC)Inside the Obama White HouseWriters: Doug Adams, Marisa Buchanan, Robert Buchanan, Matt Carluccio, Katherine Chan, Bradley Davis, Subrata De, Joe Delmonico, Andrew Franklin, Annette Freeman, David Gelles, Meade Jorgensen, Mark Lukasiewicz, Amna Nawaz, Benita Noel, Meaghan Rady, Rayner Ramirez, Mary Ann Rotondi, Tim Uehlinger, Brian WilliamsOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: RESEARCHReel Impact Series (Planet Green)Split EstateResearchers: Debra Anderson, Mitchell Marti, Matt VestOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: CINEMATOGRAPHY - NATUREWild Pacific (Discovery Channel)SurvivorsCinematographers: Rod Clarke, Wade Fairley, Richard WollocombeOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: CINEMATOGRAPHY - NEWS COVERAGE / DOCUMENTARIESWar Dance (Sundance Channel)Director of Photography: Sean FineOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: EDITINGNational Geographic's Most Incredible Photos (National Geographic Channel)         Afghan WarriorEditor: Jeremy SieferOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: EDITING&ndash;QUICK TURNAROUNDNBC News Special (NBC)Inside the Obama White HouseEditors: Rob Allen, Chad Bergacs, Deb Brown, Bruce Burger, Saverio Camporeale, Sam Casalino, Justin Cece, Linda Diehl, David Emanuele, Victor Fabilli, Anthony Innarelli, Paul Nichols, Richard Platt, William Ray, Bob Spencer, Alvaro Trenchi, Irene Trullinger, David VargaOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: GRAPHIC DESIGN &amp; ART DIRECTIONStealing Lincoln's Body (History Channel)Graphic Designer: Ray DowningOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: MUSIC &amp; SOUNDWWII in HD (History Channel)Point of No ReturnSound Design and Mix: Joel RaabeAdditional Sound Design: Allison Casey, Brian Scibinico, Frank TurbeOUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A CRAFT: LIGHTING DIRECTION &amp; SCENIC DESIGNCIA Confidential: Pakistan Undercover (National Geographic Channel)                                              Lighting Directors: Boujemaa Rassourance, Peter Schnall, Doug ShultzOUTSTANDING PROMOTIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT: INSTITUTIONAL60 Minutes (CBS)60 Minutes in 60 SecondsSenior Vice President and Creative Director: Dave McCoyDirector, Advertising &amp; Marketing: Julie HaalandDirector of Operations: Nicole FiftalProducer/Editor: Rich O'ConnellProducers: Joanne Stern, Charles HowlandSound Designers: Eric Casimiro, Daniel MaierEditor: Wes CarltonGraphic Designer: Adam SaulOUTSTANDING PROMOTIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT: EPISODICDiane Sawyer 20/20 Special (ABC)A Hidden America: Children of the MountainsExecutive Producer: Alan IvesSenior Producer: Rene Hallal-GonenProducer: Kevin SmallsArt Director: Rodrigo RedondoSound Designer/Editor: Leslie Mona-MathusOUTSTANDING REGIONAL NEWS STORY &ndash; SPOT NEWSKPIX Eyewitness News (KPIX‑TV, San Francisco)Oakland RiotReporters: Joe Vazquez, Linda YeeProducer: Brian NealPhotographers: Patrick Sedillo, Robert Moonan, Chris Mistrot, Don FordAssignment Editor: Leona WongOUTSTANDING REGIONAL NEWS STORY &ndash; INVESTIGATIVE REPORTINGKHOU News at 10 p.m. (KHOU‑TV, Houston)Soldiers at Risk: The Iraq Water InvestigationInvestigative Reporter: Jeremy RogalskiExecutive Producer for Investigations: David RaziqInvestigative Photojournalist: Keith TomsheKSTP 5 Eyewitness News (KSTP‑TV, Minneapolis)Prisoners Ride the BusInvestigative Reporter: Bob McNaneyProducer: Mike MaybayAssistant News Director: Sam ZeffBREAKDOWN BY PROGRAMCBS (7)60 Minutes (4)60 Minutes in 60 Seconds ...&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..................&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;... 1Saving Flight 1549 &hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..........................&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.... 1War in Pakistan &hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;......................&hellip;.......... 1The Winter of Our Hardship and the Long Recession &hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;....&hellip;........... 1CBS Evening News With Katie Couric (3)The Battle of Wanat &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;................ 1Financial Family Tree &hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.............. 1Rape in America &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;................ 1NBC (6)NBC News Special (2)Inside the Obama White House &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..........&hellip;...............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;... 2NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (2)Miracle on the Hudson &hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;..........&hellip;...............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;............... 1Unlikely Refugees &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;................&hellip;...............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;............. 1Dateline NBC (1)Miracle on the Hudson &hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;..........&hellip;...............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.............. 1Today (1)Fighting Grossmans &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.............&hellip;...............&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;............ 1PBS (5)FRONTLINE (2)A Death in Tehran &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.....................................................................&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.. 1The Warning &hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.............................................................................&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip; 1Bill Moyers Journal (1)The Good Soldier &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;....&hellip; 1FRONTLINE/World (1)Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;...........................................&hellip;&hellip;&hellip; 1P.O.V. (1)The English Surgeon .&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;...............................................&hellip;&hellip;1ABC (2)ABC News Special Events (1)Inauguration 2009: Barack Obama &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip; 1Diane Sawyer 20/20 Special (1)A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;. 1HDNet (2)HDNet World Report (1)South Africa&rsquo;s Shame: Modern-Day Slavery and the World Cup &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;... 1Dan Rather Reports (1)Iran&rsquo;s Manhattan Project &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip; 1History Channel (2)Stealing Lincoln&rsquo;s Body (1)WWII in HD (1)Point of No Return &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip; 1National Geographic Channel (2)CIA Confidential: Pakistan Undercover(1)National Geographic&rsquo;s Most Incredible Photos (1)Afghan Warrior &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;...&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;....&hellip; 1Planet Green (2)The Last Beekeeper (1)Reel Impact Series (1)Split Estate &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.. 1Sundance Channel (2)War Dance (2)CNBC (1)Inside the Mind of Google (1)Discovery Channel (1)Wild Pacific (1)Survivors &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;............................................. 1Globeandmail.com (1)Behind the Veil (1)HBO (1)HBO Documentary Films (1)Which Way Home &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;............................ 1NYTimes.com (1)One in 8 Million (1)TIME.com (1)The Iconic Photo Series (1)VH1 (1)Anvil! The Story of Anvil (1)REGIONAL REPORTINGKHOU-TV (Houston, TX) (1)KHOU News at 10pm (1)Soldiers at Risk: The Iraq Water Investigation &hellip;&hellip;.&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;... 1KPIX-TV (San Francisco, CA) (1)KPIX Eyewitness News (1)Oakland Riot &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip; 1KSTP-TV (Minneapolis, MN) (1)KSTP 5 Eyewitness News (1)Prisoners Ride the Bus &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.... 1]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>Program for the News &amp; Documentary Emmys, to Be Presented Tonight</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/09/news_and_documentary_emmys_to.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.43943</id>
   
   <published>2010-09-26T23:14:10Z</published>
   <updated>2010-09-27T03:22:53Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[The 31st Annual News &amp; Documentary Emmy Awards will be presented Monday night by the National Academy of Television Arts &amp; Sciences (NATAS) at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, located in the Time Warner Center in New York City.Awards will be handed out in 41 categories, including Breaking News, Investigative Reporting, Outstanding Interview and Best Documentary, among others.&ldquo;From the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the struggling American economy, to the inauguration of Barack Obama, 2009 was a significant year for major news stories,&rdquo; said&nbsp;News &amp; Documentary Emmy Awards Chairman&nbsp;Bill Small. &ldquo;The journalists and documentary filmmakers nominated this year have educated viewers in understanding some of the most compelling issues of our time, and we salute them for their efforts.&rdquo;Click here to see complete program for the event.&nbsp;]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Digital" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   <category term="10663" label="Awards" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="5536" label="documentary" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="3200" label="Emmy" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="439" label="News" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[The 31st Annual News &amp; Documentary Emmy Awards will be presented Monday night by the National Academy of Television Arts &amp; Sciences (NATAS) at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, located in the Time Warner Center in New York City.Awards will be handed out in 41 categories, including Breaking News, Investigative Reporting, Outstanding Interview and Best Documentary, among others.&ldquo;From the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the struggling American economy, to the inauguration of Barack Obama, 2009 was a significant year for major news stories,&rdquo; said&nbsp;News &amp; Documentary Emmy Awards Chairman&nbsp;Bill Small. &ldquo;The journalists and documentary filmmakers nominated this year have educated viewers in understanding some of the most compelling issues of our time, and we salute them for their efforts.&rdquo;Click here to see complete program for the event.&nbsp;]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>Bill Abbott, President and CEO of the Hallmark Channels, Who Came Up on the Ad Side of the Business, On the Importance of Brand Strategy</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/05/bill_abbott_president_and_ceo.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41675</id>
   
   <published>2010-05-05T20:21:16Z</published>
   <updated>2010-05-05T21:14:01Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[Clearly, over the past two decades, one of the smartest, yet unsung,&nbsp;ad sales executives in the TV business has been Bill Abbott, first at Fox Family and Fox Kids, and then at Hallmark. One of the hallmarks of his career, if you'll excuse the pun, has been his ability to mesh the brands he's been selling with the brands of his client in win-win situations that not not only make sense for those on both sides of the negotiating table, but for&nbsp;viewers and consumers as well.With Abbott's ascension to the top spot at Hallmark, as its President and CEO, TVWeek's Chuck Ross caught up with&nbsp;him to talk about brand stategy, particularly that of the Hallmark Channel, and its importance on the eve of the Upfront marketplace. An edited transcript follows.TVWEEK: Having covered the advertising and media and TV businesses for more than three decades, I&rsquo;ve always been struck that there are not more heads of networks who have come up on the ad sales side of the business. I was fairly close to Larry Divney, who came up from ad sales and eventually ran Comedy Central. Has the fact it doesn&rsquo;t happen more often struck you as well?BILL ABBOTT: You&rsquo;re right. It&rsquo;s odd to me why it doesn&rsquo;t happen more often. Ad sales provides such a great platform on how to learn the business. There&rsquo;s no business that ad sales really doesn&rsquo;t touch.TVWEEK: Absolutely.ABBOTT: You&rsquo;re intimately involved in the finances and economics. You&rsquo;re intimately involved in the ratings and the programming decisions that get made, and why certain things are scheduled and why they work. And certainly from a marketing point of view, there&rsquo;s no one better qualified to think about marketing than people who are out selling the product.So it&rsquo;s odd to me that more ad sales people aren&rsquo;t tapped to&nbsp;run networks.&nbsp;But then you look at history, and while there aren&rsquo;t that many&nbsp;out of ad sales, certainly some of the ones that have been the most successful in the business were out of ad sales. From Mark Lazarus, who used to be at Turner, to David Levy, who&rsquo;s there now, to Charlie Collier, who runs AMC, all remarkably successful in their own right.TVWEEK: Absolutely.ABBOTT: But that makes it all the more interesting why ad sales isn&rsquo;t a bigger breeding ground. I could not ask for a better area to have been trained within and have grown up within than ad sales and research, which is the better part of my background. The learning that you get from those areas is really critical to how you run the business.TVWEEK: Is running a network something in the back of your mind you&rsquo;d hope your career path would lead to at some point?ABBOTT: I think so. I think that I&rsquo;ve always felt like a research background certainly, along with the strategy and financial understanding of the business that ad sales provides, puts you in a position where you hope to gain more responsibility and take it to a new level. I&rsquo;ve been fortunate in that I&rsquo;ve been in management for a long part of my career, for almost 20 years.TVWEEK: How long exactly have you been at Hallmark now?ABBOTT: Just over 10 years, at this point, at Hallmark. I was at what was a combination of Family Channel, Fox Family and ABC Family over a 12-year period before being at Hallmark.TVWEEK: As you&rsquo;ve looked at how Hallmark has evolved, how did you decide where you wanted to take it and how are you going about taking it where you want it to go?ABBOTT: I think if you look at the channel we&rsquo;ve had remarkable success: a very highly-rated property that&rsquo;s grown distribution to be fully distributed over the years. We had a lot of product that was highly-rated, but wasn&rsquo;t necessarily tied as much to the brand as we would like.So, when I took over in May, we developed a new mission statement and vision around how we can celebrate life&rsquo;s special moments everyday, which we feel is very much is in line with what the essence of Hallmark really is.You look at the Hallmark television business and there&rsquo;s certainly their heritage and legacy and award-winning Hallmark Hall of Fame&mdash;the quality and the high ratings there, and that&rsquo;s a very important part of who we are that will ultimately be our Hallmark Movie Channel. It&rsquo;s in 35 million homes, on its way to 40 million pretty quickly here. It&rsquo;s becoming a strong service in its own right.And then we look at the Hallmark Channel, and we thought about what direction that might go. We came to the conclusion that, in terms of helping celebrate life&rsquo;s special moments everyday, we could really tap into that part of the Hallmark brand that up until now has not been reflected on TV.That would be holidays and events and cooking and decorating and different things people do everyday to celebrate life and that lifestyle category area. And so the direction we have gone in is really beginning to develop the channel towards more of that lifestyle celebration mood.TVWEEK: Can you tell me how that evolution led you to get Martha Stewart involved? I&rsquo;m assuming that as you were sitting there brainstorming about this lifestyle direction you wanted to move the channel towards that getting somehow involved with Stewart was high on your wish list.ABBOTT: We were fortunate that the stars were really aligned. If you sat for two weeks, you couldn&rsquo;t come up with a better name than Martha Stewart in terms of helping celebrate life&rsquo;s special moments everyday. She is the ultimate banner ad for that type of product.Fortunately, they also had been thinking about a little bit of a different business model in that syndication [which is the TV business Stewart was in] doesn&rsquo;t provide that consistent day and date opportunity that cable does. And as we developed our definition of who we wanted to be and we started having conversations with them, we started to make it a bigger proposition. And they started to see a bigger opportunity with Omnimedia and across the different talent that Martha has at Omnimedia and had really vested so well.So you begin to see that it&rsquo;s more than just &lsquo;The Martha Stewart Show&rsquo; and that you have the opportunity to develop a fully integrated lifestyle block on multiple platforms. And that lifestyle block speaks to the strengths of both Hallmark and Martha Stewart. That&rsquo;s really where the conversation went, actually very, very quickly once we got in the same room and we started to brainstorm about Martha.It wasn&rsquo;t &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s just take &lsquo;The Martha Stewart Show&rsquo; and move it from syndication to cable&rsquo; but, &lsquo;How can we make this a bigger, better partnership.&rsquo; And I give [Omnimedia Chairman] Charles Koppleman and Martha full credit for recognizing the opportunity and the value of what a 24/7 cable platform can do to help them develop their properties and products and how they can help us develop our channel.TVWEEK: Makes a lot of sense. As you look across the landscape, is something you pay attention to a lot the competition? Is it important to be real differentiated? Do you see Scripps as competition? Maybe the new Oprah channel with Discovery?ABBOTT: Certainly, Food Network and HGTV are the leaders in this category. They&rsquo;ve done a great job of branding themselves and really being consistent. That would be competition.Some of what Discovery has done would be competition. The Oprah channel is clearly undefined at this point, so it&rsquo;s really hard to view that as surely as competition.We can compete from day one with a personality and profile like Martha Stewart. We don&rsquo;t have to take a backseat to anyone in this lifestyle category. We feel that we will be competitive, if not better, quite frankly, right out of the gate than those channels who don&rsquo;t have a profile like Martha on their air. We still feel there&rsquo;s a lot of room in this area to navigate, and with our brand and our heritage and our ability to really represent so much of how people connect and people live day-to-day, we think we have a great opportunity to be highly, highly successful here.TVWEEK: Can you talk a little bit about how you&rsquo;d like to see advertising integrated in your vision?ABBOTT: There&rsquo;s no question as technology changes and changes the way viewers watch TV, we&rsquo;re all going to have to be a lot more responsive to the needs of advertisers. And I think you&rsquo;re seeing that on an evolutionary basis.I would say the death of the :30 has long since been overblown. But, the reality is we do need to be more responsive, we do need to look for unique ways in which we can embed an advertiser&rsquo;s message seamlessly into our product and into the development process. It&rsquo;ll make TV, I think, more valuable and certainly more appreciated. And it&rsquo;s creative, innovative ideas like that that we struggle with and work toward developing everyday.The lifestyle block is one that is particularly conducive to that type of activity. It&rsquo;s easier, I think, in lifestyle to place products seamlessly into the content. But certainly, we need to be true to our brand and we need to be carefully that we don&rsquo;t over do it and that we be sensitive to the value that we&rsquo;re creating for others when we do do it.TVWEEK: Can you talk a little bit about social media? That&rsquo;s obviously become a buzzword in the last year. Where you see Hallmark fitting with that phenomenon?ABBOTT: It&rsquo;s certainly real in terms of it being a phenomenon, but the real question is: What&rsquo;s the business model? We haven&rsquo;t certainly figured it out here, and that&rsquo;s one we&rsquo;re staying attuned to.Martha and Omnimedia have done a great job about being on the forefront of technology and having different applications around decorating and cooking and things that are really very, very relevant. As we develop our lifestyle area, we&rsquo;ll certainly play more in that space and whole digital arena as a rule. But, right now, it&rsquo;s not necessarily something we can point to as being a leader in.TVWEEK: Do you see the digital platforms as being more promotionally oriented and pointing viewers to the on-air products that you offer, or will they have a life of their own?ABBOTT: I see that as being a big change for us. That&rsquo;s one of the beauties as we move more towards this different side of the brand and are less focused and reliant on off-network acquisitions.When you&rsquo;re 100% reliant on scripted series that you acquire from a distributor, you have very little opportunity to play in the digital space. Here, we&rsquo;re going to have reasons to drive people to the Internet more than just information around what&rsquo;s on our air.We will have different opportunities to develop content that will speak to viewers&rsquo; interests in whatever we have on our network. And we&rsquo;ll make that a legitimate, vibrant business for us moving forward. It&rsquo;s something that we&rsquo;re thinking about everyday. It&rsquo;s something that we are very, very focused on.TVWEEK: As an independent channel, does it make sense in any way to do some sort of alliance?ABBOTT: We&rsquo;re open to forming relationships and partnerships, and you look at our partnership with Omnimedia, I would certainly put that in the alliance category, whether formal or informal.But, I think that the real issue there is that as our competitors get bigger and bigger and more complicated, ultimately some of what they have bought comes into question and they have to use their own leverage to leverage their own weaker sisters. You look at how big NBC is, and how big that whole organization will be with Comcast. There will be networks that they&rsquo;ll have to leverage to get favors in other cases. So there isn&rsquo;t an awful lot of room.You know, size cuts both ways. Too big, and you&rsquo;re in a position to have to protect your weaker properties. In a down market, being too big can be problematic, in that you&rsquo;ve got a lot of money to place on the agency side of the perspective, or you&rsquo;ve got a lot of different masters to satisfy.I&rsquo;m not so sure that that is necessarily, within the big companies, the way we want to go. With smaller organizations, certainly if we could develop some alliance that pullstogether some of those that aren&rsquo;t under big corporate umbrellas, that might be something smart to do. Overall, the big conglomerates probably are looking for alliances because they&rsquo;ve got an awful lot to leverage themselves. We wouldn&rsquo;t want to be part of anything where we would be the leveragee.TVWEEK: As we move closer toward the upfront, are there particular categories that you hope you&rsquo;ll do better in than you have in the past because of this new strategy?ABBOTT: We have already had an extremely high interest level from a number of categories, everything from automotives to financials to travel categories, that we have had a very difficult time playing in before.And there are many reasons for that. One is certainly the nature of the product is more geared toward potentially having different elements that could be incorporated within our actual content. And that our viewership will migrate much more towards a top 20 market, upper income level than we have been historically. So we are seeing a lot of activity from those clients that happen to target a more upscale adult 25-54 demographic than we have historically delivered. We are optimistic that we are going to have a robust upfront.TVWEEK: How important do you think measurement is going forward? How granular do we need to be?ABBOTT: It&rsquo;s critical. Speaking candidly, it&rsquo;s very frustrating to see so much fluctuation in the numbers and so much instability in the sample sizes where it&rsquo;s at.The question is what the right metric is. I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s second-by-second or anything that extreme. But, I do think there&rsquo;s got to be a better way given where technology is. And frankly to compete with the Internet, I think it&rsquo;s very important that television develop some type of system that is more scientific and is more reliable, quite frankly, that what we have.This is very, very important. We&rsquo;re lucky we have people who are as brilliant as Reno [Scanzoni at Group M and TVWeek&rsquo;s 2010 Media Buyer of the Year] in the process who are on it. I&rsquo;m sure everyday, when he sees the numbers, it drives him as crazy as it does the rest us in the business. To be competitive moving forward as a medium, television needs to step up and figure out ways to gain a better understanding of what actually is going on out there.TVWEEK: Anything you want to add?ABBOTT: I think at the end of the day, we are in a great position with not only our lifestyle content but with our original movies. We&rsquo;re producing 24 original movies in 2010 with two of those on our movie channel. It&rsquo;s a big commitment to the Hallmark Movie Channel, which became measured in the second quarter and that is a growing and vibrant and viable property. Our holiday effort will continue here moving forward. We had our highest rated holiday in our history recently, and our Countdown to Christmas and Countdown to Holidays have been remarkably successful. We have a lot going on here other than just that lifestyle, Martha Stewart area. That&rsquo;s all very, very exciting and we&rsquo;re all optimistic about our future. #]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Chuck Ross</name>
      
   </author>
   
      <category term="Advertising" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Business" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Digital" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Syndication" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   <category term="16893" label="Abbott" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="2090" label="Ad Sales" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="410" label="advertising" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="16894" label="Branding" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="1049" label="Hallmark" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="16895" label="integration" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="9481" label="Martha Stewart" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   <category term="16896" label="re-branding" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag" />
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[Clearly, over the past two decades, one of the smartest, yet unsung,&nbsp;ad sales executives in the TV business has been Bill Abbott, first at Fox Family and Fox Kids, and then at Hallmark. One of the hallmarks of his career, if you'll excuse the pun, has been his ability to mesh the brands he's been selling with the brands of his client in win-win situations that not not only make sense for those on both sides of the negotiating table, but for&nbsp;viewers and consumers as well.With Abbott's ascension to the top spot at Hallmark, as its President and CEO, TVWeek's Chuck Ross caught up with&nbsp;him to talk about brand stategy, particularly that of the Hallmark Channel, and its importance on the eve of the Upfront marketplace. An edited transcript follows.TVWEEK: Having covered the advertising and media and TV businesses for more than three decades, I&rsquo;ve always been struck that there are not more heads of networks who have come up on the ad sales side of the business. I was fairly close to Larry Divney, who came up from ad sales and eventually ran Comedy Central. Has the fact it doesn&rsquo;t happen more often struck you as well?BILL ABBOTT: You&rsquo;re right. It&rsquo;s odd to me why it doesn&rsquo;t happen more often. Ad sales provides such a great platform on how to learn the business. There&rsquo;s no business that ad sales really doesn&rsquo;t touch.TVWEEK: Absolutely.ABBOTT: You&rsquo;re intimately involved in the finances and economics. You&rsquo;re intimately involved in the ratings and the programming decisions that get made, and why certain things are scheduled and why they work. And certainly from a marketing point of view, there&rsquo;s no one better qualified to think about marketing than people who are out selling the product.So it&rsquo;s odd to me that more ad sales people aren&rsquo;t tapped to&nbsp;run networks.&nbsp;But then you look at history, and while there aren&rsquo;t that many&nbsp;out of ad sales, certainly some of the ones that have been the most successful in the business were out of ad sales. From Mark Lazarus, who used to be at Turner, to David Levy, who&rsquo;s there now, to Charlie Collier, who runs AMC, all remarkably successful in their own right.TVWEEK: Absolutely.ABBOTT: But that makes it all the more interesting why ad sales isn&rsquo;t a bigger breeding ground. I could not ask for a better area to have been trained within and have grown up within than ad sales and research, which is the better part of my background. The learning that you get from those areas is really critical to how you run the business.TVWEEK: Is running a network something in the back of your mind you&rsquo;d hope your career path would lead to at some point?ABBOTT: I think so. I think that I&rsquo;ve always felt like a research background certainly, along with the strategy and financial understanding of the business that ad sales provides, puts you in a position where you hope to gain more responsibility and take it to a new level. I&rsquo;ve been fortunate in that I&rsquo;ve been in management for a long part of my career, for almost 20 years.TVWEEK: How long exactly have you been at Hallmark now?ABBOTT: Just over 10 years, at this point, at Hallmark. I was at what was a combination of Family Channel, Fox Family and ABC Family over a 12-year period before being at Hallmark.TVWEEK: As you&rsquo;ve looked at how Hallmark has evolved, how did you decide where you wanted to take it and how are you going about taking it where you want it to go?ABBOTT: I think if you look at the channel we&rsquo;ve had remarkable success: a very highly-rated property that&rsquo;s grown distribution to be fully distributed over the years. We had a lot of product that was highly-rated, but wasn&rsquo;t necessarily tied as much to the brand as we would like.So, when I took over in May, we developed a new mission statement and vision around how we can celebrate life&rsquo;s special moments everyday, which we feel is very much is in line with what the essence of Hallmark really is.You look at the Hallmark television business and there&rsquo;s certainly their heritage and legacy and award-winning Hallmark Hall of Fame&mdash;the quality and the high ratings there, and that&rsquo;s a very important part of who we are that will ultimately be our Hallmark Movie Channel. It&rsquo;s in 35 million homes, on its way to 40 million pretty quickly here. It&rsquo;s becoming a strong service in its own right.And then we look at the Hallmark Channel, and we thought about what direction that might go. We came to the conclusion that, in terms of helping celebrate life&rsquo;s special moments everyday, we could really tap into that part of the Hallmark brand that up until now has not been reflected on TV.That would be holidays and events and cooking and decorating and different things people do everyday to celebrate life and that lifestyle category area. And so the direction we have gone in is really beginning to develop the channel towards more of that lifestyle celebration mood.TVWEEK: Can you tell me how that evolution led you to get Martha Stewart involved? I&rsquo;m assuming that as you were sitting there brainstorming about this lifestyle direction you wanted to move the channel towards that getting somehow involved with Stewart was high on your wish list.ABBOTT: We were fortunate that the stars were really aligned. If you sat for two weeks, you couldn&rsquo;t come up with a better name than Martha Stewart in terms of helping celebrate life&rsquo;s special moments everyday. She is the ultimate banner ad for that type of product.Fortunately, they also had been thinking about a little bit of a different business model in that syndication [which is the TV business Stewart was in] doesn&rsquo;t provide that consistent day and date opportunity that cable does. And as we developed our definition of who we wanted to be and we started having conversations with them, we started to make it a bigger proposition. And they started to see a bigger opportunity with Omnimedia and across the different talent that Martha has at Omnimedia and had really vested so well.So you begin to see that it&rsquo;s more than just &lsquo;The Martha Stewart Show&rsquo; and that you have the opportunity to develop a fully integrated lifestyle block on multiple platforms. And that lifestyle block speaks to the strengths of both Hallmark and Martha Stewart. That&rsquo;s really where the conversation went, actually very, very quickly once we got in the same room and we started to brainstorm about Martha.It wasn&rsquo;t &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s just take &lsquo;The Martha Stewart Show&rsquo; and move it from syndication to cable&rsquo; but, &lsquo;How can we make this a bigger, better partnership.&rsquo; And I give [Omnimedia Chairman] Charles Koppleman and Martha full credit for recognizing the opportunity and the value of what a 24/7 cable platform can do to help them develop their properties and products and how they can help us develop our channel.TVWEEK: Makes a lot of sense. As you look across the landscape, is something you pay attention to a lot the competition? Is it important to be real differentiated? Do you see Scripps as competition? Maybe the new Oprah channel with Discovery?ABBOTT: Certainly, Food Network and HGTV are the leaders in this category. They&rsquo;ve done a great job of branding themselves and really being consistent. That would be competition.Some of what Discovery has done would be competition. The Oprah channel is clearly undefined at this point, so it&rsquo;s really hard to view that as surely as competition.We can compete from day one with a personality and profile like Martha Stewart. We don&rsquo;t have to take a backseat to anyone in this lifestyle category. We feel that we will be competitive, if not better, quite frankly, right out of the gate than those channels who don&rsquo;t have a profile like Martha on their air. We still feel there&rsquo;s a lot of room in this area to navigate, and with our brand and our heritage and our ability to really represent so much of how people connect and people live day-to-day, we think we have a great opportunity to be highly, highly successful here.TVWEEK: Can you talk a little bit about how you&rsquo;d like to see advertising integrated in your vision?ABBOTT: There&rsquo;s no question as technology changes and changes the way viewers watch TV, we&rsquo;re all going to have to be a lot more responsive to the needs of advertisers. And I think you&rsquo;re seeing that on an evolutionary basis.I would say the death of the :30 has long since been overblown. But, the reality is we do need to be more responsive, we do need to look for unique ways in which we can embed an advertiser&rsquo;s message seamlessly into our product and into the development process. It&rsquo;ll make TV, I think, more valuable and certainly more appreciated. And it&rsquo;s creative, innovative ideas like that that we struggle with and work toward developing everyday.The lifestyle block is one that is particularly conducive to that type of activity. It&rsquo;s easier, I think, in lifestyle to place products seamlessly into the content. But certainly, we need to be true to our brand and we need to be carefully that we don&rsquo;t over do it and that we be sensitive to the value that we&rsquo;re creating for others when we do do it.TVWEEK: Can you talk a little bit about social media? That&rsquo;s obviously become a buzzword in the last year. Where you see Hallmark fitting with that phenomenon?ABBOTT: It&rsquo;s certainly real in terms of it being a phenomenon, but the real question is: What&rsquo;s the business model? We haven&rsquo;t certainly figured it out here, and that&rsquo;s one we&rsquo;re staying attuned to.Martha and Omnimedia have done a great job about being on the forefront of technology and having different applications around decorating and cooking and things that are really very, very relevant. As we develop our lifestyle area, we&rsquo;ll certainly play more in that space and whole digital arena as a rule. But, right now, it&rsquo;s not necessarily something we can point to as being a leader in.TVWEEK: Do you see the digital platforms as being more promotionally oriented and pointing viewers to the on-air products that you offer, or will they have a life of their own?ABBOTT: I see that as being a big change for us. That&rsquo;s one of the beauties as we move more towards this different side of the brand and are less focused and reliant on off-network acquisitions.When you&rsquo;re 100% reliant on scripted series that you acquire from a distributor, you have very little opportunity to play in the digital space. Here, we&rsquo;re going to have reasons to drive people to the Internet more than just information around what&rsquo;s on our air.We will have different opportunities to develop content that will speak to viewers&rsquo; interests in whatever we have on our network. And we&rsquo;ll make that a legitimate, vibrant business for us moving forward. It&rsquo;s something that we&rsquo;re thinking about everyday. It&rsquo;s something that we are very, very focused on.TVWEEK: As an independent channel, does it make sense in any way to do some sort of alliance?ABBOTT: We&rsquo;re open to forming relationships and partnerships, and you look at our partnership with Omnimedia, I would certainly put that in the alliance category, whether formal or informal.But, I think that the real issue there is that as our competitors get bigger and bigger and more complicated, ultimately some of what they have bought comes into question and they have to use their own leverage to leverage their own weaker sisters. You look at how big NBC is, and how big that whole organization will be with Comcast. There will be networks that they&rsquo;ll have to leverage to get favors in other cases. So there isn&rsquo;t an awful lot of room.You know, size cuts both ways. Too big, and you&rsquo;re in a position to have to protect your weaker properties. In a down market, being too big can be problematic, in that you&rsquo;ve got a lot of money to place on the agency side of the perspective, or you&rsquo;ve got a lot of different masters to satisfy.I&rsquo;m not so sure that that is necessarily, within the big companies, the way we want to go. With smaller organizations, certainly if we could develop some alliance that pullstogether some of those that aren&rsquo;t under big corporate umbrellas, that might be something smart to do. Overall, the big conglomerates probably are looking for alliances because they&rsquo;ve got an awful lot to leverage themselves. We wouldn&rsquo;t want to be part of anything where we would be the leveragee.TVWEEK: As we move closer toward the upfront, are there particular categories that you hope you&rsquo;ll do better in than you have in the past because of this new strategy?ABBOTT: We have already had an extremely high interest level from a number of categories, everything from automotives to financials to travel categories, that we have had a very difficult time playing in before.And there are many reasons for that. One is certainly the nature of the product is more geared toward potentially having different elements that could be incorporated within our actual content. And that our viewership will migrate much more towards a top 20 market, upper income level than we have been historically. So we are seeing a lot of activity from those clients that happen to target a more upscale adult 25-54 demographic than we have historically delivered. We are optimistic that we are going to have a robust upfront.TVWEEK: How important do you think measurement is going forward? How granular do we need to be?ABBOTT: It&rsquo;s critical. Speaking candidly, it&rsquo;s very frustrating to see so much fluctuation in the numbers and so much instability in the sample sizes where it&rsquo;s at.The question is what the right metric is. I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s second-by-second or anything that extreme. But, I do think there&rsquo;s got to be a better way given where technology is. And frankly to compete with the Internet, I think it&rsquo;s very important that television develop some type of system that is more scientific and is more reliable, quite frankly, that what we have.This is very, very important. We&rsquo;re lucky we have people who are as brilliant as Reno [Scanzoni at Group M and TVWeek&rsquo;s 2010 Media Buyer of the Year] in the process who are on it. I&rsquo;m sure everyday, when he sees the numbers, it drives him as crazy as it does the rest us in the business. To be competitive moving forward as a medium, television needs to step up and figure out ways to gain a better understanding of what actually is going on out there.TVWEEK: Anything you want to add?ABBOTT: I think at the end of the day, we are in a great position with not only our lifestyle content but with our original movies. We&rsquo;re producing 24 original movies in 2010 with two of those on our movie channel. It&rsquo;s a big commitment to the Hallmark Movie Channel, which became measured in the second quarter and that is a growing and vibrant and viable property. Our holiday effort will continue here moving forward. We had our highest rated holiday in our history recently, and our Countdown to Christmas and Countdown to Holidays have been remarkably successful. We have a lot going on here other than just that lifestyle, Martha Stewart area. That&rsquo;s all very, very exciting and we&rsquo;re all optimistic about our future. #]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>Lagging CNN Sells on Its Credibility</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/04/lagging_cnn_sells_on_its_credi.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41562</id>
   
   <published>2010-04-28T22:15:40Z</published>
   <updated>2010-04-28T22:17:36Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[By Jon LafayetteWith cable news channels turning increasingly argumentative, part of CNN&rsquo;s pitch to ad buyers is that its style of old-fashioned journalism is a better environment for advertisers.While much attention has been paid to the decline in CNN&rsquo;s prime-time ratings &mdash; it finished in third place among cable news networks in prime time last year, trailing Fox News Channel and MSNBC &mdash; the network at its upfront presentation in New York last month pointed out that when all of its digital platforms are taken into account, more people are consuming its content than ever before.&ldquo;Some of the other players in the category have a different emphasis,&rdquo; said Greg D&rsquo;Alba, executive VP and chief operating officer of CNN Advertising Sales. &ldquo;But CNN is still on the platform of journalism, and the reliability and trusted environment matters, certainly for our consumers, but for a lot of advertisers as well.&rdquo;That trusted environment is one reason why CNN reaches more &ldquo;influential&rdquo; consumers, as defined by Roper.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve always talked about getting to that one person out of 10 that tells the other nine who to vote for, what movies to see, and certainly what to buy,&rdquo; D&rsquo;Alba said.In addition to being the top cable network among Roper&rsquo;s influentials, CNN, in all of its manifestations, reached an integrated audience of 3 million influentials, the most of any broadcast or cable network, according to Nielsen Fusion data.In addition to reaching influential viewers, it also reaches more affluent ones.&ldquo;We reach over half, 58 percent of the adults, who have a household income of $250K or more. And that&rsquo;s in television,&rdquo; D&rsquo;Alba said. &ldquo;When you look at digital, we&rsquo;re attracting an audience on the CNN.com site that is 13 percent more likely to have an average portfolio of over $500K.&rdquo;By some traditional measures, this is a tough time for CNN. Ratings for its prime-time shows were down sharply during the first quarter. Larry King&rsquo;s show was down 43 percent among adults 25 to 54. Anderson Cooper&rsquo;s show was down 42 percent.CNN acknowledged that prime-time ratings were a problem and that it was taking steps to recharge its lineup. But while some suggest more argument and partisanship could improve its ratings, D&rsquo;Alba said the network wouldn&rsquo;t go in that direction.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not going to turn our back on prime time. Prime time matters,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re never going to panic and grow it the wrong way. We&rsquo;re going to stay true to our mission and our core values. We will see that strength again in prime time.&rdquo;D&rsquo;Alba said CNN&rsquo;s ratings might also pick up as the 2010 midterm elections get nearer.&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s inevitable that there&rsquo;s going to be tremendous interest on this trail &mdash; that the story is going to heat up,&rdquo; D&rsquo;Alba said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re prepared to tell it, and it&rsquo;s going to get really interesting, and we&rsquo;re going to see a bump in audience because the story itself is going to become so prominent.&rdquo;CNN is selling election sponsorships and is in the process of selling four or five major packages that would allow them to surround political content on cable, including election night coverage and prime-time events the network is developing. The packages also include digital content such as video, photos, interactive elements, live online video events, data-driven maps and political ticker updates.CNN is making guarantees on TV ratings that include out-of-home viewing as measured by the Arbitron Portable People Meter system. In the fourth quarter, the inclusion of out-of-home viewers added 40 percent to the network&rsquo;s viewership among adults 25 to 54, and 59 percent among young adults 18 to 34.But CNN&rsquo;s real growth is coming from digital.&ldquo;The real message is that media consumption is changing, moving faster than ever before,&rdquo; D&rsquo;Alba said, &ldquo;and the reality is we have more audience today than we had three [or] four years ago. Our content just followed the audience. They consume us wherever they are. It&rsquo;s a very, very positive story.&rdquo;&ldquo;I welcome the opportunity to do something cross-platform,&rdquo; said Andy Donchin, head of national broadcast at media agency Carat. &ldquo;They still have some work to do with their television numbers.&rdquo;But D&rsquo;Alba said more and more advertisers and agencies are planning for multiple media integration because of the change in the way media is being consumed.&ldquo;It's about reaching many, many more people that are capable of buying more products in more dayparts on more platforms wherever they are, which is what this business is all about,&rdquo; he said.&ldquo;To reach the same person over and over again isn&rsquo;t going to sell more product. To reach many, many more people in more places at more times is going to sell you a hell of a lot more product. And that&rsquo;s the bigger playing field. If you can play on it you&rsquo;re looking at a very strong future. If you can&rsquo;t, your success will be very short-lived if you can&rsquo;t get to this consumer the way they want you and where they are.&rdquo;]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[By Jon LafayetteWith cable news channels turning increasingly argumentative, part of CNN&rsquo;s pitch to ad buyers is that its style of old-fashioned journalism is a better environment for advertisers.While much attention has been paid to the decline in CNN&rsquo;s prime-time ratings &mdash; it finished in third place among cable news networks in prime time last year, trailing Fox News Channel and MSNBC &mdash; the network at its upfront presentation in New York last month pointed out that when all of its digital platforms are taken into account, more people are consuming its content than ever before.&ldquo;Some of the other players in the category have a different emphasis,&rdquo; said Greg D&rsquo;Alba, executive VP and chief operating officer of CNN Advertising Sales. &ldquo;But CNN is still on the platform of journalism, and the reliability and trusted environment matters, certainly for our consumers, but for a lot of advertisers as well.&rdquo;That trusted environment is one reason why CNN reaches more &ldquo;influential&rdquo; consumers, as defined by Roper.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve always talked about getting to that one person out of 10 that tells the other nine who to vote for, what movies to see, and certainly what to buy,&rdquo; D&rsquo;Alba said.In addition to being the top cable network among Roper&rsquo;s influentials, CNN, in all of its manifestations, reached an integrated audience of 3 million influentials, the most of any broadcast or cable network, according to Nielsen Fusion data.In addition to reaching influential viewers, it also reaches more affluent ones.&ldquo;We reach over half, 58 percent of the adults, who have a household income of $250K or more. And that&rsquo;s in television,&rdquo; D&rsquo;Alba said. &ldquo;When you look at digital, we&rsquo;re attracting an audience on the CNN.com site that is 13 percent more likely to have an average portfolio of over $500K.&rdquo;By some traditional measures, this is a tough time for CNN. Ratings for its prime-time shows were down sharply during the first quarter. Larry King&rsquo;s show was down 43 percent among adults 25 to 54. Anderson Cooper&rsquo;s show was down 42 percent.CNN acknowledged that prime-time ratings were a problem and that it was taking steps to recharge its lineup. But while some suggest more argument and partisanship could improve its ratings, D&rsquo;Alba said the network wouldn&rsquo;t go in that direction.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not going to turn our back on prime time. Prime time matters,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re never going to panic and grow it the wrong way. We&rsquo;re going to stay true to our mission and our core values. We will see that strength again in prime time.&rdquo;D&rsquo;Alba said CNN&rsquo;s ratings might also pick up as the 2010 midterm elections get nearer.&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s inevitable that there&rsquo;s going to be tremendous interest on this trail &mdash; that the story is going to heat up,&rdquo; D&rsquo;Alba said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re prepared to tell it, and it&rsquo;s going to get really interesting, and we&rsquo;re going to see a bump in audience because the story itself is going to become so prominent.&rdquo;CNN is selling election sponsorships and is in the process of selling four or five major packages that would allow them to surround political content on cable, including election night coverage and prime-time events the network is developing. The packages also include digital content such as video, photos, interactive elements, live online video events, data-driven maps and political ticker updates.CNN is making guarantees on TV ratings that include out-of-home viewing as measured by the Arbitron Portable People Meter system. In the fourth quarter, the inclusion of out-of-home viewers added 40 percent to the network&rsquo;s viewership among adults 25 to 54, and 59 percent among young adults 18 to 34.But CNN&rsquo;s real growth is coming from digital.&ldquo;The real message is that media consumption is changing, moving faster than ever before,&rdquo; D&rsquo;Alba said, &ldquo;and the reality is we have more audience today than we had three [or] four years ago. Our content just followed the audience. They consume us wherever they are. It&rsquo;s a very, very positive story.&rdquo;&ldquo;I welcome the opportunity to do something cross-platform,&rdquo; said Andy Donchin, head of national broadcast at media agency Carat. &ldquo;They still have some work to do with their television numbers.&rdquo;But D&rsquo;Alba said more and more advertisers and agencies are planning for multiple media integration because of the change in the way media is being consumed.&ldquo;It's about reaching many, many more people that are capable of buying more products in more dayparts on more platforms wherever they are, which is what this business is all about,&rdquo; he said.&ldquo;To reach the same person over and over again isn&rsquo;t going to sell more product. To reach many, many more people in more places at more times is going to sell you a hell of a lot more product. And that&rsquo;s the bigger playing field. If you can play on it you&rsquo;re looking at a very strong future. If you can&rsquo;t, your success will be very short-lived if you can&rsquo;t get to this consumer the way they want you and where they are.&rdquo;]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>ESPN's Erin Andrews Reaches for the Stars</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/04/espns_erin_andrews_reaches_for.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41560</id>
   
   <published>2010-04-28T22:06:55Z</published>
   <updated>2010-04-28T22:11:42Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[She&rsquo;s achieved notoriety far beyond the sidelines of any sporting event. At press time, ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews was one of the finalists on ABC&rsquo;s &ldquo;Dancing With the Stars.&rdquo;After graduating in 2000 from the University of Florida with a degree in telecommunications, Andrews began her career with Fox Sports Florida before moving on to the Sunshine Network, Turner Sports and then ESPN in 2004. There, she started off with NHL coverage, and added college football, basketball and Major League Baseball to her sports coverage repertoire. Her contract expires in July, and she wants to continue as a sideline reporter.Early this spring, Andrews testified in the case of a man who pleaded guilty to stalking and videotaping her through peepholes in hotel rooms as she traveled across the country for her job. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison.She recently took time out from rehearsals for &ldquo;DWTS&rdquo; to speak about her career with NewsPro correspondent Hillary Atkin.NewsPro: You&rsquo;ve covered so much in your sportscasting career. If you break it down, what are some of your favorite elements of covering athletics?Erin Andrews: I love the overall pageantry of it all. Right before big college football and basketball games, the crowd is going nuts, and the coaches are sweating. I&rsquo;m right on the field or the court. I see it first before tipoff. I get so excited I could jump through a wall. The energy of covering sports is something I really enjoy. I get the best seat in the house, and get to look players in the eyes. I also cherish relationships with the coaches, which are so important and special to me, especially in the last year with everything going on. So I&rsquo;m thankful.NewsPro: Your father is an Emmy award-winning television news reporter. Did he influence your career path?Andrews: My dad is such a big sports fan that growing up, I would sit on the couch and watch games with him. I grew up a Larry Bird and Celtics fan. I was born in the Northeast, in the era Michael Jordan was becoming a big deal. We would walk around with Celtics books bags and championship shirts from 10 years before. We were also big Red Sox fans and Green Bay Packers fans. My mom was really good and knew my dad has a passion for sports. She watches all my games and hears my stories about coaches. She&rsquo;ll read the sports page, and is very knowledgeable.NewsPro: What have been your biggest challenges?Andrews: I&rsquo;ve had a lot of people say that I&rsquo;m in it just because I want to be on TV or that I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;m talking about. It&rsquo;s not so much inside ESPN as those outside who don&rsquo;t work with me every day &mdash; but they&rsquo;re probably not paying attention. I&rsquo;ve had to prove them out just because I&rsquo;m female and I care about hair, clothes and makeup.NewsPro: You&rsquo;ve had a rough year.Andrews: I&rsquo;ve dealt with difficult times in my life. I&rsquo;ve had some of the most respected coaches beg me not to quit. That validated me and proved I do a good job and am respected in sports broadcasting. I was shocked at the support I got [after the stalking case.] I would get e-mails and phone calls from coaches. I&rsquo;d call my parents and tell them how special it was for me to hear from guys I really relied on over the years. I&rsquo;d always had my go-to coaches, but I got a new group that rallied behind me across college football, basketball and Major League Baseball.NewsPro: What is your advice to young people aspiring to be sports journalists?Andrews: The most important thing is to be prepared because a lot of people will question why you&rsquo;re in the field. It&rsquo;s important to be well-versed and educated on as many sports as possible.NewsPro: How has your experience been on &lsquo;Dancing with the Stars?&rsquo;Andrews: I&rsquo;ve had to deal with a lot of media, especially when they&rsquo;re digging into my private life &mdash; but I&rsquo;m good about changing around the question. Dancing is equivalent to the competitive nature of sports. I&rsquo;m channeling my inner basketball player when I get ready to take the floor. It&rsquo;s been exactly what I wanted and hoped for. I wanted to do the show before everything kind of blew up in my life.]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[She&rsquo;s achieved notoriety far beyond the sidelines of any sporting event. At press time, ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews was one of the finalists on ABC&rsquo;s &ldquo;Dancing With the Stars.&rdquo;After graduating in 2000 from the University of Florida with a degree in telecommunications, Andrews began her career with Fox Sports Florida before moving on to the Sunshine Network, Turner Sports and then ESPN in 2004. There, she started off with NHL coverage, and added college football, basketball and Major League Baseball to her sports coverage repertoire. Her contract expires in July, and she wants to continue as a sideline reporter.Early this spring, Andrews testified in the case of a man who pleaded guilty to stalking and videotaping her through peepholes in hotel rooms as she traveled across the country for her job. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison.She recently took time out from rehearsals for &ldquo;DWTS&rdquo; to speak about her career with NewsPro correspondent Hillary Atkin.NewsPro: You&rsquo;ve covered so much in your sportscasting career. If you break it down, what are some of your favorite elements of covering athletics?Erin Andrews: I love the overall pageantry of it all. Right before big college football and basketball games, the crowd is going nuts, and the coaches are sweating. I&rsquo;m right on the field or the court. I see it first before tipoff. I get so excited I could jump through a wall. The energy of covering sports is something I really enjoy. I get the best seat in the house, and get to look players in the eyes. I also cherish relationships with the coaches, which are so important and special to me, especially in the last year with everything going on. So I&rsquo;m thankful.NewsPro: Your father is an Emmy award-winning television news reporter. Did he influence your career path?Andrews: My dad is such a big sports fan that growing up, I would sit on the couch and watch games with him. I grew up a Larry Bird and Celtics fan. I was born in the Northeast, in the era Michael Jordan was becoming a big deal. We would walk around with Celtics books bags and championship shirts from 10 years before. We were also big Red Sox fans and Green Bay Packers fans. My mom was really good and knew my dad has a passion for sports. She watches all my games and hears my stories about coaches. She&rsquo;ll read the sports page, and is very knowledgeable.NewsPro: What have been your biggest challenges?Andrews: I&rsquo;ve had a lot of people say that I&rsquo;m in it just because I want to be on TV or that I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;m talking about. It&rsquo;s not so much inside ESPN as those outside who don&rsquo;t work with me every day &mdash; but they&rsquo;re probably not paying attention. I&rsquo;ve had to prove them out just because I&rsquo;m female and I care about hair, clothes and makeup.NewsPro: You&rsquo;ve had a rough year.Andrews: I&rsquo;ve dealt with difficult times in my life. I&rsquo;ve had some of the most respected coaches beg me not to quit. That validated me and proved I do a good job and am respected in sports broadcasting. I was shocked at the support I got [after the stalking case.] I would get e-mails and phone calls from coaches. I&rsquo;d call my parents and tell them how special it was for me to hear from guys I really relied on over the years. I&rsquo;d always had my go-to coaches, but I got a new group that rallied behind me across college football, basketball and Major League Baseball.NewsPro: What is your advice to young people aspiring to be sports journalists?Andrews: The most important thing is to be prepared because a lot of people will question why you&rsquo;re in the field. It&rsquo;s important to be well-versed and educated on as many sports as possible.NewsPro: How has your experience been on &lsquo;Dancing with the Stars?&rsquo;Andrews: I&rsquo;ve had to deal with a lot of media, especially when they&rsquo;re digging into my private life &mdash; but I&rsquo;m good about changing around the question. Dancing is equivalent to the competitive nature of sports. I&rsquo;m channeling my inner basketball player when I get ready to take the floor. It&rsquo;s been exactly what I wanted and hoped for. I wanted to do the show before everything kind of blew up in my life.]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>Summing Up the Peabody Award Winners</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/04/summing_up_the_peabody_award_w.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41559</id>
   
   <published>2010-04-28T22:02:27Z</published>
   <updated>2010-04-28T22:06:00Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[By Elizabeth JensenThirty-six programs will take home George Foster Peabody Awards in May, the program&rsquo;s 69th year.The awards honor the best in electronic media for 2009 and are conferred by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, in Athens. Multiple winners included PBS programs, which received a total of six awards, and HBO, which is being honored for two series and a documentary. NPR received two awards, as did &ldquo;BBC World News America.&rdquo;CBS News&rsquo; &ldquo;60 Minutes&rdquo; won for its fourth year in a row, with both of its awards going to correspondent Steve Kroft.The awards will be presented in a ceremony hosted by ABC&rsquo;s Diane Sawyer on Monday, May 17, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.Modern Family (ABC)Twentieth Century Fox Television in association with Levitan Lloyd ProductionsThe judges said: &ldquo;This wily, witty comedy puts quirky, contemporary twists in family ties but maintains an old-fashioned heart.&rdquo;The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: An Evening with Archbishop Desmond Tutu (CBS)Worldwide Pants Inc.Calling the interview with the Nobel Peace Prize winner &ldquo;fascinating, often funny,&rdquo; the judges said the Scottish-born Ferguson &ldquo;has made late-night television safe again for ideas.&rdquo;Noodle Road: Connecting Asia's Kitchens (KBS1 TV)Korean Broadcasting SystemAccording to the judges, this show is &ldquo;the who, where, what, why and how of Asia's culinary staple, rolled into one visually delicious hour.&rdquo;A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains (ABC)ABC NewsDiane Sawyer and her producers and camera crew spent nearly two years in central Appalachia reporting this documentary on children coping with adult-created problems, which the judges said &ldquo;reminds us that not all critical problems lie in &lsquo;developing&rsquo; nations.&rdquo;SesameStreet.orgSesame WorkshopThe website was given a complete makeover in 2008 and the judges approved, noting that &ldquo;Bird and company display prodigious adaptability on this delightfully educational, interactive site.&rdquo;BBC World News America: Unique Broadcast, Unique Perspective (BBC America)BBC World News America, BBC AmericaThe cable broadcast is &ldquo;a nightly newscast like none the United States has ever had,&rdquo; which &ldquo;places our actions and concerns in a global context,&rdquo; said the judges.The Cost of Dying (CBS)CBS News, 60 MinutesThis report treated the costs of end-of-life medical care &ldquo;with courage and compassion,&rdquo; the judges said.Independent Lens: Between the Folds (PBS)Green Fuse Films, ITVSThis documentary about the art of paper folding &ldquo;makes you gasp at the possibilities &mdash; of paper and of human creativity,&rdquo; the judges said.Glee (FOX)Twentieth Century Fox TelevisionFox&rsquo;s hit musical dramedy about members of a high school choral club is &ldquo;dependably tuneful and entertaining,&rdquo; the judges found.The OxyContin Express (Current TV)Vanguard on Current TVThis documentary about drug-dealing M.D.s in Florida and Appalachia &ldquo;makes clear the enormity of the prescription-drug epidemic,&rdquo; the judges said.NPR.orgNational Public Radio&ldquo;One of the great one-stop websites,&rdquo; the judges said, with the added plus of &ldquo;music you can dance to.&rdquo;Diane Rehm Personal AwardThe NPR talk show, which has been heard for decades on Washington's WAMU-FM, &ldquo;is the gold standard for civil, civic discourse,&rdquo; said the judges.The Day that Lehman Died (BBC World Service)A Goldhawk Essential Production/BBC World Service ProductionThis radio docudrama based on exhaustive interviews mixed news and dramatic reconstruction and &ldquo;put listeners in the boardroom and halls of Lehman Brothers as the financial giant collapsed.&rdquo;In Treatment (HBO)Leverage, Closest to the Hole Productions and Sheleg in association with HBO EntertainmentThis fictional series about psychiatrist-patient sessions, adapted from an Israeli series, &ldquo;is the very essence of drama,&rdquo; the judges said.Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times (PBS)Peter Jones ProductionsThere&rsquo;s &ldquo;drama enough for several feature films&rdquo; in this documentary about the longtime owners of the Los Angeles Times, the judges said.No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (HBO)Mirage Enterprises and Cinechicks in association with The Weinstein Company, BBC and HBO EntertainmentThe judges noted that Alexander McCall Smith's novels about African detective Precious Ramotswe &ldquo;come vividly to life in this groundbreaking series.&rdquo;Sabotaging the System (CBS)CBS News, 60 MinutesSteve Kroft's examination of cyber threats to the country&rsquo;s infrastructure was &ldquo;alarming and then some,&rdquo; the judges said.Brick City (Sundance Channel)Sundance Channel, Brick City TV LLCThis five-hour documentary series about the challenges of the city of Newark, N.J., is &ldquo;sociologically instructive and dramatically compelling,&rdquo; the judges wrote. Sundance has ordered a second season.Thrilla in Manila (HBO)Darlow Smithson Production, HBO Sports, HBO Documentary FilmsThis documentary about Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier &ldquo;pulls no punches and lays bare misconceptions about their rivalry,&rdquo; the judges said.FRONTLINE: The Madoff Affair (PBS)FRONTLINE, RAINmediaThe judges singled out this documentary on Bernie Madoff's devastating Ponzi scheme for taking &ldquo;viewers into the very heart of&rdquo; the scandal and &ldquo;explaining how and why it worked for so long.&rdquo;I-Witness: Ambulansiyang de Paa (GMA Network)GMA Network Inc., PhilippinesThis report about poor villagers &ldquo;who carry their sick and injured over dangerous terrain to distant medical care using &lsquo;ambulances on foot&rsquo; simultaneously condemns deplorable conditions and celebrates neighborliness and ingenuity,&rdquo; the judges found.Independent Lens: The Order of Myths (PBS)Folly River Inc., Netpoint Productions, Lucky Hat Entertainment, ITVSMargaret Brown explored the race-divided Mardi Gras traditions in Mobile, Ala., in a documentary the judges called &ldquo;highly original, moving and insightful.&rdquo;Hard Times (OPB Radio)Oregon Public BroadcastingThis series of radio reports on how the Wall Street meltdown affected ordinary citizens was singled out by the judges for &ldquo;humanly and thoughtfully&rdquo; documenting its subject.Iran &amp; the West Brook Lapping Productions for the BBC in association with National Geographic Channel, France 3, NHK, VPRO, SVT, RTBF, VRT, NRK, SRC/CBC, DRTV SBS, YLE, TVP and Press TVThe judges called this &ldquo;a spectacular, epic documentary that explains in fascinating, sometimes startling, detail how the West and Iran arrived at the present standoff,&rdquo; adding that &ldquo;it's imminently watchable and historically invaluable.&rdquo;Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson: Covering Afghanistan (NPR)National Public RadioNPR&rsquo;s Kabul bureau chief is praised by the judges, who note that &ldquo;No reporter in any medium gives us a better sense of the variety of life inside Afghanistan.&rdquo;The Great Textbook War (West Virginia Public Broadcasting)Trey Kay ProductionsThe roots of the current culture wars are traced through a 1974 battle over textbook content in rural West Virginia, in what the judges called a &ldquo;thoughtful, balanced and gripping radio documentary.&rdquo;Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools Are Failing Black Students (Public Radio Stations)Nancy SolomonThe independent producer &ldquo;exhibited great empathy&rdquo; and asked &ldquo;tough, necessary questions&rdquo; of students and teachers at a suburban New Jersey high school, judges said.Endgame (PBS)Daybreak/Channel 4/Target Entertainment, Presented on PBS/MASTERPIECE by WGBH BostonDramatizing secret negotiations at an English country estate, which helped end apartheid in South Africa, this film &ldquo;offers a lesson in the possibilities of peaceful conflict resolution,&rdquo; judges said.Sichuan Earthquake: One Year On (Now-Broadband TV News Channel)Now-TV News, Hong KongThis report on the anniversary of China&rsquo;s Sichuan earthquake was reported &ldquo;with respect for the victims and their families and hard questions about the substandard construction that worsened the death toll,&rdquo; the judges said.BART Shooting (KTVU-TV)KTVU, Oakland, Calif.When a train station altercation ended in a fatal shooting, KTVU's quick response &ldquo;gave its reporters an edge, but it was their persistent digging afterwards that revealed serious, systematic problems in the Bay Area Rapid Transit police's tactics,&rdquo; the judges noted.American Masters: Jerome Robbins &mdash; Something to Dance About (PBS)Thirteen/WNETThis retrospective documentary of Robbins&rsquo; life and work, filled with performance clips and comments from his ballet and Broadway colleagues, &ldquo;captured the legendary director-choreographer's &lsquo;dark genius,&rsquo;&rdquo; the judges said.Chronicle: Paul's Gift (WYFF-TV)WYFF 4, Greenville, S.C.This public service special, which followed the donated organs of an accident victim to their various recipients, was &ldquo;simple, ingenious and effective,&rdquo; the judges found.Under Fire: Discrimination and Corruption in the Texas National Guard (KHOU-TV)KHOU-TV, Houston, Belo, Inc.The judges noted that &ldquo;dogged work by the Houston station's investigative reporters found such blatant discriminatory treatment of female soldiers that three top Texas Guard generals were fired and a new commanding officer was appointed.&rdquo; The series also won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in January.Derrion Albert Beating (WFLD-TV)FOX Chicago News: WFLD-TV and myfoxchicago.comWFLD obtained horrifying video of the beating death of a Chicago high school honor student, but the judges said &ldquo;the greater feat was its comprehensive follow-up coverage of the suspects, the legal process and prevalence of similar violence.&rdquo;Where Giving Life Is a Death Sentence (BBC America)BBC World News America, BBC America, BBC World News, NewsnightCorrespondent Lyse Doucet &ldquo;trekked deep into Afghanistan's rugged Badakshan province&rdquo; for this report on the world&rsquo;s worst recorded rate of maternal mortality.Up in Smoke (KCET-TV)KCET, Los AngelesFor the judges, this report on KCET&rsquo;s &quot;SoCal Connected&quot; provided &ldquo;lively, eye-opening coverage&rdquo; of the medical marijuana business.]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[By Elizabeth JensenThirty-six programs will take home George Foster Peabody Awards in May, the program&rsquo;s 69th year.The awards honor the best in electronic media for 2009 and are conferred by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, in Athens. Multiple winners included PBS programs, which received a total of six awards, and HBO, which is being honored for two series and a documentary. NPR received two awards, as did &ldquo;BBC World News America.&rdquo;CBS News&rsquo; &ldquo;60 Minutes&rdquo; won for its fourth year in a row, with both of its awards going to correspondent Steve Kroft.The awards will be presented in a ceremony hosted by ABC&rsquo;s Diane Sawyer on Monday, May 17, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.Modern Family (ABC)Twentieth Century Fox Television in association with Levitan Lloyd ProductionsThe judges said: &ldquo;This wily, witty comedy puts quirky, contemporary twists in family ties but maintains an old-fashioned heart.&rdquo;The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: An Evening with Archbishop Desmond Tutu (CBS)Worldwide Pants Inc.Calling the interview with the Nobel Peace Prize winner &ldquo;fascinating, often funny,&rdquo; the judges said the Scottish-born Ferguson &ldquo;has made late-night television safe again for ideas.&rdquo;Noodle Road: Connecting Asia's Kitchens (KBS1 TV)Korean Broadcasting SystemAccording to the judges, this show is &ldquo;the who, where, what, why and how of Asia's culinary staple, rolled into one visually delicious hour.&rdquo;A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains (ABC)ABC NewsDiane Sawyer and her producers and camera crew spent nearly two years in central Appalachia reporting this documentary on children coping with adult-created problems, which the judges said &ldquo;reminds us that not all critical problems lie in &lsquo;developing&rsquo; nations.&rdquo;SesameStreet.orgSesame WorkshopThe website was given a complete makeover in 2008 and the judges approved, noting that &ldquo;Bird and company display prodigious adaptability on this delightfully educational, interactive site.&rdquo;BBC World News America: Unique Broadcast, Unique Perspective (BBC America)BBC World News America, BBC AmericaThe cable broadcast is &ldquo;a nightly newscast like none the United States has ever had,&rdquo; which &ldquo;places our actions and concerns in a global context,&rdquo; said the judges.The Cost of Dying (CBS)CBS News, 60 MinutesThis report treated the costs of end-of-life medical care &ldquo;with courage and compassion,&rdquo; the judges said.Independent Lens: Between the Folds (PBS)Green Fuse Films, ITVSThis documentary about the art of paper folding &ldquo;makes you gasp at the possibilities &mdash; of paper and of human creativity,&rdquo; the judges said.Glee (FOX)Twentieth Century Fox TelevisionFox&rsquo;s hit musical dramedy about members of a high school choral club is &ldquo;dependably tuneful and entertaining,&rdquo; the judges found.The OxyContin Express (Current TV)Vanguard on Current TVThis documentary about drug-dealing M.D.s in Florida and Appalachia &ldquo;makes clear the enormity of the prescription-drug epidemic,&rdquo; the judges said.NPR.orgNational Public Radio&ldquo;One of the great one-stop websites,&rdquo; the judges said, with the added plus of &ldquo;music you can dance to.&rdquo;Diane Rehm Personal AwardThe NPR talk show, which has been heard for decades on Washington's WAMU-FM, &ldquo;is the gold standard for civil, civic discourse,&rdquo; said the judges.The Day that Lehman Died (BBC World Service)A Goldhawk Essential Production/BBC World Service ProductionThis radio docudrama based on exhaustive interviews mixed news and dramatic reconstruction and &ldquo;put listeners in the boardroom and halls of Lehman Brothers as the financial giant collapsed.&rdquo;In Treatment (HBO)Leverage, Closest to the Hole Productions and Sheleg in association with HBO EntertainmentThis fictional series about psychiatrist-patient sessions, adapted from an Israeli series, &ldquo;is the very essence of drama,&rdquo; the judges said.Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times (PBS)Peter Jones ProductionsThere&rsquo;s &ldquo;drama enough for several feature films&rdquo; in this documentary about the longtime owners of the Los Angeles Times, the judges said.No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (HBO)Mirage Enterprises and Cinechicks in association with The Weinstein Company, BBC and HBO EntertainmentThe judges noted that Alexander McCall Smith's novels about African detective Precious Ramotswe &ldquo;come vividly to life in this groundbreaking series.&rdquo;Sabotaging the System (CBS)CBS News, 60 MinutesSteve Kroft's examination of cyber threats to the country&rsquo;s infrastructure was &ldquo;alarming and then some,&rdquo; the judges said.Brick City (Sundance Channel)Sundance Channel, Brick City TV LLCThis five-hour documentary series about the challenges of the city of Newark, N.J., is &ldquo;sociologically instructive and dramatically compelling,&rdquo; the judges wrote. Sundance has ordered a second season.Thrilla in Manila (HBO)Darlow Smithson Production, HBO Sports, HBO Documentary FilmsThis documentary about Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier &ldquo;pulls no punches and lays bare misconceptions about their rivalry,&rdquo; the judges said.FRONTLINE: The Madoff Affair (PBS)FRONTLINE, RAINmediaThe judges singled out this documentary on Bernie Madoff's devastating Ponzi scheme for taking &ldquo;viewers into the very heart of&rdquo; the scandal and &ldquo;explaining how and why it worked for so long.&rdquo;I-Witness: Ambulansiyang de Paa (GMA Network)GMA Network Inc., PhilippinesThis report about poor villagers &ldquo;who carry their sick and injured over dangerous terrain to distant medical care using &lsquo;ambulances on foot&rsquo; simultaneously condemns deplorable conditions and celebrates neighborliness and ingenuity,&rdquo; the judges found.Independent Lens: The Order of Myths (PBS)Folly River Inc., Netpoint Productions, Lucky Hat Entertainment, ITVSMargaret Brown explored the race-divided Mardi Gras traditions in Mobile, Ala., in a documentary the judges called &ldquo;highly original, moving and insightful.&rdquo;Hard Times (OPB Radio)Oregon Public BroadcastingThis series of radio reports on how the Wall Street meltdown affected ordinary citizens was singled out by the judges for &ldquo;humanly and thoughtfully&rdquo; documenting its subject.Iran &amp; the West Brook Lapping Productions for the BBC in association with National Geographic Channel, France 3, NHK, VPRO, SVT, RTBF, VRT, NRK, SRC/CBC, DRTV SBS, YLE, TVP and Press TVThe judges called this &ldquo;a spectacular, epic documentary that explains in fascinating, sometimes startling, detail how the West and Iran arrived at the present standoff,&rdquo; adding that &ldquo;it's imminently watchable and historically invaluable.&rdquo;Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson: Covering Afghanistan (NPR)National Public RadioNPR&rsquo;s Kabul bureau chief is praised by the judges, who note that &ldquo;No reporter in any medium gives us a better sense of the variety of life inside Afghanistan.&rdquo;The Great Textbook War (West Virginia Public Broadcasting)Trey Kay ProductionsThe roots of the current culture wars are traced through a 1974 battle over textbook content in rural West Virginia, in what the judges called a &ldquo;thoughtful, balanced and gripping radio documentary.&rdquo;Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools Are Failing Black Students (Public Radio Stations)Nancy SolomonThe independent producer &ldquo;exhibited great empathy&rdquo; and asked &ldquo;tough, necessary questions&rdquo; of students and teachers at a suburban New Jersey high school, judges said.Endgame (PBS)Daybreak/Channel 4/Target Entertainment, Presented on PBS/MASTERPIECE by WGBH BostonDramatizing secret negotiations at an English country estate, which helped end apartheid in South Africa, this film &ldquo;offers a lesson in the possibilities of peaceful conflict resolution,&rdquo; judges said.Sichuan Earthquake: One Year On (Now-Broadband TV News Channel)Now-TV News, Hong KongThis report on the anniversary of China&rsquo;s Sichuan earthquake was reported &ldquo;with respect for the victims and their families and hard questions about the substandard construction that worsened the death toll,&rdquo; the judges said.BART Shooting (KTVU-TV)KTVU, Oakland, Calif.When a train station altercation ended in a fatal shooting, KTVU's quick response &ldquo;gave its reporters an edge, but it was their persistent digging afterwards that revealed serious, systematic problems in the Bay Area Rapid Transit police's tactics,&rdquo; the judges noted.American Masters: Jerome Robbins &mdash; Something to Dance About (PBS)Thirteen/WNETThis retrospective documentary of Robbins&rsquo; life and work, filled with performance clips and comments from his ballet and Broadway colleagues, &ldquo;captured the legendary director-choreographer's &lsquo;dark genius,&rsquo;&rdquo; the judges said.Chronicle: Paul's Gift (WYFF-TV)WYFF 4, Greenville, S.C.This public service special, which followed the donated organs of an accident victim to their various recipients, was &ldquo;simple, ingenious and effective,&rdquo; the judges found.Under Fire: Discrimination and Corruption in the Texas National Guard (KHOU-TV)KHOU-TV, Houston, Belo, Inc.The judges noted that &ldquo;dogged work by the Houston station's investigative reporters found such blatant discriminatory treatment of female soldiers that three top Texas Guard generals were fired and a new commanding officer was appointed.&rdquo; The series also won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in January.Derrion Albert Beating (WFLD-TV)FOX Chicago News: WFLD-TV and myfoxchicago.comWFLD obtained horrifying video of the beating death of a Chicago high school honor student, but the judges said &ldquo;the greater feat was its comprehensive follow-up coverage of the suspects, the legal process and prevalence of similar violence.&rdquo;Where Giving Life Is a Death Sentence (BBC America)BBC World News America, BBC America, BBC World News, NewsnightCorrespondent Lyse Doucet &ldquo;trekked deep into Afghanistan's rugged Badakshan province&rdquo; for this report on the world&rsquo;s worst recorded rate of maternal mortality.Up in Smoke (KCET-TV)KCET, Los AngelesFor the judges, this report on KCET&rsquo;s &quot;SoCal Connected&quot; provided &ldquo;lively, eye-opening coverage&rdquo; of the medical marijuana business.]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>Sports Journalism: Time for a Change-Up</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/04/sports_journalism_time_for_a_c.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41558</id>
   
   <published>2010-04-28T21:58:57Z</published>
   <updated>2010-04-28T22:02:16Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[By Jon LafayetteHoly cow, these are tough time for traditional sportscasters. But new technology and social media may be creating opportunities for people who want a career in sports journalism.Despite record ratings for big events like the Super Bowl, the recession has hit broadcast outlets like a blitzing linebacker, and on-air talent are feeling the pain in their paychecks. Also taking a toll on broadcast jobs is the growth of cable, where outlets led by ESPN are acquiring rights to more and more games and aggressively pushing into local markets.Jobs are being created on cable, but they&rsquo;re mostly for less experienced sportscasters, or for people who can create content for the Web.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an ever-changing world, an ever-changing industry, an ever-changing landscape,&rdquo; said Dave Goren, executive director of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association and Hall of Fame.While new media is creating opportunities for those smart enough to change with it, Goren said, &ldquo;I think there&rsquo;s probably more of a contraction to come before there&rsquo;s an expansion.&rdquo;Things are tough for sports writers in the troubled newspaper industry as well.&ldquo;Anecdotally, all you have to do is be able to read and you can tell,&rdquo; Goren said. &ldquo;Every day there&rsquo;s another paper either dropping sports or cutting a bunch of sports people.&rdquo;But because most employers are looking to do things more cheaply to make up for lost revenue, &ldquo;in some ways that might be good for younger kids coming into the business,&rdquo; Goren said.Expansion seems to be going on at ESPN, which is adding events and pushing into new media, which is creating a need for more sportscasters.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s certainly creating more opportunities for younger broadcasters, especially on the digital side,&rdquo; said Laurie Orlando, senior VP for talent planning and development at ESPN.She suggested that digital media might be replacing local stations as the training ground for young sportscasters.&ldquo;No longer are we just a broadcaster. If there&rsquo;s any place in our industry that is full-service and multimedia, it&rsquo;s ESPN. We expect that our talent, within reason, are going to contribute to all of those platforms,&rdquo; she said, adding that the expectations are just as high online as on television to deliver credible information and deep knowledge to the ESPN fan base.Orlando said that channels like ESPNU and ESPN Regional Television are two places where sportscasters with just five years in the business can gain big-time experience.&ldquo;As long as they show promise and they&rsquo;re people we see potential in for down the road, it&rsquo;s a great training ground.&rdquo;Regional cable sports network Comcast SportsNet Chicago is also expanding.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re adding people and our business is still in a growth mode,&rdquo; said Jim Corno, president of Comcast SportsNet.Much of the hiring is for network&rsquo;s website.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got people who go out and cover the teams from a digital standpoint,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re hired for the digital department, but they do have some on-air exposure as well.&rdquo;For example, John Mullin, who covers the Bears for chicago.comcastsportsnet.com, also appears on the network&rsquo;s &ldquo;Chicago Tribune Live&rdquo; show and its &ldquo;Bears Postgame Live.&rdquo;At the same time, the network&rsquo;s veteran sportscasters are becoming switch-hitters.&ldquo;Our on-air people are learning the digital side,&rdquo; Corno said.Online reporting and social media are creating new expectations for sportscasters.&ldquo;The guy can no longer just sit there, call the game and go home. Or if you&rsquo;re an anchor, you can&rsquo;t just go on, &lsquo;here&rsquo;s the news of the day,&rsquo; and go home,&rdquo; he said. People expect you to be visible on all the different platforms. They expect to see you and have access to you through the Web space.&rdquo;Corno said some of his on-air talent have been very aggressive about blogging and social media.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like we&rsquo;re twisting arms here,&rdquo; he said.The activity is good for both the network and the anchors.&ldquo;You hope that the Comcast SportsNet brand is getting more exposure and more people have access to it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;As far as the talent goes, all the exposure they get helps them too. It&rsquo;s a win-win.&rdquo;Eventually, Corno said, his on-air and digital sportscasters will have nearly interchangeable skills.&ldquo;I think the on-air personality is always going to be the higher priority. But I think you&rsquo;re going to expect those on-air personalities to participate in our Web and digital components.&rdquo;While cable outlets are expanding, many stations are thinking about cutting back on sportscasts and sportscasters.&ldquo;I would say that it is something that a lot of stations are talking about,&rdquo; said Stacey Woelfel, chairman of the Radio Television Digital News Association and news director of KOMU-TV. The reason is that studies have shown that only 20 percent of the audience cares about sports, and that it&rsquo;s often an expensive area to cover.But Woelfel said there&rsquo;s more talk than action.&ldquo;The problem is none of us wants to give up 20 percent to the other guy. And that 20 percent goes up when the local team goes to the NCAA Tournament or Super Bowl,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not to say there haven&rsquo;t been cutbacks.&rdquo;Many sports departments are down to one or two people. Travel has also been reduced sharply; instead of sending anchors, reporters, sportscasters, a cameraman and producers to an event, these days a station may send just two people.One survey suggests that recent cutbacks have been more anecdotal than systematic. According to the latest RTDNA/Hofstra University study, about 2,000 people work in TV sports as an anchor, reporter or both, or about 2.7 per station. That number has held steady over the past five years.Some stations are taking a one-man-band approach to sporting events.&ldquo;Now it&rsquo;s shoot your story, cut it, send it back by FTP and then set up your Skype and do a live shot for us,&rdquo; Woelfel said.In fact, that may provide a scouting report for what stations will be looking for in a sportscaster.&ldquo;The local or regional sports journalist of the future is a one-man band, and is somebody who moves easily between sports, and is a person who has an interest in important local and regional sports,&rdquo; Woelfel said.Of course, there are some optimists.&ldquo;Sports is a staple of television. There&rsquo;s an ebb and a flow, but sports is going to stay important, and hiring is going to increase in the future,&rdquo; said Richard Leibner, president of top talent agency N.S. Bienstock. &ldquo;Maybe you won&rsquo;t have five-person or 10-person departments, but you&rsquo;ll have two- or three-person sports departments. These days, sports crimes and scandals become a lead story, and whether that&rsquo;s covered by news or sports remains to be seen.&rdquo;Goren, who was in sportscasting for 24 years, said he&rsquo;d still recommend it as a profession.&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better know there&rsquo;s a shrunken pool out there. You better know how to shoot video. You better know how to do everything is the bottom line,&rdquo; said Goren. &ldquo;I always said as I was coming up, if you love it enough you&rsquo;ll do whatever it takes. But anybody who paints it with a rosy picture and said everything is wine and roses is selling you a bill of goods.&rdquo;]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Digital" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[By Jon LafayetteHoly cow, these are tough time for traditional sportscasters. But new technology and social media may be creating opportunities for people who want a career in sports journalism.Despite record ratings for big events like the Super Bowl, the recession has hit broadcast outlets like a blitzing linebacker, and on-air talent are feeling the pain in their paychecks. Also taking a toll on broadcast jobs is the growth of cable, where outlets led by ESPN are acquiring rights to more and more games and aggressively pushing into local markets.Jobs are being created on cable, but they&rsquo;re mostly for less experienced sportscasters, or for people who can create content for the Web.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an ever-changing world, an ever-changing industry, an ever-changing landscape,&rdquo; said Dave Goren, executive director of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association and Hall of Fame.While new media is creating opportunities for those smart enough to change with it, Goren said, &ldquo;I think there&rsquo;s probably more of a contraction to come before there&rsquo;s an expansion.&rdquo;Things are tough for sports writers in the troubled newspaper industry as well.&ldquo;Anecdotally, all you have to do is be able to read and you can tell,&rdquo; Goren said. &ldquo;Every day there&rsquo;s another paper either dropping sports or cutting a bunch of sports people.&rdquo;But because most employers are looking to do things more cheaply to make up for lost revenue, &ldquo;in some ways that might be good for younger kids coming into the business,&rdquo; Goren said.Expansion seems to be going on at ESPN, which is adding events and pushing into new media, which is creating a need for more sportscasters.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s certainly creating more opportunities for younger broadcasters, especially on the digital side,&rdquo; said Laurie Orlando, senior VP for talent planning and development at ESPN.She suggested that digital media might be replacing local stations as the training ground for young sportscasters.&ldquo;No longer are we just a broadcaster. If there&rsquo;s any place in our industry that is full-service and multimedia, it&rsquo;s ESPN. We expect that our talent, within reason, are going to contribute to all of those platforms,&rdquo; she said, adding that the expectations are just as high online as on television to deliver credible information and deep knowledge to the ESPN fan base.Orlando said that channels like ESPNU and ESPN Regional Television are two places where sportscasters with just five years in the business can gain big-time experience.&ldquo;As long as they show promise and they&rsquo;re people we see potential in for down the road, it&rsquo;s a great training ground.&rdquo;Regional cable sports network Comcast SportsNet Chicago is also expanding.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re adding people and our business is still in a growth mode,&rdquo; said Jim Corno, president of Comcast SportsNet.Much of the hiring is for network&rsquo;s website.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got people who go out and cover the teams from a digital standpoint,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re hired for the digital department, but they do have some on-air exposure as well.&rdquo;For example, John Mullin, who covers the Bears for chicago.comcastsportsnet.com, also appears on the network&rsquo;s &ldquo;Chicago Tribune Live&rdquo; show and its &ldquo;Bears Postgame Live.&rdquo;At the same time, the network&rsquo;s veteran sportscasters are becoming switch-hitters.&ldquo;Our on-air people are learning the digital side,&rdquo; Corno said.Online reporting and social media are creating new expectations for sportscasters.&ldquo;The guy can no longer just sit there, call the game and go home. Or if you&rsquo;re an anchor, you can&rsquo;t just go on, &lsquo;here&rsquo;s the news of the day,&rsquo; and go home,&rdquo; he said. People expect you to be visible on all the different platforms. They expect to see you and have access to you through the Web space.&rdquo;Corno said some of his on-air talent have been very aggressive about blogging and social media.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like we&rsquo;re twisting arms here,&rdquo; he said.The activity is good for both the network and the anchors.&ldquo;You hope that the Comcast SportsNet brand is getting more exposure and more people have access to it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;As far as the talent goes, all the exposure they get helps them too. It&rsquo;s a win-win.&rdquo;Eventually, Corno said, his on-air and digital sportscasters will have nearly interchangeable skills.&ldquo;I think the on-air personality is always going to be the higher priority. But I think you&rsquo;re going to expect those on-air personalities to participate in our Web and digital components.&rdquo;While cable outlets are expanding, many stations are thinking about cutting back on sportscasts and sportscasters.&ldquo;I would say that it is something that a lot of stations are talking about,&rdquo; said Stacey Woelfel, chairman of the Radio Television Digital News Association and news director of KOMU-TV. The reason is that studies have shown that only 20 percent of the audience cares about sports, and that it&rsquo;s often an expensive area to cover.But Woelfel said there&rsquo;s more talk than action.&ldquo;The problem is none of us wants to give up 20 percent to the other guy. And that 20 percent goes up when the local team goes to the NCAA Tournament or Super Bowl,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not to say there haven&rsquo;t been cutbacks.&rdquo;Many sports departments are down to one or two people. Travel has also been reduced sharply; instead of sending anchors, reporters, sportscasters, a cameraman and producers to an event, these days a station may send just two people.One survey suggests that recent cutbacks have been more anecdotal than systematic. According to the latest RTDNA/Hofstra University study, about 2,000 people work in TV sports as an anchor, reporter or both, or about 2.7 per station. That number has held steady over the past five years.Some stations are taking a one-man-band approach to sporting events.&ldquo;Now it&rsquo;s shoot your story, cut it, send it back by FTP and then set up your Skype and do a live shot for us,&rdquo; Woelfel said.In fact, that may provide a scouting report for what stations will be looking for in a sportscaster.&ldquo;The local or regional sports journalist of the future is a one-man band, and is somebody who moves easily between sports, and is a person who has an interest in important local and regional sports,&rdquo; Woelfel said.Of course, there are some optimists.&ldquo;Sports is a staple of television. There&rsquo;s an ebb and a flow, but sports is going to stay important, and hiring is going to increase in the future,&rdquo; said Richard Leibner, president of top talent agency N.S. Bienstock. &ldquo;Maybe you won&rsquo;t have five-person or 10-person departments, but you&rsquo;ll have two- or three-person sports departments. These days, sports crimes and scandals become a lead story, and whether that&rsquo;s covered by news or sports remains to be seen.&rdquo;Goren, who was in sportscasting for 24 years, said he&rsquo;d still recommend it as a profession.&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better know there&rsquo;s a shrunken pool out there. You better know how to shoot video. You better know how to do everything is the bottom line,&rdquo; said Goren. &ldquo;I always said as I was coming up, if you love it enough you&rsquo;ll do whatever it takes. But anybody who paints it with a rosy picture and said everything is wine and roses is selling you a bill of goods.&rdquo;]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>Sportscasters and Sportswriters Honor Their Own</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/04/sportscasters_and_sportswriter.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41557</id>
   
   <published>2010-04-28T21:54:08Z</published>
   <updated>2010-04-28T21:57:56Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[By Jarre FeesSeeking to honor the best sports journalists in the nation, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association will induct football&rsquo;s John Madden and baseball&rsquo;s Peter Gammons into the NSSA Hall of Fame at its annual awards ceremony on May 3 in Salisbury, N.C.Along with Madden and Gammons, Jim Nantz of CBS Sports will be honored for the fifth time as National Sportscaster of the Year, and Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe will be honored for the fourth time as National Sportswriter of the Year.Dave Goren, NSSA executive director and former State Sportscaster of the Year for North Carolina, said, &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t ask for two better hall-of-famers. John Madden re-defined the role of TV football analyst with his simple, conversational approach. And as a Boston Globe reader growing up, I&rsquo;ve been reading Gammons for years. He and Bob Ryan are two of the reasons I went into a sports journalism career.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re thrilled to have Jim Nantz and Ryan as our national winners for the third straight year,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;Jim is as talented and smooth a play-by-play man as there is, and Bob has a knack for selling his opinions by painting a perfect picture. Even better, they are both classy men who love NSSA.&rdquo;Madden&rsquo;s career as an NFL coach included a Super Bowl win and a regular-season record of 103-32-7, and provided the impetus for a 30-year television career as football analyst for CBS, Fox, ABC and ESPN. He won 13 Emmy awards for outstanding sports personality/analyst during that stretch, and was named NSSA Sportscaster of the Year in 1984.Madden is also revered by a generation of video gamers for the wildly successful game series Madden NFL. He retired in 2009.Gammons&rsquo; Sunday Notes baseball column for the Globe set a new standard for baseball coverage. He followed the Boston stint with a career at Sports Illustrated and joined ESPN in 1988 as an in-studio analyst, in addition to writing for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. Gammons can now be seen on the New England Sports Network and the MLB Network, in addition to writing for MLB.com and other online entities.&ldquo;The first 40 years of my career I only had three employers &mdash; the Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated and ESPN,&rdquo; Gammons said. &ldquo;Now I have five at the same time, and I&rsquo;m grateful for every one of them.&rdquo;Gammons and Ryan both started as interns at the Boston Globe on June 10, 1968. Gammons, who graduated a year later from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he still refers to himself &ldquo;as an ink-stained wretch,&rdquo; although he admitted he does more television than writing at this point.&ldquo;A lot of things have become Internet-oriented,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Everything changes constantly, but it&rsquo;s still about reporting the news.&rdquo;&ldquo;We had no idea of the paths we would wind up taking,&rdquo; Ryan said, &ldquo;because the things we would end up doing weren&rsquo;t even available to us when we started.&ldquo;No one thought about the crossover business of TV, or had any idea [sports writing] would lead us all over the world. All I cared about was writing and covering the games.&rdquo;Ryan has spent his career at the Boston Globe, covering the Boston Celtics for 15 years before branching out to become a general columnist. He also appears frequently on ESPN&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Sports Reporters&rdquo; and other TV and radio shows.Ryan said his &ldquo;so-called reputation&rdquo; was based on his association with the Boston Celtics, but he admitted that baseball was actually his first love. He regrets he was &ldquo;never able to slip away to the College World Series&rdquo; because it conflicted with the NBA playoffs. But in general, Ryan said, he had few regrets about the direction his career had taken.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m still associated with the Celtics and I&rsquo;m very proud of it,&rdquo; Ryan said. &ldquo;Basketball has been very, very good to me.&rdquo;Nantz started at CBS in 1985 and has become the network&rsquo;s lead play-by-play announcer for golf, the NFL and college basketball.&ldquo;This is what I wanted to do even as a young boy,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now I look at the talent that&rsquo;s in that room every year &mdash; the state winners and the national winners and the hall-of-famers &mdash; and it just amazes me to be part of it.&rdquo;Nantz said his &ldquo;biggest thrill&rdquo; this year will be in the person of &ldquo;one of his boyhood heroes&rdquo; who will be presenting his award. &ldquo;I got Arnold Palmer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was too timid to ask him to fly any more than he has to, but then I decided I&rsquo;d never be able to live with myself if I didn&rsquo;t ask him to come.&rdquo;In addition to the national winners, the NSSA will honor 106 recipients of the State Sportscaster and Sportswriter of the Year awards.]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Digital" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[By Jarre FeesSeeking to honor the best sports journalists in the nation, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association will induct football&rsquo;s John Madden and baseball&rsquo;s Peter Gammons into the NSSA Hall of Fame at its annual awards ceremony on May 3 in Salisbury, N.C.Along with Madden and Gammons, Jim Nantz of CBS Sports will be honored for the fifth time as National Sportscaster of the Year, and Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe will be honored for the fourth time as National Sportswriter of the Year.Dave Goren, NSSA executive director and former State Sportscaster of the Year for North Carolina, said, &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t ask for two better hall-of-famers. John Madden re-defined the role of TV football analyst with his simple, conversational approach. And as a Boston Globe reader growing up, I&rsquo;ve been reading Gammons for years. He and Bob Ryan are two of the reasons I went into a sports journalism career.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re thrilled to have Jim Nantz and Ryan as our national winners for the third straight year,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;Jim is as talented and smooth a play-by-play man as there is, and Bob has a knack for selling his opinions by painting a perfect picture. Even better, they are both classy men who love NSSA.&rdquo;Madden&rsquo;s career as an NFL coach included a Super Bowl win and a regular-season record of 103-32-7, and provided the impetus for a 30-year television career as football analyst for CBS, Fox, ABC and ESPN. He won 13 Emmy awards for outstanding sports personality/analyst during that stretch, and was named NSSA Sportscaster of the Year in 1984.Madden is also revered by a generation of video gamers for the wildly successful game series Madden NFL. He retired in 2009.Gammons&rsquo; Sunday Notes baseball column for the Globe set a new standard for baseball coverage. He followed the Boston stint with a career at Sports Illustrated and joined ESPN in 1988 as an in-studio analyst, in addition to writing for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. Gammons can now be seen on the New England Sports Network and the MLB Network, in addition to writing for MLB.com and other online entities.&ldquo;The first 40 years of my career I only had three employers &mdash; the Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated and ESPN,&rdquo; Gammons said. &ldquo;Now I have five at the same time, and I&rsquo;m grateful for every one of them.&rdquo;Gammons and Ryan both started as interns at the Boston Globe on June 10, 1968. Gammons, who graduated a year later from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he still refers to himself &ldquo;as an ink-stained wretch,&rdquo; although he admitted he does more television than writing at this point.&ldquo;A lot of things have become Internet-oriented,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Everything changes constantly, but it&rsquo;s still about reporting the news.&rdquo;&ldquo;We had no idea of the paths we would wind up taking,&rdquo; Ryan said, &ldquo;because the things we would end up doing weren&rsquo;t even available to us when we started.&ldquo;No one thought about the crossover business of TV, or had any idea [sports writing] would lead us all over the world. All I cared about was writing and covering the games.&rdquo;Ryan has spent his career at the Boston Globe, covering the Boston Celtics for 15 years before branching out to become a general columnist. He also appears frequently on ESPN&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Sports Reporters&rdquo; and other TV and radio shows.Ryan said his &ldquo;so-called reputation&rdquo; was based on his association with the Boston Celtics, but he admitted that baseball was actually his first love. He regrets he was &ldquo;never able to slip away to the College World Series&rdquo; because it conflicted with the NBA playoffs. But in general, Ryan said, he had few regrets about the direction his career had taken.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m still associated with the Celtics and I&rsquo;m very proud of it,&rdquo; Ryan said. &ldquo;Basketball has been very, very good to me.&rdquo;Nantz started at CBS in 1985 and has become the network&rsquo;s lead play-by-play announcer for golf, the NFL and college basketball.&ldquo;This is what I wanted to do even as a young boy,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now I look at the talent that&rsquo;s in that room every year &mdash; the state winners and the national winners and the hall-of-famers &mdash; and it just amazes me to be part of it.&rdquo;Nantz said his &ldquo;biggest thrill&rdquo; this year will be in the person of &ldquo;one of his boyhood heroes&rdquo; who will be presenting his award. &ldquo;I got Arnold Palmer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was too timid to ask him to fly any more than he has to, but then I decided I&rsquo;d never be able to live with myself if I didn&rsquo;t ask him to come.&rdquo;In addition to the national winners, the NSSA will honor 106 recipients of the State Sportscaster and Sportswriter of the Year awards.]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>Q&amp;A: NSSA Executive Director Dave Goren</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/04/qa_nssa_ececutive_director_dav.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41556</id>
   
   <published>2010-04-28T21:51:02Z</published>
   <updated>2010-04-28T21:53:49Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[Dave Goren, executive director of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, was born in Taunton, Mass., and graduated from the SI Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. Goren did play-by-play for the Orangemen football and basketball teams along with covering the Syracuse Chiefs Triple-A baseball team.Goren also worked for WJAR-TV in Providence, R.I., and WCVB-TV in Boston before heading to WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, N.C. Goren was named North Carolina Sportscaster of the Year by the NSSA in 2008. He recently spoke with NewsPro correspondent Jarre Fees.NewsPro: In light of the economic downturn and decimation of the publishing industry, what&rsquo;s the state of the NSSA right now?Dave Goren: In flux. Things are constantly changing. If we see an effect in membership it will be on down the road, as people who are longtime members retire.The challenge is in getting younger sports journalists. What happens to them once they get out of college? Will they be able to get work? Will we have as big a pool to pick from in the future? We haven&rsquo;t fully exploited the people who are already working, so we also have to get more of those fish on the hook.NewsPro: How do you educate the general public about the NSSA?Goren: We actually threw together a roundtable discussion on three weeks&rsquo; notice with Marty Brennaman, play-by-play man for the Cincinnati Reds, when he was coming through town last year.We got Mick Mickson, color commentator for the Carolina Panthers; Stan Cotten, the sportscaster for Wake Forest; a local radio guy, Howard Platt; and some other local sports people. We got up on stage at Salisbury High School and I threw out a few questions and the sportscasters told stories and talked about some issues. That was just thrown together, but it worked.We&rsquo;d like to go into different cities and do sports summits &mdash; start with a media roundtable discussion on various issues in sports and sports journalism, with a panel of athletes, coaches, journalists and front-office people. We could have those televised, maybe on local public television, and that night have a dinner in conjunction with local VIPs to present a scholarship and local media-recognition award.We&rsquo;re also having some of our members go in and talk to local schools and organizations, and we&rsquo;d like to do more of that.NewsPro: Where do you see the NSSA in five years?Goren: In five years&rsquo; time if we don&rsquo;t have a Hall of Fame Museum we&rsquo;ll be close to it. Membership will be at least doubled. I&rsquo;d like to say that we&rsquo;ll be thriving.NewsPro: How does the NSSA recruit new members?Goren: We have interns developing e-mail blast lists and posting on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I&rsquo;m trying to contact as many people in the business as I can and gently twist their arms. It&rsquo;s hard to convince people when they haven&rsquo;t seen us in action.My philosophy is we can do so much more to help ourselves as an organization and help each other as well. The term is overused, but everything we do should be win-win.NewsPro: How do the challenges for the NSSA reflect the broader issues of the population in general?Goren: We need more members who are women, and we need more people of color. Part of our challenge is to become as diverse as the sports media population.When you look at every TV station you see one white face and one face of color. What would be wrong with having two brown faces? We have to try and reflect the community, maybe get out of our comfort zone.]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Business" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[Dave Goren, executive director of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, was born in Taunton, Mass., and graduated from the SI Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. Goren did play-by-play for the Orangemen football and basketball teams along with covering the Syracuse Chiefs Triple-A baseball team.Goren also worked for WJAR-TV in Providence, R.I., and WCVB-TV in Boston before heading to WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, N.C. Goren was named North Carolina Sportscaster of the Year by the NSSA in 2008. He recently spoke with NewsPro correspondent Jarre Fees.NewsPro: In light of the economic downturn and decimation of the publishing industry, what&rsquo;s the state of the NSSA right now?Dave Goren: In flux. Things are constantly changing. If we see an effect in membership it will be on down the road, as people who are longtime members retire.The challenge is in getting younger sports journalists. What happens to them once they get out of college? Will they be able to get work? Will we have as big a pool to pick from in the future? We haven&rsquo;t fully exploited the people who are already working, so we also have to get more of those fish on the hook.NewsPro: How do you educate the general public about the NSSA?Goren: We actually threw together a roundtable discussion on three weeks&rsquo; notice with Marty Brennaman, play-by-play man for the Cincinnati Reds, when he was coming through town last year.We got Mick Mickson, color commentator for the Carolina Panthers; Stan Cotten, the sportscaster for Wake Forest; a local radio guy, Howard Platt; and some other local sports people. We got up on stage at Salisbury High School and I threw out a few questions and the sportscasters told stories and talked about some issues. That was just thrown together, but it worked.We&rsquo;d like to go into different cities and do sports summits &mdash; start with a media roundtable discussion on various issues in sports and sports journalism, with a panel of athletes, coaches, journalists and front-office people. We could have those televised, maybe on local public television, and that night have a dinner in conjunction with local VIPs to present a scholarship and local media-recognition award.We&rsquo;re also having some of our members go in and talk to local schools and organizations, and we&rsquo;d like to do more of that.NewsPro: Where do you see the NSSA in five years?Goren: In five years&rsquo; time if we don&rsquo;t have a Hall of Fame Museum we&rsquo;ll be close to it. Membership will be at least doubled. I&rsquo;d like to say that we&rsquo;ll be thriving.NewsPro: How does the NSSA recruit new members?Goren: We have interns developing e-mail blast lists and posting on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I&rsquo;m trying to contact as many people in the business as I can and gently twist their arms. It&rsquo;s hard to convince people when they haven&rsquo;t seen us in action.My philosophy is we can do so much more to help ourselves as an organization and help each other as well. The term is overused, but everything we do should be win-win.NewsPro: How do the challenges for the NSSA reflect the broader issues of the population in general?Goren: We need more members who are women, and we need more people of color. Part of our challenge is to become as diverse as the sports media population.When you look at every TV station you see one white face and one face of color. What would be wrong with having two brown faces? We have to try and reflect the community, maybe get out of our comfort zone.]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>Salisbury, N.C.: Why Sports Journalists Return Year After Year</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/04/salisbury_nc_why_sports_journa.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41555</id>
   
   <published>2010-04-28T21:47:54Z</published>
   <updated>2010-04-28T21:50:41Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[By Jarre FeesBack in 1957, a Salisbury, N.C., restaurateur Pete DiMizio had the idea to honor regional sportscasters and sportswriters whom he had met at the Greensboro (N.C.) Open Golf Tournament. Following DiMizio&rsquo;s untimely death in 1959, Dr. Edward McKenzie, another Salisbury resident, helped realize DiMizio&rsquo;s ambition by bringing in other locals to form the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters.The first NSSA awards program was held in Salisbury on April 12, 1960, and the five-decade affiliation between the organization and the town was off and running.Today, the City of Salisbury has around 30,000 people, which would qualify it as a town in most other states. But in addition to hosting the NSSA Awards and Hall of Fame every year, Salisbury boasts a fair number of big-city attractions.&ldquo;Until recently, we were the smallest city in the nation with its own symphony,&rdquo; said Mayor Susan Kluttz. &ldquo;We also have a blues and jazz festival, and a beautiful downtown that still had to be reinvented in the 1980s when downtowns started to die.&rdquo;Salisbury is 254 years old, Kluttz said, and the community is &ldquo;a leader in historic preservation. In the 1970s we started preserving our older buildings.&rdquo; In fact, several Salisbury neighborhoods were included in the March issue of This Old House Magazine&rsquo;s &ldquo;51 Best Old House Neighborhoods.&rdquo;&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a core group of people here who pour their hearts and souls into honoring these sportswriters,&rdquo; said NSSA executive director Dave Goren. &ldquo;They picked up a torch that needed to be carried.&rdquo;Former organizer Barbara Lockert, who last year handed the reins of the NSSA awards weekend to her daughter Cassandra Barrier after &ldquo;years of being chief cook and bottle-washer,&rdquo; said she started volunteering for the NSSA awards weekend in 1972. &ldquo;Once you start volunteering, it takes up all your time,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;so finally they hired me.&ldquo;Salisbury&rsquo;s not glitzy, but we&rsquo;re genuine,&rdquo; Lockert said. &ldquo;People have wanted to take it to Vegas or Orlando or New York City. But the NSSA people who come in, they love it like it is. They don&rsquo;t have to put on a tux. People come here and they know we like them. We make them feel welcomed.&rdquo;The NSSA turns 51 this year, but some of the connections between sportscasters and citizens go back even further.Jim Nantz, NSSA&rsquo;s National Sportscaster of the Year, said his grandfather ran the train depot in the nearby town of Spencer in the early 20th Century.&ldquo;Several years ago my uncle Mark came to the NSSA ceremony with me,&rdquo; he said, and we spent the day retracing my grandfather&rsquo;s steps.&rdquo;They found the house his grandfather had lived in, and discovered his grandfather had bought the house from a doctor who was headed to Texas to help with &ldquo;a typhus epidemic in El Paso.&rdquo; &ldquo;The real estate records showed my father bought the house for $1,400 somewhere around 1912,&rdquo; said Mark Nantz, Jim Nantz&rsquo;s uncle, who lives in Atlanta. &ldquo;He paid $140 down and took a loan at 6 percent interest.&ldquo;But the amazing thing we discovered was he bought the house from a Dr. Kluttz, whose grandson is now a judge who&rsquo;s married to the mayor.&rdquo;&ldquo;Here you have these events that take you all over the world,&rdquo; Jim Nantz said, &ldquo;and then the NSSA ceremony takes place two miles from where my grandfather ran the train station.&rdquo;Dr. Kluttz died while treating patients in the Texas epidemic, and his wife returned with their children to Salisbury. &ldquo;It was a fateful transaction between two families,&rdquo; Jim Nantz said, &ldquo;and then here I am getting an award in Salisbury and Mayor Kluttz is speaking at the opening ceremony. It&rsquo;s like everything coming full circle.&rdquo;]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[By Jarre FeesBack in 1957, a Salisbury, N.C., restaurateur Pete DiMizio had the idea to honor regional sportscasters and sportswriters whom he had met at the Greensboro (N.C.) Open Golf Tournament. Following DiMizio&rsquo;s untimely death in 1959, Dr. Edward McKenzie, another Salisbury resident, helped realize DiMizio&rsquo;s ambition by bringing in other locals to form the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters.The first NSSA awards program was held in Salisbury on April 12, 1960, and the five-decade affiliation between the organization and the town was off and running.Today, the City of Salisbury has around 30,000 people, which would qualify it as a town in most other states. But in addition to hosting the NSSA Awards and Hall of Fame every year, Salisbury boasts a fair number of big-city attractions.&ldquo;Until recently, we were the smallest city in the nation with its own symphony,&rdquo; said Mayor Susan Kluttz. &ldquo;We also have a blues and jazz festival, and a beautiful downtown that still had to be reinvented in the 1980s when downtowns started to die.&rdquo;Salisbury is 254 years old, Kluttz said, and the community is &ldquo;a leader in historic preservation. In the 1970s we started preserving our older buildings.&rdquo; In fact, several Salisbury neighborhoods were included in the March issue of This Old House Magazine&rsquo;s &ldquo;51 Best Old House Neighborhoods.&rdquo;&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a core group of people here who pour their hearts and souls into honoring these sportswriters,&rdquo; said NSSA executive director Dave Goren. &ldquo;They picked up a torch that needed to be carried.&rdquo;Former organizer Barbara Lockert, who last year handed the reins of the NSSA awards weekend to her daughter Cassandra Barrier after &ldquo;years of being chief cook and bottle-washer,&rdquo; said she started volunteering for the NSSA awards weekend in 1972. &ldquo;Once you start volunteering, it takes up all your time,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;so finally they hired me.&ldquo;Salisbury&rsquo;s not glitzy, but we&rsquo;re genuine,&rdquo; Lockert said. &ldquo;People have wanted to take it to Vegas or Orlando or New York City. But the NSSA people who come in, they love it like it is. They don&rsquo;t have to put on a tux. People come here and they know we like them. We make them feel welcomed.&rdquo;The NSSA turns 51 this year, but some of the connections between sportscasters and citizens go back even further.Jim Nantz, NSSA&rsquo;s National Sportscaster of the Year, said his grandfather ran the train depot in the nearby town of Spencer in the early 20th Century.&ldquo;Several years ago my uncle Mark came to the NSSA ceremony with me,&rdquo; he said, and we spent the day retracing my grandfather&rsquo;s steps.&rdquo;They found the house his grandfather had lived in, and discovered his grandfather had bought the house from a doctor who was headed to Texas to help with &ldquo;a typhus epidemic in El Paso.&rdquo; &ldquo;The real estate records showed my father bought the house for $1,400 somewhere around 1912,&rdquo; said Mark Nantz, Jim Nantz&rsquo;s uncle, who lives in Atlanta. &ldquo;He paid $140 down and took a loan at 6 percent interest.&ldquo;But the amazing thing we discovered was he bought the house from a Dr. Kluttz, whose grandson is now a judge who&rsquo;s married to the mayor.&rdquo;&ldquo;Here you have these events that take you all over the world,&rdquo; Jim Nantz said, &ldquo;and then the NSSA ceremony takes place two miles from where my grandfather ran the train station.&rdquo;Dr. Kluttz died while treating patients in the Texas epidemic, and his wife returned with their children to Salisbury. &ldquo;It was a fateful transaction between two families,&rdquo; Jim Nantz said, &ldquo;and then here I am getting an award in Salisbury and Mayor Kluttz is speaking at the opening ceremony. It&rsquo;s like everything coming full circle.&rdquo;]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>Q&amp;A: ESPN's John Anderson</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/04/qa_espns_john_anderson.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41553</id>
   
   <published>2010-04-28T21:40:52Z</published>
   <updated>2010-04-28T21:44:04Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[As co-anchor of ESPN&rsquo;s flagship edition of SportsCenter at 11 p.m., John Anderson is one of the nation&rsquo;s most prominent sportscasters. He joined ESPN in 1999 after a long career in local broadcasting that began in Columbia, Mo., and included stops in Tulsa, Okla., and Phoenix.A Green Bay, Wis., native, Anderson has won awards from local chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Associated Press. What follows is an edited transcript of an interview with NewsPro contributor Jon Lafayette.NewsPro: What&rsquo;s the best part of the job?Anderson: I tell my friends in local news my favorite part is that we never lose time to the weatherman. It doesn&rsquo;t matter if it snows, it doesn&rsquo;t matter if there are floodwaters, we still get to do a whole hour of sportsI also like the fact that that as a kid from Wisconsin I on occasion get to interrupt the Yankee-Red Sox dynasty with a Brewers game in the newsroom, which is always sort of refreshing for me.But mostly it&rsquo;s a great job. If you&rsquo;re a sportscaster, in most cases, most nights, it&rsquo;s a pretty good subject to revolve your life around. Everyday you get to do something that, literally, you have liked since you were 6 or 7 years old.NewsPro: Was there a moment when you realized that you were over the hump and really a professional at doing this?Anderson: I would say thanks for the compliment there. I actually remember distinctly thinking when I got here at ESPN in 1999 that I was actually an anchor. That was a professional mindset change because, like most people who have come up through sports, you do a little bit of everything at all times coming up through the ranks. Now suddenly this is your one job. There should be no excuse for not being good at it because you don&rsquo;t have any other responsibilities.NewsPro: Were there any valuable experiences that you picked up working at local stations?Anderson: Oh my gosh, yeah. I worked with great people who I learned a lot from. You talk about being professional. I learned the business inside and out from there. When you&rsquo;re an anchor you write your stuff, but the video sort of pops up in front of you, where in local you&rsquo;re shooting it, you&rsquo;re editing it, and you&rsquo;re writing it, and you&rsquo;re producing the shows, and it&rsquo;s a much more wide-ranging job description.NewsPro: What challenges do you see facing the industry or you personally?Anderson: The challenge right now is rising above the noise. The business isn&rsquo;t about throwing spaghetti against the refrigerator and seeing if it sticks and it&rsquo;s done. All the fine principles that I had preached at me from Missouri journalism school or from watching Walter Cronkite or anybody else, all those things are in play. It&rsquo;s just harder I think to sometimes get them recognized because there&rsquo;s so much out there.The second one is that pretty soon your product is not always going to be in television. It&rsquo;s going to be on the Internet, and it&rsquo;s going to be on a mobile phone, and it&rsquo;s going to be on this new iPad thing. I think that is going to take some getting used to for people in my profession. I don&rsquo;t know if that relates to vanity or ego, but you just have to realize that you&rsquo;re going to show up in a lot of other places, and it might not always be the magic talking box that people are enamored with.NewsPro: Did being a high jumper help your career?Anderson: I learned really quick that there was not going to be any way to make money on that end. I was not going to parlay some Dwight Stones-like career into a media deal. You were going to have to write it better and ask good questions and cover details when you need it. And more seriously, any time you&rsquo;re with a team you learn the value of teamwork. That will translate into any job you have. Scott Van Pelt and I are the people out front, but there are 150 people that make sure we get on there and don&rsquo;t look stupid. So we&rsquo;re the last line of defense. Gosh, yes I want to serve the viewer, but I don&rsquo;t want to ruin it for a bunch of other people who&rsquo;ve invested their entire day [in the show] and then make it look bad.If you&rsquo;ve run enough and passed out enough and thrown up in enough garbage cans, when you have a long night here waiting for some 22 inning baseball game, you can go, &lsquo;At least I&rsquo;m sitting down and I&rsquo;m watching baseball and I&rsquo;m not logging mile 28, or running 24 quarter miles.&rsquo; That physical part of it makes me feel I&rsquo;m justifiably lazy at this point.]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[As co-anchor of ESPN&rsquo;s flagship edition of SportsCenter at 11 p.m., John Anderson is one of the nation&rsquo;s most prominent sportscasters. He joined ESPN in 1999 after a long career in local broadcasting that began in Columbia, Mo., and included stops in Tulsa, Okla., and Phoenix.A Green Bay, Wis., native, Anderson has won awards from local chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Associated Press. What follows is an edited transcript of an interview with NewsPro contributor Jon Lafayette.NewsPro: What&rsquo;s the best part of the job?Anderson: I tell my friends in local news my favorite part is that we never lose time to the weatherman. It doesn&rsquo;t matter if it snows, it doesn&rsquo;t matter if there are floodwaters, we still get to do a whole hour of sportsI also like the fact that that as a kid from Wisconsin I on occasion get to interrupt the Yankee-Red Sox dynasty with a Brewers game in the newsroom, which is always sort of refreshing for me.But mostly it&rsquo;s a great job. If you&rsquo;re a sportscaster, in most cases, most nights, it&rsquo;s a pretty good subject to revolve your life around. Everyday you get to do something that, literally, you have liked since you were 6 or 7 years old.NewsPro: Was there a moment when you realized that you were over the hump and really a professional at doing this?Anderson: I would say thanks for the compliment there. I actually remember distinctly thinking when I got here at ESPN in 1999 that I was actually an anchor. That was a professional mindset change because, like most people who have come up through sports, you do a little bit of everything at all times coming up through the ranks. Now suddenly this is your one job. There should be no excuse for not being good at it because you don&rsquo;t have any other responsibilities.NewsPro: Were there any valuable experiences that you picked up working at local stations?Anderson: Oh my gosh, yeah. I worked with great people who I learned a lot from. You talk about being professional. I learned the business inside and out from there. When you&rsquo;re an anchor you write your stuff, but the video sort of pops up in front of you, where in local you&rsquo;re shooting it, you&rsquo;re editing it, and you&rsquo;re writing it, and you&rsquo;re producing the shows, and it&rsquo;s a much more wide-ranging job description.NewsPro: What challenges do you see facing the industry or you personally?Anderson: The challenge right now is rising above the noise. The business isn&rsquo;t about throwing spaghetti against the refrigerator and seeing if it sticks and it&rsquo;s done. All the fine principles that I had preached at me from Missouri journalism school or from watching Walter Cronkite or anybody else, all those things are in play. It&rsquo;s just harder I think to sometimes get them recognized because there&rsquo;s so much out there.The second one is that pretty soon your product is not always going to be in television. It&rsquo;s going to be on the Internet, and it&rsquo;s going to be on a mobile phone, and it&rsquo;s going to be on this new iPad thing. I think that is going to take some getting used to for people in my profession. I don&rsquo;t know if that relates to vanity or ego, but you just have to realize that you&rsquo;re going to show up in a lot of other places, and it might not always be the magic talking box that people are enamored with.NewsPro: Did being a high jumper help your career?Anderson: I learned really quick that there was not going to be any way to make money on that end. I was not going to parlay some Dwight Stones-like career into a media deal. You were going to have to write it better and ask good questions and cover details when you need it. And more seriously, any time you&rsquo;re with a team you learn the value of teamwork. That will translate into any job you have. Scott Van Pelt and I are the people out front, but there are 150 people that make sure we get on there and don&rsquo;t look stupid. So we&rsquo;re the last line of defense. Gosh, yes I want to serve the viewer, but I don&rsquo;t want to ruin it for a bunch of other people who&rsquo;ve invested their entire day [in the show] and then make it look bad.If you&rsquo;ve run enough and passed out enough and thrown up in enough garbage cans, when you have a long night here waiting for some 22 inning baseball game, you can go, &lsquo;At least I&rsquo;m sitting down and I&rsquo;m watching baseball and I&rsquo;m not logging mile 28, or running 24 quarter miles.&rsquo; That physical part of it makes me feel I&rsquo;m justifiably lazy at this point.]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>Mary Carillo: A Jump to the Nets</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/04/mary_carillo_a_jump_to_the_net.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41552</id>
   
   <published>2010-04-28T21:38:26Z</published>
   <updated>2010-04-28T21:40:12Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[By Hillary AtkinSportscaster Mary Carillo knows her way around a field, a gymnasium, an Olympic mountaintop &mdash; and most definitely, a tennis court. The versatile broadcaster played on the professional women&rsquo;s tennis circuit from 1977-80, even winning the French Open mixed doubles title with longtime pal John McEnroe, before she traded in her tennis racquet for a microphone. Now, she&rsquo;s often paired with the former bad boy of tennis in the broadcast booth.In the past three decades, after starting her career at USA Network, she&rsquo;s had award-winning stints as a commentator, reporter and host across the dial &mdash; from HBO to PBS, CBS, NBC and ESPN.But perhaps there&rsquo;s been nothing as satisfying as the job she completed in February as host of &ldquo;Late Night at the Olympics&rdquo; on NBC, the nightly wrap-up of all the competition and the biggest stories at the Vancouver Winter Games. Adding to the excitement was the novelty of having a moose in the studio, which became a de facto mascot for the NBC team.Carillo has covered seven Winter Olympics and two Summer Olympic Games, the first in Albertville, France, in 1992 for CBS.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had some remarkable experiences,&rdquo; Carillo said. &ldquo;I have a great affinity for winter sports. Tennis is pretty straightforward. But winter sports are so dangerous and crazy and take you to beautiful mountain villages throughout the world.&rdquo;In Canada, she covered everything from the tragic luge track death that marred the opening of the games to the grand finale, which saw the host country joyfully winning the gold medal for hockey. The Western time zone worked in the broadcast&rsquo;s favor, especially compared with doing the late show from Beijing in the summer of 2008 at 1 p.m. local time.&ldquo;The good part was we were abler to react to what had just happened,&rdquo; Carrillo said. &ldquo;As soon as we were off live air, they would package things for the late show. Anyone who missed prime time got a nice feel. I thought my assignment was pretty easy, because the stuff we were given was so strong.&rdquo;As a former professional tennis player, Carillo is a frequent presence behind the mic on the Grand Slam tour and is currently working on four features for the upcoming French Open for ESPN. She&rsquo;s been covering the sport for 30 years.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen everyone. It&rsquo;s been a remarkable time in the sport,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The game used to be played with wooden racquets on grass. It&rsquo;s so different and there are so many different styles of player. The racquets are much more powerful and produce so much more spin. It&rsquo;s been a tremendous time in the evolution of tennis to cover it.&rdquo;Much as a player has to adapt to conditions, Carillo must adjust her style accordingly for each network.&ldquo;The coverage is different, with different producers and directors. There is a different sound at every network,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;At CBS, less is more, while at ESPN there is a lot of talking with a lot of announcers. They like a lot of people to have a discussion on one topic or one match. Given a choice between quieter and noisier, I like quieter. My personal choice is to set people up.Something extraordinary has to be happening for me to talk at the end of a match. You want the viewer to see it unfold.&rdquo;Carillo initially transitioned from being a player to covering sports when she was asked to do pickup commentary when she was sidelined with injuries. That led to requests to cover women&rsquo;s and then men&rsquo;s tennis &mdash; and then a host of other sports.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve covered events as a reporter, studio host, done features &mdash; they kind of throw me around and I get to experience events around the country and the world &mdash; that&rsquo;s a great gig,&rdquo; she said.]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[By Hillary AtkinSportscaster Mary Carillo knows her way around a field, a gymnasium, an Olympic mountaintop &mdash; and most definitely, a tennis court. The versatile broadcaster played on the professional women&rsquo;s tennis circuit from 1977-80, even winning the French Open mixed doubles title with longtime pal John McEnroe, before she traded in her tennis racquet for a microphone. Now, she&rsquo;s often paired with the former bad boy of tennis in the broadcast booth.In the past three decades, after starting her career at USA Network, she&rsquo;s had award-winning stints as a commentator, reporter and host across the dial &mdash; from HBO to PBS, CBS, NBC and ESPN.But perhaps there&rsquo;s been nothing as satisfying as the job she completed in February as host of &ldquo;Late Night at the Olympics&rdquo; on NBC, the nightly wrap-up of all the competition and the biggest stories at the Vancouver Winter Games. Adding to the excitement was the novelty of having a moose in the studio, which became a de facto mascot for the NBC team.Carillo has covered seven Winter Olympics and two Summer Olympic Games, the first in Albertville, France, in 1992 for CBS.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had some remarkable experiences,&rdquo; Carillo said. &ldquo;I have a great affinity for winter sports. Tennis is pretty straightforward. But winter sports are so dangerous and crazy and take you to beautiful mountain villages throughout the world.&rdquo;In Canada, she covered everything from the tragic luge track death that marred the opening of the games to the grand finale, which saw the host country joyfully winning the gold medal for hockey. The Western time zone worked in the broadcast&rsquo;s favor, especially compared with doing the late show from Beijing in the summer of 2008 at 1 p.m. local time.&ldquo;The good part was we were abler to react to what had just happened,&rdquo; Carrillo said. &ldquo;As soon as we were off live air, they would package things for the late show. Anyone who missed prime time got a nice feel. I thought my assignment was pretty easy, because the stuff we were given was so strong.&rdquo;As a former professional tennis player, Carillo is a frequent presence behind the mic on the Grand Slam tour and is currently working on four features for the upcoming French Open for ESPN. She&rsquo;s been covering the sport for 30 years.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen everyone. It&rsquo;s been a remarkable time in the sport,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The game used to be played with wooden racquets on grass. It&rsquo;s so different and there are so many different styles of player. The racquets are much more powerful and produce so much more spin. It&rsquo;s been a tremendous time in the evolution of tennis to cover it.&rdquo;Much as a player has to adapt to conditions, Carillo must adjust her style accordingly for each network.&ldquo;The coverage is different, with different producers and directors. There is a different sound at every network,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;At CBS, less is more, while at ESPN there is a lot of talking with a lot of announcers. They like a lot of people to have a discussion on one topic or one match. Given a choice between quieter and noisier, I like quieter. My personal choice is to set people up.Something extraordinary has to be happening for me to talk at the end of a match. You want the viewer to see it unfold.&rdquo;Carillo initially transitioned from being a player to covering sports when she was asked to do pickup commentary when she was sidelined with injuries. That led to requests to cover women&rsquo;s and then men&rsquo;s tennis &mdash; and then a host of other sports.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve covered events as a reporter, studio host, done features &mdash; they kind of throw me around and I get to experience events around the country and the world &mdash; that&rsquo;s a great gig,&rdquo; she said.]]>
   </content>
</entry>

<entry>
   <title>NBC Sports Will Give Comcast a Needed Broadcast Edge</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.tvweek.com/news/2010/04/comcasts_acquisition_of_nbc_sp.php" />
   <id>tag:www.tvweek.com,2010:/news//1.41551</id>
   
   <published>2010-04-28T21:32:23Z</published>
   <updated>2010-04-28T21:38:03Z</updated>
   
   <summary><![CDATA[By Jon LafayetteThe sports world will be lining up against a new giant when Comcast&rsquo;s $30 billion acquisition of NBC Universal finally pushes into the end zone.Like Walt Disney Co., which owns 80 percent of ESPN, a leader in cable and online sports, as well as a broadcast network in ABC, Comcast will boast a formidable roster of broadcast, cable and online properties.That muscle should mean that Comcast, which tried and failed to land an NFL package five years ago, now will have the count more in its favor when it comes to bidding for the most prominent and prestigious sports properties.&ldquo;Comcast will likely downplay the impact of the combining of the sports business because they don&rsquo;t want to make it seem as though they&rsquo;re going to be in control of so many assets,&rdquo; said Thomas Eagan, analyst at investment company Collins Stewart.At first it will be a reverse image of Disney. &ldquo;More strong in broadcast than strong in cable,&rdquo; Eagan said. But Comcast&rsquo;s new brawn in broadcast with NBC &ldquo;will help them in terms of being able to get eyeballs. In the broadcast business today it&rsquo;s about getting eyeballs that are real-time eyeballs.&rdquo;Comcast tried to acquire Disney &mdash; and with it ESPN &mdash; in 2004. Now no company puts more money into ESPN&rsquo;s coffers than Comcast. SNL Kagan estimates Comcast pays $5.8 billion a year to carry ESPN&rsquo;s domestic networks.Like a golf score, Comcast would love to see that number come down.By taking properties away from ESPN, Comcast would be building its own business while at the same time intercepting rationales ESPN could use to justify more increases in the subscriber fee it charges cable operators.&ldquo;Comcast probably at some point would like to at least hold down future payments, maybe even seek a reduction. One way to do that is to render ESPN not quite as exciting a network as it is today,&rdquo; said Neal Pilson, former CBS Sports president and now chief of Pilson Communications, a consultancy specializing in sports and media. &ldquo;And the way to do that is to take some of the sports properties that have up till now been controlled by ESPN and perhaps taking them on yourself.&rdquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not going to happen overnight, but over the long term, I&rsquo;m sure Comcast would like nothing more than to be able to turn [its national cable sports network] Versus into a viable competitor to ESPN, which would give it at least some negotiating leverage,&rdquo; said Derek Baine, senior analyst at SNL Kagan.&ldquo;ESPN has this love-hate relationship with cable operators. It&rsquo;s a must-have, but every time the negotiations come up, they&rsquo;re just horrendous,&rdquo; Baine said.Comcast declined to comment. Executives there are discouraged from talking about their plans for NBC Universal while the merger awaits government approval.Last month, the Federal Communications Commission extended its review of the deal for as much as six weeks, giving Comcast time to prepare two reports on whether the combination is in the public interest. The deadline for comments on the deal will be a month after the reports are filed.ESPN executives, while noting they&rsquo;ve always operated in a very competitive environment, also declined to comment.All by itself, NBC is a powerful player in sports. Among the events NBC telecasts are the NFL on Sunday nights, the Olympics on broadcast and cable, the NHL and the Stanley Cup Finals, Notre Dame football, Wimbledon and some top professional golf tournaments.Comcast airs the NHL, the Tour de France and professional bull riding on Versus. It also owns the Golf Channel and array of regional sports networks. After a long feud, Comcast finally reached a deal with the NFL to provide wide distribution of the NFL Network on its cable systems. With NBC on board, Comcast becomes an important media partner with the league.Baine said that Versus has been an underperformer for Comcast, and the merger could help shore it up.&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve just had all of these problems getting carriage, and the ratings have not been good and the programming is not that great. There are big synergies in being able to take existing sports rights like that and slam them in there,&rdquo; he said.Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports, appears likely to be put in charge of the combined companies&rsquo; sports assets, according to Pilson.Jeff Shell, president of Comcast Programming Group, has been leading Comcast&rsquo;s push into sports.Having Comcast in his corner might give Ebersol more latitude in pursuing big-ticket items.&ldquo;I think the next Olympic negotiations are going to be an example of where NBC is a stronger contender for rights with Comcast that it would have been with GE, which is much more concerned about the P&amp;L of the games themselves, even though the games have tremendous supplemental value or ancillary value that no one ever seems to account for,&rdquo; Pilson said.The NCAA&rsquo;s decision last month to award rights to its annual men&rsquo;s basketball tournament to CBS and Turner Sports for $10.8 billion over 14 years shows the power of combining the reach of broadcast and business model of cable for major sports properties. CBS also puts tourney games online with March Madness on Demand.Turner expects to be able to recoup some of its new March Madness costs by raising subscriber fees it charges operators, led by Comcast.As rights fees go up, televising sports becomes a tougher business on which to make a profit.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing written in the constitution of the United States that says every sports event, or even the sports network has to be profitable,&rdquo; Pilson said.&ldquo;The fact is that sports is clearly an enormous platform for launching and sustaining your entertainment and news programming. The most recent example was that NBC used the Olympics, basically, to restart its entire prime-time schedule.&rdquo;And where does that leave ESPN?&ldquo;They can decide strategically what&rsquo;s important to them and what isn&rsquo;t, which they&rsquo;re in the process of doing right now,&rdquo; said Pilson.He said ESPN advised the Atlantic Coast Conference that they&rsquo;re not prepared to bid up to levels it pays for the Southeastern Conference for college sports It also apparently decided not to bid as much as CBS and Turner did to secure the NCAA basketball tournament.ESPN is a smart well-managed company. I&rsquo;m sure they can deal with some added competition,&rdquo; Pilson said.]]></summary>
   <author>
      <name>Tom Gilbert</name>
      <uri>http://www.tvweek.com/</uri>
   </author>
   
      <category term="Broadcast" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Cable" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
      <category term="Digital" scheme="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category" />
   
   
   <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.tvweek.com/news/">
      <![CDATA[By Jon LafayetteThe sports world will be lining up against a new giant when Comcast&rsquo;s $30 billion acquisition of NBC Universal finally pushes into the end zone.Like Walt Disney Co., which owns 80 percent of ESPN, a leader in cable and online sports, as well as a broadcast network in ABC, Comcast will boast a formidable roster of broadcast, cable and online properties.That muscle should mean that Comcast, which tried and failed to land an NFL package five years ago, now will have the count more in its favor when it comes to bidding for the most prominent and prestigious sports properties.&ldquo;Comcast will likely downplay the impact of the combining of the sports business because they don&rsquo;t want to make it seem as though they&rsquo;re going to be in control of so many assets,&rdquo; said Thomas Eagan, analyst at investment company Collins Stewart.At first it will be a reverse image of Disney. &ldquo;More strong in broadcast than strong in cable,&rdquo; Eagan said. But Comcast&rsquo;s new brawn in broadcast with NBC &ldquo;will help them in terms of being able to get eyeballs. In the broadcast business today it&rsquo;s about getting eyeballs that are real-time eyeballs.&rdquo;Comcast tried to acquire Disney &mdash; and with it ESPN &mdash; in 2004. Now no company puts more money into ESPN&rsquo;s coffers than Comcast. SNL Kagan estimates Comcast pays $5.8 billion a year to carry ESPN&rsquo;s domestic networks.Like a golf score, Comcast would love to see that number come down.By taking properties away from ESPN, Comcast would be building its own business while at the same time intercepting rationales ESPN could use to justify more increases in the subscriber fee it charges cable operators.&ldquo;Comcast probably at some point would like to at least hold down future payments, maybe even seek a reduction. One way to do that is to render ESPN not quite as exciting a network as it is today,&rdquo; said Neal Pilson, former CBS Sports president and now chief of Pilson Communications, a consultancy specializing in sports and media. &ldquo;And the way to do that is to take some of the sports properties that have up till now been controlled by ESPN and perhaps taking them on yourself.&rdquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not going to happen overnight, but over the long term, I&rsquo;m sure Comcast would like nothing more than to be able to turn [its national cable sports network] Versus into a viable competitor to ESPN, which would give it at least some negotiating leverage,&rdquo; said Derek Baine, senior analyst at SNL Kagan.&ldquo;ESPN has this love-hate relationship with cable operators. It&rsquo;s a must-have, but every time the negotiations come up, they&rsquo;re just horrendous,&rdquo; Baine said.Comcast declined to comment. Executives there are discouraged from talking about their plans for NBC Universal while the merger awaits government approval.Last month, the Federal Communications Commission extended its review of the deal for as much as six weeks, giving Comcast time to prepare two reports on whether the combination is in the public interest. The deadline for comments on the deal will be a month after the reports are filed.ESPN executives, while noting they&rsquo;ve always operated in a very competitive environment, also declined to comment.All by itself, NBC is a powerful player in sports. Among the events NBC telecasts are the NFL on Sunday nights, the Olympics on broadcast and cable, the NHL and the Stanley Cup Finals, Notre Dame football, Wimbledon and some top professional golf tournaments.Comcast airs the NHL, the Tour de France and professional bull riding on Versus. It also owns the Golf Channel and array of regional sports networks. After a long feud, Comcast finally reached a deal with the NFL to provide wide distribution of the NFL Network on its cable systems. With NBC on board, Comcast becomes an important media partner with the league.Baine said that Versus has been an underperformer for Comcast, and the merger could help shore it up.&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve just had all of these problems getting carriage, and the ratings have not been good and the programming is not that great. There are big synergies in being able to take existing sports rights like that and slam them in there,&rdquo; he said.Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports, appears likely to be put in charge of the combined companies&rsquo; sports assets, according to Pilson.Jeff Shell, president of Comcast Programming Group, has been leading Comcast&rsquo;s push into sports.Having Comcast in his corner might give Ebersol more latitude in pursuing big-ticket items.&ldquo;I think the next Olympic negotiations are going to be an example of where NBC is a stronger contender for rights with Comcast that it would have been with GE, which is much more concerned about the P&amp;L of the games themselves, even though the games have tremendous supplemental value or ancillary value that no one ever seems to account for,&rdquo; Pilson said.The NCAA&rsquo;s decision last month to award rights to its annual men&rsquo;s basketball tournament to CBS and Turner Sports for $10.8 billion over 14 years shows the power of combining the reach of broadcast and business model of cable for major sports properties. CBS also puts tourney games online with March Madness on Demand.Turner expects to be able to recoup some of its new March Madness costs by raising subscriber fees it charges operators, led by Comcast.As rights fees go up, televising sports becomes a tougher business on which to make a profit.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing written in the constitution of the United States that says every sports event, or even the sports network has to be profitable,&rdquo; Pilson said.&ldquo;The fact is that sports is clearly an enormous platform for launching and sustaining your entertainment and news programming. The most recent example was that NBC used the Olympics, basically, to restart its entire prime-time schedule.&rdquo;And where does that leave ESPN?&ldquo;They can decide strategically what&rsquo;s important to them and what isn&rsquo;t, which they&rsquo;re in the process of doing right now,&rdquo; said Pilson.He said ESPN advised the Atlantic Coast Conference that they&rsquo;re not prepared to bid up to levels it pays for the Southeastern Conference for college sports It also apparently decided not to bid as much as CBS and Turner did to secure the NCAA basketball tournament.ESPN is a smart well-managed company. I&rsquo;m sure they can deal with some added competition,&rdquo; Pilson said.]]>
   </content>
</entry>

</feed>
