NEWFRONT UPDATES
Trusted Media Brands , the owner of properties such as Reader’s Digest, Taste of Home and The Family Handyman, wants very much to be known as a digital-first media company. At its NewFront presentation, the company announced that it’s planning several new digital series, including My Morning Ritual, which explores the healthy morning habits of well known people, and Your Way to Better Health , which highlights ways to stay healthy beyond just physical fitness. Both series will come from Reader’s Digest. Other new digital shows will hail from Taste of Home (‘Everyday Gorgeous’), The Family Handyman (‘The Design+Build Challenge’), and Haven Home Media (‘Bragging Rights’). The company also took time to highlight a new partnership with Arcade Creative Group, a creative and marketing agency born from Sony Music. In addition, the company says that it plans to add 25 new roles to its digital team, with the goal of supporting digital programming and creative custom video content for advertisers.
The company repeatedly assured advertisers that its properties are brand-safe environments. Given the brand safety travails that companies like Google and Faecbook have faced this year, it’s certainly not a bad theme to hammer home. “All of our brands are squeaky clean,” CRO Rich Sutton, who delivered the bulk of TMB’s presentation, told Cynopsis Digital in an on-site interview. “Because our user generated content is scrubbed by human beings, we’re never going to have a problem.” “I think that it’s a mistake to put user-generated content online with no guardrails in place,” he added. “Technology can’t do it alone. You can tell tech to go out and search the landscape – for instance, you can say, ‘show me all the things that have problem words in them.’ But then you have to look at them. Because if you don’t, you’re going to miss stuff. Counting on technology alone to keep your platform brand safe is a mistake.”
PLATFORMS, APPS + DEVICES
WhatsApp wants folks to know that its users are spending a lot of time using its video-calling features. The Facebook-owned company announced that the app’s 1.2 billion users are now spending more than 340 million minutes a day making over 44 million video calls. Not coincidentally, WhatsApp is now updating its Android app to make video calling more prominent. The video-calling feature will now appear next to the voice-calling menu within chats on Android devices.
Seven Bucks Productions , the production company launched by Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia, has launched a new pilot program through Seven Bucks Digital Studios, its digital arm. The program comes as part of a partnership with digital media company Studio71. The news was first reported by Variety. The program will result in six pilots, all slated to launch later this year. The first project to come out of the program will be a scripted workplace pilot made in partnership with Mike Tornabene and Gian Hunjan, the creators of the Bro Science Life YouTube channel.
Scripps Networks Interactive says that its digital arm, Scripps Lifestyle Studios, saw record-breaking growth in April. The company says that SLS topped 1.4 billion video views across its digital, social and mobile platforms – more than quadruple what it saw last April. And the company says that SLS reached over 560 million visitors last month, more than twice the amount it reached in April 2016.
RESEARCH
SHAREABLEE SOCIAL TV RATINGS: Top U.S. Streaming Shows Overall by Engagement for the week of May 1-May 7, 2017
Program, Total Actions (000), Total Content, Actions per Post (000), Fans/Followers (000)
1. House of Cards (Netflix) 545, 15, 36, 4768
2. Sense8 (Netflix) 374, 28, 13, 1904
3. Orange Is the New Black (Netflix) 325, 9, 36, 10341
4. The Defenders (Netflix) 223, 14, 16, 454
5. Daredevil (Netflix) 179, 5, 36, 3827
6. Gilmore Girls (Netflix) 93, 2, 46, 3479
7. Trailer Park Boys (Netflix) 60, 10, 6, 2049
8. Chelsea (Netflix) 57, 24, 2, 461
9. Marvel’s Jessica Jones (Netflix) 54, 7, 8, 1610
10. The Crown (Netflix) 51, 11, 5, 449
Source: Shareablee Inc. The total actions metric includes the total volume of post-level likes, shares, favorites, retweets and comments. Total content includes all posts, tweets and media posted by each TV property across all platforms. Actions per post metric notes the average e number of actions garnered by each property. Total fans/followers includes Facebook and Twitter and Instagram followers.
EXECUTIVE MOVES
News Corp. has officially named Marc Frons as its Chief Technology Officer. He’s served in the role on an interim capacity since last October. Frons has previously held roles at companies such as The New York Times Co. and Dow Jones & Co.
Mobile advertising company Kargo has named Justin Maggio as VP of Programmatic Sales, a newly created position. In the new role, Maggio will work with Kargo’s brand sales team to increase programmatic revenue. He joins the company from Adelphic, a mobile-first demand-side platform, where he headed up west coast sales.
TRIVIA
Our Last Trivia Question: Amy Sherman-Palladino, who created Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, is best known for creating a different series, which debuted on The WB in 2000. What’s the series? Answer: Gilmore Girls. Kudos to Louis Lewow-Lewow Media Group/GA, Susan Nessanbaum-Goldberg/M and S Entertainment-CA, David Westberg-Sag-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/CA, Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/CA, Cortney Pellettieri-campfire/CA, Lorrie Shilling/CA, Aaron Paquette-Screen Engine/ASI/TX, and Mathew Tombers-Intermat, Inc./NY.
Follow-up: A four-part Gilmore Girls miniseries ran on Netflix last year. What was it called? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, and state.)
