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| Thursday, August 13, 2026 |
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Happy Friday Junior! Here’s what’s in today’s dispatch:
- Newsmax Joins The Ranks Of Media Companies Giving The FCC Flak
- The Legacy Of “The Office” Carries On With “The Paper” Season 2
- Tubi Jumps On The Show-Level Transparency Bandwagon
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| Partner content |
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This Is the Last Chance to Nominate a Top Woman in Media.
The 2026 Cynopsis Top Women in Media Awards close August 14. This is it — the final opportunity to ensure the women driving media, entertainment and advertising forward receive the recognition they deserve. Self-nominations are welcome.
Submit Today
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Pinterest Names Jason Fairchild GM Of Programmatic And Affiliate
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By Alyssa Boyle
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Pinterest is adding more programmatic CTV inventory to its board.
The social image-sharing platform expanded tvScientific CEO and Co-Founder Jason Fairchild’s title to general manager of programmatic and affiliate. The title upgrade comes less than a year after Pinterest acquired the performance-focused CTV ad startup. Fairchild also remains CEO of tvScientific, which still operates as an independent business.
One of Pinterest’s most lucrative assets is its high-intent audience, Fairchild told AdExchanger. Pinners, as Pinterest fans are called, use the platform to compile or “pin” ideas, interests and items, and those data points serve as behavioral and interest-based signals for targeting ads.
Fairchild’s new title at Pinterest also indicates the parent company’s increased focus on performance. When the company reported quarterly earnings earlier this month, it shared plans to fully fold tvScientific’s capabilities into Performance+, its AI-driven ad platform that launched in 2024.
Put a pin in that
For Pinterest, connecting latent consumer intent to clear purchase behavior is not a straightforward task. The vast majority of product searches on the platform aren’t associated with specific brands. For brands and retailers, the opportunity lies in reaching Pinners with relevant items, including off platform.
To capitalize on that opportunity, Pinterest wants to make its audiences more readily available through programmatic and affiliate buying channels, too, Fairchild said, not just through tvScientific’s platform. And, naturally, streaming TV is an enticing target for Pinterest due to the high value of that inventory.
Recent tests of Pinterest’s targeting performance beyond its site and app indicated that “scaling the availability of those audiences off-platform would be a big business,” Fairchild said.
Ultimately, Fairchild said, Pinterest wants to help brands deliver and prove outcomes on cross-channel campaigns that target Pinterest users. Especially when it comes to streaming TV, where it’s harder to attribute commercials to real-world actions. People just don’t click around on smart TVs looking for things to buy the way they do on other devices (and on Pinterest, of course).
Pining for performance
Advertisers are clamoring for demonstrable campaign performance at reasonable rates, and Pinterest says it’s listening to those demands.
Ecommerce-native brands that are adept at search and social marketing are “very performance-oriented” and “flock to CTV” when they see the proof of its efficacy, Fairchild said.
Generally speaking, these performance-focused brands may make fewer upper-funnel bets on connected TV, which is still largely considered a reach vehicle. But they are open to investing more in streaming if the channel can prove that it drives online traffic and conversions like other digital marketing channels.
The pool of CTV advertisers “is going to increase dramatically,” Fairchild said, as these marketers with a data-driven performance mindset navigate the channel and better understand how those ads generate results – and, most importantly, how to prove those results.
“There’s a massive opportunity there,” Fairchild said of the burgeoning streaming TV media category. But for digital-native and performance-focused marketers, the shift to CTV is “still in the early innings.”
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| Partner content |
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Walmart’s Wall: Will The Vibe Deal Make It Meta, Or Another AOL?
AdExchanger Guest Columnist
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Will Walmart’s acquisition of Vibe.co create an AOL-esque walled garden – or a CTV platform advertisers actually want to use?
Continue Reading ▷ |
| In The News |
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Even Newsmax is going after the FCC. CEO Christopher Ruddy, who founded the far-right conservative outlet in 1998, told The Desk that he plans to sue the organization over its decision to eliminate the limits on how many broadcast television stations a company can own.
- Newsmax had already filed strong opposition to the ruling last month, on the grounds that loosening these rules would “stifle media diversity, diminish local news coverage, and consolidate political power over information distribution in the hands of a few major corporate players.”
- In March, Newsmax also filed a lawsuit with DirecTV and several state broadband and cable groups against the FCC over its approval of Nexstar’s acquisition of Tegna.
- The pushback from Newsmax is significant, given that the current makeup of the FCC is itself fairly conservative. As The Verge points out, the organization now has two Republicans and one Democrat, and President Trump just nominated a third Republican, Brendan Carr aide Danielle Thumann Severs.
It’s time to unmask some Emmy Award winners. Winners in juried categories were announced Wednesday, covering animation, costume design, emerging media programming, and motion and title design. Peacock’s “The Traitors” and Fox’s “The Masked Singer” won the crown for costume design while four series, including “Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal,” won recognition for animation.
Where are the ladies? Women still hold fewer speaking roles than men in film and television. Racial and LGBTQ+ representation also lags, but there has been some gradual improvement.
- Only 33.6% of speaking roles in 2025’s top 100 most commercially successful movies belonged to women, according to a new USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study. That proportion has hardly changed since 2007, when the study launched.
- There has been clearer progress in Hollywood’s racial representation, however. Last year, about 41.5% of speaking roles or named character roles were held by underrepresented ethnic demographics, according to the same study. Still, a similar study from USC recently found that the number of Latino characters on television has dropped 27% since 2020.
- LGBTQ+ film representation remained static from 2024, with roughly 1% of all speaking roles belonging to this community last year, based on the same metrics. Not a single transgender character appeared in a top 100 film last year, the study says.
- The Takeaway: Consumers are more likely to engage with media that reflects their own background and identity. Proper representation is a prerequisite for deeper audience engagement among underrepresented groups – and, hey, it’s also better for business.
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| STATISTICALLY SPEAKING |
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More than half (55%) of people over the age of 16 follow at least one digital creator, according to a new report from the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB). That includes over 80% of people under the age of 34.
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| New & Returning Series |
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For sneak peeks, check out Cynopsis Trailer Park.
Season 2 of “Adults,” the hangout comedy from FX about a group of young people living in their friend’s childhood home, hits Hulu on Aug. 27.
MGM+ debuted the trailer for “A Tale of Two Cities,” a four-part drama adaptation of the eponymous literary classic by Charles Dickens. The series features Kit Harington (“Game of Thrones”), François Civil (“Beating Hearts”) and Mirren Mack (“Miss Austen”), and will premiere on Sept. 6.
Peacock dropped the trailer for Season 2 of “The Paper,” a spinoff series of “The Office” that also features the character Oscar Martinez (played by Óscar Núñez). The second season will premiere on Sept. 9.
Young adult sports shows are all the rage. Netflix released a new trailer for their latest, “Crew Girl,” which follows a teen girl (Miku Mertineau) who becomes the coxswain of an all-boys rowing team. The series premieres on Sept. 10.
NBC uncloaked the cast of “The Traitors” Season 5. The new season, hosted by Emmy Award-winning actor and comedian Alan Cumming, premieres on Sept. 17 and will be available to stream on Peacock the following day.
CNN released the trailer for a new CNN Original series called “The Detour of David Chang.” The six-episode series, produced by Majordomo Media and Tremolo Productions, follows the culinary adventures of the titular chef and restaurateur. It premieres Sept. 22, with episodes available to stream on the CNN app and website the day after they air.
Sticking with cast reveals: CBS unveiled the cast of “The Amazing Race” Season 39, which kicks off with a two-night premiere event on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. Paramount+ subscribers will be able to watch episodes on demand the day after they air.
Season 2 of FX’s “The Lowdown” will premiere Oct. 14 on FX and Hulu, and will also be available to stream internationally on Disney+. The new season is executive produced by writer and director Sterlin Harjo (“Reservation Dogs”) and Ethan Hawke (“Moon Knight”), who also stars. Season 2 adds Tommy Lee Jones (“Lonesome Dove”) and Betty Gilpin (“Glow”) to the cast list.
TODAY’S PREMIERES
Great American Pure Flix: “Jep & Jess: Beyond the Bayou”
HBO Max: “Isadora Moon”
History: “Engineering From Above” at 10 p.m.
Netflix: “My Brilliant Career;” “Tires”
Sundance Now: “Hollywood Crime Story: The Mob Takes Over the Movies”
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| In Other News |
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Tubi Media Group, home of the Fox-owned free ad-supported streaming service, teamed up with Nielsen’s content intelligence arm, Gracenote. As part of the agreement, Tubi will get more detailed and standardized metadata about its content library. That information will serve two purposes: helping Tubi provide more personalized and relevant content recommendations, and helping brands serve more effectively targeted ads to Tubi viewers. The tie-up reflects a growing trend of advertisers demanding clearer and more detailed information about the content they’re running ads in.
Spectrum and Optimum reached an agreement to restore reciprocal carriage agreements for Spectrum News NY1 and Optimum’s News 12 channels, which will expand access to local TV news for the New York Market. Optimum customers in Texas and North Carolina will also receive access to local Spectrum News coverage. As part of a separate agreement, Spectrum Reach will handle ad sales for Optimum across roughly 30 designated market areas spanning central, southern and western US regions – pairing Optimum’s local reach with Spectrum Reach’s advanced ad sales capabilities.
The microdramafication of Hollywood continues. James Franco (“127 Hours”) is starring in a vertical miniseries titled “Love, Lies & Frank.” The series is one of the first microdramas produced under SAG-AFTRA’s Vertical Agreement, and is available to stream exclusively on Shortical.
MTV’s Video Music Awards returns to Los Angeles, broadcasting live from the Peacock Theatre on Sept. 27 and on Paramount+ the next day. Paramount+ subscribers can watch the special on demand the following day.
Fox News Channel wrapped the week of Aug. 3 with nearly 2.6 million weekday prime-time viewers, according to Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel media ratings.
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| Trivia |
TODAY’S TRIVIA QUESTION
Which TV show produced more spinoffs: “All in the Family” (1971-1979) or “The Walking Dead” (2010-2021)?
Email answers to Trivia@Cynopsis.com and include your name, company and city/state (don’t forget!). Only the first four correct responses from each time zone will be included.
YESTERDAY’S TRIVIA ANSWER
Former “American Idol” finalist Anoop Desai plays what supernatural creature in FX’s “What We Do In The Shadows” (2019-2024)? A djinn, or genie.
Congrats to: Name-Company/City, ST (Or NYC or LA)
Kayla Moriarty-Fallon/NYC; David Garber-Loyola Marymount University/CA; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA
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