MEDIA AND BROADCASTING
Allen Media Group | June 24, 2022
Byron Allen's Allen Media Group (AMG) free-streaming digital platform, HBCU GO – the leading media provider for the nation's 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) – is launching a pair of exhilarating shows that appeal to the hearts and minds of their audience. Beginning Thursday, June 23, fans are invited to tune in to THE COLOR OF STEM – a docu-series that explores the latest discoveries, NFTs, and people making a difference in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), and SPADE A SPADE – a half-hour roundtable talk show that features teams of well-known entertainers, athletes, and influencers as they discuss topical news and views over a game of spades. Both shows are proudly sponsored by Procter & Gamble and are available to audiences across the country at HBCUGO.TV and by downloading the HBCU GO app on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV.
THE COLOR OF STEM – debuts on Thursday, June 23 at 11:00 am ET. This docuseries explores how access to STEM programs has impacted the lives of Black students across the country by creating opportunities for students to secure jobs in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and to compete in the global marketplace. Each episode will introduce HBCU graduates and highlight their road to success as a way to empower viewers, shatter stereotypes and share "how-tos." The series celebrates and amplifies the unique journey of Black students who have skillfully navigated STEM-related career paths. Additionally, the program explores how attending an HBCU impacted their lives and their careers. THE COLOR OF STEM episode airing June 23rd will feature Music Notes, an educational music company founded by Jimmy Pascascio and LaMar Queen, two middle school math teachers in South Central Los Angeles. Mr. Q-U-E and Mr. D combine their love of hip hop with their passion for teaching to create STEM songs that are sure to have viewers nodding their heads and rapping along. The episode also highlights Lisette Titre-Montgomery of Gameheads, whose passion is being a diversity advocate for the game industry. She speaks publicly about how game-based curriculums are the key to engaging today's youth in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM), and careers. Gameheads is a Game Development Accelerator program for Oakland youth, establishing art curriculums and recruiting industry professionals to mentor students of color to become the next generation of developers.
SPADE A SPADE – debuts on Thursday, June 23 at 3:30 pm ET. The first episode of SPADE A SPADE, in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Title IX, which gave equal access to sports for women, will feature Olympic sprinter Sanya Richards-Ross, the first female African-American position coach in NFL history, Jennifer King, and Shakira Austin of WNBA's Washington Mystics – 2022's third overall draft pick in the WNBA. SPADE A SPADE is a 30-minute round-table talk show hosted by notable influencer King Flexxa. SPADE A SPADE features teams of students, entertainers, athletes, and their select partners in a classic neighborhood game of trash talk and real conversation about key issues of the day. Each week, three guests will play for a winner-takes-all game and bragging rights. For those who know and love the game, SPADE A SPADE offers fans a chance to get in the heart of the action and play for fun while rooting for their favorite team's charity. Additional celebrity guests for the season include David Banner, Robert Covington, Quinn Cook, K. Michelle, Yandy Smith, Jess Hilarious, and John Wall, among others. The first season will include a five-episode run featuring such kitchen table topics as mental health, the state of HBCUs, and other riveting cultural conversations.
These new shows are executive produced by HBCU GO's Curt Simmons and Karrington Symonds. With more than 40 years of collective television and film experience, the HBCU GO team has garnered five Emmys, six Telly Awards, a Peabody Award, and three NAACP Image Award nominations for their documentaries, unscripted series, and live shows.
THE COLOR OF STEM and SPADE A SPADE are being supported by Procter & Gamble, which through its Widen the Screen initiative is fueling more expansive portrayals of the Black experience in film, television, and media through partnerships and programming with Black creators and Black-owned and Black-operated media companies. Procter & Gamble brands (including My Black is Beautiful, Olay, Old Spice, Pantene, and Secret) will provide advertising support as part of Procter & Gamble's collective efforts to serve the HBCU community.
"HBCUs are the heart and soul of Black America. The free-streaming service HBCU GO is simply here to amplify the excellence of these extraordinary institutions of higher learning, Allen Media Group is 100-percent committed to bringing original and inspirational content to this platform, and we genuinely appreciate Procter & Gamble for their continued sponsorship and commitment in working with us to achieve this very important goal."
-Byron Allen, Founder/Chairman/CEO of Allen Media Group.
HBCU GO is pleased to amplify the voice of Black excellence to students, alumni, and our community during the summer and throughout the whole year," said HBCU GO President Curtis Symonds. "From documentaries, movies, sports, talk, and lifestyle programming, we're opening new doors for content creators to share their stories and to shine a light on our unique cultural experience. HBCU GO is the ultimate destination for free, quality content.
For more information about HBCU GO visit HBCUGO.TV or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram.
About HBCU GO
HBCU GO is a cultural lifestyle destination and leading sports media provider that embraces and represents the voice of Black Excellence every day of the year through an all-new platform that captures the rich history, diversity, perspectives, and cultural experiences at HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). The network also provides a platform for emerging creatives in media production, branding, and broadcasting. We offer our viewers the best in live sports, original series, documentaries, films, comedy, and edutainment programming produced by African American leading producers, directors, and students from select HBCUs.
Read More
MEDIA AND BROADCASTING
Samba TV | June 22, 2022
As part of an ongoing industry-wide evaluation of television viewership methodologies in a post-Nielsen era, market research firm Frost & Sullivan released the findings of a new analysis assessing the capabilities of eight leading television data providers. The Television Viewership Data (TVD) companies were evaluated on more than 20 key criteria that brands, agencies and publishers are looking to assess as the market shifts to a multi-currency world. These capabilities include omniscreen reach and activation, depth of privacy compliant, first party data and the quality of currency grade measurement insights. The 2022 Frost Radar on Television Viewership Data Providers found Samba TV to be the leader in TV data capabilities.
“With companies in this market all having relatively large datasets, Frost & Sullivan believes that partner diversity and measurement capabilities truly separates top providers. Across 25 key attributes assessed for the 2022 Frost Radar™: Television Viewership Data, no other company in the market today provides the range of partnerships and breadth of capabilities as Samba TV,”
-Robert Cavin, Senior Consultant at Frost & Sullivan.
Frost & Sullivan’s analysis comes on the heels of Samba TV’s selection as Disney's first currency grade measurement partner earlier this year. The Disney announcement follows significant international growth and a recent unveiling of Samba TV’s first of a kind incremental reach guarantee product for advertisers, guaranteeing marketers only pay for audiences that are incremental to their linear TV buys.
Samba TV’s capabilities were evaluated against 20 metrics aligned with five core pillars in the report. These included: diversity of viewership sources; linear and streaming measurement segments; technology portfolio; use cases, including ability to deliver advertising features to its customers, such as optimization as well as reach and frequency; and privacy values. Samba TV notably outpaced Inscape, iSpot.tv, LG Ads, Nielsen, Roku, Samsung Ads, and VideoAmp across these combined metrics, according to the Frost & Sullivan analysis.
“This latest industry analysis reaffirms Samba TV’s strong positioning in the marketplace as well as our commitment to providing the best-in-class experience for our customers with unmatched measurement capabilities, The TV data and measurement world has fundamentally changed and has embraced a new multi-currency future that empowers advertisers and publishers to truly understand their audiences and the impacts of advertising on both the biggest screen in the home and across every screen in the consumer journey. This is an exciting time for the industry and for Samba TV and we look forward to continuing to help shape the future of TV measurement and advertising globally.”
-Samba TV CEO and Co-founder Ashwin Navin.
The full Frost & Sullivan report can be accessed online here. The blog post from Frost & Sullivan’s Robert Cavin can be found here.
About Samba TV
Samba TV has transformed the TV from a pane of glass on the wall to a window into the heart of audiences. We are the global leader in television technology powering real-time insights and audience targeting to enable unparalleled marketing efficiency and effectiveness. Our proprietary first-party data from tens of millions of opted-in televisions, across more than 20 TV brands sold in over 100 countries, provides advertisers and media companies a unified view of the entire consumer journey. Our independent currency-grade measurement has future-proofed advertising for the next generation, empowering advertisers to connect with their audiences on any platform, across every screen.
Read More
MEDIA AND BROADCASTING
FuboTV Inc | June 20, 2022
FuboTV Inc. (NYSE: FUBO) will unveil pick’em games this weekend - becoming the first company to launch the popular free-to-play sports contests directly integrated into the live TV streaming experienceIn another first, pick’em players in select markets will have seamless access to Fubo Sportsbook by scanning a QR code to place real-money wagers aligned with their picks. This marks the latest incorporation of FuboTV and its owned-and-operated real-money wagering platform.
Pick’em players will be able to predict the outcome of select live sporting events directly from FuboTV’s live TV streaming platform’s home screen. Fubo will make pick’ems available prior to the start of select live sporting events each Sunday. Players can test their skills through a variety of contests, including Perfect Pick’ems, to earn points and compete against their friends and the FuboTV community for the chance to work their way up leaderboards.
FuboTV will continue to expand the types of contests, the gaming experience and, later, will introduce prizing.
Pick’ems will launch on Sunday, June 19 to select FuboTV subscribers and will continue to roll out to the company’s user base in the coming months. Subscribers can engage with pick’ems across all FuboTV connected TV, smart TV, gaming consoles and mobile apps as well as on https://fubo.tv.
Watch a demo of FuboTV’s pick’ems here.
As it aims to transcend the industry’s current TV model, FuboTV continues to integrate interactivity and personalization into its live TV streaming experience with recent proprietary launches of free-to-play games and the FanView live scores and stats widget. In January, the company updated its popular Multiview on Apple TV feature to include FanView, enabling viewership of multiple live sporting events alongside game stats and scores from around the league.
The industry-first integration also demonstrates and further builds upon the seamless Watch/Wager/Win connection between FuboTV and Fubo Sportsbook - all within a single ecosystem. Fubo Sportsbook is purpose-built to meet U.S. sports fans’ growing demand for interactivity by delivering personalized omniscreen experiences that turn passive viewers into active participants. Its proprietary feature, Watching Now, leverages FuboTV’s first-party user data to engage participants by recommending relevant bets based upon what they are streaming — even as they change the channel.
FuboTV recently reported that this integrated approach has led to stronger engagement with crossover users on average placing a greater number of bets and having higher retention rates on the sportsbook than sportsbook-only players. The company intends to further integrate FuboTV and Fubo Sportsbook with the launch of additional product features, including live odds, this year, subject to regulatory approvals.
“With this weekend’s launch, FuboTV will become the first live TV streaming platform to offer pick’em games integrated into the video experience with a direct gateway to an owned-and-operated sportsbook, We believe interactivity is a key product differentiator for Fubo and, with these immersive experiences built into our live streaming product, we can offer the most personalized - and customizable - sports and entertainment television experience.”
-Mike Berkley, chief product officer, FuboTV.
While other media companies are entering into external partnerships with betting companies, FuboTV and Fubo Sportsbook have combined both into one ecosystem,” said Scott Butera, president, Fubo Gaming. “The launch of pick’ems will further demonstrate FuboTV’s unique product integration and commitment to offering fans real-time immersive experiences across multiple touchpoints.
Our mission is to transform the TV experience through interactive engagement, including free gaming and real-money wagering, into streaming video, said David Gandler, co-founder and CEO, FuboTV. This industry-first integration has been popular with consumers, and, as we reported on our recent first quarter 2022 earnings call, we’re already seeing encouraging early signs of the flywheel effect between FuboTV and Fubo Sportsbook. We believe our built-in video audience will allow us to acquire users more efficiently, with a limited amount of marketing spend. We will continue to build our fully unified streaming TV and sportsbook experience with the rollout of more interactive features this year.
About FuboTV
With a mission to build the world’s leading global live TV streaming platform with the greatest breadth of premium content, interactivity and integrated wagering, FuboTV Inc. (NYSE: FUBO) aims to transcend the industry’s current TV model. FuboTV Inc. operates in the U.S., Canada, France and Spain.
Leveraging its proprietary data and technology platform optimized for live TV and sports viewership, FuboTV Inc. aims to turn passive viewers into active participants and define a new category of interactive sports and entertainment television. The company's sports-first cable TV replacement product, FuboTV, offers U.S. subscribers more than 100 live sports, news and entertainment networks and is the only live TV streaming platform with every Nielsen-rated sports channel (source: Nielsen Total Viewers, 2021). Subscribers can interact with FuboTV’s live streaming experience through predictive free-to-play games, which are integrated into select sports content.
Fubo Gaming Inc., a subsidiary of FuboTV Inc., launched Fubo Sportsbook, a next-generation mobile sportsbook purpose-built to integrate with FuboTV, in 2021.
Read More