‘Hollywood Today’ Sees New Tomorrow
MEDIA GENERAL AND THE FOX Television Stations are teaming to return entertainment strip Hollywood Today Live, which launched as a Web series, to traditional airwaves this fall.
The show, which is still offered at HollywoodTodayLive.com, aired as a test last summer on select Foxowned stations. Fox was happy enough with the show’s performance that it wanted to bring it back.
Last September, LIN Media bought the show’s digital production studio, BiteSizeTV, which was then merged into Media General last December. That acquisition made Media General the perfect partner to bring the show back to TV.
“Having the ability to partner with BiteSize TV and work directly with Media General has given us an opportunity to reinvent the classic development paradigm,” said Stephen Brown, executive VP of programming at FTS.
Media General and Fox will share production costs on the show, which will air on both groups’ owned stations in major markets including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. Since the show will not be nationally cleared, there will be no national advertising in it, and stations will get to own and sell all the ad inventory in each episode.
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Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.