Scripps’s response to cord cutting: Launch new TV networks

The company wants to encourage people to ditch cable and replace it with over-the-air antennas.

Pawn Stars branded mugs

New networks Defy TV and TrueReal will carry shows like "Pawn Stars" and "Married at First Sight."

Photo: David Becker/Getty Images

Consumers are voting with their feet, abandoning cable television by the millions and flocking to streaming services like Netflix and Disney+. Veteran media company E.W. Scripps is responding to this trend with a contrarian move: launching two new TV networks next month.

Defy TV and TrueReal are being positioned as male- and female-centric, respectively. TrueReal will carry shows like "Storage Wars" and "Married at First Sight," while Defy's programming will include "Pawn Stars" and "Ax Men." It's the kind of reality TV fare you might know from cable networks like the History Channel or A&E — the very networks now struggling with pay TV subscriber defections.

The key difference between those cable properties and the new Scripps networks: Defy and TrueReal will primarily be available over the air, for free. Viewers just need to pick up an antenna for less than $20 to tune in. "Why is Scripps doubling down on over-the-air television? For us, it's really simple. It's the result of cord cutting," explained Scripps Chief Revenue Officer Michael Teicher in a recent conversation with Protocol.

Over-the-air television is nothing new to Scripps. The media company, which first launched as a newspaper publisher all the way back in 1878, has been operating local stations affiliated with major broadcasters like ABC and NBC in dozens of markets, including Denver, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Scripps has also been operating a handful of nationwide TV networks, including Bounce, ION and Court TV, which are all available over the air, and the company has seen the audience for these properties grow as people cut the cord.

"One out of four homes are now cable-free," Teicher said. "And those numbers are growing. We think that this is going to get down to around 50 million homes." At the same time, antenna sales are growing, and consumers are rediscovering over-the-air television, which is now available in compression-free HD. "There's a little over 40 million homes right now that are using digital antennas, and we believe that that's going to continue to grow," he said.

Ahead of the launch of the two networks in July, Scripps is now making the pitch that advertisers should follow consumers to over-the-air. The argument for that is fairly straightforward: Where else are they going to go?

"Cord cutting is leading to what we call self-bundling, and it's causing the single biggest headache that advertisers have," Teicher said. "When a consumer either cancels or pares down their cable subscription, they are self-bundling with services that largely don't carry ads. Every hour a consumer spends watching [subscription] services like Netflix or Disney is an hour that [advertisers] just can't reach them."

Granted, online video is not completely ad-free. Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ do not carry ads, but Warner Bros. is rolling out an ad-supported subscription tier of HBO Max this week. Most of Hulu's subscribers do see ads, while some pay more for an ad-free tier. And then there is a growing number of free, ad-supported video services like Tubi and Amazon's IMDb TV, which pitch themselves to advertisers as the best way to reach cord cutters and younger viewers who never had cable to begin with.

Scripps isn't ignoring these trends. The company's Newsy news network is already available on a number of free streaming networks, as is Court TV. Scripps is looking to launch Bounce, its over-the-air channel for African American audiences, on linear streaming services in August.

Free TV, watched with over-the-air antennas as well as streaming services: Scripps is very much betting the house on it. Scripps acquired Ion Media and its ION over-the-air network for $2.65 billion in January. In March, it sold podcast ad provider Triton Digital to iHeartMedia, following the sale of the podcasting service Stitcher to SiriusXM last year.

And later this year, the company is going to become a cord cutter of sorts itself: Newsy, which in addition to streaming online has also been available on cable and satellite TV networks, will move away from pay TV and become a nationwide over-the-air news network. Coinciding with this and the launch of the two new networks this summer, Scripps will also make a promotional push to reintroduce audiences to over-the-air television, and perhaps encourage them to cut the cord along the way.

"We believe it's incumbent upon us as a company to really dial up the education and [teach] people how they can really make a dramatic shift in spending [with] a $15 antenna," Teicher said.

Correction: This story was updated June 3, 2021, to correct which networks Scripps bought in January.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins