Multi-Platform Producer

News: NBC-MLB Wild Card, Jason Benetti, damian Woody and more. The NBC broadcast network will carry two of the four games per day during the MLB Wild Card Series. Plus: NBC's Jason Benetti is officially joining the network's NBA roster; ESPN has not retained NFL analyst Damien Woody; and more. NBC broadcast network to carry two games per day during MLB Wild Card round. The NBC broadcast network will carry two games per day during the Major League Baseball Wild Card Series, with the other two airing on NBCSN and all four streaming on Peacock, Sports Media Watch has learned. NBCUniversal is carrying the Wild Card Series for the first time this season, having acquired most of the rights ESPN gave up when it opted out of its MLB contract early last year. When ESPN held rights to the Wild Card Series, it typically distributed one game per day on ABC - always in the afternoon - and the remainder on its flagship cable network. No single broadcast network has carried more than five postseason games prior to the World Series since 2013, but NBC could potentially air as many as six. Other than the change in rights, the Wild Card Series schedule is unchanged from the previous three seasons, with all four series taking place on three consecutive days Tuesday-Thursday. (The Wild Card round ran Friday-Sunday in the first year of the format in 2022). The rest of the postseason schedule is also unchanged, save for Fox and TBS alternating leagues as is customary. Times have not been determined for the Wild Card games. The only other time NBC carried weekday games this season, Opening Day, the network aired a 1 PM ET matinee between the Pirates and Mets and then a primetime 8 PM game between the Diamondbacks and Dodgers. Benetti adds NBA play-by-play role on NBC. NBC Sports lead Major League Baseball play-by-play voice Jason Benetti is joining the company's NBA broadcasting roster for the coming season, it was announced Thursday. Benetti, who joined NBC from Fox Sports at the start of the MLB season in March, called a Sixers-Celtics NBA playoff game for Peacock in April. Benetti has called occasional NBA games throughout his career, including national games for ESPN and Chicago Bulls games for NBC Sports Chicago. He also co-hosted an NBA altcast alongside the late Bill Walton for the NBA app. He has not previously held a regular national role on NBA game coverage. It is not clear what other roles Benetti might occupy during his time with NBC. With Fox, his primary assignment was on college football, where he was second on the company's depth chart behind Gus Johnson. He has also called college basketball games for both television and radio. NBCUniversal owns rights to both properties thanks to its deals with various conferences and Notre Dame. NBC, which has more games than any other NBA rights partner, already has a deep roster of play-by-play voices that includes Mike Tirico, Noah Eagle, Terry Gannon and Michael Grady, plus occasional voices Mark Followill and John Fanta. Longtime ESPN analyst Woody not retained. Longtime ESPN NFL analyst Damien Woody is leaving the company after his contract was not renewed, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported Wednesday. Woody will reportedly continue appearing on ESPN for the remainder of the month and was on the network's "Unsportsmanlike" show Thursday. Inside ESPN, Woody's exit is seen "differently" from the network's recent layoffs, per Marchand. ESPN parted ways with Karl Ravech, Ryan Clark and others late last month. ESPN and Woody are said to have discussed the possibility of his remaining with the network, but ultimately that did not come to fruition. Woody joined ESPN straight out of retirement 15 years ago this month and has been a regular contributor to the company's suite of NFL and general studio shows. On his social media feed Wednesday, he described his tenure at ESPN as "a joy" and said that overcoming a "serious speech impediment" to pursue a career in broadcasting is one of his "proudest accomplishments." According to Marchand, Woody will "pursue other avenues." He was pursued by FS1 in 2022 before reaching a new extension with ESPN. Plus: apple-british Open, Paramount HQ, disney-formula E, Jimmy Traina. * Apple has had early talks with the R&A about acquiring rights to the British Open, Matt Hughes of The Guardian reported this week, and fellow streamers Netflix and Amazon are also expected to express interest in rights to the tournament, which become available in 2028. Incumbent NBCUniversal acquired rights to the event in a deal struck in 2015, during the brief period the company was completely without major golf. Rights are now split between NBCU and the spinoff of its cable networks Versant. * Paramount is reportedly threatening to relocate its headquarters from California if state attorney general Rob Bonta does not enter into settlement talks to resolve the multi-state lawsuit seeking to block the company's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to multiple reports this week. Paramount has agreed to put its efforts to acquire WBD on hold until the legal matter is resolved or until June 1 of next year, whichever date comes first. A trial is not set until next March, and Paramount will begin incurring hundreds of millions in quarterly "ticking fees" owed to WBD shareholders after the ongoing Q3 ends next month. * Disney this week announced an agreement to acquire global rights to Formula E racing, with events set to air on Disney+ and ESPN+ in the United States, and Disney+ alone in "most" international markets. Paramount previously held rights to Formula E, with races airing on CBS and Paramount+. * Longtime Sports Illustrated media writer Jimmy Traina announced this week that he is leaving the company. Traina, who worked for SI from 2000-13 before returning in 2017, had been hosting the "SI Media" podcast since 2018. He said on the final edition of the podcast that he will begin hosting a new podcast on a new feed starting next month.

ChIPs to welcome entertainment executives to Global Summit. The 2026 ChIPs Global Summit will feature Michelle Ganeless, Mary Olson and Erin Underhill in conversation for the panel "Women Who Run Entertainment." Entertainment executives Michele Ganeless, CEO of Comic Relief and the long-serving Comedy Central president; Mary Olson, studio head at Santa Monica Studios; and Erin Underhill, president of Universal Television, will speak at the ChIPs Global Summit 2026, on October 22 in Los Angeles, CA. More than 800 ChIPs members are expected to attend the sold-out event at the J.W. Marriott LA LIVE. Ganeless, Olson, and Underhill will sit down for a conversation with Stephanie Burns, ChIPs Board Director and Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Sony Interactive Entertainment. The panel is part of the ChIPs Global Summit theme for 2026, "The Next Act: IP, Innovation, and Influence." As innovators across the entertainment landscape, Ganeless, Olson, Underhill, and Burns will discuss what lies on the horizon for film, television, and gaming. "The entertainment industry and IP have always gone hand in hand," Joan Toth, Executive Director of ChIPs Network, shared. "There's been a deeper focus in the industry as it focuses more heavily on pre-established intellectual property and identifies opportunities to ensure artists' rights are upheld. This is the exact type of conversation the ChIPs Global Summit is designed to unpack." Burns shared a similar sentiment. "I encounter many leaders in gaming, film, and television. Michele, Mary, and Erin are some of the greatest within their respected industries. They not only hold some of the highest positions in entertainment, but also have some of the longest tenures. Together, they bring over a century of experience and knowledge to our main stage." Michele Ganeless currently serves as CEO of Comic Relief US, a role she took on in 2025 after long serving as a board member. Comic Relief uses the power of comedy to fight childhood poverty - changing the stories that keep it invisible, engaging communities to take action, and resourcing local nonprofits doing the work on the ground. She's best known for her earlier tenure as president of Comedy Central from 2004 to 2016, where she built the network into a cultural powerhouse and it became the leading brand in comedy across all platforms, earning numerous Emmy and Peabody awards. Mary Olson is Studio Head of Santa Monica Studio, the award-winning Sony Interactive Entertainment studio behind the acclaimed God of War franchise. Appointed Studio Head in 2025, she leads one of the industry's most respected first-party game studios. Prior to Santa Monica Studio, Olson held leadership roles at Sony Interactive Entertainment, Microsoft, 343 Industries, Midwinter Entertainment and Behaviour Interactive. Beginning her career as a sound designer, Mary has built a multidisciplinary career spanning creative, technical and production leadership, overseeing some of gaming's most celebrated and commercially successful franchises. Erin Underhill is President of Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, where she oversees creative affairs, casting and production for one of the most successful television studios in the world. She's spent her entire career at NBCUniversal since 2000, rising up to lead the studio's drama development department before being named President in 2020. Acclaimed series under her purview include Dick Wolf's enormously successful "Law & Order," "One Chicago" and "FBI"-branded series, and many Emmy-winning shows including "Hacks," "The Gilded Age," as well as the critically lauded "The Four Seasons. " She currently serves on the Motion Picture & Television Fund's Board of Governors and the Hollywood Radio & Television Society Advisory Council.

Innovators Unscripted with NBCUniversal. Kristina Shepard on proving streaming TV performs. Welcome to Innovators Unscripted, a series where Index Exchange, Inc. share unfiltered insights from some of the most disruptive voices in today's advertising ecosystem. Kristina Shepard, EVP, streaming, performance sales and partnerships at NBCUniversal, joins for a conversation about the increasing value of entertainment and live sports programming, proving streaming TV's performance case, and why media buyer diversity is a priority for NBCUniversal. Here are the takeaways that stuck with Index Exchange, Inc.. Programmatic streaming TV is expanding media buyers' access to premium entertainment and live sports. Premium entertainment and live sports continue to be some of the most valuable programming for brands looking to reach engaged audiences at mass scale. NBCUniversal's portfolio keeps growing: NBA games return this fall, a new MLB partnership is underway, and Sunday Night Football will share the spotlight with Sunday Night Basketball and Sunday Night Baseball in 2027. Live sports advertising has historically been expensive, relationship-driven, and largely out of reach for small and medium-sized brands. NBCUniversal is focused on making more inventory available programmatically, giving smaller and more diverse brands a level of premium access to participate in some of the industry's most valuable moments. Fully scaling programmatic access to live events inventory isn't without challenges. "When programmatic started getting more and more popular, there was this thought and dream of an easy button. And I think we've quickly learned that's not the case." Kristina Shepard, EVP, Streaming, Performance Sales and Partnerships NBCUniversal Programmatic infrastructure wasn't built for the viewership spikes live events create, which is why NBCUniversal works with its partners and the IAB Tech Lab to develop standards that solve challenges like timeouts and concurrency, making live inventory easier to activate programmatically. That work is what turns some of the biggest cultural moments once reserved for the biggest brands into something any media buyer can plan around with confidence. Peacock's Olympics coverage created room for new media buyers. Kristina points to the Olympics as evidence of what's possible when programmatic access to live sports expands. Making Peacock the exclusive streaming destination let Olympics fans go deeper on the events and athletes they cared about most, and that expanded viewing experience created more premium advertising opportunities. Combined with NBCUniversal's other biggest February moments, the Super Bowl and NBA All-Star Game, that reach brought in 250 media buyers, 60% of them new. Expanding access to premium live sports advertising inventory is bringing real incremental spend into programmatic streaming TV, not just reshuffling existing budgets. Streaming TV has always been performant, and now NBCUniversal can prove it. Kristina has spent a decade in streaming, and she has watched the category evolve from an incremental reach play into something far bigger. "It's the brains of TV on the largest screen in the home, but it has the digital infrastructure of everything else with the targeting and measurement capabilities." Kristina Shepard, EVP, Streaming, Performance Sales and Partnerships NBCUniversal Peacock launched in July 2020 and was built to be ad-supported from the start. NBCUniversal kept both brands and viewers at the forefront from day one. That strategy meant producing content with ad breaks in mind, so ads appear during a natural pause in the programming rather than interrupting it. NBCUniversal also capped the ad load deliberately - five minutes per hour compared to 16 minutes on cable - and has kept innovating on ad experiences since launch, introducing formats like pause ads that make the viewing experience more immersive without disrupting it. That design gave NBCUniversal a foundation to drive performance, but proving it to agencies and marketers has been the harder half of the equation. Search and social still dominate performance budgets today because last-click attribution makes lower-funnel demand easy to capture, and most CMOs still aren't treating streaming as a performance channel, even as the data increasingly says they should. NBCUniversal's Performance Insights Hub, a self-serve intelligence platform launching later this year, is built to close that gap. It gives media buyers real-time visibility into campaign performance, a shift from the historical wait time of six weeks for a report. That means brands can finally see what's working while a campaign is still running, the kind of insight that has been standard on the big tech platforms for years but has never existed in TV. Linear and programmatic streaming TV measurement need to work together. For Kristina, linear and programmatic streaming TV measurement are complementary, not competing, approaches. For example, reach and frequency, the legacy metrics for linear TV, are what NBCUniversal has long relied on to show live sports is worth the premium price tag. Programmatic measurement builds on that, allowing NBCUniversal to go several levels deeper. Instead of sending every viewer the same message, a brand can match a story to a specific cohort, informed by contextual signals down to the scene level, and see how that performs. "How do we actually understand what that viewer's watching down to the scene level and then serve an ad in that next ad break that winks and nods back to the content?" Kristina Shepard, EVP, Streaming, Performance Sales and Partnerships NBCUniversal Ultimately, programmatic brings technology and data together with the precision that makes accurate streaming TV measurement possible. Trust is what makes innovation possible. Opening up access to premium entertainment and live sports programming, proving streaming performance, and giving media buyers sharper signals to plan around can only happen with the right infrastructure in place. For Kristina, that's the piece NBCUniversal's partnership with Index brings to the table. She describes the relationship as deeply collaborative, especially in how Index works with DSPs to enable differentiated ways of buying. Media buyer diversity and making TV accessible to brands of all sizes are among NBCUniversal's top priorities, and having a partner with built-in demand and the technology to activate it easily has made a real difference. That kind of trust is what gives marketers access to premium NBCUniversal inventory without sacrificing the transparency or control they expect from a programmatic buy. "The partnership, the trust, the relationship is just so interwoven into how we work together." Kristina Shepard, EVP, Streaming, Performance Sales and Partnerships NBCUniversal Index Exchange, Inc. break down all the complexities of programmatic streaming TV in its Index Explains video series. Tune in to learn how to make the most of your streaming investments. Mike Siegel. Content Marketing Manager Mike Siegel is a content marketing manager at Index Exchange, where he supports thought leadership and editorial content across the company's blog, website, and events. He brings a decade of experience across advertising, media, and technology, with a background spanning PR agency work and in-house roles at PubMatic, Criteo, and Taboola. He studied journalism at the University of Maryland and is based in New Jersey.