New to The Street Announces Episode 741 Airing Tonight on Bloomberg Television at 6:30 PM EST Featuring Canton Networks, Acme Markets, Virtuix Holdings (VTIX), HPB, Jonas & Redman, Acurx Pharmaceuticals (ACXP), and FreeCast (CAST)
By
Media News
2 min read • Published April 4, 2026
By
Media News
2 min read • Published April 4, 2026
NEW YORK CITY, NY / ACCESS Newswire / April 4, 2026 / New to The Street, one of the longest-running U.S. and international business television brands, today announced the broadcast of Episode 741, airing tonight as sponsored programming on Bloomberg Television at 6:30 PM EST across the United States, with additional distribution across international markets.
This week’s episode delivers a strong lineup of innovative companies and sector leaders across financial infrastructure, healthcare, advanced technology, and digital media-continuing New to The Street’s role as a platform for emerging growth companies to reach a global investor audience.
Featured Companies in Episode 741
Canton Networks A next-generation financial infrastructure platform focused on enabling secure, interoperable blockchain networks for institutional markets, advancing real-world asset tokenization.
Acme Markets A well-established retail grocery operator serving key U.S. markets, with a focus on operational scale, customer engagement, and evolving consumer demand.
Virtuix Holdings A leader in immersive virtual reality solutions, redefining entertainment and fitness through its Omni platform and expanding commercial adoption globally.
HPB (High Performance Battery) A German-based advanced battery technology company developing next-generation solid-state battery systems to support global electrification and energy storage demand.
Jonas & Redman A strategic investment and advisory group focused on identifying and scaling high-growth opportunities across emerging industries.
Acurx Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ACXP) A late-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of antibiotics targeting Gram-positive bacterial infections, including drug-resistant pathogens.
FreeCast Inc. A digital streaming platform offering aggregated content solutions designed to provide cost-effective alternatives to traditional cable and subscription services.
National Broadcast and Global Distribution
Episode 741 will air nationwide on Bloomberg Television in the U.S. at 6:30 PM EST, reaching millions of households, with additional distribution across MENA and Latin America as sponsored programming.
All featured interviews will also be distributed across New to The Street’s powerful digital ecosystem, including:
This combined distribution delivers immediate scale across television, digital, and social platforms-driving visibility, engagement, and investor awareness for featured companies.
About New to The Street
New to The Street is a premier business television platform broadcasting sponsored programming on Bloomberg and Fox Business, featuring innovative public and private companies. With over 17 years of production and more than 700 episodes filmed, the platform combines long-form television interviews, earned media, digital distribution, and iconic outdoor advertising.
Filming regularly from the NYSE and Nasdaq MarketSite, New to The Street delivers unmatched exposure through its "Predictable Media™" model-aligning media reach with measurable outcomes for its clients.
John Lombard is a content strategist and writer with over a decade of experience creating interactive and video content for brands like Apple, IBM, and Samsung. He previously worked at Mediabistro and now serves as a Client Strategist at Ceros.
3 min read • Originally published July 28, 2016 / Updated April 4, 2026
John Lombard is a content strategist and writer with over a decade of experience creating interactive and video content for brands like Apple, IBM, and Samsung. He previously worked at Mediabistro and now serves as a Client Strategist at Ceros.
3 min read • Originally published July 28, 2016 / Updated April 4, 2026
So you landed a new job. Congrats! The first two months can be an exciting—and stressful—time as you’re meeting your team, learning the ropes, and working to make your mark.
How can you be sure you’re doing all you can to set yourself up for long-term success at this new company or role? Read on as we break it down.
1. Be Prepared for Introductions
One of the first things you’ll be doing at your new job—assuming your company has a decent onboarding process—is meeting your team and any other staff you may work with.
Because you’ll be around these people every day, and in sometimes stressful situations, it’s important to start out positive, letting your coworkers know you’re excited to jump in and support the team.
Another thing to keep in mind—people will be asking you a lot of questions. Because you don’t want to nervously blurt out you left your last job because you hated your boss, a brief, prepared elevator pitch might be helpful.
2. Do Something Really Nice
Small things, like offering to grab coffee for a coworker or bringing in donuts for your team the first week, go a long way when you’re new to the team. It shows you’re excited to be there and that you’re the type of person who goes out of his way to help others.
And when you do finally make your first big mistake at work, how could anybody be mad at the person who brought donuts?
3. Ask Questions—a Lot of Questions
Your first few months are considered your onboarding time, when you’re getting the lay of the land. And while your manager or higher-up will try hard to get you up to speed, they are certain to skip crucial pieces of information.
So ask questions. Get everything figured out now, so when your workload does ramp up, you’ll be ready to tackle it all.
If you feel like you’re constantly pestering your manager with questions, put together a list of questions that don’t impede your current work and schedule a meeting with your manager to go over all of them at once. This not only helps you iron out the missing pieces, it shows your manager you’re committed to doing your job well.
4. Make Your Mark
Once you start feeling more comfortable in your role, it’s a great idea to start mapping out an easy—and highly visible—win.
Now this doesn’t mean developing a plan to restructure the company. Stick to something simple and attainable, since you want to make sure you’ll actually be able to accomplish it.
One way to go about this is to discuss your goals for the week with your manager. Then, at the end of that week, recap what your goals were and show how you hit your mark. Or, if your manager is looking to assign a task and you’re confident you could knock it out of the park, grab it before anyone else does and, well, knock it out of the park.
Andrea Williams is an author, journalist, and columnist for The Tennessean with over 16 years of experience in journalism and 20 years in copywriting and communications strategy. Her work spans national outlets and high-traffic digital brands.
7 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated April 4, 2026
Andrea Williams is an author, journalist, and columnist for The Tennessean with over 16 years of experience in journalism and 20 years in copywriting and communications strategy. Her work spans national outlets and high-traffic digital brands.
7 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated April 4, 2026
According to a slew of media reports detailing how the economic crisis has disproportionately affected millennials, most 20-somethings are unemployed or underemployed, bunking on their parents’ sofas, eating Frosted Flakes for dinner, and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. Except for Kara Taylor, that is.
At just 25, Taylor is riding high on the success of her young-adult thriller series: Prep School Confidential. Oh, and she recently snagged writer and co-executive producer credits on The Revengers, a new TV pilot created by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and ordered by the CW network.
The temptation to call Taylor an overnight success or credit her good fortune to a well-connected relative in the industry is understandable. But make no mistake, haters: Taylor’s been hustling hard for years.
With Prep School Confidential, your first novel, tell me about the process from completed manuscript to published book. How did you find your agent? How long did it take to sell the book?
So I’ve obviously been writing most of my life, but I finished my first book my freshman year of college.
And I started to read up on the publishing industry [and] how to find an agent. And that book, it was just the cliché, terrible first book. So I eventually set that one aside, and my sophomore year of college I wrote another book. It was a young adult, contemporary novel, and it took me about six months to find an agent.
I did a major revision for the agent I signed with, who’s my agent now, and that book actually spent over a year on submission and it never sold. And during that time I wrote Prep School Confidential, which is the book that eventually sold.
So it was about two years, three completed manuscripts, and it was one book that eventually sold.
Did you always plan to pursue a traditional publishing deal, or did you ever consider self-publishing?
My goal was always just to find an agent and sign with a big publisher because back when I started writing, self-publishing wasn’t this phenomenon that it is now.
It still had the connotation that it was this vanity thing, where you pay somebody to publish your book. So I’d always had it in my mind that I was going to find an agent and find a publisher.
Around the time that I found my agent, self-publishing really had this upswing, and it was like this eBook revolution. [But] I never really considered it because, at that point, I’d worked so hard to find my agent and she’d worked so hard shaping the manuscript with me that we both just wanted to see it land with a traditional publisher.
Speaking of eBooks, you came into the publishing industry fairly recently, in the midst of all of the changes on the digital landscape. How has that affected your approach to your career?
I know with a lot of the [YA] authors, the pressure to churn out a book every year is enormous, and that’s why a lot of authors have turned to releasing short, eBook novellas in between their books.
My publisher is a little different. [At] St. Martin’s Griffin, their trade paperbacks, which Prep School Confidential is, come out every six to eight months, so the second book in the series is actually going to be out in March [2014].
So they stick with that model, and they really haven’t experimented a lot with the short eBooks. It’s not something that I’ve considered for this series, but I do know that to have longevity as a writer, if you’re not doing a book a year, it’s hard to stay in the game.
I know a lot of people are doing these serialized novels in eBook form, so that’s something that I’d definitely like to dabble in, especially since I write for TV, too. Episodic writing comes naturally to me.
OK, let’s talk about the TV writing. How did you land the writing position with the CW’s The Revengers?
My publisher [has] a new division called Macmillan films, [and] my editor, Brendan Deneen, has worked with the Weinstein Company in the past, so he has a lot of experience being a film rights agent. So the projects that he takes on at Macmillan are really focused on things that would translate well to film.
Prep School Confidential, once it was a finished manuscript, before it was even published, was making its way around the Hollywood circuit to producers and talent agents.
And it actually fell in the hands of Dan Dubiecki, who produced Juno and Up in the Air, and he just loved it so much that he called my editor and asked if I would be open to talking to him about other projects because he thought that my voice is really suited for television.
So I had a conversation with Dan, and I went out to California to meet him. I met some film agents; I wound up signing with United Talent Agency, and I had a general meeting with Warner Bros. Television.
They offered me a blind deal, which is basically a script commitment. So I had to write a script for them for this TV development season. I talked to a bunch of producers for a bunch of ideas that Warner Bros. had in house, and one day I got a call, “Hey, would you like to talk to Rashida Jones and Will McCormack? They have a new production deal at Warner Bros. Television. They wrote [the film] Celeste and Jesse Forever together, and now they’re trying to branch out to TV.”
I was like, ‘Of course I want to talk to Rashida Jones!’ So over about three or four months, I worked with Rashida and Will and a bunch of producers, and we came up with a pitch for [the show] and it wound up at the CW. And now I’m writing the pilot for this development season, and we’ll see if it gets picked up in January.
What tips do you have for other writers who want to break into TV?
I think the most important thing, and this is hard advice because it’s not something that you can really learn, [is to] just have a voice and a point of view and focus on branding yourself, whether it’s [with] humor or whatever.
Just be unique and be yourself, and write as much as you can.
I obviously broke into it in a strange way because it was actually the novel writing that helped me break into TV. So I think it’s good to keep in mind that there’s not one clear path or way to break into the industry. You have to put yourself out there in all mediums and all aspects and not write anything off, and [don’t] get discouraged, obviously.
I was writing books for two years before I found an agent, and I heard a lot of nos. I must have been rejected by over a hundred literary agents with my first book. So if you’re expecting instant results, it’s not going to be the career for you.
You just have to be patient and be in it for the long run.
So what is a typical writing day like for you? How do you balance TV and your books?
Well, I wake up around 8, and the first thing I have to do is answer all of my emails. I make sure to set aside a certain amount of time for the things like answering emails from readers, but I try not to get too bogged down by that.
And I’ll spend the first half of my morning working on book stuff because it’s early and the California people haven’t woken up yet. So I’ll work on the books until lunchtime, and I take a break.
And that’s normally when the TV people start their day, and if I’m waiting on notes from them, they’ll probably contact me in the afternoon. Sometimes I actually have to work until 10 [p.m.] my time because in the TV industry, they work till 7:30, 8 at night sometimes, just to churn out things, especially during development season.
So I have to be careful how I split up my day because it’s obviously hard to work on two things at once, a book or a TV show. I usually reserve the morning for books and night for TV.
Where do you see your career in the next five or ten years?
I would love to be writing for TV full-time. I mean, as much as I love writing the novels, right now, the book series is a full-time job in itself.
I’d like to gradually transition to TV and then five, 10 years from now, go back and write the book I’ve always wanted to write—at my own pace, not under contract, not with any deadlines—and maybe see that go out into the world at the same time as I’m working on my TV show. In five years, I’d obviously love to be working on The Revengers still, if everything works out and it gets picked up.
But if not, I have a lot of other ideas for TV.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Andrea Williams is an author, journalist, and columnist for The Tennessean with over 16 years of experience in journalism and 20 years in copywriting and communications strategy. Her work spans national outlets and high-traffic digital brands.
8 min read • Originally published October 15, 2015 / Updated April 4, 2026
Andrea Williams is an author, journalist, and columnist for The Tennessean with over 16 years of experience in journalism and 20 years in copywriting and communications strategy. Her work spans national outlets and high-traffic digital brands.
8 min read • Originally published October 15, 2015 / Updated April 4, 2026
For many writers, getting a book published with a major publishing house is the ultimate mark of success, a validation of talent and proof that years of toiling in anonymity were worth it. But for a select few — authors like John Grisham, J.K. Rowling, Nicholas Sparks, and others — there’s an even greater pinnacle: when their books are optioned for movies.
It’s a sweet gig for Deneen, a lifelong storyteller. His own novel, The Ninth Circle, was released in January, and he has written several graphic novels in the Flash Gordon and Casper the Friendly Ghost series. He even recruits writers to pen books based on ideas that he’s developed in house (and that will hopefully soon be playing at a cinema near you).
Here, Deneen discusses Hollywood’s love affair with the literary world and how new writers can get in on the book-to-film fun. At Macmillan Publishers, authors who hope to see their stories on the silver screen must undoubtedly go through Brendan Deneen.
As the executive editor of the brand-new Macmillan Entertainment Group, he shops TV and film rights for all of the company’s signees. For example, Deneen successfully sold the crime novel American Blood by young New Zealand author Ben Sanders to Warner Bros. — and Bradley Cooper has signed on to star in the film.
Name: Brendan Deneen Position: Executive editor, Macmillan Entertainment Group Resume: Moved to New York to write and act; landed a job at William Morris Agency (now William Morris Endeavor) at 28. After a year, left to become a junior associate at Scott Rudin Productions, facilitating the book-to-film process for two years. Became an executive in the same book-to-film capacity for Bob and Harvey Weinstein, which provided the opportunity to dabble in production and development work. Four years later became a literary agent before landing a job as editor at Thomas Dunne Books (a division of Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press). After closing a deal with a film company, was ultimately called on to represent all titles for Macmillan. Birthday: “Only my hairdresser knows for sure.” Hometown: Windsor, Conn. Education: University of Scranton, with a pit stop at the University of Glasgow in Scotland Marital status: Married Media mentor(s): Mark Roybal (currently at 20th Century Fox), Andrew Rona (most recently at Joel Silver Pictures), Thomas Dunne Best career advice received: Shut up and listen. Guilty pleasure:Entertainment Weekly Last book read:Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins X handle: @BrendanDeneen
What are the primary functions of your new role as executive editor of Macmillan Entertainment?
The primary role is that I create ideas for books. I create the ideas by myself or with other editors, write the outlines, and then hire authors to write the books. We control the rights, so I then turn around and, using my experience in Hollywood, hopefully sell those rights to film or television companies.
And do you still work in the traditional sense, acquiring books from authors?
Yes. Traditionally, agents and authors don’t give publishing companies movie and TV rights; that’s just not the way it’s done.
So I am still getting submissions the old-fashioned way, and I welcome and love those because you never know what’s going to come your way. But because of this new division, I am looking for an opportunity to at least shop them on behalf of the agents.
A lot of agencies will hire or work with other film agencies to sell the rights, so I’m just replacing that for some of the literary agencies out there, taking the same commission that a film agent would take. So it’s a win-win because they would be doing this anyway.
Instead of using another agent to do this, they can use me — somebody who’s working for the publishing company, who’s invested in the book already, who wants the book to succeed.
With Macmillan retaining the rights to works developed in house, how do you ensure the authors are not taken advantage of?
I really believe in honoring authors. [They] get an advance, just like they always would in a book deal. They get their name on the cover. They get a piece of all profits — royalties, movie money, foreign sales, merchandising, everything. It’s very author friendly.
As a former agent and an author myself, I’m not in this to take advantage of people. I happen to have a ton of ideas that I’ve created and I continue to create, and I can’t write them all myself. Not a single one of my authors has written one of these and not put their own information or ideas into the book, and I love that.
When we work together it’s very collaborative. And it’s a great opportunity, especially for up-and-coming authors who haven’t been able to sell their books and are looking for their big break, or someone who’s looking for a commercial idea to break them through. And also, I’m not so cynical as to want to churn out bad books just to hopefully make a movie.
How can authors position themselves to have an opportunity to write for you?
I go to agents when I have an idea and I’m looking for authors who are a good match. So the key is for an author to get an agent. I know it’s easier said than done, but that’s the most important thing.
And then, for me specifically, because I’m doing Macmillan Entertainment, I need to have some kind of hand in the film rights, even if it’s just six months to shop the material on behalf of the literary agent. But the good news is that I have a pretty decent success rate, so it’s not something that’s like a shot in the dark.
So if the agent has unsuccessfully pitched you on an original idea, you would still keep the author in mind for one of your ideas developed in house?
Absolutely. Or an agent calls me and says, I have this great author, really hungry, is totally open to collaborating, what do you have? And I’m like, ‘Oh, I have this one thing,’ and then I’ll pitch it, and they may say it’s perfect for them, or, no, it’s probably not, what else do you have? So we go out fairly wide, and we have people write sample chapters.
It’s almost like a reality show. We pick a winner; they write the book; they win the book contract. But we take it very seriously, and we want the perfect match for each book. And like I said, it’s a circumstance in which everybody wins.
Why does Hollywood turn to published books so often for content? And what does that mean for writers?
As a writer, I think you gotta write what’s in your heart. I think that trying to adjust your story or style for any other reason than just the book is a mistake, honestly.
If you happen to have a commercial instinct, then that’s great. But there’s no guarantee that your book will ever, first off, get published — let alone get optioned. So I think you have to be true to what you believe as an artist.
As to why [Hollywood likes published books], I think the idea of a book means that it’s been vetted. It’s been looked at by an agent already, by an editor. It’s a source material that’s got fans, marketing, publicity and sales that are already in place. Hollywood likes that; that’s why they’re always looking for franchises.
That’s why you hear about exciting stuff like Hunger Games and Harry Potter. They’ll go for anything these days. Ouija board is being made into a movie; Battleship was made into a movie. They want stuff that has pre-existing fans, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
So what is the best way for an established author to break into TV and film, aside from being lucky enough to work with you?
It’s really up to your agent. If you have an agent at CAA, ICM, William Morris or one of the big agencies, they have TV and film divisions, so hopefully your agent will pass your stuff on. One of the things I’ve said in other interviews is that patience is key. I’m 41 and I wrote my first book when I was 18, and I sold my novel this year. It took me forever.
And that doesn’t mean you have to not be putting yourself out there and working your ass off; it just means you may get rejected over and over again like I did when I was 18 and I wallpapered my bathroom in college with rejection letters. It should be a badge of honor. It means you’re getting stuff out there.
And you just have to keep trying. Finish one book, but don’t just spend your life sending out query letters. Send out the query letters to agents, but be writing book two. And finish book two, send out query letters for that and then write book three.
You need to be constantly writing. If you’re a screenwriter, you should be writing a new screenplay every three or four months. If you’re an author, honestly, you should have a new book every year if you’re serious about it — two years at the most.
If your legacy is based solely on your work with Macmillan, and no one ever reads your books, will you be OK with that?
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I wrote Flash Gordon for a while; I worked on Casper the Friendly Ghost. I actually sold two of my novels this year, and I’m writing a very high-profile graphic novel for next Christmas.
I’m not saying I’m a well-known author by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve gotten fan mail from random people, and if that’s all I get for the rest of my life, I can live with it. It’s nice that I’ve made any impact.
Would I like more? Yeah, who wouldn’t? But if I just get this little piece of the pie as an author then that’s great. And then, for my day job, if I can break out new authors or find someone who goes on like Kara [Taylor] to do bigger and better things, or if I create a franchise that becomes a huge hit, it’ll be a cool legacy.
I’m having fun and that’s really, honestly, the most important thing for me. I love creating stories. So if I can make a living creating stories for myself and for other people, then I’m living the life I want.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Mediabistro regularly interviews media personalities to hear their stories and for their career advice.
If you’re drowning in leads but your close rate isn’t improving, you’re not alone. Most B2B sales teams waste hours chasing dead-end prospects while hot leads go cold in their CRM. The fix? A lead scoring model that automatically tells you which prospects deserve your time right now.
Every sales rep knows the frustration — you’ve got a list of 500 leads, but no clue who to call first. You could go alphabetically (spoiler: That doesn’t work), or you could build a system that ranks leads based on how likely they are to buy. That’s where lead scoring comes in.
In this guide, Apollo walks you through creating your first scoring model. You’ll learn exactly which criteria matter, how to weight them, and how to implement a system that separates tire-kickers from serious buyers — so your team can focus on conversations that actually close.
What is lead scoring?
At its core, lead scoring is a methodology that helps businesses evaluate the quality and potential of leads based on predefined criteria.
By assigning scores to different attributes, businesses can focus their efforts on leads that are more likely to convert into customers. Typical lead scoring models assign “points” to individual leads based on factors like company size, revenue, industry, if they’ve shown intent to buy, etc. The higher the points, the more likely they are to convert into customers.
With lead scoring, you remove the manual vetting of which high-potential leads to tackle next (which is prone to human error), and instead, you use a data-driven methodology that can be easily optimized to drive better results.
The value of lead scoring
Improve lead prioritization and prospecting efficiency
By assigning scores to leads based on predefined criteria, you can focus your time, resources, and efforts on the most promising leads. This leads to better allocation of resources and increased efficiency in your sales and marketing activities.
Make marketing and sales an allied revenue duo
With a clear understanding of lead quality, both sales and marketing teams can work together to target high-scoring leads more effectively. Marketing can tailor campaigns and content to match the needs and interests of specific lead segments, while sales can focus their efforts on leads with the highest scores, resulting in improved conversion rates and higher revenue generation.
Increase conversion rates and revenue
Lead scoring helps you identify leads that exhibit characteristics or behaviors indicative of strong buying intent. This enables you to personalize your outreach and engage with leads in a more targeted and meaningful way. As a result, your conversion rates improve, leading to a higher return on investment (ROI) for your sales and marketing efforts.
Types of lead scoring models
Not all lead scoring models are built the same. The best ones usually blend a few different types to get a complete picture of a lead’s potential. Think of it as looking at a lead from multiple angles to decide if they’re the right fit and if they’re interested right now.
Here are the core types you’ll work with:
Demographic and Firmographic Scoring: This is all about fit. It answers the question, “Is this the right type of person at the right type of company?” It uses explicit data points like job title, industry, company size, and revenue. If a lead matches your ideal customer profile (ICP), they get a high score here.
Behavioral Scoring: This is all about interest and intent. It answers, “How engaged is this lead with us?” This model tracks actions like visiting your pricing page, downloading a whitepaper, opening your emails, or attending a webinar. The more they engage, the higher their score.
Negative Scoring: Just as important as adding points is knowing when to subtract them. This model deducts points for actions that signal a poor fit. For example, you might subtract points if a lead is a student, comes from a non-target country, or only visits your careers page. This helps weed out unqualified leads automatically.
A truly powerful lead scoring system doesn’t just pick one; it combines all three. This way, you’re prioritizing leads that are both a great fit for your product and are actively showing interest in buying.
Step-by-step guide to creating your first scoring model
Step 1: Define your criteria
To start, identify the criteria that matter most to your business. Consider factors such as demographics, firmographics, and behavior-based indicators. What characteristics align with your ideal customer profile? Defining these criteria will form the foundation of your scoring model.
Here are a few commonly used demographic and firmographic attributes on contacts or companies:
Job titles or departments
Location
Industries
Number of employees
Revenue
Technologies used
And here are a few commonly used behavioral attributes that are relatively easy to collect (depending on the tools you use):
Opened or clicked an email
Expressed buying intent by researching online for your service
Filled out a form on your website
Registered or attended your webinar
Start by simply selecting a few of the criteria above and add more as you learn more about what works and what doesn’t. Your first scoring model can be very simple and still make a huge impact on how you prioritize your leads.
Step 2: Weight your attributes
Not all criteria carry the same weight in determining lead quality. Assign appropriate weightings to each criterion based on their relative importance to your business.
There are two ways you can think about assigning weightings:
Scale (e.g. not important, somewhat important, neutral, important, or very important)
Numerical (e.g. 0-20 where 20 is the max)
If this is your first time setting up a scoring model, the scale might be the easier approach. However, either way will still tally up scoring points between 0-100 where the higher number indicates better customer fit than a lower number.
For example:
Each attribute can be weighted differently — a lead’s level of engagement like attending a webinar might be more significant than their job title.
The options within an attribute can be weighted differently — a VP or director might be more significant than a manager job title.
Step 3: Gather and integrate data
To effectively score leads, you need reliable data. Collect and integrate data from various sources, such as your CRM, website analytics, marketing automation systems, and sales intelligence platforms.
Whatever data sources you’ll use for scoring, make sure it’s accurate, up-to-date, and clean to avoid any misleading scores.
Step 4: Build your scoring model
Now it’s time to build your scoring model.
Select your target type: For example, people or companies
Add the criteria and weightings:
Persona (e.g., sales leadership)
Location (e.g., US)
Number of employees by department (e.g., at least 5)
Contact engagement – # of times opened (e.g., at least 10)
Render distribution and see how many of your saved contacts match the criteria as excellent, good, fair, or not a fit.
Step 5: Test and refine
Once your scoring model is set up, it’s time to put it to the test. Start by applying the model to a sample set of leads and analyze the results.
The next step is to personalize your outreach based on the data insights provided.
For example, you could try sending a personalized email that says “Hey, we’ve seen that you’ve been opening our emails a few times, and would love to chat about what caught your eye!”
Continuously refine and optimize your model based on real-world feedback and outcomes. Remember, lead scoring is an iterative process, and it will evolve as you gain more insights.
Lead scoring best practices
Building your model is the first step. Keeping it effective is an ongoing process. A great lead scoring model isn’t static; it’s a living system that you refine over time. Here are a few best practices to make sure your model keeps delivering high-quality leads to your sales team.
Get sales and marketing in the same room: Your lead scoring model will fail if your sales team doesn’t trust it. Sit down with them from day one. What signals do they see in their best deals? What makes a lead “sales-ready” in their eyes? Build the criteria together to ensure everyone is aligned on what a good lead looks like.
Start simple, then expand: You don’t need 50 different criteria on day one. You’ll get lost in the complexity. Start with the 5-10 most impactful attributes you identified with your sales team. You can always add more nuance later as you gather more data.
Work with clean data: A scoring model is only as reliable as the data that fuels it. If your contact data is outdated or incomplete, your scores will be meaningless.
Review and iterate regularly: Don’t just set it and forget it. Schedule a quarterly review of your model. Look at your closed-won deals. Did they have high scores? If not, it’s time to adjust your weights and criteria. The market changes, and your model should, too.
Unlock new opportunities with lead scores
The scores generated by your model provide valuable insights into lead quality. Leverage this information to tailor your outreach and engagement strategies. High-scoring leads deserve more attention, personalized messaging, and targeted offers.
By aligning your efforts with lead scores, you can enhance efficiency, improve conversion rates, and drive revenue growth.
Lead scoring isn’t just another sales tool — it’s your competitive edge in a world where speed wins deals. You’re now equipped with everything you need to build a model that transforms how your team prioritizes prospects. Start simple, test often, and watch as your close rates climb.
Frequently asked questions about lead scoring models
What is the formula for lead scoring?
There isn’t one universal formula because it should be customized to your business. However, a simple and effective structure is: Lead Score = (Demographic Fit Score) + (Behavioral Interest Score) – (Negative Score). You decide the points for each attribute based on what matters most for converting a lead into a customer.
What’s a good lead score range to use?
Most businesses use a 0-100 scale. The key isn’t the range itself, but the thresholds you define within it. For example, you might decide that leads scoring 80+ are “sales-ready” and get routed to an AE immediately, while leads scoring 50-79 enter a nurture sequence to build more interest.
How often should I update my lead scoring model?
You should plan to review your model at least quarterly. The market changes, and so do your buyers. Look at your recent closed-won deals. Did they have high scores? If not, your model needs tweaking. Treat it as an iterative process, not a one-time setup.
What’s the difference between behavioral and demographic scoring?
It’s the difference between “fit” and “interest.” Demographic scoring measures fit—does this lead match your ideal customer profile based on things like job title, industry, or company size? Behavioral scoring measures interest—what actions has this lead taken, like visiting your pricing page or downloading a guide? You need both for a complete picture.
How do I know if my lead scoring model is working?
The ultimate test is your conversion rate. Are leads with higher scores converting into customers at a significantly higher rate than leads with lower scores? If the answer is yes, it’s working. Also, get qualitative feedback from your sales team. Do they agree that the high-scoring leads are better opportunities? Their buy-in is crucial.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal announced it had grown its digital subscriber base to 4.3 million, a 33% increase under editor Emma Tucker’s leadership since 2023. Tucker told Press Gazette the growth wasn’t an accident. Deliberate digital infrastructure investment. Editorial repositioning. Organizational discipline about who the publication serves.
Key Takeaway: These aren’t contradictory signals about whether the news business is healthy or dying. The industry has split into two tracks, and the gap between them is accelerating.
Your organization’s business model, ownership structure, and digital investment determine which side you’re on. For individual journalists, the stability of your role increasingly depends on factors far upstream from how good your work is.
Two Hollywood stories illustrated a different kind of durability. Hannah Einbinder used a press tour for the final season of Hacks to call AI creators “losers.” Lili Reinhart described a male director telling her to “suck in your stomach” on set. Different issues, same throughline: talent using public platforms to name problems that institutions won’t address on their own.
Two Business Models, Two Outcomes
The WRTV situation is the blunt-force version of local news consolidation. The station’s parent company sold to an owner who saw more value in stripping out the newsroom than maintaining it. No pretense of efficiency. Just elimination.
The Journal’s trajectory runs opposite. Tucker’s 33% subscriber growth came from strategic choices about product, pricing, and content focus. Reorganized sections to match how readers actually consume news. Editorial decisions that prioritized subscriber value over traffic volume.
The professional implication is plain. The question for anyone in journalism is whether your specific organization can command subscriber revenue, premium ad rates, or strategic value from an owner who sees content as an asset rather than a cost center.
Local broadcast news supported by declining linear ad revenue carries a fundamentally different risk profile than subscription-driven publications with audience demographics that advertisers want.
A four-time Golden Globe nominee used mainstream entertainment press to publicly reject the legitimacy of AI-generated creative work.
What matters here is less whether Einbinder is right and more what it signals when A-list talent makes anti-AI positions part of their public identity. During negotiations over streaming residuals and AI protections, union leadership carried the public arguments. Now individual performers are taking that stance into press tours and social media, where they have direct audience relationships that don’t require union mediation.
For studios and content platforms, this creates a practical problem. If enough talent at Einbinder’s level makes AI rejection a brand position, deploying these tools openly gets harder, even for applications that seem technically innocuous. The PR risk compounds when audiences side with talent over platforms, which has been the pattern throughout the streaming era’s labor conflicts.
Pressure to adopt AI tools for efficiency increases as they get more capable. Simultaneously, the reputational cost of being seen as replacing human creativity with algorithmic output grows. Different organizations will make different calculations about which risk they’d rather absorb.
The Problems That Outlast the Technology
Meryl Streep recalled that The Devil Wears Prada faced budget struggles because studio executives labeled it a “chick flick.” The film eventually grossed $326 million worldwide, but getting to production required “scrabbling” for resources that comparable male-targeted projects secured automatically.
Two stories spanning nearly two decades and different tiers of Hollywood power. What connects them is structural. Studios systematically undervalue projects associated with female audiences. On-set culture frequently subjects women’s bodies to scrutiny that male actors don’t experience.
Key Takeaway: When a $326 million hit has to fight for its budget because of a genre label, that affects what gets greenlit the following year. When directors feel comfortable making body-focused comments to actors, that affects who stays in the industry and who leaves.
The pattern extends beyond Hollywood. Any organization making content investment decisions carries versions of these biases. What types of stories get labeled “niche” versus “universal”? Which creators have to prove their audience before getting resources, and which get benefit-of-the-doubt funding?
You can now measure exactly how audiences respond to different content, which makes the gap between performance data and investment patterns more obvious than ever.
What This Means
The news business bifurcation forces difficult decisions for anyone in journalism. If your organization doesn’t have a clear path to subscription scale, premium positioning, or strategic value beyond commodity content, the timeline for disruption may be shorter than institutional inertia suggests. WRTV shows that consolidation doesn’t always come with transition periods.
For creative professionals, the AI conflict and workplace culture patterns both point toward talent using public platforms to set boundaries that organizations have been slow to establish. Align with where cultural momentum is moving, and you position yourself well. Wait for organizational policy to settle everything, and you may find yourself explaining past associations that audiences have already rejected.
If you’re navigating this as a jobseeker, focus on organizations with demonstrable business model success and clear creative values. Browse open roles on Mediabistro to find positions at companies building sustainable media businesses.
For employers trying to attract talent, clarity about business model, technology strategy, and workplace culture isn’t optional. Candidates with options are making decisions based on those factors. Post a job on Mediabistro to reach professionals evaluating their next move with these considerations in mind.
This media news roundup is automatically curated to keep our community up to date on interesting happenings in the creative, media, and publishing professions. It may contain factual errors and should be read for general and informational purposes only. Please refer to the original source of each news item for specific inquiries.
Publishing and Legal Content Jobs Hiring Now on Mediabistro
By
Mediabistro Team
4 min read • Published April 3, 2026
By
Mediabistro Team
4 min read • Published April 3, 2026
Niche Expertise Is the New Currency in Media Hiring
A quiet shift is playing out across today’s listings: the most interesting roles all reward deep subject-matter knowledge over generalist skills. Whether it’s fiction editing through an AI pipeline, translating LLC law into plain English, or marketing graphic novels on TikTok, employers are looking for people who already live inside the content they’ll be producing.
That tracks with a broader trend. As AI handles more of the commodity writing and campaign execution, the professionals who understand a specific audience, genre, or regulatory landscape become harder to replace. Today’s featured roles reflect that reality across publishing, legal education, and editorial.
One more signal worth watching: independent publishers are investing heavily in digital marketing leadership. Topix Media Lab’s Associate Director listing reads like a role that would have lived at a Big Five house three years ago. Smaller publishers are building in-house capabilities that used to be outsourced, and they’re hiring experienced people to run them.
Today’s Hot Jobs
Associate Director, Digital Marketing at Topix Media Lab
Why this role deserves a close look: Topix Media Lab is an independent publisher with a catalog spanning gaming, graphic novels, food and drink, home decor, and children’s titles. This position owns full-funnel campaigns across Amazon, TikTok, Instagram, and influencer partnerships. You’ll also mentor an Associate Publicist, making it a true leadership role at a company small enough that your decisions will visibly move the business. For someone who loves books and understands direct-to-consumer marketing, this is a rare combination.
What they need from you:
Proven experience developing and executing direct-to-consumer marketing programs, including digital strategy and influencer outreach
Strong relationships with authors, agents, influencers, and others in genre book publishing
Ability to strategize, budget, and execute digital advertising, social media, and influencer marketing efforts across a diverse catalog
Comfort working in an entrepreneurial environment at a small, independent publishing house
Senior LLC Educator and Legal Content Writer at LLC University
The interesting angle here: LLC University has spent 15 years building one of the most trusted platforms for small business formation guidance, and now they’re hiring a senior writer to own the educational content that drives that reputation. This is a content role with real editorial authority. You’ll translate complex legal and regulatory information into clear, accessible language for entrepreneurs. The remote-first team operates on U.S. Eastern hours and emphasizes ownership and flexibility in a way that feels genuine rather than performative.
Core qualifications:
Ability to make complex legal and business topics simple and accessible for a non-expert audience
Strong editorial instincts with a commitment to accuracy and clarity
Experience producing educational or explainer content at scale
U.S.-based, comfortable working Eastern time zone hours
What makes this one stand out: This freelance role sits at the exact intersection of traditional editorial skill and emerging AI workflows. You’ll refine AI-assisted fiction drafts, ensuring every piece meets human editorial standards before publication. The listing emphasizes that AI handles the drafting while human editors handle the judgment, tone, and quality control. At $25–35 per hour on a contract basis, it’s a solid freelance opportunity for fiction editors curious about how AI pipelines actually work in practice.
A standout entry point: Kirkus Reviews has been one of the most authoritative voices in book criticism since 1933. Their paid editorial internship offers 15–25 hours per week of hands-on work with editors, including fact-checking, managing editorial calendars for both the website and bimonthly print issues, and contributing original writing. For anyone early in their publishing career, a Kirkus byline and editorial experience carry significant weight. The internship is remote, which opens it up beyond the usual New York orbit.
What they’re looking for:
Genuine interest in the publishing industry, cultural journalism, and criticism
Today’s strongest listings share a common thread: they all require candidates who already understand a specific world, whether that’s genre publishing, business law, fiction craft, or literary criticism. Generalist content skills remain valuable, but the roles offering the most creative autonomy and growth are the ones where domain knowledge is the price of entry.
If you’ve been building expertise in a niche, now is the time to lean into it rather than broaden your pitch. Tailor your portfolio and cover letter to demonstrate fluency in the subject matter, not just the format. The employers posting today want someone who can teach them something about their own audience. That’s a very different ask than “write clean copy,” and it commands a very different level of respect in the hiring process.
Climate change is driving rising temperatures and more record heat. The Earth’s temperature has climbed each decade since 1880 by about .14 degrees Fahrenheit, or roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit total.
Stacker compiled a ranking of the hottest Aprils in New York since 1895 using data from the National Centers for Environmental Information. Rankings are based on the highest average temperature in each month. For each of the hottest months listed below, we’ve included the average state temperature, state-wide highs and lows for the month, and the total precipitation.
#10. April 1991 (tie) – Average temperature: 47.4°F – Monthly high temperature: 58°F – Monthly low temperature: 36.9°F – Total precipitation: 3.88″
#10. April 1987 (tie) – Average temperature: 47.4°F – Monthly high temperature: 57.9°F – Monthly low temperature: 36.9°F – Total precipitation: 4.13″
#9. April 1968 – Average temperature: 47.5°F – Monthly high temperature: 60.9°F – Monthly low temperature: 34.1°F – Total precipitation: 2.69″
#7. April 2023 (tie) – Average temperature: 48°F – Monthly high temperature: 60.2°F – Monthly low temperature: 35.8°F – Total precipitation: 3.91″
#7. April 1945 (tie) – Average temperature: 48°F – Monthly high temperature: 59.5°F – Monthly low temperature: 36.6°F – Total precipitation: 4.21″
#5. April 1941 (tie) – Average temperature: 48.1°F – Monthly high temperature: 61.7°F – Monthly low temperature: 34.6°F – Total precipitation: 1.57″
#5. April 1915 (tie) – Average temperature: 48.1°F – Monthly high temperature: 59.7°F – Monthly low temperature: 36.5°F – Total precipitation: 1.59″
#4. April 2008 – Average temperature: 48.4°F – Monthly high temperature: 61.3°F – Monthly low temperature: 35.5°F – Total precipitation: 2.81″
#3. April 2017 – Average temperature: 48.8°F – Monthly high temperature: 59.6°F – Monthly low temperature: 37.9°F – Total precipitation: 4.85″
#2. April 2010 – Average temperature: 49.2°F – Monthly high temperature: 62°F – Monthly low temperature: 36.4°F – Total precipitation: 2.09″
#1. April 1921 – Average temperature: 49.7°F – Monthly high temperature: 61.9°F – Monthly low temperature: 37.5°F – Total precipitation: 3.34″
Climate change is driving rising temperatures and more record heat. The Earth’s temperature has climbed each decade since 1880 by about .14 degrees Fahrenheit, or roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit total.
Stacker compiled a ranking of the hottest Aprils in California since 1895 using data from the National Centers for Environmental Information. Rankings are based on the highest average temperature in each month. For each of the hottest months listed below, we’ve included the average state temperature, state-wide highs and lows for the month, and the total precipitation.
#8. April 2021 (tie) – Average temperature: 58.2°F – Monthly high temperature: 72.5°F – Monthly low temperature: 44°F – Total precipitation: 0.29″
#8. April 2019 (tie) – Average temperature: 58.2°F – Monthly high temperature: 70.3°F – Monthly low temperature: 46.1°F – Total precipitation: 1.22″
#8. April 2013 (tie) – Average temperature: 58.2°F – Monthly high temperature: 71.7°F – Monthly low temperature: 44.7°F – Total precipitation: 0.71″
#8. April 1985 (tie) – Average temperature: 58.2°F – Monthly high temperature: 72.1°F – Monthly low temperature: 44.3°F – Total precipitation: 0.24″
#8. April 1962 (tie) – Average temperature: 58.2°F – Monthly high temperature: 72.6°F – Monthly low temperature: 43.8°F – Total precipitation: 0.47″
#7. April 1939 – Average temperature: 58.3°F – Monthly high temperature: 72.4°F – Monthly low temperature: 44.2°F – Total precipitation: 0.55″
#6. April 1990 – Average temperature: 58.4°F – Monthly high temperature: 71°F – Monthly low temperature: 45.7°F – Total precipitation: 0.83″
#5. April 1959 – Average temperature: 58.8°F – Monthly high temperature: 73°F – Monthly low temperature: 44.6°F – Total precipitation: 0.55″
#4. April 1992 – Average temperature: 58.9°F – Monthly high temperature: 72°F – Monthly low temperature: 45.9°F – Total precipitation: 1.03″
#3. April 1987 – Average temperature: 59.3°F – Monthly high temperature: 74.1°F – Monthly low temperature: 44.5°F – Total precipitation: 0.4″
#2. April 1934 – Average temperature: 59.8°F – Monthly high temperature: 74.2°F – Monthly low temperature: 45.4°F – Total precipitation: 0.6″
#1. April 1989 – Average temperature: 60°F – Monthly high temperature: 73.5°F – Monthly low temperature: 46.4°F – Total precipitation: 0.83″
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
17 min read • Originally published February 12, 2026 / Updated April 2, 2026
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
17 min read • Originally published February 12, 2026 / Updated April 2, 2026
This week, the Super Bowl ended with the Seahawks dominating the Patriots, but the real story, as always, had nothing to do with the action on the field.
That’s because the Super Bowl is more than a sporting event – it’s a cultural touchstone, a uniquely American spectacle (even when the halftime show is in Spanish, it’s somehow more mutually intelligible with English than Bawitdaba or the seminal Po Dunk).
It’s also the last true appointment viewing event in American media, the kind of shared cultural moment that disappeared along with the MASH finale, the ‘Who Shot JR’ cliffhanger on Dallas, or Liza Minnelli appearing on any daytime talk show.
For comparison, only about 8 million people globally have watched Oscar frontrunner Marty Supreme (about 7 million more than Melania); the most recent White Lotus season captured the Zeitgeist, but only around 6 million viewers to date; or 2025 Best Musical Tony winner Maybe Happy Ending, which has sold just over half a million tickets since its debut in 2016.
That sort of viewership is why the Super Bowl remains an unprecedented media and advertising machine, with companies shelling out an eye-watering $8 million for a single 30-second spot, with some ads selling for as much as $10 million. That’s basically like throwing the equivalent of the annual GDP of a developing nation towards a crypto commercial with a questionable celebrity cameo, or the entire average budget of an A24 release on a single spot.
Is it worth it? Well, the Super Bowl drives the one mass audience moment remaining in American media, and brands are willing to pay exorbitant fees for that concentrated attention, even though ads are optimized for word of mouth and brand awareness – not direct sales impact.
Break-even analysis shows that to justify spending, Super Bowl advertisers require tens of millions in incremental revenue before generating any revenue from their spend, and tens of millions more to justify the resulting ROI. And yet, ad space sells out months in advance, with demand (and pricing) soaring every year.
The stupid money generated by the biggest of Big Games is great news for anyone working in the media industry, too, with thousands of jobs created around the periphery of this multi-ring circus – the game is a reliable boon for roles ranging from production crews to live technicians and post production editors to event marketers, media planners, account teams, and more.
A recent study by a Bay Area think tank (hella) estimated that the most recent Super Bowl would create over 5,000 local jobs, plus an additional 15,000 roles from increased demand in tourism, logistics, and event support.
These numbers are a bit misleading; the overwhelming majority of these roles are obviously temporary, gig, or contract work that’s both inherently seasonal and highly unstable. Even then, the competition is fierce.
The people you see working the game are not “the lucky few.” They’re actually the survivors of a brutally competitive labor market that chews up ambition while restricting opportunities.
For the 60 jobs created for local youth through the Juma program in partnership with the Super Bowl, thousands of applicants competed for roles with an average pay of around $18.70 an hour; staying above the poverty line in the Bay Area, by contrast, requires at least $27/hr minimum hourly wage.
But this low pay, extreme competition for a handful of unstable opportunities, isn’t just reserved for the big events like the Super Bowl – it’s endemic throughout the multi-billion-dollar economic driver that is the sports industry.
That’s why this week, we’re taking a closer look at sports-related careers and job trends. We’ll look at what the numbers say, where hiring is actually happening, and what the future holds for jobs in the sports media and industry.
Super Bowl LX didn’t just deliver TV ratings; it underscored how many people you need behind the scenes to deliver that spectacle.
From sideline reporters flying between franchises to influencers-turned-broadcast contributors, the industry’s talent pipeline extends far beyond the field.
But before we dive into our deep dive into careers in sports, let’s take a look at the week’s biggest stories, and break down what the headlines really mean for industry professionals and media careers.
1. The Labor Economics of the Super Bowl
The Super Bowl isn’t just a football game; it’s a content factory, with everyone from podcasters, producers, and technical crews to sportswriters, broadcasters, and on-site coordinators creating the engine driving a week’s worth of multi-platform coverage that generates more eyeballs than any other entertainment event of the year.
In just the last few years, credentialed media covering the show has skyrocketed – the NFL now includes social, streaming, and even influencers in the accredited press pool of almost 6500 media professionals, compared to only 2400 in 2021.
Under license from Creative Commons, God and the USA
Additionally, networks, newsrooms, and digital platforms add an estimated 4,800-5,000 roles each year to simply meet demand from viewers, visitors, and voyeurs. And that’s not even including the cast of thousands backing halftime performer Bad Bunny – or the 3 temporary PAs responsible for the Kid Rock-led “alternative” halftime debacle.
That show was for the questions that don’t have any answers, the midnight glancers, and the topless dancers (and whoever Lee Brice is).
While you probably hadn’t heard of any of the performers at the Turning Point halftime extravaganza unless you’re a big fan of American Idol deep cuts, chances are you’ve heard of one of the army of YouTube stars the NFL enlisted to cover the big game.
From Mr. Beast to Haylie Kalil (who’s probably hoping to avoid a hung jury in her impending libel case – boom), the league turned to exclusive streaming partner YouTube in a deliberate attempt to court a younger audience of viewers.
While those elusive Gen Z viewers probably have no idea what the hell that Good Will Dunkin’ ad was referencing, nor who Ben Affleck or Jennifer Aniston are (lucky them), they’re also not turning grown men giving each other CTE into event viewing – a cause for concern for a league that’s trying to soften its image as a blood sport controlled by really rich, old, stodgy white dudes. Look no further than the GOP to see how that perception resonates with the younger generation.
YouTube’s Super Bowl LX blitz included a full roster of content produced in partnership with the NFL, Google and capitalist pawns (er, creators), including an influencer flag football game, stand ups from the Levi Stadium field and access normally reserved for traditional media, such as interview opportunities with players and coaches, who no doubt were happy to trade Al Michaels for Kay Adams for their locker room sound bites.
This resulted in non-traditional coverage and behind-the-scenes access to live moments that most traditional sports media wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. It’s an experiment that leans hard into the NFL embracing influencers as distribution and branding partners, rather than just those crazy kids from the interwebs who would have never before been considered for credentials.
The “sports reporter” job used to be about wire copy and beat notes; today, the business is aggressively pivoting toward creator economics, where audiences follow personalities and develop parasocial relationships with individual influencers rather than with networks or mainstream media outlets.
That means opportunities for anyone who can build an engaged online audience, produce compelling short-form content, and game the algorithm for relevance and reach. Sports leagues and broadcast rights holders (like Google) are increasingly outsourcing more of their media strategy to creators with built-in fan bases and millions of followers.
This growing push towards non-traditional content isn’t a one-off; it’s proof that you can build a viable career by leveraging social media skills and making sports feel relevant to non-traditional audiences and younger viewers. Talking heads on TV will always have a place in sports media, but the playing field continues to widen – as do the opportunities for savvy sports streamers.
3. The Economics of Advertising
Love it or hate it, advertising drives the economic engine, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue for sports media. The Super Bowl is the closest thing the US has to a monoculture moment (Incluso cuando Bad Bunny canta en español, es un crack) – and brands are paying 8 to 10 million dollars for half a minute of airtime because it’s really the only legacy brand left capable of consistently capturing an otherwise fragmented audience.
That’s some expensive paid media, but it’s more than big companies burning brand marketing budgets. Those spots represent entire payrolls, teams of strategists, media buyers, creatives, data scientists, production crews, and agency account leads whose entire year can hinge on how they rank on the USA Today Ad Meter. Of course, the on-air ad is only a small part of the all-out blitz that starts months before kick-off.
If they’re buying big for the big game, even the most mundane consumer packaged good will be working for months on integrated campaigns involving teasers, influencer tie-ins, event activation, media planning, brand lift studies, and other really exciting marketing motions.
After the confetti falls, analysts will pore over engagement metrics, sentiment data, conversion signals and Q ratings (among other made-up agency “analytics”) to prove to their clients that they generated ROI on their ten million dollar ad spend, and that it was definitely not a forgettable, regrettable budgetary bonfire.
For anyone in sports media, this one’s pretty obvious. The Super Bowl is more than a big-time broadcast; it’s a marketing machine that generates billions of dollars in brand spend every year.
According to Nielsen, live sports are one of the only formats that consistently reach millions of viewers in real time – a big reason why ad dollars keep going up, even as linear television goes down for the count. That sustained demand fuels what jobs in creative direction, performance marketing, audience analytics, and media buying, among other disappearing disciplines.
Many aspiring sports media professionals approach their nascent careers like fans; they should remember that, in this industry, the real action is never on the field. It’s in the boardrooms and war rooms where brands decide how and where to allocate that 8-figure ad spend. If you can turn thirty seconds into sustained relevance, well, you’ve probably got a pretty promising career ahead of you (or a really killer sex tape).
4. Do the Rights Thing
Sports media is about more than highlight reels and hot takes; the entire industry is funded primarily by broadcast rights revenue, not advertising dollars. This week, the increasingly lucrative, increasingly competitive battle for broadcast rights returned to the Worldwide Leader in Sports (and largest media brand in Bristol, CT).
In a heated bidding war, ESPN secured rights to the NFL Network and NFL RedZone, effectively consolidating a significant portion of the league’s image, narrative, and presentation into a single ecosystem controlled by a single corporate conglomerate. Hint: it’s the same one charging like $200 for one-day passes to their mediocre theme parks, ostensibly to recoup this profligate spend through margins on Dole Whips and old-timey paper silhouette making.
This is a pretty big structural issue. When one platform has an effective monopoly on premium properties and associated IP, it not only controls distribution but also how advertising dollars are allocated, how production budgets are set, and how supporting headcount is determined.
The NFL is already the nation’s most valuable media property, dominating the list of most-watched live broadcasts every year (unlike, say, whatever midseason replacement Fox greenlit this time around). With its new deal in place, though, the league is just another billion-dollar brand in the same IP stable as the Marvel Universe, Star Wars, and the Lizzie McGuire franchise.
Consolidation isn’t unique to sports media, and like other sectors of the media industry, it’s effectively an opportunity and a red flag. Larger, vertically integrated platforms require deeper infrastructure – more editors, streaming engineers, analytics specialists, sponsorship strategists, and other mundane, but necessary, high-paying corporate gigs.
Similarly, integrated ecosystems require increased content operations, digital packaging, cross-platform programming, and audience engagement. That means while the machine gets bigger, so too do the job opportunities.
This is obviously a double-edged sword. When rights are concentrated, so too is power; more inventory is controlled by fewer companies, which means fewer decision makers, stakeholders, and, in short order, staff across siloes and specialties.
If you’re in sports media, your career trajectory will be determined as much by proximity to whoever happens to control distribution as by luck, timing, or talent. Better start sucking up to the good folks over at Netflix, or start sending care packages over to the Team Disney Building.
When rights consolidate – and for the NFL and most other major sports, they look to be locked down for the indeterminate future – production centralizes, and jobs become tightly clustered, rather than evenly spread. The question is, are you positioned inside that cluster, or do you live outside of the friendly confines of the Nutmeg State?
This brings us to the part no one likes to say out loud: if you want a career in sports but don’t have the athletic skills, you’d better have the pedigree or the connections already in place.
The truth is, this is one industry where getting your foot in the door requires genes more than grit, where who you know is more important than what you know, and networking is the only talent that really matters when building a sustainable career in sports.
But then again, that’s probably true of most industries, too.
The Job Market Reality
Sports media jobs are among the most disproportionately competitive roles in the market, at least relative to total pay and projected growth.
According to BLS data, sports broadcasting, operations, production, and support roles are projected to grow more slowly than general entertainment or media jobs.
The already finite amount of open roles available generally opens only due to periodic attrition, rather than expansion- particularly for full-time roles, making the odds of working in sports almost as infinitesimal as actually playing professionally.
But even if you land a gig, much like an NFL player, there’s no guaranteed money; career longevity is limited to a couple of years on average; and the only way to make the active roster is if someone else gets cut, which rarely happens in off-the-field roles.
MEDIABISTRO SPOTLIGHT
While there aren’t a ton of open jobs in sports media or production, the good news is that the latest openings and hottest jobs from across the industry get posted every day directly on Mediabistro.
So, if you’re looking to break into the business of sports, or just trying to figure out your professional game plan, head on over to Mediabistro.com to check out thousands of new job listings from across the entire media and entertainment landscape, too.
You Don’t Need to Be An Athlete to Work in Sports. Just an expensive degree.
The background of people working professionally in sports, from broadcasting to production to marketing and PR, is relatively consistent, even if their roles are anything but.
An analysis of full-time workers in the sports industry reveals some telling trend lines. Here’s how you score a spot at the career Combine:
Early access. Many professionals in sports started out as unpaid interns (like graduate assistants, in NCAA parlance) or in underpaid seasonal roles, such as event promotions or corporate ticket sales; these jobs generally pay only on commission or are limited to a few weeks or months a year.
According to BLS data, the entry-level salary in the sports industry is a whopping 22k a year (the silver lining is that’s so low it’s completely tax-free). Many professionals enter the industry before completing their education, so these roles are subsidized through college credits, student loans, or, most commonly, family support.
Let’s just say Media Row isn’t exactly crammed with first-generation college grads or people who need to be financially independent in their twenties.
Elite institutions. There are a handful of blue-chip institutions that, because of their proximity to networks and reputations, tend to act as pipelines to the pros. These include top-tier journalism schools like Indiana, Northwestern, Michigan, and Missouri, each of which has a disproportionate number of J-School grads currently employed in sports media.
They also include a handful of highly reputable, top-ranked sports management or sports business programs, such as UT Austin, UMass, Miami, and Rice – schools with prime alumni pipelines and trusted connections with the networks and leagues looking to hire.
Sure, you don’t need a college degree or academic pedigree to succeed in a sports media career, but it’s perhaps the most imperative factor in determining who gets hired for the few coveted openings on the market; referrals dominate hiring in this industry.
Where your degree came from, sadly, often matters more in the sports industry than what your reel looks like or what relevant experience you might have in related roles or industries.
Flexibility Jobs in sports are rare and highly competitive, meaning that talent often can’t afford to stick around in a single market. These roles reward those who can relocate on short notice, who have no expectations for work-life balance, who are open to the grind of constant travel, and who will live in the most expensive media markets for poverty-level pay without blinking.
If you want free time, a family, stability, or disposable income, this probably isn’t the right career for you in the first place.
Talk about trade-offs. So if you don’t check any of the standard sports industry boxes listed above, or are having trouble breaking in or landing a gig, don’t worry.
You’re probably better off doing literally anything else.
The Blind Side of Jobs in Sports
There’s no doubt that for many, sports is a fantasy job – the kind of gig you dream about your entire life. But the thing about fantasy sports is that it’s arbitrary, difficult to keep up with, and almost impossible to win, even with impeccable planning and management. And if you do beat the odds, well, the payoff is mostly pride (with a few bucks thrown in to make it interesting).
That “dream job” discount is real: early-career production assistants, editors, and reporters routinely earn less than their peers in corporate media or branded content roles; this trend continues even for more experienced positions. These roles trade mostly on prestige and passion, not pay.
As mentioned, the hours are brutal, and predictability isn’t an option. Neither is working nights, weekends, holidays, and a ton of overtime, just to keep up.
Unsurprisingly, burnout is common; live events compress stress, deadlines are tight, and public scrutiny is constant, intense, and ubiquitous. One mistake can be broadcast to millions of people, a pressure that’s constantly felt by everyone with credentials.
Stability is non-existent; rights deals shift, networks restructure, and entire production teams or sports departments can disappear when contracts move platforms or content switches to other providers. Freelancing is not a phase- in sports, it’s a structural part of how professionals make ends meet in between full-time gigs, which are mostly anything but.
Additionally, while competition for sports-related media roles is fierce, it’s even more intense for experienced professionals; the ladder narrows quickly, with many entry points leading to very few executive roles.
Advancement slows dramatically after the 3-year mark, according to Nielsen data, and the average sports media career lasts only marginally longer than that, around 4.2 years, according to the same report.
None of this is a secret; it’s just not the reality most professionals looking to break into the industry ever really hear before choosing to make the (somewhat suspect) jump.
WHY PEOPLE STILL DO IT: THE FUTURE OF JOBS IN SPORTS
Here’s the part that nobody puts in the training montage or highlight reel. Sure, there are some glamorous gigs in sports – mostly on-air roles like announcers, sideline reporters, or whoever gets to mop the lane after every NBA possession.
The former athletes with bad blazers and worse hot takes, and the professional broadcasters with great diction and bad toupees are iconic – and they’ll always exist. But the hiring curve isn’t exactly bending upwards for the aspiring Bob Ueckers or Chick Hearns of the world.
The real growth is happening off camera, off the air, and off the field. Every snap on Sunday, every pitch thrown by a journeyman pitcher making fifty million bucks, every hockey faceoff that no one really watches because, you know, it’s hockey – every one of these moments still requires a small army of support staff.
From digital producers to motion designers, from platform strategists to rights lawyers (the worst), from sponsorship analysts to partnership managers (here’s hoping they fired whoever blew the Farmer John’s-Dodger Dog deal), every moment of live drama requires decades of experience and dozens of skilled professionals. The broadcast is what the world sees; the real power and the real job opportunities stay squarely behind the scenes.
Sports is a business. And the bigger it gets, the more opportunities it should create, particularly for non-traditional platforms and creators who have more fans than the New York Jets (and are much happier, too). Sure, if you want a career in sports media, you’ve got to believe a little in the mythology of sports. Just understand that once the final whistle blows and the last piece of popcorn is swept off the concrete, the real work begins.
The business, and the paychecks, happen behind the scenes; people turning raw footage into narrative story arcs and short films, strategists mapping spot ratings and forecasting overnights, and data scientists mining stat lines for better predictions and deeper fan insights – a perpetual cycle that turns with every sports season.
Sure, it’s not nearly as romantic as everybody’s favorite gym teacher kissing everyone’s favorite English teacher after winning the Super Bowl (barf). But it’s also way more stable and far more future-proof, too.
It might be a bit cynical, but the thing is, industries run on infrastructure and scale, not nostalgia and emotional attachment. The future of sports careers has little to do with sports; instead, it belongs to the builders and creatives who understand the games are nothing more than content, a product that has to be distributed as widely and monetized as much as possible.
In other words, the business of sports media is increasingly just like any other business. It might not be glamorous, it isn’t exactly visible, and it’s not exactly stable or financially viable, either.
But for those who are willing to fight for their dream, it might not be easy, but if you build it, your sports career will come.
