Samsung Using Gracenote Data to Help Viewers Find Shows

There’s nothing like buying a new smart TV set these days. They’re bigger than ever, with brighter, sharper pictures. But the best thing a smart TV set can do for you is to help you find something to watch.

To help make that happen, Samsung Electronics has made a deal with Nielsen’s Gracenote unit to use Gracenote’s content data to deliver advanced search capabilities.

The companies say this means viewers will be able to find the TV shows, movies and sports programs they want in a more intuitive and conversational manner.

The data will also enable Samsung to offer new content-discovery capabilities by enabling the curation of compelling carousels and recommendations of relevant programmers. 

Viewers will be able to lean back and chill instead of wasting precious minutes with more frustrating search routines.

“Samsung is committed to delivering the most useful and engaging entertainment experiences to our users,” said Bongjun Ko, Corporate executive VP at Samsung Electronics. “By combining our AI technology with Gracenote’s industry-leading metadata, we aim to push content search and discovery to new heights, delighting viewers by empowering them to find the entertainment they love intuitively and naturally.”

Yeah, the man said AI. AI needs good data, and Samsung said working with Gracenote will help it create new services and be more efficient operationally. 

Gracenote considered its content ID and program metadata the industry’s gold standard, making it essential for AI-powered applications. 

“The structured nature of Gracenote’s entertainment metadata and the scale of our content coverage put us in a unique position to power LLM-driven use cases,” said Jared Grusd, CEO at Gracenote. “We’re pleased to join forces with Samsung and are confident our collaboration will yield innovative user experiences and benefits extending far beyond.” 

Gracenote noted that Samsung is just the latest customer to sign up for its content data. Two weeks ago, Gracenote announced a separate expanded deal with Google, which will incorporate Gracenote data into its traditional search and Gemini AI product. 

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The Olympics are over and NBCUniversal says it earned a gold medal–and it didn’t have to lose any teeth to do it.

NBCU says the Olympics averaged 23.5 million viewers on NBC, Peacock, NBCU Digital and Versant’s CNBC and USA Networks over their live afternoon and primetime window. 

It was the highest rated Winter games since Sochi in 2014 and was up 96% from the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

Peacock had its best month ever, with a record 16.7 billion minutes streamed of Olympic content alone. Peacock also streamed the Super Bowl, the NBA All-Star game and the first installment of the new Sunday Night Basketball franchise. 

All of that translated to the highest advertising revenue in Winter Games history. We’ll have to wait for Comcast’s next earnings report to see how many dollars it raked in.

The Olympics was part of what NBCU has been touting as its Legendary February. Over the course of the month, 216.6 million Americans tuned in for either the Super Bowl, Olympics or NBA All-Star Game.

“Our NBC Sports and Olympics personnel delivered a truly ‘Legendary February’ to our audiences on NBC, Telemundo, Peacock and Versant’s USA Network and CNBC that definitely exceeded our expectations,” said Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports. “The success of the Milan Cortina Olympics, Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara and the 2026 NBA All Star Weekend in Los Angeles could not have happened without the enormous cooperation and support from across Comcast NBCUniversal— including Peacock, NBC Entertainment, NBC News, Telemundo, local owned-stations, NBC affiliates, our exceptional ad sales and distribution teams, and Xfinity.  And, of course, our great partners at the IOC, USOPC, NFL and NBA.” 

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Comcast Advertising said it named James Borow as general manager of Universal Ads, which enables brands of all sizes to create, buy and measure ads in premium video.

Borow had been VP of product management and engineering for Universal Ads. He succeeds James Grant, who left last year after launching the business.

“Universal Ads has built a strong foundation in its first year—the pace and quality of execution have been incredible,” said James Rooke, President of Comcast Advertising. “As such, many ecommerce and social-first advertisers were able to reach audiences on TV for the first time, with exceptional return on ad spend thanks to the performance power of premium video. As we enter year two, James is the ideal person to take the helm, applying his insights and learnings from big tech to Universal Ads as we continue our journey to make TV advertising simple to buy, just like social.”

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The Walt Disney Co. had a big month in January according to Nielsen’s monthly report ranking media distributors.

Disney’s share jumped to 11.9% from 10.7% in December. The gains were powered by ESPN, which had an 82% increase in viewing thanks to its College Football Playoff coverage, plus 10% rise at ABC affiliates, led by shows such as Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, The Rose Bowl Parade, High Potential and World News Tonight.

The gain brought Disney closer to YouTube, which remained at the top of the list with a 12.5% share. 

The NFL boosted NBCUniversal and Fox, and A+E moved up ahead of Hallmark thanks to increases at its FYI and Lifetime networks.