How’s this for a news break?
Disney’s ad-sales team has offered potential sponsors of “What You Need to Know,” a new ABC News streaming news program made for Disney+, the chance to embed their logos between headlines that would scroll at the bottom of the screen. The idea is just one that Disney has discussed with media buyers and advertisers, according to a person familiar with the matter, part of a bid to highlight new concepts and innovations it’s willing to embrace in streaming venues.
Disney declined to make executives available for comment. But the person with knowledge of the ad outreach says the idea would allow for a sponsor’s logo to show up in a bottom-of-the-screen scroll, potentially after every three or four headlines.
“What You Need to Know” isn’t the typical TV-news program. It’s aimed at streaming audiences, and is anchored by James Longman and Rachel Scott. The show, which debuted Monday and is updated every morning, offers an 8-to-10 minute survey of breaking headlines, outsized graphics and surprising videos. The program is so fast paced that Billy Joel’s 1989 hit song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which encapsulates 40 years of U.S. history in under five minutes, would have a hard time keeping up.
The ad placement, if enacted, would allow ABC News to embrace advertising in ways many of its contemporaries do not. News tickers or zippers became popular elements of the TV-news graphics package following the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001, and have largely been regarded as the province of the newsroom, not the business side of the house.
Few if any of the major national TV-news outlets put any type of advertising in the scrolling bars — except, perhaps for promotional messages about other shows on the schedule.
That doesn’t mean the screen is sacrosanct. Indeed, executives at then-CNN parent Time Warner expressed interest in similar concepts in 2015. In 2025, however, CNN sees its scrolling tickers as editorial content, says one person familiar with network practices, and keeps advertising separate from them. Still, CNN occasionally allows marketers to sponsor other elements, such as an on-screen “countdown clock.” Fox Corp.’s Fox Business Network and NBCUniversal’s CNBC sometimes tell viewers that the market data streaming on screen is made available to them via a sponsor or provider. But such notifications surface outside the tickers’ boundaries.
Most news outlets keep news in their scrolls, not ads. As a general policy, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC do not run commercials in ticker content, nor do NBC News, CBS News — or even ABC News. A recent examination of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” “Good Morning America” and the live-streamed “ABC News Live” showed no use of tickers at all.
And none have been used so far in “What You Need’s” earliest days. On Wednesday’s edition of the new show, Longman took viewers through a dizzying array of news items that ranged from correspondent Kayna Whitworth in the prison that might house murderer Bryan Kohberger to the death of heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne to video of a monster truck losing a wheel at a live event. “What You Need To Know” has made references in two of its first three episodes to the fact that Disney+ was streaming the premiere of Disney’s new “Fantastic Four” movie. Unlike other programs, Disney+ does not maintain a full library of episodes, giving users only the most current edition of the show.
Disney’s potential interest in embedding logos in tickers comes as the task of luring advertisers to news programming becomes more difficult. Many top sponsors dread the prospect of having their name or logo surface alongside images of war, famine or natural disasters. They also fret about appearing to be aligned with opinion hosts, potentially alienating the part of their consumer base that doesn’t agree with the thoughts being expressed.
There are fresh signs, however, that Madison Avenue is getting over such aversions. Both Fox Corp. and NBCUniversal have in recent days said they won new commitments from advertisers to news programming, either boosted by interest in packages tied to NBCU’s sports portfolio or because of the larger audiences that have tuned to Fox News Channel in recent months. The reason? Live news in many cases commands bigger simultaneous audiences than scripted favorites, which more people are viewing at times of their own choosing via streaming services.
In recent years, advertisers have been encroaching on news programs in ways that would have been forbidden in the past. The third hour of NBC’s “Today,” for example, has made excursions to venues that come about as a direct result of sponsorships. A visit to Alaska was underwritten by Visit Anchorage, while a broadcast in March from the deck of the MSC World America was part of a promotional deal with MSC Cruises. ABC’s “Good Morning America” has embraced similar commerce, sending on-air personality Ginger Zee to Scotland in 2020 for a segment that showed where “Outlander,” a series on the cable network Starz, was in production. Viewers were told the report was sponsored by the media outlet.
TV stations are willing to take on advertisers in new ways as well. Many nightly sports reports have the name of a sponsor in the title or display it on screen while a local personality discusses wins and losses of hometown favorites.
Whether the “What You Need to Know” offer proves attractive to sponsors remains to be seen. Disney only recently began discussing ideas with media-buying agencies, according to the person familiar with the matter. Other proposals include interactive ad units tied to the new streaming show, or sponsorship of “tune in” promos that appear on linear TV or social media.
Such things are more typical of streaming offers. Placing logos in a news ticker? It may well generate new headlines.