• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 7, 2021

Are Wall Street investors just shrugging their shoulders at hacked data headlines?

Recent reports says a hacker got 533 million consumers’ phone, email, and other data from Facebook accounts -- which actually, according per the social network, was an event stemming from two years ago, something it has already addressed and adjusted to.

Indifference seems to be the response: Facebook stock hit an all-time high on Monday as part of an overall stock-market gain. Investors took it in stride with this mindset: Consumer data will continue -- in part -- to be taken away by bad actors.

This is something traditional media -- television, radio and print -- will have to deal with as those companies move aggressively into the digital media space.

Even as over-the top/connected TV platforms continue their growth; negative headlines around advertising fraud continue. We have yet to see if data collection around consumers' OTT/CTV usage/payments is an issue.

TV networks might yield to the way Facebook is operating. For its part, Facebook has more or less conceded some form of regulation is headed its way.

Somewhat good news: Traditional media, especially those companies with TV stations and cable operations, have decades of experience around regulation. TV stations have had a long -- and somewhat testy relationship -- with federal regulators over the broadcast license and overall U.S. station ownership.

For those with cable operations, the longtime 1992 Cable Act requires cable television systems to carry most local broadcast television channels and prohibits cable operators from charging local broadcasters to carry their signal.

The next big headline might be when TV networks get real scale in terms of more granular consumer info from their ramped-up direct-to-consumer (D2C) business with more connectivity.

But it won’t just be more regulation. Are more bad actors already sniffing around?