Contributions are defined as " A gift, subscription, loan, advance or deposit of money or anything of value given to influence a federal election; or the payment by any person of compensation for the personal services of another person if those services are rendered without charge to a political committee for any purpose. 11 CFR 100.52(a) and 100.54."
News coverage of an election - given the presumption of disseminating factual and necessary information for people to make reasoned voting decisions - cannot be counted as support towards any candidate because it is news.
Opinion segments, on the other hand, are not news coverage from a legal standpoint. And, one could argue, if they are a sufficiently long-lasting proponent for a particular candidate (e.g. devoting hundreds of hours of promotional material to them) and - especially if they seem to be coordinating their advertising message with a political candidate - it seems difficult to see how this would not be a fairly clear political donation.
This is, for example, the standard for a PAC. They can advertise to their hearts content in favor of a candidate but should they be shown to be coordinating with the candidate then they are in violation of campaign donation restrictions.
Which would bring up the question of whether public commentators need to register as a PAC?
As best I can tell, the rules for this vary by state. For example, in Nevada, the requirement seems to be that the company expressly requests contributions and uses that money to advertise. But, in Maine, the standard is:
So in at least some states, there would seem to be an argument that opinion segments of the news would count as PACs and, for at least one of them, there’s an indication that the PAC was coordinating with the candidates.