CBS Shareholder Meeting Convenes Without Moonves at Helm
CBS News: The last time CBS had an annual meeting without Les Moonves at the helm was 2005, when the biggest show on TV was Fox's "American Idol," a video website called YouTube was a few months old, and Netflix's only line of business was delivering DVDs by mail. On...
Disney Makes History at Box Office Ahead of Merger with Fox
Deadline: Prior to merging with Fox next quarter in 2019, Walt Disney Studios is celebrating a $7 billion global B.O. win for 2018 YTD. It’s the second time in history any studio has surpassed the $7 billion mark, after Disney’s own industry-record 2016 global gross...
AT&T: Warner Bros TV, Digital Exec to Exit After Two Decades
Variety: After nearly 25 years in the Warner Bros. family, Craig Hunegs is exiting his post as head of business for Warner Bros. TV Group and president of the studio’s digital networks wing. Hunegs said he has been discussing his exit with Warner Bros. chairman-CEO...
Dish Quietly Tests Movie Recommendation App Called Flixpert
Variety: Dish and its corporate sibling EchoStar have quietly been testing a movie recommendations platform called Flixpert. The platform promises to help people find movies to watch through recommendations from friends and trusted contacts; Dish has been testing...
CBS Sells Television City Complex to Developer for $750 Million
Los Angeles Times: CBS has sold its iconic Television City headquarters, and active sound stages for $750 million to Los Angeles-based real estate developer Hackman Capital Partners. Shows that are produced at Television City, including CBS’s “The Late Late Show with...
Fox News Bonus Pay to Shine Probed by Democratic Senators
CNBC: Four Democratic senators are requesting the White House counsel's office to provide documents and answer detailed questions about whether Trump aide and former Fox News executive Bill Shine is breaking conflict of interest laws as he continues to get paid by...
EW Scripps Unit to Relaunch Court TV After Decade Off the Air
Wall Street Journal: E.W. Scripps is betting that crime actually does pay. Scripps division Katz Networks said Monday that it is reviving Court TV, the cable network that helped turn American judicial proceedings into TV spectacles with gavel-to-gavel coverage of...
Verizon Says 10,000 Employees Have Accepted Buyout Offers
CNBC: Verizon said Monday more than 10,000 employees, or about 7 percent of its global workforce, have accepted the company's buyout offer, first announced in September as a cost-cutting measure. Verizon previously announced a goal to save $10 billion in cash by...
Endeavor Taps Chief Content Officer of IMG for New President
WWD: Mark Shapiro, chief content officer of IMG since 2014, has been named president of Endeavor, the global leader in sports, entertainment and fashion. Endeavor’s portfolio of companies includes WME, IMG and UFC. Shapiro reports to Ari Emanuel, chief executive...
Fox PR Veteran to Join Snap as Chief Communications Officer
PR Week: Snap has hired Julie Henderson as chief communications officer. Reporting to CEO Evan Spiegel, Henderson will lead global communications. Henderson is serving as EVP and chief communications officer at 21st Century...
Snap’s Most Popular Creators Say Platform is Losing Its Cool
Ad Age: Some of Snapchat's most popular users say the company has fallen short of its promise to welcome its creator community as partners, with one of its most popular users threatening to quit the app entirely. Shaun McBride was one of the platform's first stars...
Google CEO to Rebut Privacy, Bias Criticisms Before Congress
Axios: Google CEO Sundar Pichai will tell lawmakers Tuesday that the company takes user privacy seriously, doesn't bake political bias into its products and is proud to work with the U.S. government, according to his prepared testimony posted by the House Judiciary...
Facebook Plans Kiosk in Manhattan to Offer Advice on Privacy
New York Post: Mark Zuckerberg’s social network plans to open a pop-up kiosk on Dec. 13 in Midtown Manhattan, where it will field questions about its data-sharing practices and teach users how to understand its new privacy controls. “It’s been a tough year, and people...
Quibi, from Katzenberg, Sees Revenue Driver in Subscriptions
Digiday: Jeffrey Katzenberg has been open about his plans to spend big bucks on programming for Quibi, his upcoming subscription mobile video streaming service. Subscriptions will be the main driver of revenue for Quibi, which will offer a $5-per-month ad-supported...
Bezos’s Washington Post Grows 202 as Brand for Newsletters
Digiday: The Washington Post built a successful stable of newsletters by super-serving DC insiders and news junkies. But it is slowly stepping outside the beltway — and out of readers’ inboxes. On Dec. 4, the news publisher launched The Technology 202, the seventh...
Conde Nast Introduces Digital Weekly Edition of GQ in Britain
British GQ: Welcome to GQ Hype, a brand new free weekly edition of GQ. Starting at 7 am every Monday morning, in addition to the digital and print magazine, GQ Hype will have its own cover and publish multiple new stories each day, every day, all...
Pew: Social Media Outpaces Newspapers as US News Source
Associated Press: The Pew Research Center said Monday that 20 percent of Americans cited social media as a frequent news source, compared to 16 percent that credited newspapers. It’s the first time since Pew has found sites like Facebook and Twitter outpacing...
Prediction: Consolidation Wave to Hit Old, New Media in 2019
Digiday: Everyone has decided that consolidation won’t save publishers in 2019. But a wave of it is coming anyway, as large digital players seek to make themselves more attractive to legacy giants, legacy print players hunt for more savings and everybody tries to...
Media Giants to Hit ‘Pause’ on Deals After Big Mergers of 2018
CNBC: The story of 2018 for media companies was simple: The world is changing, and now is the time to consolidate. AT&T closed its deal for Time Warner, Disney bought Fox, and Comcast bought Sky. But don't expect the same from 2019 or 2020, according to Wall...
Disney, Comcast Gear Up to Outspend Netflix on Programming
Wall Street Journal: The sale of major assets of 21st Century Fox will create two juggernauts of programming, Disney and Comcast, that will tower over a rapidly consolidating media landscape, according to a report by Ampere Analysis. The two companies together will...
Comcast Hints Mobile App Will Be Key to Newly Acquired Sky
Business Insider: CFO Michael Cavanaugh gave an initial indication of how Comcast's offerings might inform decisions at the company's newly acquired Sky. Sky execs expressed interest in Comcast's Xfinity xFi mobile app, which lets customers access and control their...
CBS Faces Possible Lawsuit from Moonves Over Probe Leaks
New York Post: Les Moonves is threatening to sue CBS over leaks of details about his alleged sexual misconduct. In what’s expected to amount to a breach of contract suit, Moonves’s lawyers are preparing to allege that leaks to the New York Times about CBS’s pending...
Viacom, CBS: Redstone Heirs Say Media Mogul is Incompetent
Vanity Fair: There is no longer any confusion about the health of Sumner Redstone, the Hollywood billionaire whose family controls CBS and Viacom. In a California court filing last week, Sumner’s grandson confirmed what everyone but Sumner’s lawyer has acknowledged...
Fox Chief Murdoch Likely to Begin Exerting Influence at Disney
Variety: During the past 12 months, the Murdochs have greatly expanded the family’s wealth. And Rupert Murdoch will undoubtedly begin to exert some influence at Disney as the family members collectively rank as the largest individual shareholders in...
Dish Chief Sends Message to TV Industry with Blackout of HBO
Bloomberg: By going to war with HBO and Univision, Dish's Charlie Ergen is sending a message to his suppliers -- media titans like CBS, 21st Century Fox, Disney and AT&T, the parent of HBO. As cord cutting erodes Dish’s subscriber base, Ergen is determined to keep...
Amazon Channels May Be How Cord-Cutters Sign Up for HBO
CNET: How are cord-cutters subscribing to HBO and Starz? People sign up with those networks' apps directly, sure, but Amazon's Prime Video Channels may be delivering a huge chunk of their members. Nearly half of Starz direct-to-consumer subscribers may be coming from...
Google Staffer, 22, Found Dead at New York City Headquarters
WABC: A 22-year-old man was found dead in Google's New York offices Friday. Police said Scott Krulcik, of Manhattan, was found unconscious and unresponsive on the sixth floor of 111 8th Avenue, the building Google rents for its New York offices. There were no obvious...
Netflix Breaks Record on Consumer Spending in Mobile Apps
TechCrunch: Netflix just broke new records on consumer spending in its mobile apps. In November, Netflix pulled in an estimated $86.6 million in worldwide consumer spending across its iOS and Android apps combined — a figure that’s 77 percent higher than the $49...
Spotify Inks Content Partnership with ‘Ellen DeGeneres Show’
TheDrum: "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and Spotify have teamed for a long-term, reciprocal content partnership deal. This is the first such digital content deal from Spotify, where it's allowing a partner to develop a content hub. The music-streaming service has created...
Apple New Musician Platform Buy Could Bypass Music Labels
TechCrunch: Apple has acquired Platoon, a startup out of London that works primarily with musicians — but also other creators like writers — to produce, distribute and sell their work, using analytics to source talent, and figure out the best way to target and market...