News Corp Vows No Bias with Debut of Knewz Aggregator
The Sun: News Corp's newly launched Knews "is a new resource for people who want news not tainted by fallacious filters and biased bubbles." The website and app draw on artificial intelligence, combined with curation, to provide a menu of stories from hundreds of...
Drudge Report Founder Hints of Fears for Personal Safety
CJR: Matt Drudge wasn't too happy with a reporter who had driven out to his house in remote southern Florida and knocked on his door requesting an interview. "That's not fair that you would come onto my property," Drudge told the journalist. "It's a volatile climate...
Media Star Asks Readers to Help Support Industry Service
Media Star needs your support to continue to thrive. This one-person operated service is read daily by media professionals across New York, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. ... Does Media Star help you with your work? Then please help support Media Star. Thank...
Apple CEO Sees New Video Streamer as ‘Rousing Success’
Reuters: Apple on Tuesday reported sales and profits for the holiday shopping quarter above Wall Street expectations. CEO Tim Cook said the company’s Apple TV+ subscription streaming video service released last fall was a “rousing success” and that it is “very...
Disney’s Hulu Sets Sundance Record for Acquisition Deal
Associated Press: The “Groundhog Day”-esque comedy “Palm Springs,” by Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island, has set an acquisition record at the Sundance Film Festival by 69 cents. The indie distributor Neon and the streaming service Hulu bought “Palm Springs” for...
Netflix to Lay Off Staffers Amid Strategy Shift in Marketing
Hollywood Reporter: Netflix is overhauling its marketing strategy and laying off some employees in the process. Sources say the streaming giant, which has emphasized marketing individual shows and movies in recent years, will work to better sell the service as a...
Facebook Says Oversight Board Will Be Slow at Decisions
Recode: More than a year after CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially announced the idea of an oversight board, Facebook has released a series of proposed rules about how it will all work. That includes a process for users to submit appeals and an outline of how the board...
CBS Chief Eyed to Front Private-Equity Offer for Univision
Wall Street Journal: Private-equity firm Platinum Equity has sought to recruit CBS chief Joe Ianniello to front its bid to acquire Univision, a move that would bring an experienced media executive to the helm of the Spanish-language...
Comcast’s NBC News Considers Fifth Hour of ‘Today’ Show
Variety: NBC News has considered creating a fifth hour of “Today” on weekdays, the latest nod to the growing spotlight many broadcast networks are giving to news programming across their schedules as more consumers watch scripted programs at times of their own...
Fox News is Facing ‘Beginning of the End,’ Trump Predicts
Daily Beast: President Trump lashed out Tuesday morning at Fox News even as the network continued to defend him at every turn of the ongoing impeachment trial. "Really pathetic how @FoxNews is trying to be so politically correct by loading the airwaves with...
Chernin Inks $450 Million Deal in Sale of Barstool Sports
Recode: The owner of Barstool Sports has agreed to sell the popular and controversial digital sports publisher to Penn National Gaming, a regional gambling operator. The deal values Barstool, which has its roots as a rowdy Boston sports blog founded in 2003, at an...
New York Times Taps BuzzFeed Boss for Media Columnist
NBC News: Ben Smith, editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, who built a respected news organization alongside the website’s lighter content, will leave the company and join the New York Times as the newspaper's top media...
BuzzFeed in Hunt to Fill Jobs for President, Head of News
Recode: Ben Smith, BuzzFeed News’s editor-in-chief, will become the New York Times’s new media columnist in March. Smith’s departure leaves BuzzFeed with two major hires to make: In addition to a successor to Smith, the company is still looking to hire a...
Washington Post Reinstates Journalist Behind Kobe Tweet
Associated Press: Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez, who had been placed on administrative leave after she tweeted a link to a story about a 2003 rape allegation against Kobe Bryant, has been cleared to return to work, the paper said...
TMZ Chief Claims ‘Kobe’s People’ Gave OK to Crash Story
New York Post: Harvey Levin, the founder of TMZ, said the outlet had the OK from “Kobe’s people” to break news of the helicopter crash that killed the NBA legend, his 13-year-old daughter and seven other people. Law enforcement authorities had slammed the tabloid...
Quartz, CNBC, New York Post Veteran Journalist Dies at 55
CNBC: Xana Antunes, a veteran business journalist, died Monday night in New York after a struggle with pancreatic cancer. Antunes, who at a relatively young age also was editor of the New York Post, most recently was executive editor of the news site...
Penske’s Rolling Stone Magazine Rolls Out B2B Newsletter
Folio: Since being acquired by PMC Media in 2018, Rolling Stone has undergone a series of changes to transform its business. Its latest initiative is targeting music industry professionals with a new e-letter called RS Pro. The email will be distributed...
Conde Nast’s Employees at Ars Technica Work from Home
Ars Technica: Ars Technica, the Conde Nast-owned website covering tech news, operates in remote offices. Writers don’t have the benefit of seeing each other as they work, so having routines and procedures is important to keep the workday on...
Flipboard Expands News Aggregation App Into Local News
TechCrunch: Flipboard, the personalized news aggregation app used by 145 million users per month, is launching a new feature aimed at bringing local news coverage to 23 cities across the U.S. and Canada, including major metros like New York, Los Angeles, and...
Scroll Makes Hundreds of Websites Ad-Free for $5 a Month
The Verge: A new subscription service called Scroll is offering ad-free access to hundreds of websites — not by blocking the ads, but by working with an expanding group of publishers to take the ads down in exchange for a slice of the subscription...
Media Star Asks Readers to Help Support Industry Service
Media Star needs your support to continue to thrive. This one-person operated service is read daily by media professionals across New York, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. ... Does Media Star help you with your work? Then please help support Media Star. Thank...
Netflix, Fox, MSNBC Among Top ‘Loyalty’ Brands in Media
MediaPost: Media brands including Amazon, Netflix, MSNBC, Fox, Google, and an ascendant WhatsApp, are dominant among the top 20 loyalty brands, according to findings from the just-released 2020 edition of Brand Key's annual Customer Loyalty Engagement...
Disney Faces Potential Business Impact from Coronavirus
Deadline: The Coronavirus hit markets hard Monday with gambling, travel and selected tech stocks taking the hardest punches but other pockets feeling the jitters too — like Disney. The entertainment giant closed Shanghai Disneyland indefinitely last...
ViacomCBS Chief Invests in Podcasting Startup ‘Meet Cute’
Variety: Meet Cute, a New York-based podcast company that focuses on romantic comedies, has secured more than $3 million in funding from a group of investors, including Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital and venture capital firm Union Square...
CBS Credits Trio of Events with Streaming Signup Record
TechCrunch: CBS’s streaming service, CBS All Access, credits a trio of high-profile events — including the premiere of its new Star Trek series, “Star Trek: Picard” — with helping it to achieve a new record for subscriber sign-ups in a given...
Fox, CBS Begin Borrowing Bingeing Concepts from Netflix
Multichannel News: As streaming becomes more and more the viewing norm, the content of the Netflixes, Amazons and Hulus of the world, bold and binge-friendly, is increasingly affecting the programming viewers see on cable and...
Netflix Courts First-Time Filmmakers for Edge in Streaming
Los Angeles Times: Netflix is aggressively courting not only Academy Award-winning filmmakers such as “The Irishman” director Martin Scorsese, but also artists who haven’t yet broken out. The idea is to forge relationships with up-and-coming directors before they...
Facebook Teases First Super Bowl Ad After Stallone Leak
Ad Age: Facebook got its first taste of the high-wire act that is Super Bowl advertising when the star of its commercial, Sylvester Stallone, leaked information about the secret spot. Stallone was sharing to Instagram from behind the scenes at the commercial shoot in...
Twitter NFL Team Accounts Hacked Ahead of Super Bowl
Bloomberg: The official Twitter accounts for more than a dozen National Football League teams have been hacked, less than a week before the Super Bowl. Official verified Twitter accounts for a number of teams no longer have profile photos on the social media...
Google, Conde Nast Release Study on Programmatic Ads
Adweek: Publishers can find value in programmatic advertising, even when the inventory is next to content that normally attracts luxury dollars, Google and Condé Nast attest in a new joint case study, disclosing details about their programmatic guaranteed...