News Corp Plans to Battle BBC with Debut of Times Radio
City A.M.: Rupert Murdoch is gearing up for an attack on the BBC with the launch of a new radio station to rival the embattled Radio 4. The media baron’s News UK is set to unveil details this week of Times Radio, which will be funded by the newspaper...
iHeartMedia CEO Gets Senator’s Questions About Layoffs
Business Journal: Following mass layoffs by iHeartMedia last week, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is seeking answers from the radio chain’s CEO Bob Pittman. Brown raised concerns about the company paying millions in bonus pay to the exec prior to the company’s 2018...
Sinclair to Pay $60 Million Over Tribune Spat with Nexstar
Hollywood Reporter: Sinclair Broadcast Group has settled the lawsuit stemming from its failed $3.9 billion takeover of Tribune Media. The merger was scuttled after the FCC referred it to an administrative law judge, making it...
NPR Journo Gets Booted from Pompeo Trip by State Dept
The Hill: The U.S. State Department has removed an NPR reporter from a group of journalists traveling this week to Europe and Central Asia with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, days after Pompeo publicly feuded with the news outlet following a tense...
Conde Nast Veteran Opens Up About Addiction in Memoir
WWD: Dan Peres's new HarperCollins memoir “As Needed For Pain” shines a light on the first half of his 15-year-long reign as editor in chief of Details magazine, during which he was at one point swallowing up to 60 Vicodin pills a day and concealing it from...
Playboy Turns Focus from Print to Events, Brand Licensing
FIPP: Playboy still does content, says top exec David Israel. "We have a website, we still have the magazine. And we use it really to keep promoting the kind of pleasure-seeking, egalitarian sort of lifestyle. And really, that editorial content is essentially...
Vox Media Expects $20 Million in Revenue from Podcasting
Digiday: Vox Media Podcast Network now generates over $10 million a year in revenue from a roster of more than 200 shows across the company's 14 brands. The network is expected to double revenue in 2020, according to Vox Media president Marty...
Texas Tribune Expats Prep News Targeting Women, Politics
Nieman Lab: Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora — formerly the editor-in-chief and chief audience officer of the Texas Tribune — on Monday announced the soft launch of and more details about The 19th, their new national news...
Washington Post Suspends Journo for Kobe Bryant Tweet
Associated Press: The Washington Post has placed a political reporter on administrative leave after she tweeted a link to a story about rape allegations against NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, who was killed Sunday. Dozens of journalists at the newspaper criticized the...
Gannett’s ‘Ghost Papers’ Stir Worries of Local News Void
New Yorker: Under Gannett’s watch, many small-town newspapers have become "ghost papers," emaciated versions of their former selves, hobbled by cost-cutting, barely able to cover their established beats. "The South tends to have lost more...
Craigslist Founder Makes Donation to ProPublica Project
ProPublica: ProPublica has announced $1 million in support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies for its Electionland collaboration and related national and local reporting on voting issues around the 2020 U.S....
Media Star Asks Readers to Help Support Industry Service
Media Star needs your support. 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, Amazon Among New ‘Big Six’ Global Media Giants
CNBC: Apple, Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Disney and Netflix may be a new “Big Six” among global media companies. MGM has held early talks with Apple, Netflix and other larger media entities about an acquisition as the streaming giants consider strengthening their...
Amazon CEO Hosts Rich, Powerful at New Mansion in DC
Daily Mail: Jeff Bezos threw a lavish party at his newly completed Washington, DC mansion on Saturday attended by the likes of Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and Bill Gates. The Amazon CEO purchased the $23 million mansion in 2016 and it underwent three years of...
ViacomCBS Plans ‘Grueling’ Post-Merger Layoffs in April
Fox Business: ViacomCBS plans to kick off a significant round of layoffs this April, according to Charlie Gasparino of Fox Business. “This is not good news.” CEO Bob Bakish has said that he is “going to try to squeeze $500 million in cost savings out of this...
CBS Chief Likely to Exit Company Sooner Than Expected
The Information: CBS chairman and CEO Joseph Ianniello is expected to leave the company this spring, say two people familiar with the situation. While his departure was long anticipated following CBS’s merger with Viacom, the timing wasn’t previously...
Comcast: We’ll Make More Streaming Money Than Anyone
Multichannel News: Comcast expects to be able to make more money from streaming than any other company in the world, according to Steve Burke, chairman of Comcast's NBCUniversal unit. "We could make more money in streaming than anyone else, by a...
AT&T’s Warner Bros Signs Podcast Deal with Mick Jagger
Hollywood Reporter: Mick Jagger has partnered with Warner Bros. Digital Networks to produce a series of original narrative podcasts. The studio has signed a first-look deal with Rainy Day Podcasts, a company formed by Jagger and...
Disney’s ESPN Preps 500 Live Shows Across Digital Media
Digiday: ESPN is upgrading online game viewing. The TV network this year plans to air more than 500 live original shows across its own digital properties and platforms including YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat and...
AT&T-Owned TMZ Under Fire for Kobe Bryant Death Story
Mediaite: The sheriff of Los Angeles County appeared to criticize TMZ at a press conference addressing the shocking death of Kobe Bryant and eight others on Sunday. “It would be entirely inappropriate right now to identify anyone by...
Google May Face Combined State-Federal Antitrust Probe
MarketWatch: State attorneys general will meet with U.S. Justice Department attorneys next week to share information on their respective probes of Google, a step that could eventually lead to both groups joining...
Twitter’s Vine Founder Returns with New Brief Video App
Engadget: In 2017 Twitter pulled the plug on Vine, and left a community of extremely-short-form-video creators without a platform. Since then TikTok has flourished, but it's still not the same...
Google’s YouTube Lands Rights to Stream Major Esports
Bloomberg: YouTube has secured the exclusive rights to broadcast some of the biggest esports leagues, giving Google a boost in its efforts to push into the lucrative world of video games. The deal covers the Call of Duty League and the Overwatch...
Quibi CEO ‘Super Sorry’ for Remarks Insulting Journalists
Variety: Quibi CEO Meg Whitman apologized for comparing journalists to sexual predators, saying her remarks did not convey her true feelings about the press. “I used an analogy that was inappropriate and just plain...
NPR Journalist is Part of ‘Unhinged’ Media, Pompeo Says
Guardian: US secretary of state Mike Pompeo launched an extraordinary attack on a respected NPR journalist on Saturday, a day after reports emerged of him swearing at and trying to humiliate her by asking her to identify Ukraine on a...
Fox’s Hannity to Interview Trump for Pregame Super Bowl
Mediaite: President Trump will be sitting down at the White House for an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity ahead of Super Bowl LIV on Feb. 2. The highly-rated event will be broadcast this year by...
Pew Study Links Trump Impeachment Beliefs to News Diet
Associated Press: For many Americans, how they feel about issues raised during President Trump’s impeachment has much to do with where they get their news. A study released Friday by the Pew Research Center illustrated these...
New York Times Mum on Plan for Future of Media Column
Mediaite: Jim Rutenberg is leaving his “Mediator” column behind to become a writer at large at the New York Times. It is unclear if the Times is planning to find a replacement for him. “We have nothing to share,” a spokeswoman...
Bauer Unveils New Edition of Walmart Shopping Magazine
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Friends Bethany Halford and Amanda Jerkins joined with Bauer Media to launch the quarterly magazine Whoa, Wait in September with a fall/winter edition, and the spring issue hits Walmart store racks Feb....
Meredith Sells FanSided to New Owner of Players’ Tribune
New York Post: Meredith on Friday announced the sale of sports blogging site FanSided to Minute Media — two years after it inherited the site with its January 2018 acquisition of Time Inc. Sources said the sale was in the $15 million...