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...
G/O Media’s Deadspin Editor Predicts New Life for Website
Digiday: "We're going to tackle topics and issues and the big entities the same way that Deadspin always has, which is unapologetically and fearlessly," says new editor Jim Rich. "I've pretty much made my career on being a straight...
Politico Subscription Product to Cost Up to $75,000 a Year
Digiday: Politico is chasing after more subscription revenue by starting on Monday a new business-to-business product covering the Food and Drug Administration called AgencyIQ. The product will include research, analysis and...
ViacomCBS Faces Grammy Scandal Ahead of Big Telecast
Hollywood Reporter: Just how many people will tune in to CBS on Sunday to watch the Grammy Awards? The question carries extra weight thanks to a bombshell complaint filed by Deborah Dugan, the suspended Recording Academy chief. ...
Fox News Emerges as Top Channel to Watch Impeachment
Bloomberg: About 10 million people watched the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump on the six broadcast and cable networks in the first two days, with Fox News drawing the biggest audience, according to...
AT&T to Lean On HBO Max for Media Industry Domination
Business Insider: AT&T has made no secret of its desire to lead the fractured media landscape through its new WarnerMedia assets and Xandr ad-tech division. A WarnerMedia strategy deck shows how much the plan will focus on HBO...
Comcast to Open Streaming Video Studio with NBC News
Variety: After closing down its Peacock Productions non-fiction unit, NBC News is quickly getting back into the documentary business with NBC News Studios. The new division, led by Liz Cole, will produce content for emerging...
Disney Plans Live Programming for ABC News Streaming
Associated Press: ABC News will hire some 50 new journalists, assign correspondents Linsey Davis and Tom Llamas to online leadership roles and increase live programming with the goal of becoming a round-the-clock service within a...
Netflix Numbers Rise After Move to New Viewership Metric
CNET: Netflix has switched to a new viewership metric that inflates its numbers by more than a third compared with its previous standard. Netflix will now count a title as "watched" if you choose to watch it and let it play for two...
Google’s YouTube Hires Humans to Tackle Harmful Videos
Hollywood Reporter: To tackle so-called fake news, Susan Wojcicki, CEO of the Google-owned video streaming giant, said YouTube has worked to reduce borderline content. YouTube is using human moderators to combat harmful video...
Snap Nabs Oprah Network Veteran for Mobile Programming
Variety: Jill Dickerson has left OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network after more than a decade to join Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, as a senior member of the Snap Originals team. Dickerson will help lead development of Snap’s...
PBS’s ‘MacNeil/Lehrer Report’ Newsman Lehrer Dies at 85
USA Today: Jim Lehrer, a longtime anchorman for PBS who appeared on the air for more than 30 years until his retirement in 2011, died Thursday at 85. Lehner died “peacefully in his sleep,” according to PBS. He had suffered a heart attack in...
Vice Media Study Says Gen Z Really Likes Original Content
Billboard: The results of a new study conducted by Vice Media Group for Ontario Creates focus on how Gen Z discovers, consumes and shares culture content, including music, film, television, art, lifestyle, gaming and...
PwC Says M&A to Slow as Media Giants Evaluate Strategy
World Screen: While calling 2019 a “transformative year” in M&A in the media and telco sectors, with several megadeals and a shifting relationship between traditional media and big tech, PwC reports that overall deal activity and value fell last...
Axel Springer Plans Stock Delisting in Hunt for Media Buys
Reuters: German publisher Axel Springer said it planned to delist from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Springer has said that once private, it hopes to gain greater freedom to build its digital portfolio and look for...
News Corp Appoints New Editor at Britain’s Sunday Times
Prolific London: Emma Tucker, deputy editor of the Times, is to be the next editor of the Sunday Times, according to reports. Tucker is to replace Martin Ivens, who has edited the paper since 2013. Tucker started her career at the Financial...
Gannett’s USA Today Wins Kudos for Yanking Comments
Editor & Publisher: Readers liked the removal of the comment option for stories in the recent redesign of USA Today's website, according to consumer products chief Jason Jedlinski. "This was a daunting challenge for me and some of my team...
New York Times at Work on February Makeover of Opinion
Vanity Fair: In many ways, the New York Times’s planned makeover of Opinion, which is scheduled to take effect sometime in February, has everything to do with the department’s structure and org-chart. At its core, however, is a notable departure from the way things...