New York City’s Movie Theaters Reopen in March
Deadline: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said movie theaters in New York City will be brought into line with the rest of New York state as of March 5, when they will be allowed to reopen at 25% capacity with no more than 50 people per screen, masks, social distancing and...
Discovery Nabs 11 Million Streaming Subscribers
Broadcasting & Cable: Discovery reported higher than expected subscriber numbers for its direct-to-consumer streaming services, but reported lower profits for the fourth quarter.Discovery said it currently has more than 11 million streaming customers, up from 5.2...
Spotify Unveils Audience Network for Audio Ads
Ad Age: Spotify has announced a new advertising marketplace that will allow brands to tap into the streaming giant's audience of audio consumers. The Spotify Audience Network will include podcasts, ad-supported music, and Spotify originals and exclusives with the goal...
Snap Hits $100 Million Value Amid Surge in Users
Bloomberg: Snap briefly hit $100 billion in market value for the first time after surging usage and a rebounding market for digital ads sent the social-media stock soaring this year. The Snapchat owner rose as much as 3% on Monday after Morgan Stanley turned bullish,...
Hearst Magazines Veteran Preps Major Spac Deal
Financial Times: Joanna Coles, the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, and Jonathan Ledecky, the co-owner of the New York Islanders ice hockey team, are preparing to launch an obscure securities clearing and custody firm on the New York Stock Exchange, using their...
Scripps OKs Spelling Bee as Mostly Virtual Event
Associated Press: The Scripps National Spelling Bee will return this year in a mostly virtual format, with the in-person competition limited to a dozen finalists who will gather on an ESPN campus at Walt Disney World in Florida. Last year's bee was canceled because of...
Conde Nast Taps Global Creative Head at Vogue
WWD: Vogue has named Juan Costa Paz new global creative director, taking over some of the responsibilities of Anna Wintour's longtime right hand Raúl Martinez, who departed in December. In his new role, Costa Paz will oversee the creative direction for the brand in...
Hearst to Unveil New Name for Oprah Magazine
WWD: As O, The Oprah Magazine transitions from monthly to quarterly, publisher Hearst said the next iteration of the brand will include a new name, reimagined website and a membership program offering unrestricted access to all-new digital content, a searchable...
Bustle Digital CEO is Ready to Make Acquisitions
Digiday: Brian Goldberg "has his credit card and his checkbook out and wants to go acquire things. In 2019, we made five or six acquisitions. We did one last year with the W. I think we’ll be back in the three to four acquisitions kind of neighborhood this year...
Outside Magazine Preps for Expansion After Sale
Santa Fe New Mexican: Lawrence Burke is letting go of Outside magazine and its parent company in a seismic shift of the outdoors journalism business. Pocket Outdoor Media announced Monday it acquired Outside Integrated Media for an undisclosed amount, after months of...
Sports Illustrated Article Set for New Docuseries
Hollywood Reporter: George Clooney's production firm is teaming with Sports Illustrated Studios to produce a docuseries about a decades-long abuse scandal in the athletic department at Ohio State University. The series, which hasn't found an outlet yet, is based on an...
Google, Facebook Brace for Clash with US Media
Reuters: Bipartisan members of Congress plan to introduce a bill in coming weeks to make it easier for smaller news organizations to negotiate with Big Tech platforms. The US bill would be introduced at a time when Australia is in a pitched battle with Facebook. While...
Facebook’s CEO Adjusts Rules for Right-Wingers
BuzzFeed News: Mark Zuckerberg personally intervened in Facebook's effort to ban Infowars founder Alex Jones, overruling his own internal experts. Zuckerberg didn't consider the Infowars founder to be a hate figure. So Facebook would permanently ban Jones and his...
Disney’s CEO, in First Year, is Full Stream Ahead
Wall Street Journal: A global pandemic hit just as Bob Chapek ascended to the top job at Disney a year ago this month. The spread of Covid-19 accelerated plans to make Disney+ a focal point of Disney's entertainment divisions. Chapek, in his first year on the job, has...
Lionsgate’s Starz Needs to Join Larger Streamer
Hollywood Reporter: Smaller-scale streaming services like Starz and AMC Networks might be better off folded into larger platforms, according to Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall. "Lionsgate's Starz OTT op margins in the mid-teens may not be sustainable given stiff...
Comcast’s NBC Gets Scrutiny for Golden Globes
Los Angeles Times: In the run-up to the Golden Globe Awards next Sunday, questions persist around the legitimacy of the insular Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the qualifications of its members and its ethics. Interviews and internal documents paint a picture of...
Disney Punts NFL Price Hike as Viewership Falls
CNBC: The NFL wants to charge its current network partners double what they've been paying to broadcast games — but Disney is pushing back, citing the high price tag. The NFL is in active discussions on renewal rates with all four of its existing network partners —...
Report: US Time Spent with Media Keeps Rising
Insider: The onset of the coronavirus pandemic caused digital media consumption to skyrocket across a multitude of platforms. From recording TikTok videos, to binge watching TV series, US adults spent hours consuming media per day throughout 2020 — and this trend will...
Data: Media Groups Still Fall Behind in Diversity
NBC News: Newly released data shows that beyond a few key hires, very little has changed when it comes to newsroom diversity. Hiring and employee data collected by Conde Nast, Hearst and Vice show that minorities remain underrepresented at nearly every level of these...
AT&T’s CNN Media Guy Updates Fox News Book
Associated Press: Brian Stelter thought more than a quick update was necessary in preparing for the paperback edition of his book from last summer, "Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth." In effect, he's writing a substantially different...
Discovery-Backed British TV News Vows No Bias
Press Gazette: GB News, the biggest news TV channel to launch in the UK since Sky News, has been defended amid a campaign to get advertisers to boycott the channel. CB News chairman Andrew Neil, who will present a nightly news program on the channel, said it "will not...
New York Times Prints Front-Page ‘Wall of Grief’
New York Times: From afar, the graphic on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times looks like a blur of gray, a cloudy gradient that slowly descends into a block of solid ink. Up close, it shows something much darker: close to 500,000 individual dots, each...
Gannett-McClatchy Ad Offering Shows Potential
Digiday: In combining their local print and digital advertising networks, Gannett and McClatchy aim to compete with the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google for national advertising dollars. Agency executives see reason to believe the two largest US local newspaper...
Hearst’s Cosmo Livestreams Shopping ‘Hauliday’
WWD: For the second "Hauliday" virtual shopping event, livestreaming has been added to make the experience more immersive. Cosmopolitan magazine and Klarna, the payment and shopping platform, launched Hauliday last year for Gen Z and Millennials in the US. This year,...
Conde Nast Veteran Fights Eviction in New York
New York Post: Vogue legend Andre Leon Talley is being dragged out of his $1 million New York home by the former CEO of Manolo Blahnik USA who alleges the former editor is $500,000 behind in rent. Talley has dramatically fallen out with his former close friend,...
G/O Media Veterans Inspire Hope at New Startup
Washington Post: At less than six months old, Defector is financially self-sustaining and entirely owned by its staff. It just expanded with a couple of high-profile hires, including Laura Wagner from Vice News and Kalyn Kahler, who had worked at Sports Illustrated....
Los Angeles Times Owner Refutes Report of Sale
Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has reaffirmed his commitment to the news organization. Soon-Shiong made the statement shortly after the Wall Street Journal published an article saying Soon-Shiong was exploring a sale of the Los...
Hollywood Reporter Alum Abandons Editor Race
New York Post: Janice Min, who has been in the running to replace Norm Pearlstine as the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times, has officially pulled out of the race. The move came after the Wall Street Journal reported that Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is...
Google, Facebook, Twitter CEOs to Testify Again
CNBC: Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey will appear before members of the US House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 25. Committee leaders pointed to false claims about the Covid-19 vaccine and supposed election fraud that has proliferated on social...
Facebook Ban Sends Publishers’ Traffic Tumbling
Nieman Lab: What happens when a tech company turns off the traffic tap? When Facebook traffic dropped off, overall Australian traffic did not shift to other platforms. This drop has been seen most dramatically in traffic to Australian sites from readers outside of...