Craigslist Founder Pledges to Help Fight Hunger
Cheddar: Craig Newmark, the founder of classifieds website Craigslist, has announced a commitment to donate $15 million to snuffing out hunger in the US. This is in addition to the $10 million that the Craig Newmark Philanthropies organization pledged in October....
Fox Corp Regards Tubi as Billion-Dollar Business
Broadcasting & Cable: Tubi, the streaming service acquired last year by Fox for $440 million, will grow to be a billion-dollar business, according to Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch. Speaking on Fox's fiscal second-quarter earnings call, Murdoch called Tubi "an exciting...
Disney to Slash 450 Jobs in Animator Shutdown
TheStreet: Disney is shuttering Blue Sky Studios, the animation studio it acquired as part of its purchase of the majority of Fox's assets two years ago. Disney's decision, unveiled on Tuesday, will eliminate about 450 jobs. Blue Sky Studios, which Fox bought in 1999...
AT&T’s WarnerMedia Readies New ‘Wizard of Oz’
Reuters: Hollywood is preparing to take another trip down the yellow brick road with a remake of classic movie "The Wizard of Oz," one of the most celebrated films of all time. New Line Cinema, a unit of AT&T's Warner Bros studio, said on Tuesday it was developing...
ViacomCBS Spotlights Streaming of Super Bowl
Ad Age: Super Bowl television ratings took a hit, marking the lowest viewership for the game since 2007. Just 96.4 million total viewers tuned in to CBS’s Sunday night broadcast. However, there's a silver lining that may signal the future of the game's broadcast: the...
iHeartMedia Star Host Ails Along with Talk Radio
Washington Post: Rush Limbaugh, the most successful talk-radio host in history, is ailing. And so is the medium he helped revolutionize over the past 30 years. Faced with aging and shrinking audiences, competition from newer technologies and financial problems for the...
Twitter CEO: Trump Ban Didn’t Hurt Our Platform
Adweek: Jack Dorsey on Tuesday called 2020 "an extraordinary year," which sells the absurdity of the year a bit short. But early 2021 brought one momentous change: The forcible removal of Donald Trump from the platform — something still not entirely accounted for in...
Fox Corp Targets News Channel to ‘Center-Right’
Reuters: Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch said that Fox News head Suzanne Scott has extended her term with the company. As the US enters a new political era, Murdoch endorsed a strategy that has led Fox News to dominate cable news for 19 years. "We believe where we're...
Bloomberg Media Plots Big Haul in Subscriptions
Axios: Bloomberg Media is expecting to bring in at least $100 million in consumer subscription revenue in 2021, according to an internal memo sent to staff from CEO Justin Smith. Prior to the launch of its consumer digital subscription business three years ago,...
Gannett Sees USA Today Future in Subscriptions
Local News Initiative: Mayur Gupta, a former executive with Spotify and Freshly, joined the Gannett USA Today Network in September as chief marketing and strategy officer. "We want to put customer value at the forefront of our business," said Gupta. "We want to shift...
New York Times Eyes ‘Morning’ for Subscriptions
Digiday: The New York Times's flagship morning newsletter The Morning hit a milestone in January 2021: over 1 billion unique opens since it launched in May 2020. The newsletter represents a direct and important relationship between the Times and its readers, and a...
Meredith Cooks Up Recipe for Largest Food Site
WNIP: Allrecipes, with its 85 million user base, is a publisher to learn from when nurturing a niche audience. It started as a recipe sharing site in 1997 and has grown steadily to become the world's largest food website. The publisher has throughout been tightly...
Conde Nast in Rent Standoff at One World Trade
Wall Street Journal: Conde Nast is withholding $2.4 million in rent at One World Trade Center for January 2021 and could withhold further sums in the coming months as part of a rent dispute with its landlords. The publisher wants to reduce its square footage and its...
New York Times Appoints ‘Partner’ for Publisher
New York Times: Rebecca Blumenstein will take on a newly created role at the New York Times, reporting directly to the publisher, A. G. Sulzberger, and helping him run newsroom operations as the newspaper's business expands. Blumenstein, a deputy managing editor, has...
Hearst Promotes Staffer to Digital Director of Elle
WWD: Jessica Roy has been promoted from deputy digital director of Hearst's Elle magazine to digital director, taking the reins from Katie Connor, who recently decamped to W. Roy was deputy digital director for three years and previously held positions at The Cut,...
The Atlantic Nabs Seven Figures for ‘Inheritance’
Digiday: The Atlantic is setting out on an 18-month journey to uncover Black history in America, with initial sponsor Salesforce willing to support it with a seven-figure deal. This partnership is coming to fruition at the same time that the advertising world had...
New York Times Staffers in Dispute Over N-Word
New York Post: A full-blown war has erupted inside the New York Times over the ouster of long-time science reporter Donald McNeil for his use of the N-word on a trip to Peru in 2019. Current and former staffers have been locked in heated debate since McNeil’s removal...
Air Mail Newsletter Opens Selective Online Store
Business of Fashion: In recent years, media companies have increasingly turned to e-commerce to supplant dwindling advertising sales, with revenue typically generated through affiliate marketing links. The Graydon Carter-led Air Mail has just launched its first...
US Publishers Vague About Returning to Offices
Digiday: The timeline for the eventual return to in-person work remains murky for US media companies, many of whom have spent the past year delaying once-optimistic plans for reopening. Asked to share their approach to an uncertain future, four media executives said...
Google Warns of Covid Hit on Company’s Culture
CNBC: As Google prepares to return workers to offices in 2021, it is warning it may take a productivity and financial hit in the process, according to the company's annual 10-K report. "As we prepare to return our workforce in more locations back to the office in...
Facebook Promises to Crack Down on Covid Lies
USA Today: Facebook is moving more aggressively to combat vaccine misinformation, taking down debunked claims on Facebook and Instagram including that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to get Covid-19 than to receive the immunization. Facebook also...
Disney Plans Food Festival as Park Stays Closed
Los Angeles Times: It's still not clear when Disney's theme parks in Anaheim will reopen, but the House of Mouse hopes to appease its most ardent fans by holding a food and beverage festival on the grounds of its California Adventure Park in March. To help launch the...
Fox Corp Seeks to Halt $2.7 Billion Mega Lawsuit
Law & Crime: Lawyers for Fox Corp have filed a motion to dismiss a $2.7 billion lawsuit by Smartmatic, a maker of electronic voting technology. Smartmatic sued Fox News and Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro in New York state court for reports and...
ViacomCBS Helps Streamer Score at Super Bowl
Broadcasting & Cable: ViacomCBS ran 29 house ads during CBS’s broadcast of the Super Bowl, accounting for about 25% of commercial time during the game, according to an analysis by MediaRadar. Of those 29 promos, eight were for Paramount+, or about 30%....
Nielsen Delays Report on Super Bowl Viewership
Sports Business Journal: We won't learn the ratings for the Super Bowl until Tuesday morning, an extraordinary delay that has led to speculation the final viewership could drop significantly. "You all know if it takes too long, they're scrambling to figure out how to...
Disney: Longtime ESPN Reporter Dies at Age 58
ESPN: Pedro Gomez, an ESPN reporter since 2003 and one of the country's foremost baseball journalists, died unexpectedly Sunday. Gomez, who was based in Phoenix, covered baseball for SportsCenter, Baseball Tonight and other ESPN studio shows, live events and radio....
Fox Corp Preps Larry Kudlow Business TV Show
Los Angeles Times: Larry Kudlow will move into the Fox Business Network lineup next week, effectively replacing Lou Dobbs, whose program was canceled Friday. Kudlow's new program will air at 4 p.m. Eastern with a repeat at 7 p.m. Eastern. "Fox Business Tonight," which...
Discovery-Backed GB News Faces Early Boycott
Press Gazette: Hundreds of tweets have been directed to banks, mobile phone companies and other brands using the hashtag #DontFundGBNews. Although Britain's GB News has yet to broadcast a second of coverage, the campaign group Stop Funding Hate used articles from the...
Lupa Systems, from Murdoch, Eyes Asian Media
Bloomberg: James Murdoch's investment company Lupa Systems and a former senior executive at Disney's Asia unit are weighing a plan to raise funds through a special purpose acquisition company. The former chief executive officer of 21st Century Fox and Uday Shankar,...
Disney TV Veteran Unveils App for Youth Sports
The Information: Ben Sherwood's new app company Mojo is going live and hoping to attract legions of youth sports coaches along with the athletes and their families. Mojo is subscription-based and offers coaches instructional videos and practice drills. Sherwood is a...