Comcast’s NBC News Sees Big Growth on YouTube
Fast Company: NBC's popular nightly newscasts like "Nightly News with Lester Holt" have seen explosive growth on YouTube. The flagship news program is up 769% on YouTube over 2019. Since the pandemic began in earnest in the US in March, the show has garnered an...
FuboTV Recovers After Souring Analyst Sentiment
Bloomberg: FuboTV shares soared after the "sports first" streaming-video platform announced preliminary fourth-quarter revenue that came in ahead of its prior guidance, helping to end a precipitous multi-day sell-off. The weakness in Fubo shares came amid a souring of...
Cameo Hires Media, Tech Expats After Banner Year
Axios: Cameo, the app that lets fans pay for personalized videos from celebrities, has hired a slew of new C-suite executives from media and tech companies, with plans to continue rapidly growing its employee base. The company, which last year brought in roughly $100...
Nexstar’s ‘News Nation’ Retreats as Ratings Sputter
Robert Feder: Just four months after launching "News Nation" as a three-hour primetime newscast, WGN America is cutting the third hour in favor of a nightly talk show hosted by cable news veteran Ashleigh Banfield. Originating from a studio in Connecticut, "Banfield"...
iHeartMedia Enters Pact to Expand in Sports Betting
Betting News: Las Vegas-based sports information network VSiN will make its sports betting audio content subscription-free, thanks to a new partnership with iHeartMedia and especially its iHeartRadio subsidiary. The VSiN network has been a big player in betting audio...
Hachette Publishes New ‘Gatsby’ as Copyrights End
New York Times: The new novel "Nick," by Michael Farris Smith, is something of a prequel to F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic "The Great Gatsby." Showbiz411: Copyrights have expired for 1925 novels like "The Great Gatsby" and "Mrs. Dalloway," as well as films by Buster...
Tribune Union Pushes to Remove Alden from Board
Wall Street Journal: A labor union representing newsroom employees at seven of Tribune Publishing's nine newspapers is demanding the removal from the board of three representatives of Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that has offered to buy the company and take it...
News Corp Names New Top Editor at New York Post
Mediaite: News Corp announced that Keith Poole will take over as editor in chief of the New York Post Group starting in early March. The news comes about one year after Poole was named deputy editor in chief of the UK tabloid The Sun, also owned by Rupert Murdoch's...
Conde Nast Delays Hollywood Issue from Vanity Fair
WWD: This could be the first time in a decade Vanity Fair is unable to hold its swanky Oscar party and fete Hollywood at large. To state the obvious, the party is certainly not happening in February, as usual, since the Oscars itself is not happening then. The 2021...
McClatchy Taps New Regional Editor for California
Sacramento Bee: Colleen McCain Nelson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has been named the Sacramento Bee's new executive editor and will also serve as the regional editor for California, where McClatchy operates five newsrooms. Nelson, 46, is currently the...
Newspapers Tell Journos to Start Delivering Papers
Washington Post: Some small-town newspapers have called on their own reporters and editors to deliver papers amid delivery delays due to cutbacks at the US Postal Service. The Postal Service has been under siege for months as holiday packages and election mail ran up...
Report: Over 500 Journos Have Died from Covid-19
New York Post: Covid-19 claimed the lives of over 500 journalists in 2020, according to the Save Journalism Project. “The news industry suffered not only economic losses, but also the loss of hundreds of reporters’ lives,” said Nick Charles, spokesman for the Save...
Big Media to Face New Pressure for Mergers in 2021
The Information: The pandemic will likely end up having accelerated the long-anticipated shift away from TV advertising to digital. Long term, this shift is likely to speed the disappearance of many old-style TV channels and further consolidation among traditional TV...
Google’s YouTube Forming Closer Ties to Big Media
Los Angeles Times: Kelly Merryman, YouTube VP of content partnerships, has worked tirelessly to change Hollywood's perception of the video site from pariah to partner. She’s persuaded media companies to use the vast reach of YouTube to promote their shows and films....
Netflix Sees Big Hit in Shonda Rhimes’s ‘Bridgerton’
Bloomberg: A period drama from producer Shonda Rhimes has been tapped as one of the biggest hits in Netflix history. "Bridgerton" will be seen by 63 million households in its first four weeks, marking the fifth-largest debut of any show on the service, Netflix...
Apple Stalls New TV Series with Oprah, Prince Harry
The Sun: A much-anticipated Apple TV+ series has hit a snag despite being in the making for more than two years. The mental health documentary series was due to be released last autumn with Prince Harry working alongside Oprah Winfrey. No firm release date has yet...
Google, Snap in Talks to Invest in India’s ShareChat
TechCrunch: ShareChat, an Indian social network that added Twitter as an investor in 2019, may soon receive the backing of two more US firms. The Bangalore-based startup is in advanced stages of talks to raise money from Google and Snap, as well as several existing...
Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan End Healthcare Effort
CNBC: Haven, the joint venture formed by three of America's most powerful companies to lower costs in healthcare, has disbanded after three years. The company began informing employees Monday that it will shut down by the end of next...
Twitter in Deal to Buy Social Podcasting App Breaker
TechCrunch: Twitter has acquired social broadcasting app Breaker, the companies announced. The deal will see Breaker's team joining Twitter to help "improve the health of the public conversation" on the service, as well as work on Twitter's new audio-based networking...
AT&T Wins Upgrade on New Strategy for Streaming
MarketWatch: AT&T has been betting big on HBO Max in a way that could help the stock during 2021, according to one analyst. Raymond James's Frank Louthan upgraded the stock to outperform from market perform, saying "there is more that can go right during the next...
ViacomCBS in Distribution Deal with Disney’s Hulu
New York Post: ViacomCBS has inked a distribution deal with Disney's Hulu, to add Showtime and other popular channels to the live-TV streaming service. The deal gives viewers of Hulu's live TV service access to 14 ViacomCBS channels, including CBS, Showtime, MTV,...
Disney’s ESPN is Tricked Into Publishing Fake Story
New York Post: ESPN issued a correction after it was seemingly tricked into publishing a story that falsely said Miami Dolphins offensive coordinator Chan Gailey had been fired. The misinformation originated from a now-deleted Twitter account posing as ESPN journalist...
Liberty’s SiriusXM Mines Podcast Merch at Stitcher
Wall Street Journal: Podcast merchandise has become a big business, as more listeners want to show their allegiance to their podcast of choice through a T-shirt, mug or hoodie. Stitcher, a podcast conglomerate, said that sales of merch associated with its shows are...
WPP Expat Bullish on US with Agency Acquisitions
Adweek: Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital has started off 2021 with two acquisitions. New York-based creative agency Decoded Advertising will join S4's MediaMonks, while Metric Theory, the San Francisco-based marketing agency, becomes part of S4's ...
New York Times Eyes Life After Third-Party Cookies
Adweek: Advertising remains a minority-interest for New York’s journal of record, but the New York Times still wants to take greater control over its digital offering. All this comes at a time when automated ad trading is preparing for a seismic overhaul as the...
Conde Nast Staffers Edit Archives to Delete Racism
Associated Press: A little corner of the Conde Nast universe is taking on racial and cultural injustices. A small staff at Epicurious, a resource site for home cooks, has been scouring 55 years’ worth of recipes from a variety of Conde Nast magazines in search of...
Meredith Off the Hook in Legal Dispute with Playboy
WWD: Playboy had filed a lawsuit in June against Meredith and others, seeking millions of dollars in damages it allegedly suffered for losses related to a separate subscriber privacy suit. Playboy alleged that subscriber data had been improperly disclosed to third...
Vox Media Taps Conde Nast Editor to Lead The Cut
The Cut: Lindsay Peoples Wagner, editor in chief of Teen Vogue, has been named the next editor in chief of the Cut, the New York magazine site covering style, fashion and culture. Peoples Wagner previously the the Cut's fashion market...
Atlantic Media Spinoff to Buy Publisher City & State
New York Post: A DC-based news agency for politicians and bureaucrats has acquired City & State, a media business covering New York state and local politics for elected officials and government workers. Terms of the acquisition by Government Executive Media Group...
Village Voice’s New Owner Mulls Publishing Models
Los Angeles Times: LA Weekly publisher Brian Calle surprised the media world in December by purchasing the Village Voice. "We've been successful in building out tangential revenue streams to support the journalism work. We create content for a lot of our clients,...