Daily Wire Acquires Movie for New Slate of Films, TV
Deadline: Conservative news website The Daily Wire has made its first movie acquisition with high school-shooting thriller "Run Hide Fight," the first of multiple projects on a new film and TV slate. The film will premiere during a “Daily Wire Backstage event” hosted...
Adweek Eyes Growth with Buy of Social Media Week
Social Media Week: Social Media Week said it will become part of Adweek. Toby Daniels, who founded Social Media Week in 2009, will join Adweek as chief innovation officer, while also overseeing the SMW business. "Joining forces with Adweek represents an opportunity to...
Googlers Announce Union Plans in New York Times
CNBC: More than 200 Google employees have come together to form the Alphabet Workers Union amid increasing disagreements with company executives. News of the union was announced Monday in a New York Times op-ed by two employees, Parul Koul and Chewy Shaw, who serve on...
Facebook Ad Integrity Chief Departs After Ad Furor
Reuters: Facebook's chief of advertising integrity, who handled the company's ad products around sensitive subjects such as politics and coronavirus misinformation, departed last week, according to an internal company post. Rob Leathern's exit had not been previously...
Amazon Jumps Into Podcasts with Buy of Wondery
Associated Press: Amazon has announced a deal to acquire Wondery, a 4-year-old producer of popular true crime podcasts such as "Dr. Death" and "Dirty John," which was later turned into a TV series. An explosion of new podcasts has led to a number of acquisitions as...
Netflix’s Success Likely to Spur Media M&A in 2021
Deadline: Another wave of M&A and consolidation could well result from the race to catch up with Netflix. Streaming has already prompted massive deals like AT&T-Time Warner and Disney-Fox and Comcast-Sky. "There will be M&A activity between companies that...
Sony’s ‘Bad Boys’ Tops Disastrous 2020 Box Office
Associated Press: As the sun sets on the 2020 film box office, it'll be difficult to look at the numbers as anything but disastrous. After five consecutive years of North American revenues exceeding $11 billion, this year they're expected to cap out at an almost...
Disney, ViacomCBS Delay Shoots as Covid Looms
Bloomberg: Hollywood has been grappling with tough choices because of the devastating rise in Covid cases in the entertainment capital: whether to restart film and TV production following a holiday break. "Covid-19 has been a clear factor in decision...
ViacomCBS Chief Under Fire in Big Merger Lawsuit
Reuters: A Delaware judge has ruled that former Viacom shareholders may pursue a lawsuit accusing Shari Redstone of engineering a "patently unfair" merger that created ViacomCBS so she could become a media magnate like her late father, Sumner...
Fox Corp Boosts Covid Screenings at Headquarters
Daily Beast: In recent weeks, Fox News strengthened its Covid-19 screening process for staffers working at the New York City offices following a slew of positive tests for on-air personalities. Employees who work more than three days a week at the News Corp building...
Discovery Kicks Off 2021 with US Streaming Debut
New York Times: Discovery+, which goes live on Monday, has been built on cooking, nature and home improvement shows from HGTV, the Food Network, TLC, ID, Animal Planet and the company's flagship, Discovery. The service is a late entrant to a crowded...
Roku Nears Deal to Buy Content Catalog from Quibi
Wall Street Journal: Quibi is said to be in advanced talks to sell its content catalog to Roku, as the short-form streaming service winds down its operations following an unsuccessful run. Quibi, which was founded by the movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, had raised...
Charter Ousts Five Female Reporters in Spat at NY1
Showbiz411: After 28 years, a raft of awards and colon cancer, Roma Torre is out at NY1. Also out is Kristen Shaughnessy, there for 25 years, and three other female reporters. The women sued NY1 for sex discrimination, claiming they were paid vastly less than their...
Tribune Forms Team to Review Alden Takeover Bid
Wall Street Journal: Tribune Publishing has appointed a special committee to review a buyout bid proposed by its largest shareholder, New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Alden, which already owns a 32% stake, said it was interested in acquiring the rest of the...
New York Times: We Survived by Not Standing Still
@cliffordlevy: New York Times chief Arthur Sulzberger Jr., in his retirement memo to employees: "I remember well the resistance I faced when pushing to modernize our culture, diversify our staff, embrace the web and reimagine our business model. Today, the Times is...
Hearst’s Esquire Wins Praise for Pioneering Profile
Air Mail: An Esquire 1966 cover story, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," has become known as the most famous celebrity profile in American magazine history, despite the fact that author Gay Talese never once sat down with the singer...
Conde Nast: Legendary Magazine Editor Dies at 91
New York Times: Paige Rense, the former influential editor of Architectural Digest, died on Friday at her home in West Palm Beach, Fla. The cause was reported to be a heart-related issue. Rense made Architectural Digest the most popular publication in the shelter...
Washington Post Faces Backlash from Staff Bonus
@jdelreal: A tweet about Washington Post staffers receiving a $2,021 year-end bonus ignited a firestorm across Twitter. Some people expressed anger after the Post published an op-ed opposing $2,000 stimulus checks. "I deleted a tweet about WaPo bonuses because some of...
Politico Veterans Launch Their Own News Venture
New York Times: Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer and John Bresnahan have launched a political news start-up called Punchbowl, named after the Secret Service's moniker for the US Capitol. The Politico veterans promise a scoop-driven, just-the-facts-ma'am...
Broadcasting Star Larry King in Hospital with Covid
CNN: Legendary talk show host and former CNN interviewer Larry King has Covid-19. King, 87, has been hospitalized at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for more than a week. Due to protocols at the hospital, King's three sons have been unable to visit...
Roundup: 2020 is a Year of Reckoning Across Media
NBC News: Audio, streaming, diversity, newsletters and layoffs were among the hot topics in the media business in 2020. The year was largely dominated by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic — and left the industry indelibly altered. "This was a huge year for...
Netflix Co-CEO’s Wealth Jumps by $2 Billion in 2020
Bloomberg: Reed Hastings has collected enough cash in 2020 to produce all four seasons of "The Crown," all six seasons of "Peaky Blinders" or the equivalent of about 4.7 million annual Netflix subscriptions. Netflix's co-CEO has seen his wealth increase about $2.2...
Disney, Fox Corp Veterans to Hit Job Market in 2021
Business Insider: Big media's massive restructurings and pandemic-driven business troubles have thrust experienced talent in the TV and film industries onto the job market. Across the US media landscape, a staggering 28,637 jobs were slashed this year through...
AT&T Hazy on Streaming Data for ‘Wonder Woman’
CNBC: AT&T's WarnerMedia premiered "Wonder Woman 1984" on Christmas Day, the first movie in its experiment to release its films simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max. The result? Some $16.7 million in box office sales in the US and Canada. The streaming...
Fox Corp Extends Streak with Cable Record in 2020
Reuters: Ratings for Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel topped all news and basic cable channels for a fifth straight year in 2020, according to Nielsen data. Newsmax's audience jumped after the election, though its overall audience remained much smaller than Fox's...
Comcast Adds Data Caps for Home Internet in 2021
Fox Business: A new year means another round of higher TV and Internet prices. Starting Jan. 1, Comcast will hit customers with an extra charge for using too much data, a hike that has become an annual holiday tradition for some of the biggest cable...
Amazon, Twitch Score with Streaming of NFL Game
MediaPost: Saturday's NFL regular-season game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals posted 4.8 million "average minute" viewers on Amazon Prime Video and its live video-gaming platform Twitch, according to the league -- the highest ever for a...
Spotify Streaming Record Slapped by Mariah Carey
Jezebel: Mariah Carey referenced Spotify's stinginess while celebrating the new single-day streaming record she set on the platform with her 1994 Christmas classic "All I Want for Christmas Is You." The pop star tweeted: "Li'l secret: artists make very little from...
Yahoo Founder is Behind Top US News App of 2020
Press Gazette: Local-news focused news aggregator News Break was the most downloaded app in the US in 2020. The app has seen huge success since it was launched in 2016 by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Chinese tech executive Jeff...
Vice Media Takes Steps Away from Bad-Boy Culture
Digiday: After years of building its name — and a $1.4 billion war chest of venture capital — by pitching itself as the next great youth culture brand, Vice Media Group has been busy rebalancing and refocusing itself more as a 21st century news...