AT&T Buzz Says HBO Max to Revive ‘Sex and the City’
New York Post: "Sex and the City" is buzzed to be returning to HBO Max starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon -- but not Kim Cattrall. "I wouldn't call it a reboot," Parker said. "I would call it a...
IAC to Spin Off Vimeo After Growth During Pandemic
TheVerge: Vimeo is being spun off into a standalone public company as the video streaming site sees rapid growth brought on by the pandemic. Since shortly after its founding, Vimeo has been owned by IAC, the enormous tech and media holding...
Report: Video Games Become Giant Global Business
MarketWatch: Video games have become a bigger industry than sports and movies combined, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. Global video game revenue is expected to surge 20% to $179.7 billion in 2020, according to data from...
News Corp Seeks to Block Sale of Simon & Schuster
Financial Times: Robert Thomson, the CEO of News Corp, whose publishing house HarperCollins lost out in the auction of Simon & Schuster, alleged the sale deal with Bertelsmann would create a competition-crushing "book...
Gannett to Pay $30 Million to End Management Deal
USA Today: Gannett said it will pay an affiliate of investment firm Fortress Investment Group a one-time fee of $30.375 million to end its management deal at the end of this year. The deal had previously been set to expire at the end of...
New York Times Picks Winner of Article Bidding War
Hollywood Reporter: Blumhouse, the production company run by Jason Blum, has won the screen rights to the New York Times piece "She Stalked Her Daughter's Killers Across Mexico, One by One," a gripping story that personalizes the kidnapping epidemic in...
Washington Post Insiders Talk of Editor Succession
Vanity Fair: Marty Baron has indicated to colleagues he doesn't plan on stepping down before his staff can return to the newsroom. On that note, the Post's remote-work setup is "unlikely" to end before June 1, according to an update last month from publisher Fred...
Hearst Magazines Expat Jumps Into World of SPACs
New York Post: Joanna Coles, who once ran Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, has reinvented herself following her departure from Hearst. Coles has joined the male-dominated world of buying companies using special-acquisition purpose vehicles, or...
Conde Nast, Meredith Glossies Downplay Mastheads
WWD: Readers have noticed that the masthead — a traditional component of many monthly glossy print magazines — has quietly disappeared from the pages of many US titles. Appearing on the masthead was widely viewed as "a badge of...
Village Voice Returns as Quarterly Under New Owner
New York Times: The Village Voice, the storied New York alt-weekly that shut down in 2018 after a 63-year run, will live again. Brian Calle, the chief executive of Street Media, the owner of LA Weekly, said othat he had acquired the publication from publisher Peter D....
Apple Plans to Produce a Self-Driving Car by 2024
Reuters: Apple is moving forward with self-driving car technology and is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle that could include its own breakthrough battery technology. Central to Apple's strategy is a new battery design that could "radically" reduce the...
Google, Facebook Agree to Team for Antitrust Fight
Wall Street Journal: Google and Facebook agreed to "cooperate and assist one another" if they ever faced an investigation into their pact to work together in online advertising, according to an unredacted version of a lawsuit filed by 10 states against Google last...
MGM Explores a Sale as Media Stock Up on Content
Wall Street Journal: MGM, the movie studio behind the "James Bond" franchise, is exploring a sale, betting that its library of content will prove attractive to companies pursuing growth in streaming video. MGM has tapped investment banks Morgan Stanley and LionTree...
Disney Names New Film Chief Amid Streaming Push
CNBC: Alan Horn is stepping down as co-chairman of Walt Disney Studios, but will remain with the company as chief creative officer. Alan Bergman will run Disney's studio content as the sole chairman. The shifts come after Disney announced that it was restructuring to...
AT&T Unhappy with Bids to Buy Struggling DirecTV
New York Post: AT&T's attempt to unload DirecTV has been thrown into doubt, as the telecom giant has signaled it's unhappy with the offers it has received for the struggling satellite TV service. Earlier this month, AT&T pushed back a deadline for final bids...
ViacomCBS’s Super Bowl Ad Slots Likely a Bargain
CNBC: With the pandemic impacting NFL scheduling, advertisers who are not yet committed to the Super Bowl could see last-minute discounts for slots. CBS is likely package the Super Bowl with other NFL or sports programming packages to make it attractive for companies...
Fox Corp’s News Channel Sees GOP Flee to Upstart
Vanity Fair: Republican lawmakers and other GOP officials are increasingly appearing on Newsmax, the right-wing cable channel that gained traction by embracing President Trump’s election denialism claims even when, in some cases, they were too radical for Fox News...
WPP Slashes New York Office Space in Cost Cutting
Business Insider: WPP will shed 700,000 square feet, or around one-third, of its New York City office space as part of a plan to reduce global real estate costs by up to 20% in the next five years. As part of the downsizing, ad agency Ogilvy will ditch its...
Twitter CEO No Longer Follows Trump, Biden, Harris
Reuters: Jack Dorsey appeared to stop following President Trump on Twitter this weekend. The Twitter CEO also unfollowed President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, as well as the account of Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump. Trump has lost 368,743...
Bloomberg News: No Bias in ‘Pharma Bro’ Coverage
New York Times: Bloomberg News said it had found no bias in former reporter Christie Smythe's coverage of Martin Shkreli, a story recalled in an Elle magazine article posted online Sunday. "Ms. Smythe's conduct with regard to Mr. Shkreli was not consistent with...
Hearst’s Elle ‘Pharma Bro’ Story Stirs Up Hollywood
New York: Stephanie Clifford, the writer of "The Journalist and the Pharma Bro," said she is now fielding requests from Hollywood for adaptations. It takes a lot to get everyone on the Internet to read the same thing, but on Sunday night, Clifford's article on Elle's...
Meredith Titles Among 2020’s Notable New Glossies
Tech-media-tainment: Celebrity-branded lifestyle magazines continued to be a hot trend this year. Meredith launched three such titles in 2020. In January, it released Reveal magazine, with Drew and Jonathan Scott, as well as Rachael Ray in Season. April brought Sweet...
Conde Nast Editor Names Favorite Magazine Cover
Deez Links: Does Vanity Fair's Radhika Jones have an all-time favorite magazine cover? "For me, it’s the cover that represents the possibility of what a magazine can do. When I think about the possibilities of Vanity Fair, I think about, can you make an image that...
Hearst Former Newspaper Gets Another New Owner
San Francisco Business Times: Bay Area real-estate magnate Clint Reilly has acquired the 155-year old San Francisco Examiner, along with SF Weekly. "I've always felt the Examiner is one of the great brands of American journalism, the flagship of the Hearst Corp until...
New York Times Preps Year-End Leadership Change
Guardian: This month, at 69, Arthur Sulzberger Jr will retire as company chairman, after decades of speculation that he would be the last Sulzberger to run the business. Sulzberger will hand over a healthy, thriving enterprise to his son AG Sulzberger, giving the...
Washington Post Opens News Hubs in Europe, Asia
MediaPost: The Washington Post said it will create breaking news hubs in London and Seoul to cover live news in the US and around the world. "WaPo will be able to operate energetically and rapidly 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a particular emphasis on the...
Financial Times to Cut 64 Staffers Amid Pay Dispute
Press Gazette: Hits to advertising revenue and events income mean the Financial Times is expected to make a small loss in 2020. The FT is said to be proposing to make 64 redundancies out of a global workforce of 2,300 (700 of whom are journalists). The redundancies...
Ebony Sells Magazine Brands to Former NBA Player
Wall Street Journal: Ebony Media plans to sell its business to an investment group led by former NBA player Ulysses “Junior” Bridgeman for about $14 million, the only serious offer received by the bankrupt publisher of Black magazines. Ebony stopped publishing in...
Group Nine Media Forms SPAC to Buy Competitors
The Wrap: Group Nine Media has formed a special purpose acquisition company, according to an SEC filing. The company, called Group Nine Acquisition Corp, was formed "for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase,...
Vox Media’s New York Mag Merch to Support Locals
MediaPost: New York magazine has partnered with Neighborhood Spot to create a capsule collection, based on the 16th annual "Reasons to Love New York" issue, a tribute to 500 local businesses forced to close this year, since the coronavirus pandemic...