Apple Shutters Stores After New Coronavirus Surge
Reuters: Apple has temporarily shut all of its 53 stores in California because of a coronavirus outbreak and 16 stores in the United Kingdom following restrictions introduced by the government in London. The company said it was temporarily shutting some stores in...
Google Offers Free Covid Testing as Employee Perk
Wall Street Journal: Google has come up with a new perk for Silicon Valley's famously pampered workforce: Free, weekly, at-home Covid-19 testing. The search giant rolled out the new benefit for all of its 90,000 US employees. The offer proved so popular that Google’s...
Fox Corp Chief Gets Vaccine Amid Fox News Doubts
Reuters: Rupert Murdoch received a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, a day before prominent opinion host Fox News's Tucker Carlson raised suspicion over the marketing strategy for the vaccine. The 89-year-old Murdoch received the vaccine at his local doctor's office in...
Comcast’s NBC Adds Empathy to Nightly Newscast
Associated Press: During this brutal news year, Lester Holt has concluded that telling stories isn't enough. The "NBC Nightly News" anchor frequently ends his broadcasts now with commentaries, an unusual departure for network evening newscasts that have more than a...
ViacomCBS, Comcast See Declines in Broadcast TV
MediaPost: For much of this year -- starting with the Covid-19 pandemic in March -- TV network ratings, especially those of major broadcast networks, have seen steeper declines than in past seasons. The top four networks collectively are down 17% in Nielsen-measured...
AT&T’s ‘Wonder Woman’ Opens in Foreign Theaters
Bloomberg: The Warner Bros. superhero flick "Wonder Woman 1984" opened in 32 markets around the world this weekend, bringing in $38.5 million in box-office receipts. The movie will appear in US theaters on Christmas Day, with a simultaneous debut on the streaming...
Vivendi Inks Deal with Tencent Over Universal Music
Bloomberg: A Tencent-led consortium will acquire an additional 10% of Universal Music Group, in a deal that values the world's biggest music company at nearly $37 billion. The purchase will bring Tencent's holding in the music group to 20% following a deal last year...
Sony Pulls Game from PlayStation After Complaints
New York Post: Sony has yanked "Cyberpunk 2077" from its PlayStation store following widespread complaints about glitches in the futuristic video game. Sony Interactive Entertainment announced that it was removing the game from its digital store "until further...
Disney Taps TikTok Stars for Reality Series on Hulu
Los Angeles Times: TikTok superstars Charli and Dixie D'Amelio are gearing up to conquer a new medium: TV. Hulu is developing an unscripted series starring the social media sister act and their parents. Scheduled for a 2021 debut, "The D'Amelio Show" will chart its...
Univision Plans Streaming Service for Debut in 2021
Bloomberg: Univision plans to launch a fresh streaming service in the first half of next year, a bet by new leadership that the Spanish-language broadcaster can attract more viewers with a bigger online presence. The service is expected to include advertising and rely...
Netflix Films, TV Series on Obama List of 2020 Faves
Los Angeles Times: Step aside, Oprah: Former President Obama has plugged more than two-score films, TV series and books in his annual list of his favorite things. Topping his visual-storytelling list were Netflix's biopic "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," released Friday...
Fox Corp Debunks On-Air Hosts on Own News Channel
New York Times: Voting machine companies have threatened "highly dangerous" defamation lawsuits against Fox News, Newsmax and One America News for airing conspiracy theories about the US election. "There's so much falsity that is being spread on certain...
Sinclair Joins Media Eyeing Growth in Sports Betting
Washington Post: Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley said that gambling will transform a sports industry that is reeling from the pandemic, watching advertising and cable bundle fees shrink. "It's a third revenue stream to maintain the growth of the...
New York Times Admits Its Podcast Fell for a Hoaxer
Associated Press: The New York Times admitted that it could not verify the claims of a Canadian man whose account of committing atrocities for the Islamic State in Syria was a central part of its 2018 podcast "Caliphate." The series had won a Peabody Award, but...
McClatchy Apologies for Racist News in Kansas City
NBC News: One of the Midwest's most influential newspapers apologized for what its top editor described as decades of racist coverage of Kansas City, Missouri. In a letter to readers, Mike Fannin wrote that the newspaper "disenfranchised, ignored and scorned...
Hearst Magazines Chief Says 2020 is Toughest Year
Mr Magazine: Debi Chirichella, president of Hearst Magazines: "Obviously 2020 has been a very challenging year and honestly, I’ve been in this industry for a while, it’s probably been one of the toughest years that I’ve ever experienced. Covid-19 exacerbated the...
Bloomberg Journalist Gives Up Job for ‘Pharma Bro’
Daily Beast: A former Bloomberg News reporter quit her job, divorced her husband, and froze her eggs for imprisoned former CEO Martin Shkreli, known as the "Pharma Bro," who now refuses to talk to her. Christie Smythe first broke the news of Shkreli's arrest on fraud...
Meredith, Hearst Find Big Sales in Korean Pop Band
CNN: The Korean pop band BTS, a global music phenomenon, has had an outsized influence on magazine sales. Esquire is just one US magazine that ended up going back to the presses to print more of the edition that featured BTS on the...
Conde Nast Use of Global Data Helps Elevate Vogue
Digiday: Conde Nast has identified key similarities in the global audiences of Vogue's 26 international editions. Since May, Vogue's global editions have seen a notable shift in readers looking for "escapism' content. American Vogue reported similar traffic...
BuzzFeed, Axios Ready for Digital Media Deal Frenzy
Wall Street Journal: BuzzFeed and Group Nine Media, two of the largest venture-backed outfits, are exploring deals to buy competitors or go public through special-purpose acquisition companies. Among relatively smaller players, short-form publisher Axios is exploring...
Report: News Outlets Shuttering Amid the Pandemic
Washington Post: Despite flickers of good news, journalism remains in a state of emergency. Fifty-five news outlets have closed for good since the pandemic began — and that's on top of more than 2,000 newspapers that have folded since 2004. Thousands of local...
Hollywood Sees Covid Accelerate Digital Disruption
Los Angeles Times: The economic shock waves of the Covid-19 pandemic rocked the film and television industry. While there was a lot of disruption in a short amount of time, it showed the industry is adapting. Many of the changes were expected to happen anyway — just...
AT&T’s ‘Fanboy’ WarnerMedia CEO Riles Hollywood
Business Insider: Jason Kilar is eight months into his new job running WarnerMedia and he's already replicating a decade-old playbook from his days at Hulu. That playbook might best be described as burning down the house so that the consumer can get access to as much...
Comcast’s NBCU CEO Laments ‘Bad Dream’ of 2020
Deadline: NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell didn't mince words about the "bad dream" that was 2020, but touted the success of Peacock and laid out a string of streaming stats in a holiday-season memo to employees. Covid-19 "extremely impacted" every part of NBCU, Shell...
CAA Reaches Deal with Writers Guild After Standoff
New York Post: CAA has ended a 20-month standoff with the Writers Guild of America that will enable it to once again represent screenwriters. Both sides said they have dropped legal claims that stemmed from the WGA's directive to thousands of Hollywood scribes to fire...
Roku Torments Media Giants Amid Streaming Wars
Wall Street Journal: Roku was long viewed as the scrappy startup that invented the streaming-media player. Now, it is a $40 billion juggernaut increasingly comfortable throwing around its weight. The leading distributor of streaming-video apps in the US, Roku has...
Google Faces Another Antitrust Lawsuit from States
CNBC: Google now faces its third government antitrust lawsuit in less than two months, this time from a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general. A group of 38 states and territories took part in the lawsuit, which claims Google illegally maintained a monopoly...
Comcast’s Ad-Tech Arm FreeWheel to Buy Beeswax
Adweek: Comcast's ad-tech division FreeWheel plans to acquire Beeswax, a buy-side startup headed by influential programmatic personality Ari Paparo. Beeswax offers media buyers a "bidder-as-a-service" programmatic buying model, where clients are charged a standardized...
WPP to Seek Tech Acquisitions for Revenue Growth
Financial Times: WPP has set out a more aggressive shift towards e-commerce and technology as it seeks to return to steady growth in the wake of the pandemic. The London-based company said it expected to spend £200 million to £400 million a year on acquisitions in...
Chernin to Invest in Online Education Outfit Sketchy
Deadline: Andrew Sugerman, a former high-level executive at Disney, has been named president of online education specialist Sketchy, and the company has also received a $30 million investment from The Chernin Group. Founded in 2013, Sketchy uses the "memory palace"...