Comcast Hit with Lawsuit from Teleprompter Staffer
Law360: NBCUniversal has been hit with a race bias lawsuit in New York federal court by a teleprompter operator who says she was given the boot during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic because she is Asian. Amy Sinavsky's five-year tenure with the company...
News Corp Faces Media Inquiry Petition in Australia
Guardian: A former Australian prime minister’s petition calling for a royal commission into the Murdoch media has reached a historic high of almost half a million signatures. The ex-Labor leader behind the campaign, Kevin Rudd, has been supported by a fellow prime...
Thomson Reuters Hints of New Acquisition by 2021
Reuters: Thomson Reuters says third quarter revenue rose on gains in its legal and corporate divisions and cost cuts helped lift its 2020 free cash flow outlook. CFO Michael Eastwood says Thomson Reuters is evaluating acquisition targets and could announce a deal this...
Gannett to Lean On Digital Subscriptions, Cost Cuts
USA Today: Nearly a year after completing a major media merger, USA Today owner Gannett is betting on paid digital subscriptions to deliver revenue growth while using cost cuts to offset its declining print business and the effects of the coronavirus...
McClatchy Recognizes Fort Worth Newspaper Union
Fort Worth Business: Fort Worth Star-Telegram owner McClatchy has recognized Fort Worth NewsGuild as a unit of the NewsGuild-CWA. The Star-Telegram becomes the third McClatchy newspaper to recognize a union this year. Recognizing the union allows contract negotiations...
New York Times Deletes Tweet About US Election
Fox News: The New York Times corrected a tweet on Tuesday after the newspaper initially claimed that “the role of declaring the winner” in the presidential election "falls to the news media." The Times eventually deleted the tweet and issued a...
Philadelphia Inquirer Closes Printer, Cuts 528 Jobs
New York Post: The Philadelphia Inquirer says it will lay off 528 people when it shuts down the printing plant where the paper and the Philadelphia Daily News have been printed since 1992. The grisly headcount is slightly higher than 500 layoffs that were...
Alphabet Talks Trump Election Ad Buy on YouTube
CNBC: President Trump may dominate YouTube's home page on Election Day. But that slot won't be available for advertisers to buy in the same way again, according to a policy update. Google says the policy change affects all advertisers, and is not connected "in any...
Facebook, Twitter Face Election Day ‘Judgment Day’
USA Today: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are pulling on their battle fatigues. They will be on high alert Tuesday and in coming days for any effort to destabilize the election or delegitimize the results. This heightened state is the result of the 2016 presidential...
Apple Readies Online Unveiling of ‘One More Thing’
CNET News: Apple has announced a new online-only event planned for Tuesday, Nov. 10, a week after the US presidential election. The event will be streamed live via the company's website. Apple is expected to announced its next-generation Mac...
US Media Giants Forecast to Seek Big M&A in 2021
Forbes: With government antitrust focus on the digital giants, is more deal-making in store for traditional media? Would Comcast spin off NBCUniversal? Will AT&T sell off part or even all of WarnerMedia? Will ViacomCBS find a big...
AT&T Nabs Nearly $2 Billion Cash from Asset Sales
Deadline: AT&T says it completed the sale of its wireless and wireline operations in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands to Liberty Latin America, taking in $1.95 billion. The telco and entertainment giant continues to pursue additional "non-core asset...
Disney in Billion-Dollar NFL TV Battle with Comcast
New York Post: A billion-dollar battle for "Sunday Night Football" is emerging between incumbent NBC and Disney/ABC/ESPN as the NFL moves toward agreements on its new TV deals. If Disney were able to swipe "Sunday Night Football" from NBC, it would likely place it on...
Comcast’s E! News EVP Exits for Digital Opportunity
New York Post: John Najarian, executive vice president and publisher at E!, is said to be the latest departure to hit the beleaguered network. Najarian, who is based in Los Angeles, will leave E! at the end of the year to pursue other digital opportunities. He broke...
ViacomCBS: Covid-19 Positives Won’t Halt TV Shoot
Deadline: Production on the CBS daytime drama "The Young and the Restless" is slated to proceed as planned despite two people testing positive for the coronavirus. An email was sent to crew informing them that the "production received two new positive test results for...
Sony Scores New Music Deal with Video App TikTok
Bloomberg: TikTok has secured the rights to recordings from thousands of artists, including Beyonce and Travis Scott, under a new deal with Sony Music Entertainment that will deepen ties between the world’s second-largest record-label group and the popular video...
Twitter CEO to Remain in Job After Investor Review
Bloomberg: A Twitter board committee reviewing the social network's leadership concluded that CEO Jack Dorsey should maintain his role. The committee was asked to review Twitter's leadership as part of an agreement with activist investor Elliott Management and private...
Netflix Sparks Anxieties with Shake-Up of Top Execs
Hollywood Reporter: Many Netflix insiders suggest it will take more than a new org chart to quell anxiety at the streaming behemoth. "It didn’t used to be this way. Now, it’s all, 'Who’s going next? Am I going to have a job? What’s it going to look like?'...
Quibi Collapse is Tied to Rejection of Traditional TV
Wall Street Journal: Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman were warned by advisors to make sure Quibi could be seen on TVs, not just phones -- but the two executives didn't follow the recommendation, The company eventually changed course, but it was too...
Fox Corp, New York Times Mull a Post-Trump Future
Bloomberg: "With Biden you’re not going to have these wild rallies. You’re going to have speeches on budget reconciliation. I don’t think that’s going to light people’s hearts afire. There’s no way you’re not going to see lower cable ratings and some reduction in...
News Corp Wins Johnny Depp ‘Wife Beater’ Lawsuit
BBC News: Johnny Depp has lost his libel case against the UK Sun newspaper over an article that called him a "wife beater." The actor sued the paper after it claimed he assaulted his ex-wife Amber Heard, which he denies. The Sun said the article was...
New York Times to Revive Election Needle – Sort of
New York Times: For many New York Times readers, the memory of election night 2016 is inseparable from the image of a semicircular chart that has become known — affectionately or not — as "the needle." The needle analyzes incomplete results to show who is on track to...
Hearst Tops List of Private Companies in New York
Crain's New York Business: Crain's list of privately held companies is ranked by revenue earned last year, when the economy was breezing through a Covid-free world. The data, therefore, do not reflect the pandemic's full effects. But there's no debating that Covid-19...
Conde Nast Staffers Complain About Subscriptions
Mediaite: Staffers at The New Yorker took to Twitter to complain about how difficult it is navigate a magazine subscriber’s account — even if you write for the title. "I've tried 5 times over the past month to renew my subscription to the magazine I happen to write...
Penske Turns Podcast Into an Event at Rolling Stone
MediaPost: Rolling Stone and Yappa World have partnered for a virtual live event series — Useful Idiots Live — utilizing the magazine's political podcast with editor Matt Taibbi and comedian Katie Halper. Also, Yappa’s commenting tool will be installed on select...
Analysis: US Media Brace for New Chiefs, Strategies
New York Times: Many US news and media leaders have been holding their breaths for the election – and planning everything from retirements to significant shifts in strategy for the months to come, whoever wins. Change is in the air across a media landscape that has...
Alphabet: Trump Will Rule Election Day on YouTube
New York Times: In the final three days of the election, one of the most desirable billboards on the internet — YouTube's home page — will be devoted exclusively to promote the re-election of President Trump. It is the conclusion of a yearlong tug of war between the...
Facebook Fears Disturbances Ahead of US Election
CNBC: Facebook says it is temporarily stopping recommendations of new groups to users ahead of Tuesday's election. The announcement comes a day after CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was concerned about the elevated risk of disturbances in the US stemming from the...
ByteDance Avoids Trump’s US Shutdown of TikTok
Associated Press: A federal judge has postponed President Trump's threatened shutdown of the popular short-form video app TikTok, siding with a Pennsylvania comedian and two other TikTok creators who say Trump's order hampers their free...
Netflix Stirs Oscar Buzz for New ‘Citizen Kane’ Film
USA Today: Director David Fincher's latest film, "Mank," doesn't debut on Netflix until Dec. 4, but that isn't stopping it from generating Oscar buzz more than a month ahead of its streaming release. The film chronicles Herman J. Mankiewicz's work with Orson Welles...