Modern Family has found not one but two streaming homes for its vast 11-season library. Disney-backed Hulu and NBCUniversal’s Peacock will share streaming rights for all 250 episodes, with the family comedy from creators Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd making its debut Feb. 3 on both platforms. Financial terms of the deal were not immediately available.
In a classic case of coopetition, Roku inked a deal with Amazon to bring the IMDb TV free, ad-supported streaming service to the Roku platform in the U.S. The IMDb TV service competes for viewers — and ad dollars — with the Roku Channel, a similar ad-supported VOD service. Under Roku’s standard distribution agreements, it takes 30% of ad inventory on partner channels but the terms of the deal with Amazon for IMDb TV were not disclosed.
In an emailed statement 90 minutes after the outage was first reported, Verizon said it was working on the problem hurting Fios service “throughout the Northeast corridor” and that some service had already been restored. The telecom giant had reported a cut fiber in Brooklyn via Twitter, although it’s not clear if that issue was responsible for the entire outage. Verizon didn’t give any estimate in its email about when the problem would be fixed.
In an effort to combat misinformation, Twitter says it hopes to build a community of “Birdwatchers” that can eventually help moderate and label tweets in its main product.
When companies move all employee communications online, they face the same problems as the rest of the internet. But they don’t have to let bad behavior seep in.
Exclusives
The average U.S. household increased its streaming subscriptions to four from three in the past eight months, chipping away at SVOD pioneer Netflix’s market share, according to a J.D. Power survey. Netflix still holds the No. 1 spot among streaming services — it had about 74 million U.S. and Canadian subscribers in 4Q 2020 — but five of the next six largest streaming providers gained market share since April 2020.
Univision’s PrendeTV streaming service will premiere this quarter with a group of blue-chip advertisers as launch partners, according to Donna Speciale, recently named president of advertising sales and marketing at the Spanish-language media company.
Peacock has entered the ring as the newest home for World Wrestling Entertainment content. Beginning Thursday, March 18, WWE Network will exclusively be available via NBCUniversal’s streaming service. TVLine has confirmed that the standalone WWE Network streamer, which launched in February 2014, will in turn shut down in March as the content moves to Peacock.
2021’s totally online NATPE Virtual Miami is just but half over. Some inkling of how it might shape out, however, is fast falling into place. Basically, streaming stole the show. Yes, Fox did announce during NATPE that the Jay Leno-hosted You Bet Your Life reboot, bowing this fall, has sold in 85% of the U.S. Yet a once annual launchpad for shows seeking U.S. syndication was dominated this time round by the seismic pivot of Hollywood’s majors and other players into global VOD platforms, and the impact of this tectonic shunt on the industry at large.
The content recommendation company is set to announce it will go public via Wall Street’s hottest trend — a publicly traded deal vehicle known as a SPAC. The deal values it at $2.6 billion.
The New York Times has received criticism for canceling the contract of editor Lauren Wolfe after she tweeted last Tuesday that she got “chills” over Joe Biden arriving in Washington, D.C., ahead of his inauguration as president. Wolfe, an award-winning journalist who has reported from war zones in Syria and Congo, became a trending topic on Twitter over the weekend as people expressed outrage over her ouster, called for her reinstatement and set up a Venmo account to provide financial aid.
Facebook and Amazon topped all other U.S. companies in federal lobbying expenditures last year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the most recent disclosures. It was the second straight year they outspent all other companies, including stalwarts such as AT&T and Boeing.
Disney and Pixar’s Soul was the most viewed streaming title during the week of Christmas, topping other Netflix original shows and films and even the juggernaut The Office in its final full week on Netflix before moving to Peacock.
Varun Narang has been named chief product officer at Fox, where he will oversee the company’s Fox-branded streaming products, platforms and engineering. Narang had been chief product officer with Disney Plus Hotstar, which he joined in 2015, before it was sold by 21st Century Fox to Disney.
The Branded Content Project, an initiative by Local Media Association, the Local Media Consortium and Facebook Journalism Project, today announced a call for entries from Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) publishers for its Branded Content Sales Bootcamp. The program will provide state-of-the-art sales training and consulting to help publishers develop successful and sustainable branded content offerings and related […]
Streaming hit Hollywood fast. In its wake, the industry is racing to find a new way of doing business, rethinking who’s in charge, how contracts are set up and how stars get paid. Studios are overturning their management ranks, empowering executives with backgrounds in business development, technology and strategy. Producers, filmmakers and actors are trying to protect their interests in new contracts that aren’t built around ticket sales in movie theaters. Above, while Tenet got a theatrical release last year, Warner Bros. films this year will simultaneously appear on HBO Max.
Google today threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government goes ahead with plans to make tech giants pay for news content. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison quickly hit back, saying “we don’t respond to threats.” Above, Mel Silva (r), the managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, appears via a video link during a Senate inquiry into a mandatory code of conduct proposed by the government at Parliament House in Canberra, Friday, Jan. 22. (Mick Tsikas/AAP Image via AP)
Collins | Online Compliance Issues Offer Potential Pitfalls
Companies need to be aware of online compliance regulations that could trip up media businesses looking to build online revenues.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle said she wasn’t dismissing Parler’s “substantive underlying claims” against Amazon, but said it had fallen short in demonstrating the need for an injunction forcing it back online. Amazon kicked Parler off its web-hosting service on Jan. 11. In court filings, it said the suspension was a “last resort” to block Parler from harboring violent plans to disrupt the presidential transition.
The new app combines the latest programming from The CW and fan-favorite library series from CW Seed Free on Vizio SmartCast televisions.
The period drama based on Julia Quinn’s best-selling novels marks Shonda Rhimes’ first series for the streaming giant.
CBS Sports said it plans to stream the Super Bowl across multiple platform, including its subscription streaming service CBS All Access. Broadcast coverage of Super Bowl LV will also stream unauthenticated and for free on the CBSSports.com, the CBS Sports app. The big game will also be free on Verizon properties including Yahoo Sports, on NFL digital properties and NFL team mobile properties.
Forgoing any appeals for healing or reflection, right-wing media organizations that spread former President Donald J. Trump’s distortions about the 2020 election continued on Wednesday to push conspiracy theories about large-scale fraud, with some predicting more political conflict in the months ahead.
YouTube announced on Tuesday that it is extending its suspension of uploads from outgoing President Trump’s account for “a minimum” of another seven days, citing “concerns about the ongoing potential for violence.” The Google-owned platform, which initiated the Trump ban last week after Trump supporters’ insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, confirmed that it will also continue to stop comments from showing on videos posted in Trump’s channel.
It’s a Twitter user’s worst nightmare: Wake up to find most of your followers gone. But that’s exactly what will happen on Wednesday to the official presidential accounts on Twitter. No, not @realDonaldTrump — he’s already been banned for life. This is the fate awaiting lesser-known accounts such as @POTUS, @WhiteHouse, @FLOTUS and @VP. (POTUS […]
Department of Justice Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim said that if the government does not find a way to harness the massive market power of those platforms to democratic policies, the country risks “devastating outcomes for our civil democratic society.” He suggested one solution could be a new “public-private” agency, the Digital Markets Rulemaking Board, with the power to regulate edge providers like social media sites.
