Digital

CNN said Tuesday that it has acquired the assets and hired the development team of Canopy, a Brooklyn- and Boston-based private firm that will help speed the development of NewsCo, an upcoming news and information platform. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Consumers are watching more streaming video and are starting to gravitate toward free services, according to a new study. According to Integral Ad Science’s second Streaming Wars survey, while 85% of consumers have access to a paid streaming service — Netflix is No. 1 — that’s up only 2 percentage points from IAS’s first survey.

As a digital-centric news organization, Newsy was better prepared than many to shift to remote working conditions. What’s changed is a tighter collaborative relationship with other E.W. Scripps-owned sister companies, including Court TV and TV stations.

While the rest of the sporting world continues to be shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic, the NFL is going full steam ahead with its offseason activities, formally annoucing the 2020 NFL Draft will be completely virtual. ESPN and NFL Network are still expected to air the draft, which is scheduled for April 23-25.

The telco is prioritizing its new internet-net-based pay TV platform, AT&T TV and has stopped selling its 14-year-old IPTV pay TV platform, U-verse TV.

The Local Media Association’s Jed Williams was working with a trio of TV stations on a pilot membership model when the coronavirus struck. He says the moment made clear TV broadcasters’ importance to their communities. It may also be an ideal moment to deepen the relationship with viewers with an endgame of new revenue streams when normalcy returns.

Amazon.com is postponing its major summer shopping event, Prime Day, until at least August and expects a potential $100 million hit from excess devices it might now sell at a discount, according to internal meeting notes.

The party “may have to do a virtual convention,” the former vice president said Sunday. “The idea of holding the convention is going to be necessary. We may not be able to put 10, 20, 30,000 people in one place,” he told ABC’s This Week, calling an online convention “very possible.”

Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Quibi — a snappy amalgam of “quick” and “bite” — is a mobile phone-only platform that will release its snack-sized installments of movies and TV shows each weekday. There will be seven-day-a-week dollops of news, sports and weather, gathered under the umbrella name Daily Essentials, all adding up to a mind-boggling 175-plus programs planned for this year. It launches Monday in the U.S. and Canada with a 90-day free trial and 50 programs.

As people turn to local news stations for critical updates amidst the crisis, the free streaming platform is experiencing a record number of users and sessions.

New apps from ABC News Live debut on Fire TV and Android TV platforms with an update coming to the Roku platform and Apple TV apps. The ABC Owned Television Stations are also introducing market-specific apps on Fire TV, Android TV, the Roku platform and Apple TV.

Reversing course, Google said on Thursday it will begin allowing political groups to run ads related to COVID-19. The company’s move comes shortly after liberal digital ad shop DSPolitical publicly complained that Google was giving President Donald Trump “an unprecedented advantage in our upcoming elections” by banning Democratic ads relating to the outbreak, while allowing the current administration to run ads referencing the virus.

Certain T-Mobile customers will get a free yearlong subscription to Quibi, the companies said Thursday, in a move that should boost early users of the ambitious streaming service debuting April 6 in a crowded streaming market. Under the deal, T-Mobile customers who have two or more voice lines with T-Mobile will get a free yearlong subscription to Quibi’s ad-supported tier, which normally will cost $4.99 each month (the ad-free version is $7.99). Interested T-Mobile customers can sign up between April 2 and July 7 to get the offering added to their plan for no additional cost for the first year.

The surge of Americans working, learning and socializing online is helping make the wireless industry’s case for building superfast internet connections.

The coronavirus pandemic has amped up the transition to cloud-based workflows as broadcasters have employed as many remote operations as possible. The next frontier: an acceleration of live production applications in the cloud. Above, an Amazon Web Services Outpost cloud server.

Video providers can’t fill all the ad inventory being created as people stuck at home watch more streaming content.

We’ve tried all sorts of things to stop us from staring at our devices. Digital detoxes. Abstinence. Now? Bring on the Zoom cocktail hour.

U.S. consumers’ viewing of streaming has continued to increase through March. Over the first three weeks of March 2020, the total estimated number of minutes streamed to the TV was 400 billion, up 85% compared with the comparable three-week period in 2019, according to a Nielsen analysis.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, organizer of the NewFronts, is moving the annual pitchfest to June to give presenters more time to prep their virtual showcases.