Digital

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav Tuesday said he doesn’t plan on getting into a streaming arms race as Hollywood’s big entertainment companies bolster their platforms to woo analysts. “I know we have the resources, but we can plan on being careful and judicious,” he said during the company’s conference with analysts after the 1Q earnings were released.

Warner Bros. Discovery reported a 13% revenue jump and consistent streaming subscriber growth for its fiscal first quarter Tuesday. The results don’t include first-quarter performance from WarnerMedia, which Discovery bought this month. The company reported revenue of $3.16 billion and net income of $456 million. Shares rose as much as 2% in premarket trading.

The deal with Abry Partners is the latest example of private equity’s pushing into Hollywood to cash in on the demand for streaming shows.

The big question now is how far Musk, who describes himself as a “free-speech absolutist,” wants to ratchet back these systems — and whether users and advertisers will stick around if he does.

The 24/7 news channel with a focus on the headlines hires the former Black News Channel senior producer to oversee journalism.

The outspoken Tesla CEO, the world’s wealthiest person, has said he wants to buy Twitter because he thinks it’s not living up to its potential as a platform for “free speech.” He says it needs to be transformed as a private company in order to build trust with users and do better at serving what he calls the “societal imperative” of free speech. Twitter said the transaction was unanimously approved by its board of directors.

Streaming is important but complicated for PBS, according to Ira Rubenstein, chief digital and marketing officer for the public broadcasting network. “For the last eight years I’ve been at PBS, I’ve been very focused on broadening the distribution of our local stations to digital, and you have to do that at scale,” said Rubinstein, speaking at a session at NAB Show’s Capitalize Experimental Zone theater on Sunday.

Joe Ferullo: “The passionate romance between Twitter and journalism suddenly seems to be on the rocks — and that’s good news for people who care about real news, delivered straight.”

The use of the QR codes in TV commercials is winning converts among local TV sales execs and their advertising clients. “We were expecting a wave and it’s almost like a tsunami,” says one local advertiser.

The New York Times, citing people with knowledge of the situation who it did not identify, said the two sides were discussing details including a timeline and fees if an agreement was signed and then fell apart. The people said the situation was fluid and fast-moving.

Tech companies’ power has “turbocharged” political division and requires government scrutiny, former President Barack Obama said at Stanford.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday in documents filed with U.S. securities regulators that the money would come from Morgan Stanley and other banks, some of it secured by his huge stake in the electric car maker. Twitter has yet to formally respond to Musk’s offer, but the company has enacted an anti-takeover measure known as a poison pill that could make a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive.

The Digital Services Act would force Meta, Google and others to combat misinformation and restrict certain online ads. How European officials will wield it remains to be seen.

Netflix’s Bridgerton was viewed for more than 2.5 billion minutes during the week of its Season 2 debut, according to Nielsen’s newly released streaming Top 10 rankings. The Chris Van Dusen-created period romance was easily the No. 1 program on streaming for the week of March 21-27 on Nielsen’s charts, even though only its first season was available for the majority of that week, as Season 2 premiered on March 25.

The company faces a number of challenges, but its problems may be an indication that its competitors are racing toward an unstable future.

Netflix’s entry into the ad business could give the connected TV business a big boost. Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify, a top CTV measurement and verification company, said a Netflix with ads could grow the market for CTV ads by 30% to 50%, with Netflix attracting 40 million ad support subscribers right out of the gate.

In a Thursday memo, incoming CNN chief executive Chris Licht said the service would shut down at the end of April. CNN+ launched when its parent was still part of AT&T. It combined with Discovery earlier this month in a new company, Warner Bros. Discovery, under Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who had his own vision for CNN and its Warner siblings.

CNN’s new streaming service CNN+ is off to a slower start than executives at the network had hoped, raising new questions about the future of the paid, subscription-based vertical — and more broadly how much consumers are willing to invest in streamed news.  The launch of CNN+ is just the latest push by a major cable provider into streaming, as industry insiders and network leaders prepare themselves for a future increasingly characterized by cable cord-cutting.