Digital

Last month Fox offered 10,000 free “Miss Masky’ Genesis Edition NFTs to the general public through its www.maskverse.com website. In less than 10 hours, all 10,000 had been claimed and a second 10,000 NFT run had been announced. The question now is where do NFTs fit in the television ecosystem?

The Fox Weather app was the top free app downloaded in the week it launched, ahead of brand giants like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. How’d they do it? A combination of old-school advertising and brand loyalty.

The social networking company has discussed opening physical stores to showcase its virtual reality and augmented reality devices.

The Walt Disney Co. has enlisted just about every part of the company for Disney Plus Day — which is actually a weeklong series of promotions, events and content premieres. It’s ultimately aimed, of course, at driving up paying subscribers for the global streaming service. Among the deals: Starting today (Nov. 8) through Sunday, Nov. 14, new and eligible returning Disney+ subscribers can get one month of the service for $1.99 (available in the U.S. and select countries). After the first month, the service goes back to the regular price ($7.99/month in the U.S.).

The mega-streamer is facing more defamation complaints than any major news outlet, stemming from projects like Making a Murderer and When They See Us — but is it a distributor, a publisher or something else entirely?

The suit, filed by the now defunct photo start-up Phhhoto, accused the social network of stalling on a deal and then putting it out of business.

A concept that on paper seems like a good idea — levying additional taxes on media companies that sell digital advertising to keep the power and influence of Big Tech in check — is quickly turning out to be a disastrous experiment. While many believe the digital behemoths aren’t paying enough taxes, remedies proposed at the state level demonstrate digital advertising taxes can be unfair to smaller media companies, particularly struggling local news outlets.

Squid Game remained the dominant force in U.S. streaming from October 4 to 10, according to Nielsen, once again racking up more than 3 billion minutes of viewing. The Korean drama, Netflix’s top all-time original with viewing by 142 million global households according to the company, attracted 3.26 billion viewing hours in its previous week. That made it just the sixth title to clear the 3 billion mark since Nielsen began tracking streaming in 2020. The most recent week saw a slight dip to 3.02 billion, but the show’s hold was impressive.

Peacock has a serial TV problem and is counting on a pandemic-delayed pipeline of programming to help overcome it. More than a year after its launch, NBCUniversal’s streaming service lacks the buzzy original TV shows of its rivals or even the fan-friendly Star Trek offerings of Paramount Plus, the ViacomCBS service formerly known as CBS All Access. And while top brass praised Peacock as “headed in the right direction” during Comcast’s earnings call with Wall Street analysts last week, the lack of breakthrough hits, considered key to streamer growth, suggests the service has much work to do before it becomes truly competitive with its rivals.

Roku stock dropped sharply in after-hours trading after the company reported third quarter revenue that fell just short of Wall Street analysts’ consensus estimate. Revenue of $680 million missed the Street number by a bit more than $3 million. On the bottom line, though, earnings per share of 48 cents far outpaced the estimate of 6 cents.

Integral Ad Science (IAS) this morning announced it has been accredited by the Media Rating Council for impression and viewability measurement and reporting of display and video ads across Facebook and Instagram.

Though Netflix’s most popular (OK, “sampled”) original series has yet to be renewed for any additional season, the nine-episode Korean thriller will compete as a drama series, and not as a limited series, at upcoming awards shows (including next fall’s Emmys). It thus will throw in against the anticipated likes of Succession, Better Call Saul‘s final season, The White Lotus and the farewell season of This Is Us.

FuboTV has fully integrated with Dentsu International’s M1 people-based identity and data platform to better target the live sports viewers on its live streaming TV platform. The companies said that advertisers can now use M1’s connected individual, device and panel data across fuboTV’s connected TV inventory that includes 50,000 live sports events per year along with more than 100 sports, news and entertainment channels.

Netflix is officially ready to compete with the likes of Fortnite, launching its expansion into the gaming world. Starting today, the streamer has rolled out five exclusive mobile games to all Android subscribers, including two based off its Stranger Things franchise.

While urging Comcast to get out of the video business altogether, LightShed Partners’ Richard Greenfield assembles a rather bleak snapshot for the conglomerate’s struggling streaming service.

After more than a decade of controversy, Facebook will halt its use of facial recognition technology.

The streaming service’s new agreements with Hearst, Citadel, Morris Network and others add more than 70 stations from top DMAs including Boston, Baltimore, Orlando and Pittsburgh.

Charter looks poised to go over the top, with Chairman Tom Rutledge telling investors that he “likes the Comcast model of putting its platform on televisions.”

Competing with SpaceX, OneWeb and others, the e-commerce titan will rely on small rockets to get prototypes of its satellite constellation into space.