Digital

Australia’s bold move to force tech giants to start paying for the news appears to be reigniting U.S. efforts to hold Google and Facebook to account for the gloomy state of the local news industry. Momentum is building for a new version of a bipartisan bill first introduced in 2019 that would allow U.S. news publishers to band together to negotiate for payments by tech giants that link to their news content.

Sling TV says it will lose three NBC Sports regional sports networks on April 1 due to a carriage dispute with their owner, NBC Sports. The live streaming service says NBC Sports Washington, NBC Sports California and NBC Sports Bay Area will be removed from its lineup. Sling has carried the three channels since 2017.

Perhaps the most polarizing OTT company on Wall Street, FuboTV, reported a 98% jump in fourth quarter revenue, passing the six-figure mark for the first time in a quarter to reach $105.1 million. The virtual pay TV operator added 92,800 customers during the final three months of 2020, reaching 547,880 paid subscribers, up 73% year over year.

In a move that will bolster Roku’s advertising capabilities, the streaming company has acquired Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising unit. Terms for the deal were not disclosed. A person familiar with the transaction described it as “not material” to the overall business of Roku, whose market value is $53 billion. Nevertheless, the acquisition is a meaningful step forward for the streaming potentate. The company will now be able to serve viewers “dynamically inserted” ads on live, linear programming, opening up new horizons for its burgeoning ad business.

Richard Steiner joins Scripps after more than 20 years in key positions with WarnerMedia/Turner Broadcasting, where he created and led dozens of nationally recognized products.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for a marketing and promotions producer for Cox and a digital content producer for Hearst.

MobiTV, a key video technology vendor to T-Mobile, Cable One and myriad small cable companies, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. According to FTI Consulting, a firm brought on by the Emeryville, Calif. company to oversee the restructuring process, MobiTV has obtained $15.5 million in debtor-in-possession financing to keep the lights on, the employees paid and its cloud-based video systems up and running.

Netflix’s cautionary Social Dilemma overstates the data-driven power of Facebook, YouTube and others to engage users and effectively target advertising and it doesn’t address the real cause for concern — their enormous size and reach. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

Once the last pay TV bastions, along with sports, is fast becoming a free, add-supported services programming staple.

The streamer commissioned the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative to analyze its 2018 and 2019 original, live-action films and series, and presented the results to members of the press Thursday in a video presentation. The results were, as Annenberg Inclusion Initiative founder and director Stacy L. Smith noted, far more positive than most Annenberg reports, which have typically found only slow, sporadic improvement in the most popular films.

Chinese parent ByteDance has settled a class-action lawsuit alleging that the video-sharing app failed to get users consent to collect data in violation of a strict Illinois privacy law.

Netflix’s offering of Criminal Minds was the most-viewed show on streaming platforms in the last week of January, according to Nielsen’s latest Top 10 list released Thursday. The popularity of Criminal Minds has been the fuel for news just this week. Paramount+ confirmed yesterday it is rebooting the hit CBS procedural, which ran from 2005-2020 and spawned two spinoffs, with a 10-episode season revolving around a single case.

A new partnership with Charter Communications adds nearly 40% more households and expands inventory for marketers.

An idea that seemed like a real plus when streaming was newer has fallen into cliché.

TV meant to be responsive to the moment seemed distant. But podcasts, with the intimate production values, felt more immediate and relevant than ever before.

ViacomCBS spent the afternoon unveiling details about Paramount+, its rebranded streamer that will launch May 4, and now here is a roundup of the television series and feature films that will be available on the service. Paramount+ will feature a content catalog of more than 30,000 episodes, 2,500 movie titles and 1,000-plus live sporting events and news coverage. More than 50 new series across multiple genres will bow during the next two years on the streamer, which promises 7,000 episodes of kids content, 5,000 of reality and 6,000 of comedy.