Digital

J.R. McCabe, a veteran content creation, sales and marketing and product development executive, is picked to fill the new position.

ByteDance and Oracle Corp issued conflicting statements on Monday over the terms of an agreement they reached with the White House over the weekend to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the United States, casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s preliminary blessing of the deal.

Streaming service Quibi is exploring several strategic options including a possible sale, according to people familiar with the situation, as the company founded by Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg struggles to sign up subscribers in a competitive online-video marketplace.

The saga of TikTok had everything: Ominous threats of surveillance. A forced fire sale. Threats of retaliation. Head-spinning deal terms that morphed by the hour. Dark horse bidders and a looming deadline. Now, as the dust settles on the weeks of drama over the social media app, investors and others are asking what it was all for. The answer? A cloud computing contract for the Silicon Valley business software company OracleT, a merchandising deal for Walmart and a claim of victory for President Trump.

Trump said the proposed deal between Oracle and Walmart will result in a new company likely to be based in Texas. “I have given the deal my blessing,” he said. “If they get it done, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s OK too.”

On Friday, Roku and NBCUniversal reached a deal bringing Peacock, NBCU’s recently launched streaming service, to Roku, while also keeping a number of other NBC apps on the platform.

Saying that the Sundance award-winning film Cuties meets the definition of child pornography, almost three dozen Republican members of Congress led by Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana have called on Attorney General Bill Barr to prosecute Netflix for distributing it.

Roku, a major streaming gatekeeper, has reached an impasse with NBCUniversal over its nascent Peacock service and a swath of NBCU apps is about to go dark as a result. As soon as overnight Friday into Saturday, 11 national “TV Everywhere” apps, which are available to pay-TV subscribers, will disappear due to the dispute. Dozens of other local apps from NBC and Telemundo stations, which are available only to Roku viewers in those local markets, are also hanging in the balance.

The Commerce Department said President Trump’s proposed ban of the apps WeChat and TikTok will go into effect Sunday, Sept. 20, to “safeguard the national security of the United States.” The order follows weeks of dealmaking over the video-sharing service TikTok. President Donald Trump has pressured the app’s Chinese owner to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations to a domestic company to satisfy U.S. concerns over TikTok’s data collection and related issues.

Some people flock to streaming platforms for juicy dramas. Others queue up quirky comedies. But there’s also an audience willing to binge-watch local journalism. Just ask NBC Bay Area (KNTV). Last week, the NBC O&O dropped its second season of Derailed, an in-depth digital series investigating problems at BART, the Bay Area’s beleaguered public transit system. The whole project lives on NBCBayArea.com, YouTube and Apple TV, ready to stream in six digestible episodes ranging from about 4 to 15 minutes long.

The U.S. Commerce Department plans to issue an order today that will bar people in the United States from downloading Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat and video-sharing app TikTok starting on this Sunday, Sept. 20, according to three officials.

Nielsen is launching Compass, a global database designed to establish syndicated standards and shared definitions for campaign outcomes measurement across platforms and regions. The campaign elements in the aggregated dataset — updated annually with about 25,000 campaign ROIs across 100 categories and 50 countries — include brands, pricing, promotions and media platforms.

The Tom Ellis show has rocketed its way to the top of Nielsen’s weekly top 10 shows on streaming list for the week of Aug. 17, removing The Umbrella Academy from top spot for the first time. Season 5 of Lucifer premiered that week, hence its hellishly strong performance.

TV measurement and attribution firm TVSquared and Blockgraph, which securely connects data providers and users, said they are working together to provide omni-channel TV measurement and attribution capabilities.

Senate Republicans and others criticized the latest plan to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States, citing national security concerns.

Wilmore, his new weekly series for the Peacock streaming service, came together on the fly but, as he describes it, promises to be a better fit for the writer, performer and producer of shows like Black-ish and The Mayor. The half-hour show debuts Friday with soccer great Megan Rapinoe, Missouri Democratic Congressional candidate Cori Bush and comedian-writer Amber Ruffin, another new Peacock host.

Apple will bundle some of its subscription services together for discount. Customers who want to buy subscriptions to Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade and iCloud storage will soon be able to do so for a combined price that starts at $15 per month.

NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock has reached more than 15 million sign-ups, Comcast Chairman-CEO Brian Roberts told a virtual conference on Tuesday. And Comcast Cable is trending to add more than 500,000 broadband subscribers in the current third quarter, which would be a new record, he also said during an appearance at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference.

CBS All Access is trading in CBS for Paramount. ViacomCBS revealed Tuesday that the rebranded streaming service will be called Paramount+ beginning early next year. The rebranding is the second, and much bigger, phase of the two-phase expansion of CBS All Access, which first launched in 2014 and was among the earliest entrants in the streaming space.

Dialing up its wagering efforts around sports, ESPN has made two separate sports betting partnerships — one each with DraftKings and Caesars Entertainment to promote sports gambling content. ESPN will offer content linked to both gambling companies’ sports booking operations.