Digital

The company has said HBO Max will become the “workhorse” for its video business as cord-cutting of traditional TV expands. It hopes to migrate people who pay for HBO in different ways today to the new platform. The service grew out of AT&T’s $81 billion purchase of Time Warner, which AT&T overhauled and rechristened WarnerMedia.

Chris Berend, EVP of NBC News Digital, said in a memo today that his division is adding 70 jobs. The 20% boost in staffing is part of the company’s efforts to expand the NBC News NOW streaming service into a 24-hour platform of live programming as early as this winter. NBC Left Field, the company’s digital video studio founded two years ago, and its MACH science and tech vertical are being shuttered.

The Big Four networks have opened another front in their battle with Locast, the startup behind a free service that streams local TV signals in several large U.S. markets. In their latest move, ABC, NBCUniversal, CBS and Fox have urged a New York court to dismiss recent counterclaims filed by Locast and to instead focus on what the broadcasters claim to be Locast’s “wholesale violation of the Copyright Act.”

“Unfortunately, the highly competitive pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected,” the company wrote in a blog post.

In 2013, Netflix shook up television by delivering 13 episodes of House of Cards in one batch, a move that helped popularize streaming video and fueled a culture of binge watching. But Apple, Walt Disney Co. and AT&T are largely rejecting that path as they prepare their own efforts to hook the online audiences that embraced Netflix.

On Monday, Google parent Alphabet met growth expectations for its key moneymaking businesses — notably its advertising business, which reported revenues that increased 17% to $33.9 billion during the quarter. But Alphabet’s capital expenditures grew at the same time, rising to $6.7 billion in the period as Google continued to expand its headquarters and build data centers for its cloud computing business.

Adam Symson, president and CEO of The E.W. Scripps Co., says leading the company isn’t a quarter-to-quarter proposition, but rather about taking a decades-long view. From that vantage, he sees a growing marketplace for podcasts and multicasting, along with a deepening the OTT sales business and ATSC 3.0’s longer-term potential as crucial fronts to buttress the company’s core broadcast business.

Screens large and small are already flooded with splashy commercials for competing streaming services trying to lure viewers with budget-busting, celebrity-soaked new shows, movies, fan favorites and classics. And there’s more to come.

Sales to the U.S. and to streamers, fueled especially by the popularity of British drama, helped drive the value of U.K. television content exports to a record £1.4 billion ($1.8 billion) in 2018-19, a new report says. The U.K. TV Exports Report, published by producers’ trade body Pact on Friday, revealed a 7% uptick in revenues generated by British fare internationally. The U.S. remains by far the biggest buyer.

Amazon’s third-quarter earnings fell short of street expectations on Thursday, driving its stock down roughly 7% in after hours trading.

LinkedIn Editor in Chief Dan Roth envisions LinkedIn as the perfect “utility” for professionals. “LinkedIn should help you be better at what you do or what you want to do,” he says. In order to fulfill this dream, Roth has hired a team of journalists and empowered them with the tools they need to discover original stories and to distribute those stories to the right audience. Having these tools at their disposal is appealing to journalists who want to know who is reading their work.

The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and University of Missouri Libraries received a $250,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help ensure the survival of today’s digital news record for future generations.

Twitter Inc. posted worse-than-expected third quarter revenue and profit on Thursday, which the company attributed to advertising problems including product bugs and unusually low demand over the summer, sending its shares down about 15%.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday fielded sharp criticism and tough questions about nearly all aspects of his company’s business practices at a hearing about Facebook’s new cryptocurrency project Libra. The aggressive questioning underlined how difficult it will be for the Libra project to move past the baggage of Facebook’s various controversies, which have angered lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

The deal that the Walt Disney Co. cut with Verizon to give Disney+ free to some Verizon mobile and broadband customers will result in nine million subscribers for the new streaming service in its first year, according to an estimate by analyst Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson Research.

With the influx of new streaming services, even spendthrift conglomerates are opening their pocketbooks wider than ever. For example, When Apple TV plus launches on Nov. 1, it will do so with what’s arguably the most expensive new-series lineup in TV history. Among the streamer’s initial offerings are the drama The Morning Show, bearing a price tag believed to be more than $15 million an episode, and the dystopian sci-fi series See, which is rumored to have cost as much as $17 million an hour. 

The details are still murky, but CNN has recently created a new internal group called NewsCo that is developing a suite of digital products, a company spokesperson confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter today.

What’s left of 47-year-old Money magazine has been sold to a 3-year-old digital startup run by a former Google executive. After shutting down its print edition earlier this year when parent Meredith failed to find a buyer, Money has sold its surviving brand, Money.com, to Ad Practitioners LLC, based in Dorado, Puerto Rico. Terms were not disclosed, but sources say the brand went for just over $20 million.

Quibi said Tuesday it has sold out of its $150 million first-year advertising inventory. Set for an April 2020 launch, the mobile-only streaming service has also added Discover, General Mills, Taco Bell and T-Mobile as new brand partners.