Amazon

The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB), representing television networks, asked Nielsen not to go forward with its plan to incorporate viewing data from Amazon when coming up with the audience estimates advertisers will use to determine how much they pay for commercials on Thursday Night Football on Amazon’s Prime Video.

Amazon has had early talks with Disney about working on the streaming version of ESPN it is developing, said people familiar with the matter. The tech giant could offer the service through one of its streaming offerings, helping to expand its distribution, while possibly also taking a minority stake in ESPN. Such an arrangement could shore up ESPN’s status as the biggest force in sports media, even as declining TV viewership and advertising, combined with rising sports programming costs, have squeezed the sports channel and Disney, its majority owner. It could also reposition the tech behemoth, which has been trying to make a dent in sports streaming, as more friend than foe to ESPN. And it could weaken the sports leagues’ bargaining power.

Amazon.com Inc. and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. are competing to broadcast a new package of Nascar races, with the league trying to boost its overall revenue by bringing in more media partners. The companies are vying with a third broadcaster for a package of between six and eight races during the summer months, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private negotiations.

The football season hasn’t officially started yet, and Amazon.com is already on the verge of scoring a touchdown. Nielsen is planning to incorporate viewing data from streaming services for live programming, a move that will likely boost the ratings for Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football package and allow it to charge more for commercials. This is the first time Nielsen has agreed to use a company’s own data along with its independent research to publicly report ratings. It only applies for live programming on streaming services and is open to other streamers as well.

Within a few years, Amazon hopes to be building and launching up to 80 satellites per month to populate the company’s Kuiper constellation, a $10 billion network that is similar to fleets already operated by SpaceX and OneWeb providing Internet connectivity around the world. In the next six months, Amazon plans to begin production of operational Kuiper satellites at a new 172,000-square-foot factory in Kirkland, Wash. Pictured: Artist’s illustration of Amazon’s Kuiper satellite processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Amazon, Google and Meta are among the companies that announced the new commitments on Friday as they race to outdo each other with versions of artificial intelligence.

The agency is expected to focus on Amazon’s online marketplace. Khan is deemed unlikely to accept any tweaks to the business.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the agency accused Amazon of using deceptive designs, known as “dark patterns,” to deceive consumers into enrolling in Prime, which provides subscribers with perks such as faster shipping for an fee of $139 annually, or $14.99 a month.

Frustrated by job losses, office policies and rising carbon emissions, white-collar Amazon workers are demanding more from leadership.

Dish Network is in talks to sell wireless plans for its nascent mobile phone service through Amazon, according to people familiar with the matter, an arrangement that could give the telecom company’s 5G rollout a critical lifeline. Details of the new phone plans sold through Amazon’s U.S. website could be announced as soon as June, the people said, though several factors could still delay or derail their launch.

NBC and Telemundo local FAST channels are now available on Amazon Fire TV and Echo Show devices.

Amazon said this season Thursday Night Football sponsors will be able to send different creative messages to different targeted audience groups within the same 30-second commercial position. For example, an automaker could send a sports car spot to younger viewers, an SUV ad to sports and outdoors enthusiasts, and a more general brand spot to the remaining viewers.

On Monday, Amazon announced the launch of Fire TV Channels, a free live TV service that will work similar to Pluto TV and The Roku Channel. This service will launch in the summer of 2023 and will offer 400 live channels. Amazon already has free content on the Fire TV in the free content section. Starting this summer, this new Fire TV Channels destination will roll out to Fire TV devices putting over 400 live channels in a single place on the Fire TV home screen.

Amazon is staying in the Team Palladino business, handing a two-season, 16-episode order to a new ballet-themed series from Marvelous Mrs. Maisel auteurs Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. Titled Étoile, the show — which features Maisel vets Luke Kirby and Gideon Glick as part of the full-time ensemble — will be set in New York City and Paris, and follow the dancers and artistic staff of two world-renowned ballet companies, as they embark on an ambitious gambit to save their storied institutions by swapping their most talented stars.

FTS to distribute its local news content across Amazon devices.

A multi-pronged investigation of the online giant is approaching the action phase — on mergers, antitrust, privacy and more.

Amazon plans to lay off 9,000 corporate and tech workers by the end of April, adding to the 18,000 roles it already cut late last year and this January, Andy Jassy, the company’s chief executive, said in a note to employees on Monday.

Amazon has designed three satellite broadband user terminals and will start offering Internet service in 2024, the company announced Tuesday. The standard terminal, designed for residential and small business customers, is expected to cost Amazon less than $400 to make; Amazon did not say what it will charge customers for the terminals or for monthly service plans.

The FCC has paved the way for Amazon’s satellite-delivered broadband company, Project Kuiper, and its constellation of low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites. On the same day the House Communications Subcommittee held a hearing on satellite communications tech, the FCC’s International Bureau approved the orbital debris mitigation plan of Kuiper Systems as well as its license modification, which will allow the company to begin deploying birds and ultimately deliver high-speed broadband connectivity.

Amazon poured significant investment into content enhancements last year, disclosing last week it spent a total of $16.6 billion on digital video and music content in 2022 — up from $13 billion in 2021. Approximately $7 billion went toward Amazon originals, live sports and licensed third-party video content

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing a potential antitrust lawsuit against Amazon Inc. that in the coming months could challenge an array of the tech giant’s business practices as anticompetitive, according to people familiar with the matter. The timing of any case remains in flux, some of the people said. The commission also could opt not to proceed, and doesn’t always bring cases even when it is making preparations to do so.

Amazon said it earned $300 million, or 3 cents per share, in the October-December quarter. Industry analysts were expecting the Seattle-based company to earn 17 cents a share. Amazon’s 4Q profits represent a significant drop from the $14.3 billion it posted during the same period in 2021, when the company had a nearly $12 billion gain from its investment in Rivian Automotive. Shares in Amazon.com Inc. fell 4% in after-hours trading.

Amazon is planning to lay off more than 18,000 employees, adding to a massive round of job cuts first announced last year, the tech giant said Wednesday, after more than 100,000 employees of large U.S. corporations lost their jobs in 2022 amid growing recession fears.

Amazon is working on a standalone app for watching sports content, the Information reported on Wednesday, citing a source with direct knowledge of the plan. The move will likely complement Amazon’s effort to double down on sports programming through its Prime Video service, a key channel to attract consumers to its shopping platform.

Amazon’s future in streaming video has come into greater focus in 2022 with the acquisitions of Thursday Night Football and MGM and the debut of LOTR: The Rings Of Power. Now, the onetime bookseller is headed into 2023 without the main architect of its expansion into TV and film via Prime Video, Jeff Blackburn. His retirement, announced on Friday, capped a month of a series of executive moves that laid out Amazon’s plans for the next stage of its evolution as an entertainment brand.

Never mind those weekly Nielsen program rankings showing that Netflix still dominates engagement, Prime has more subs, research company says.

The executive, who has been with the company for two decades, returned from a yearlong sabbatical in May 2021. (Image: Amazon)

Jennifer Salke just got a big vote of confidence at Amazon Studios. The head of Amazon Studios has just been handed total control of MGM’s film and television divisions following the retail giant/streamer’s February acquisition of the storied studio behind the James Bond and Rocky/Creed franchises. The Salke announcement is but one of multiple staffing moves announced via a trio of internal memos late Tuesday.

The Survivor mastermind follows film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy out the door as Amazon takes full control of the studio.

The job market is booming, so why is the tech industry getting hit with layoffs?

The e-commerce giant, which will shed roughly 10,000 positions as soon as this week, would become the latest big tech company to slash its workforce.

Big Tech companies took a heavy beating last week, to the tune of more than $255 billion in lost market capitalization that’s helped make a bad year even worse for the once-beloved sector. The five tech giants that posted results have now lost a combined $3 trillion in market cap on the year, according to Dow Jones Market Data, showing that Big Tech isn’t immune to the macroeconomic storm sweeping up the broader stock market.

The company on Thursday reported revenue for the three months that ended Sept. 30 of $127.1 billion, boosted by Amazon’s Prime Day, a major sales event for dues-paying Prime members that was pushed back to July this year from June the year before. That helped fuel Amazon’s revenue growth of 15% over last year, an improvement from the prior two quarters when revenue grew by only 7% — the slowest in nearly two decades. Still, those numbers came in short of forecasts by analysts surveyed by FactSet, who were expecting third-quarter revenue of $127.4 billion.

The Big Tech behemoths are squeezing local media for content, controlling the algorithms that reach broad digital audiences, limiting or denying monetization and withholding data, which in turn control who can see the stories we are working so hard to tell. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which enjoys rare bipartisan support in Washington, is how local media need to fight back.