TV’s streaming wars are a global contest, and this year India became one of the most hotly contested fronts.
Software start-ups have a phrase for what Amazon is doing to them: “strip-mining” them of their innovations.
Yankees Team With Amazon To Stream Games
The Yankees may soon become a major-league thorn in the side of New York’s cable providers. The Bronx Bombers, working with tech giant Amazon, are gearing up to become the first Major League Baseball team to let fans watch games on their phones or laptops without a cable subscription — a bid to win over millennials who are cutting ties with cable TV
Amazon Stock Drops On Earnings Miss
Amazon’s third-quarter earnings fell short of street expectations on Thursday, driving its stock down roughly 7% in after hours trading.
Exclusives
Amazon Studios has signed an overall deal with former ABC Studios President Patrick Moran. He’ll develop television series for Prime Video.
Politicians want to rein in the retail giant. But Jeff Bezos, the master of cutthroat capitalism, is ready to fight back.
Jimmy Pitaro said today: “I have no idea if [Amazon, Google and Facebook] are going to be interested specifically in Monday Night Football, but I do believe that several new media companies are going to be interested in acquiring more NFL rights.”
Amazon’s growth into a digital advertising giant will imperil Google and Facebook, transforming their current “duopoly” status into a “triopoly,” Forrester Research says in a new report. Ad agencies and ad-tech firms also will need to adapt as the e-commerce giant follows its long-term strategy of eliminating middlemen that hinder efficiency.
Amazon appears to be looking to build out its advertising business by putting the data on a blockchain. An Amazon job post suggests the company will expand on the work it has already done in blockchain by expanding the technology into advertising. The company is looking for a senior software engineer to join its Advertising FinTech team.
The streamer went on a bit of a killing spree Saturday, cancelling five series including the freshman Maya Rudolph-Fred Armisen afterlife satire Forever and sophomore critical fave Patriot.
The Justice Department said it will investigate how internet giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google have accumulated market power and whether they have acted to reduce competition. Similar inquiries are underway in Congress and at the Federal Trade Commission, which shares antitrust oversight responsibilities with the DOJ.
A Tuesday afternoon panel of the House Judiciary Committee focused on whether it’s time for Congress to rein in these companies, which are among the largest on Earth by several measures. Central to that case is whether their business practices run afoul of century-old laws originally designed to combat railroad and oil monopolies.
Some $7.9 million has been spent to date — June 30 to July 15 — with big dollars spent on Univision ($1.3 million), NBC ($705,000) and ABC ($604,000).
The House Antitrust Subcommittee is holding the second of its two Big Tech hearings this week, hearing from the FAAG in FAANG, lacking only Netflix among the witness list and definitely meeting the criteria for the hearing’s title.
Executives from Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google will testify before a House of Representatives congressional committee next week in a hearing to discuss the tremendous market power wielded by online platforms.
The precipitating event for Silicon Valley’s regulatory reckoning? A change in our political beliefs.
Amazon confirmed on Friday that it agreed to acquire Sizmek’s ad-server business and dynamic creative optimization platform, ending months of speculation since Sizmek declared bankruptcy in March. The deal will help Amazon strengthen its position in the ad industry, digging into Google’s and Facebook’s respective ad businesses, experts say.
Amazon is in talks to join Sinclair Broadcast Group in a deal to buy the 21 Fox regional sports TV networks that are being auctioned off by Disney. Sinclair is looking for Amazon’s backing as it preps a roughly $9 billion, all-cash offer for the so-called RSNs, sources say.
Amazon Pulls In $3.6 Billion Profit
Amazon reported a record $3.6 billion in profit during the first quarter of 2019, more than doubling its profit from a year ago and continuing its streak of record-breaking earnings. The company’s lucrative advertising and cloud computing businesses notched the bulk of its profits and helped boost margins even as sales growth slowed. Overall, first-quarter sales rose 17 % to $59.7 billion, compared to sales growth of 46% last year.
Amazon said Thursday that YouTube will appear on Amazon’s Fire TV devices and smart TVs in the coming months, but did not give an exact date.
Amazon is planning to build a network of more than 3,000 satellites federal filings reveal, in an ambitious attempt to provide global internet access. Known as Project Kuiper, the move represents the latest space ambition from Jeff Bezos.
An Amazon-led group of investors that includes the New York Yankees and Sinclair Broadcast Group is ready to sign a deal to buy YES Network — one of NY’s most prominent cable sports channels — for roughly $3.5 billion, according to two people close to the plans.
Onetime film and television CEO Barry Diller offered an apocalyptic vision of the entertainment business during a podcast interview, arguing that in the face of Netflix and Amazon, “Hollywood is now irrelevant” and yet “those who chase Netflix are fools.”
The stunning withdrawal that would have brought 25,000 jobs to the city was a serious blow to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had lobbied intensely to land the project, competing against more than 200 other metropolitan areas across the continent that were practically tripping over each other to offer incentives to Amazon in a fierce bidding war it openly stoked.
Amazon’s acquisition of the mesh WiFi router startup Eero marks yet another effort by the retail giant to integrate its products and services into the home. The deal also indicates that it’s getting even more difficult to purchase or use technology that isn’t run by the “big five” tech companies: Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook.
Amazon.com is reconsidering its plan to bring 25,000 jobs to a new campus in New York City following a wave of opposition from local politicians, according to two people familiar with the company’s thinking. The company has not leased or purchased office space for the project, making it easy to withdraw its commitment.
Bezos, who is also owner of The Washington Post, detailed his interactions with American Media Inc., or AMI, in an extraordinary blog post Thursday on Medium.com. The billionaire did not say the tabloid was seeking money — instead, he said, the Enquirer wanted him to make a public statement that the tabloid’s coverage was not politically motivated.
Amazon 4Q Profit Tops $3 Billion
Amazon, which recently surpassed Microsoft as the most valuable publicly traded company in the U.S., reported net income of $3.03 billion for the last three months of 2018. Revenue rose 20% to $72.38 billion, beating the $71.73 billion that analysts expected.
Movie studios often use the Super Bowl to drop trailers for their coming blockbusters. Since last year, a rival source of video entertainment has been doing the same. Amazon Prime Video will return to the Super Bowl this year, dropping a 60-second trailer in the third quarter for Hanna, a new drama centered on a powerful young girl who must thwart agents who want to take her down, along with her father. The commercial will show Amazon getting more aggressive in the realm of big-game promotion.
Citing a “noticeable uptick in enthusiasm for Amazon’s ad business,” Wall Street securities firm BMO Capital Markets upgraded its outlook for Amazon’s ad revenues for 4Q 2018, as well as full years 2019 and 2020. “This marks one of the most significant reinforcements of our thesis on Amazon,” BMO equities research analyst Daniel Salmon wrote in a note sent to investors this morning
