Digital

The Netflix historical drama landed on Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming programs list for the first time in weeks.

AMC Networks shifted two executives to give its streaming services more management attention as the company pivots its focus  towards its growing direct-to-consumer businesses. Courtney Thomasma was named general manager of AMC Plus, its commercial-free original content product, and Matt Graham was named general manager of AMC’s Sundance Now streaming service.

Netflix and Sony Pictures Entertainment have set a significant new licensing deal giving the streaming giant an exclusive window for the studio’s theatrical titles starting in 2022. The agreement, which replaces an output arrangement with Lionsgate-owned Starz dating back to 2005, provides Netflix with an 18-month exclusive window for Sony films. Multiple bidders had been angling for the rights for some time. Terms were not officially disclosed, but Netflix prevailed with an offer of $1 billion over four years, according to sources familiar with the deal.

Despite — or maybe because of — the COVID-19 pandemic, internet ad spending soared 12.2% during 2020 to $139.8 billion, according to a just-released annual report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC.

Features like AR and VR, social media integrations with synchronized streaming options and personalization are key to capturing fans’ imaginations and driving more active, engaged consumption.

MobiTV has refuted an earlier report that suggested the company was poised to cease operations on May 2 and terminate its 86 employees, saying company-issued warnings to that effect were merely requirements of its ongoing bankruptcy process.

Its app and marketing have new design elements that will debut in an ad campaign starting this week. It’s a call for people to step into the video service as the starting point in what’s become a chaotic and confusing digital media landscape.

In a letter sent Tuesday to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, the U.S. House Oversight and Reform subcommittee on economic and consumer policy said YouTube does not do enough to protect kids from material that could harm them. Instead it relies on artificial intelligence and creators’ self-regulation to decide what videos make it on to the platform, according to the letter.

Already in bankruptcy, video tech firm warns the California Employment Development Department that it could soon lay off all 86 of its employees.

ViacomCBS’s international networks division said it agreed to acquire Chilevisión from AT&T’s WarnerMedia. Financial terms were not disclosed. Local reports valued the transaction at between $14 million and $20 million. ViacomCBS Networks International said the acquisition will expand its footprint in Latin America and give it premium Spanish-language content for its Paramount Plus and Pluto TV streaming platforms.

After a year in which streaming became even more important to millions of Americans, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, Netflix still dominates the streaming universe in the U.S. But new competitors like HBO Max and NBCU’s Peacock are already eating into Netflix’s lead in the streaming wars.

It said the case is moot. There were no noted dissents, but Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately to say the court at some point will need to examine the power of tech media companies.

To tap into the burgeoning online video streaming marketplace, Facebook today introduced a new advertising unit formatted specifically to promote subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services via Facebook’s feeds. The new units, dubbed “Dynamic Ads for Streaming,” or DAS, are aimed at film and/or TV streaming advertisers, enabling them to automatically generate unique ads for each of their titles without the need to configure individual ads.

Google can let out a huge sigh of relief now that the Supreme Court has saved the tech giant from billions of dollars in damages in a long-lasting lawsuit brought by Oracle over computer code used to build the Android operating system.  As for big movie studios, while a copyright dispute about computer code might not seem like a subject of particular consequence for them, an opinion from Justice Stephen Breyer concluding that Google made fair use of copyrighted material will very likely be discussed for quite some time and be invoked in other contexts. As such, a few lines in particular from today’s opinion could have many in Hollywood quite tense about a future staked on intellectual property.

New TV jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for an Executive Producer, a digital sales coordinator and a graphics design manager for stations owned by Hearst, Gray and Nexstar.

While antitrust lawsuits and Capitol Hill hearings get headlines, Big Tech’s biggest threat in Washington may come from the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC is gearing up to flex its muscle, by both enforcing current rules and trying to draft new ones. And it may be able do so relatively quickly.

After a dip in the second quarter as spending paused in the early days of the pandemic, advanced TV ad impressions rebounded as 2020 went on, according to a report from Google. Advanced ad impressions fell 18% in the second quarter, despite a 14% increase in viewing. By the third quarter, advanced TV ad impressions were up 40% from the second quarter lows and continued to increase in the fourth quarter.

In television categories, the ensembles of Schitt’s Creek (for comedy series) and The Crown (for drama series) added to their string of awards. Other winners included Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit), Gillian Anderson (The Crown), Jason Sudeikis (Ted Lasso), Jason Bateman (Ozark) and Mark Ruffalo (I Know This Much Is True).

The FCC has released a list of the 300-plus wired and wireless ISPs who have been accepted into its Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program, which provides subsidized internet service and devices.

Coming 2 America did the seemingly impossible and put Amazon at the top of Nielsen’s typically Netflix-dominated weekly SVOD top 10 ranking list for the very first time during the week of March 1-7. The Amazon Studios film garnered more than 1.4 billion minutes of total viewing during its first four days of availability in the U.S., making it the most streamed SVOD title in country during the week ending March 7.

Beginning April 5, the 10-minute weekday digicast exclusively for Roku, Apple TV and streaming audiences will feature local and national headlines, the latest weather, in-depth reporting and entertainment and lifestyle programming.

Google this week began testing its controversial cookie-less tracking and targeting system, which relies on placing Chrome users into audience segments based on their web-browsing history, and then transmitting data about those segments directly to publishers. The company has enrolled “a small percentage” of users in the United States and other countries in tests of its new, so-called “Federated Learning of Cohorts.”

Getting into streaming is “pretty critical,” for TV news operations, says Jonathan Dunn, global leader of McKinsey’s consumer, technology and media practice. Revenue from advertising and distribution is in decline, he says, and the mainstream news outlets by and large have launched “nonthreatening, non-cannibalizing incremental products and services — a little bit of extra content to serve the super fans.” Suddenly, a lot of new ideas are coming to the surface.