Digital

ViacomCBS spent the afternoon unveiling details about Paramount+, its rebranded streamer that will launch May 4, and now here is a roundup of the television series and feature films that will be available on the service. Paramount+ will feature a content catalog of more than 30,000 episodes, 2,500 movie titles and 1,000-plus live sporting events and news coverage. More than 50 new series across multiple genres will bow during the next two years on the streamer, which promises 7,000 episodes of kids content, 5,000 of reality and 6,000 of comedy.

60 Minutes+ will debut March 4 with three separate episodes, the network announced Wednesday. The announcement was part of a rollout for Paramount+, which is replacing the CBS All Access service, offering Paramount movies as well as old and new programming from CBS and the Viacom stable of networks. Above, Jonathan Blakely, is executive producer of the new show that CBS hopes CBS hopes will expose the durable brand to a younger and more diverse audience.

The streaming business is about to get a lot more expensive, if early signs of subscriber interest in premium content on HBO Max and Disney Plus force competitors to ante up to attract and keep subscribers. The question is, can the legacy media companies spend enough on streaming content to keep pace with Netflix’s global audience and the near-bottomless wallets of Apple and Amazon.

Epix and Paramount Pictures today announced an expansion of their relationship that includes an extension of their existing U.S. pay TV output deal on mutually beneficial terms. Under the new agreement, many of Paramount’s theatrically-released films will premiere earlier than before in pay TV on Epix.

CNN Beijing-based reporter David Culver, CNN International producer Yong Xiong and photojournalist Natalie Thomas earned the Polk award for Foreign Reporting. Their win marks the first time in the 73-year history of the Polk Awards that the award for Foreign Reporting went to a television report. All previous TV awards were in the Television category. the award for Television Reporting went to Vice News Tonight correspondent Roberto Ferdman and his crew for breakthrough coverage of the shooting death of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor in a “no-knock” police raid in Louisville and the investigations that followed.

Al Jazeera, the media company funded by Qatar, is launching a news platform targeted to American conservatives. The company — which shuttered its unsuccessful left-leaning cable channel Al Jazeera America five years ago — says that the new digital platform, dubbed Rightly, is not aimed at the far right, but at “center-right folks who feel left out of mainstream media.”

AT&T says it’s listening to its homebound customers and is increasing the number of simultaneous streams available on its AT&T TV platform from three to 20. The telecom said the change will occur automatically for customers starting Thursday, and it won’t affect the price of the service.

Jeff Blackburn, whose 22-year run at Amazon culminated in a role overseeing the company’s streaming efforts, has wrapped up his one-year sabbatical and announced his exit from the company. The news, which came via a memo posted on the company’s intranet, was not unexpected.

The FCC is scheduled to vote at its next public meeting on opening an inquiry into whether it can or should require new distribution outlets, including websites and streaming services, to deliver emergency alerts.

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Facebook confirmed that they have agreed on amendments to proposed legislation to require the social network and Google to pay for Australian news that they feature. Facebook’s cooperation is a major victory in Australian efforts to make the two gateways to the Internet pay for the journalism that they use.

With his company’s vMVPD reporting just 16,000 customer additions in the fourth quarter, the Dish chairman concedes the service should have more market share than it does.

Microsoft is joining forces with two lobbying groups, the European Publishers Council and News Media Europe, along with two groups representing European newspaper and magazine publishers, which account for thousands of titles.

MobiTV, a key cog in pay-TV streaming services from T-Mobile and from an array of U.S. telcos and cable operators, is in need of a financial lifeline — in the form of more capital or cash from a white knight buyer — to keep the operation afloat beyond the short term, multiple industry sources familiar with the situation said.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for a digital sales manager and a chief meteorologist at Nexstar and Hearst stations.

The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee plans to hold a series of hearings on proposed bills to rein in “the rise and abuse of market power online” and adjust antitrust laws accordingly. Both Republicans and Democrats have concerns that antitrust laws were not nimble enough to capture Web giants’ efforts to buy start-up competitors before they became full-fledged competition and, importantly for antitrust law, before they triggered Hart Scott Rodino automatic antitrust reviews.

Vizio Ads introduced Universal Frequency Control, a product that limited the number of time a viewer sees the same spot when an advertiser buys commercial inventory through the smart-TV set maker’s platform.

“Smaller-scale services like Starz and AMC Networks’ might be better off folded into larger platforms,” writes Wells Fargo’s Steven Cahall.