Digital

The sites are key conduits for communication and information. Here’s how they plan to handle the challenges facing them before, on and after Tuesday.

Sony is close to finalizing a deal to buy US-based anime streaming service Crunchyroll fro AT&T for nearly $1 billion, according to a report from Nikkei Asia. Nikkei says Sony negotiated exclusive rights to bid for the streaming service and its 3 million paying subscribers earlier this year, and the two companies have now “entered into final negotiations.” Although an asking price is unclear, Nikkei notes that Sony could end up spending “more than 100 billion yen” on the company — around $957 million.

Alphabet’s Google must tell a district court how it will respond to a federal antitrust lawsuit by mid-November, with the two sides making initial disclosures later in the month, U.S. Judge Amit Mehta said in a brief order on Friday. The U.S. Justice Department sued Google on Oct. 20 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing the $1 trillion company of illegally using its market muscle to hobble rivals in the biggest challenge to the power and influence of Big Tech in decades.

The video platform’s virtual pay TV service, YouTube TV, has surpassed the 3 million paid subscriber mark. This revelation comes just seven months after Google announced the passing of the 2 million mark for the vMVPD service. That’s an indicator of accelerated growth, as that February 2 million announcement came a full two years after the platform launched.

The Drudge Report’s traffic fell 45% year-over-year in September, extending its nine-month losing streak in 2020, according to Comscore data. The data shows that visits to the conservative news aggregator was down, but one conservative figurehead who did not see declines is Dan Bongino, a Fox News contributor who launched his own aggregator site last year to compete with Drudge’s.

While all five — Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Facebook, Apple and Twitter — exceeded analyst expectations, gloomy forecasts and other uncertainties led to share-price declines for all but Alphabet in after-market trading.

Netflix is raising the subscription price to its standard and premium plans in the U.S., the first such hikes at the streaming giant since January 2019. The service confirmed Thursday that it is raising the price of its HD Standard plan to $13.99 from $12.99, and its 4K Premium plan to $17.99 from $15 over the next two months. The prices take effect today for new members, with current subscribers to be notified 30 days ahead of their price increase based on their billing cycle.

Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet rallied on Thursday ahead of earnings reports from the group of technology heavyweights that has helped keep Wall Street in positive territory this year, despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Judith Sheindlin is headed to streaming. The Judge Judy star’s untitled new court show (aka Judy Justice) has been greenlighted by Amazon Studios to stream exclusively on IMDb TV, Amazon’s free, ad-supported streaming service.

In a year crammed with arresting news images, local broadcaster Tegna has started to leverage photos and videos shot by its audience. Over the past five months, Tegna station reporters and producers have been combing through photos and videos that people have submitted to their CMS using a feature in their stations’ mobile apps called Near Me.

Facebook critic UltraViolet took out a six-figure TV, Pandora and online ad campaign arguing that Facebook is bad for Democracy. The ads urge the social media site to shut down hate groups, pages and online events that promote violence or spread disinformation.

Competing with the Trump era’s deranged reality show, American television has a million viewing options and a lot less worth watching.

Locast, the nonprofit streaming service focused on local TV stations, said Wednesday that it has debuted in its 24th U.S. market, Indianapolis. The streaming service also said it now has 1.7 million users.

The CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google were scolded by Republicans at a Senate hearing Wednesday for alleged anti-conservative bias in the companies’ social media platforms and received a warning of coming restrictions from Congress. Lawmakers of both parties are assessing the companies’ tremendous power to disseminate speech and ideas, and are looking to challenge their long-enjoyed bedrock legal protections for online speech.

Following the exit of several top executives, Netflix’s head of global television, Bela Bajaria, has set her new global leadership team and overhauled the streaming service’s U.S. operations under her purview, creating a new overall team in the process.

The Senate Commerce Committee has summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai to testify for a hearing Wednesday. The executives agreed to appear remotely after being threatened with subpoenas. With the presidential election looming, Republicans led by President Donald Trump have thrown a barrage of grievances at Big Tech’s social media platforms, which they accuse without evidence of deliberately suppressing conservative, religious and anti-abortion views. Above (l-r): Dorsey, Pichai and Zuckerberg.