Skydance Sweetens Offer For Paramount Global

David Ellison’s Skydance has sweetened its offer to acquire Paramount Global, in an attempt to make it more palatable to the company’s Class B stockholders.

BRAND CONNECTIONS

DTVA was formed on the heels of challenging outcomes with features The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. Initially, DTVA was restricted from using established Disney legacy characters, but nevertheless had huge successes with new shows like The Wiggles and Adventures of the Gummi Bears, both of which became popular in syndication.

AI & THE MEDIA

New Streaming Service Lets Users Create Their Own Shows Using AI

Fable Studio, an Emmy-winning San Francisco startup, on Thursday announced Showrunner, a platform the company says can write, voice and animate episodes of shows it carries. Under the initial release, users will be able to watch AI-generated series and create their own content — complete with the ability to control dialogue, characters and shot types, among other controls.

CTV, Streaming Ad Experiences Face Ongoing Issues

With growing digital channels of video content — streaming, connected TV, and otherwise — advertising quality and ad experience are facing some issues, according to a new report from Comcast’s FreeWheel.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who started talking about more deals shortly after inking a massive merger, irritating Wall Street, has been publicly quiet on that front for a bit. Today, he said he sees opportunities in M&A with the company on a stronger financial footing and rolling out streamer Max globally to achieve necessary scale.

Is ‘Love Is Blind’ A Toxic Workplace?

Reality TV contestants are barely paid, and the experience can feel like abuse. Former cast members of Netflix’s megahit are speaking out — and calling for solidarity.

Siding against Amazon, a federal judge has ruled that the Federal Trade Commission can proceed with charges that the company used “dark patterns” to dupe people into signing up for Prime subscriptions, and also thwarted subscribers' attempts to cancel.

Peltz sold all of his Disney stock at roughly $120 a share, making about $1 billion on the position, according to a person familiar with the matter. The stock currently trades for about $100 per share. The exit comes weeks after Peltz’s Trian Partners lost a proxy battle at Disney in early April as shareholders reelected the company’s full slate of board nominees.

Why Reality TV Is On Life Support

Development and production have been sluggish since the strikes, leaving desperate workers in the lurch: "All of a sudden the faucet just turned off."

Robert De Niro Will Not Receive Service To America Award

Robert De Niro, announced as the winner of the NAB’s Leadership Foundation’s Service to America Leadership Award the day before, will not get the award. The NAB noted that the June 4 awards event is “proudly bipartisan,” and said on Wednesday the actor’s “recent high-profile activities will create a distraction.”

TVN’S MEDIA JOBS

New Jobs Posted To TVNewsCheck

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include an opening for a remote position as a national advertising sales account executive. Existing jobs posted include openings for a vice president-GM, a market manager and director of student media.

TVN Webinar: News, Sports And Remote Production In 2024

Technology leaders from NBC Regional Sports Networks, Sinclair, Gray Television, Hearst Television and Fox Television Stations discuss the benefits and challenges of remote production in an IP environment in a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch webinar on July 16 at 1 p.m. ET. Register here.

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