Digital

Sinclair Broadcast Group said it sold its controlling interest in Chicago sports network Stadium to Jerry Reinsdorf’s Silver Chalice. Reinsdorf is the owner of the Chicago White Sox of Major League Baseball and the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Chalice has owned a stake in Stadium since it was started in 2017.

Netflix has threatened to preemptively remove films and TV shows from its U.K. library to avoid falling foul of new streamer regulations being introduced by the British government. Ministers in the U.K. want media regulator Ofcom to police streaming giants in a similar way to traditional broadcasters, meaning the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video could be fined up to £250,000 ($310,000) for carrying harmful content. Pictured: Queen Cleopatra is a Netflix documentary that has attracted criticism.

The announcement of Comcast’s new virtual MVPD service, Now TV, comes at a pivotal moment for the media giant. The pay TV giant’s Xfinity cable service can’t stop shedding subscribers. It lost 2.1 million subs versus Q1 2021, 3.8 million versus Q1 2020, and it’s down 5.7 million subscribers when compared with the number held in 2018. In comparison, broadband subscribers grew by 5.6 million over the last five years, even if growth has plateaued in the last year as Comcast reaches the limits of its geographic footprint.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for a morning news anchor/reporter, evening meteorologist, latenight news anchor/reporter, news reporter, transactional sales manager and multimedia journalist.

The era of consolidation in podcasting seemed like it might have effectively started and ended when Spotify, Amazon, SiriusXM and others gobbled up major names in the space in an effort to diversify their audio lineups. But now, four years after Spotify got into podcasting by buying Anchor and Gimlet Media, we’re witnessing the dawn of a second wave. This time around, the companies up for sale are smaller production studios and networks.

Its president, Brad Smith, said companies needed to “step up” and governments needed to “move faster” as artificial intelligence progressed.

Comcast Corp. CEO Brian Roberts has a penchant for lining up a huge deal around every five years or so. It was 2018 the last time he made a big acquisition, and Wall Street is ready for his next dramatic move. Gaming and streaming could be in the cards.

AFC Richmond scored a goal for Apple TV+ on the Nielsen streaming charts for the week of April 24 to April 30. Ted Lasso managed its highest weekly viewership ever, moving its way up the list to No. 6 overall and No. 4 among original streaming programming with 795M minutes viewed. Meanwhile, Netflix dominated the Top 5 overall spots, with The Diplomat holding onto first place.

A new Convergence Research overview report on U.S. streaming (OTT) and pay TV trends highlights continued but slowing growth in streaming revenue, in an analysis of 50-plus providers (80 services) led by Netflix, Disney (including Hulu), Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon.

At $1.66 a month, the discount is $30 off the annual $50 price for the base Peacock Premium package.

Hulu’s parents, Walt Disney Co. and Comcast, are negotiating to end their troubled marriage. Comcast can require Disney, which owns two-thirds of Hulu, to buy its one-third stake, or Disney can require Comcast to sell under a deal starting in 2024. Hulu has a minimum valuation of $27.5 billion under the agreement.

Emma Miller, SVP, scripted development & programming for AMC Networks (left), has joined Netflix as director, overall deals, series (U.S. and Canada) reporting into Nne Ebong, VP, overall deals, series. Carrie Gillogly, SVP scripted programming for AMC Networks (right), also is leaving the company to join Netflix as director, drama series, (U.S. and Canada) reporting into Jinny Howe, VP, drama series.

Meta has begun its third round of layoffs as part of the company’s multibillion-dollar plan to save costs. The latest round of cuts targets members of Meta’s business groups and follows a previous round of layoffs in April that affected employees in technical roles. About 10,000 workers will lose their jobs between the April and May cuts, following the company’s first round in November that affected 11,000 employees.

Elon Musk’s much-publicized Twitter Spaces kickoff event, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announcing his run for president, struggled with technical glitches and a near half-hour delay Wednesday. The billionaire Twitter owner said the problems were due to “straining” servers because so many people were trying to listen to the audio-only event. But even at their highest, the number of listeners listed topped out at around 420,000, far from the millions of viewers that televised presidential announcements attract.

The media start-up’s new backers include Henry Kravis, a founder of the private-equity giant KKR, and Jerry Yang, a Yahoo founder.

Early Wednesday, some started noticing a change to the credits on films appearing on the just-renamed Max streamer from Warner Bros. Discovery. Instead of individually listing writers, directors and producers, the new Max format had lumped them all together. By Wednesday afternoon, the presidents of the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America West had issued a strongly worded joint statement condemning the “creator” credit.

The Mother continues to lead all of Netflix titles for the second consecutive week with 92 million hours viewed during the May 15-21 viewing window. Thus, pushing the show to hit more than 90 million views. Netflix calculates total views by dividing the total hours watched, (178.1 million hours) by total runtime (1.96 hours).

Dr. Vivek H. Murthy urges immediate action from policymakers, tech companies and parents to safeguard against potential harms.

Comcast is rolling out Now TV, a streaming offering aimed at what it calls “the value-conscious consumer who wants an entertainment product.” For $20 a month, the service includes more than 40 live channels, among them A&E, AMC, Hallmark and selections from Warner Bros. Discovery’s portfolio, along with 20-plus free, ad-supported TV (FAST) channels from NBC, Sky and Xumo Play. A subscription to Peacock Premium is also included at no extra charge. Now TV is available to customers paying for internet service from Comcast’s Xfinity brand.

Josh McIvor has been promoted to global general manager of MGM+, the Amazon-owned streamer that relaunched in January after previously being known as Epix. As global general manager, he will report to Chris Brearton, vice president of Prime Video Studios corporate strategy.

The streamer intros an “extra member” option priced at $7.99/month for adding access to people outside the account holder’s household.

The lawsuit by TikTok, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, follows one filed last week by five content creators that looks to overturn Montana’s ban on the video sharing app. They made similar arguments including that the state of Montana has no authority to take action on matters of national security. Both lawsuits were filed in federal court in Missoula.

The Spanish-language media company says the acquisition will strengthen Entravision’s service offerings in Europe and the Middle East, while adding a team of e-commerce, entertainment and gaming industry specialists.