Tech

The Venice Film Festival and Italy’s Mymovies streaming platform have devised what the streamer’s chief Gianluca Guzzo calls “a unique model.” It’s an SVOD service called Biennale Cinema Channel that offers Italians Lido titles from past editions that never made it into local theaters and in September will also provide them with a selection of

German publishing group Axel Springer announced an agreement to acquire Politico, the 15-year-old digital political news outlet, a deal sources told Variety was worth slightly more than $1 billion. The price of the acquisition wasn’t disclosed. Politico’s owner, Robert Albritton, had been seeking $1 billion for the company, the New York Times reported earlier this

CNN is bringing more of its big-name TV talent into the podcast arena. The news network’s fall podcast lineup includes new limited-series podcasts from CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash, chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward, and senior political reporter/analyst Harry Enten, as well as a new companion podcast for HLN’s “Very Scary People” true-crime show

Why is Tinder wading into the crowded field of original content? Because its Gen Z user base wants more “immersive” experiences while surfing and swiping across the the dating app that is one of the internet’s most recognizable digital native brands. Tinder CEO Jim Lanzone explains why the dating app is embracing streaming video applications

Fox Corp. announced a strategic investment in Eluvio, giving it a minority stake in the startup whose platform is designed to distribute and monetize premium content using blockchain to verify ownership and provide access control. As part of the investment, the companies also announced that Eluvio will provide the underlying tech platform for Blockchain Creative

What, exactly, is Hulu? For years, its core brand identity in a nutshell has been: Watch the TV you know and love, streamed over the internet. Right now, analysts say, Hulu’s biggest advantage in the streaming wars is that it serves up most of the scripted programming released on broadcast networks. Yes, it has thrown

OnlyFans dropped plans to ban pornography from its service, less than a week after the U.K. content-creator subscription site had announced the change citing the need to comply with policies of banking partners. On Wednesday, the company said it “secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community,” suggesting that it has new agreements with

Fox Corp. is looking to leverage Tubi, its free-streaming outlet, as a new way to monetize a whole bunch of its sports-programming rights and content. Tubi, together with Fox Sports, has started the rollout of “Sports on Tubi,” a new and expanded hub for sports content on the platform. Tubi is adding 10 livestreaming sports

The founder and CEO of OnlyFans, the social site whose user and revenue growth boomed thanks to X-rated content, said the company would “absolutely” welcome pornographic material back on the site — but that for now, OnlyFans is at the mercy of banks that refuse to do business with it. OnlyFans founder and chief exec

Dan Patrick has teamed up again with iHeartRadio for the second annual “Next Great Podcast” search — a contest that will award $1,000 to each of 10 finalists, one of which will get picked up by iHeartMedia as an original series. Beginning Tuesday, Aug. 24, and running through Sept. 17, 2021, podcast creators can pitch

Spotify is flinging open the doors to its podcast-subscription program to anyone in the U.S., as the audio streamer rolls out new monetization options for podcast creators as part of its ongoing battle with Apple. Along with the broader availability, Spotify is expanding monthly subscription options creators can charge to 20 different price points —

Netflix is looking for a more global outlook on hiring and HR: The streamer has hired Sergio Ezama, a 20-year veteran of PepsiCo, as its new chief talent officer. Ezama will start at Netflix in September, leading the company’s human resources, recruiting, culture and coaching teams, reporting to COO and chief product officer Greg Peters.

T-Mobile is offering one year of Apple TV Plus — for free — as an additional perk to new and existing subscribers on most of its wireless plans. Starting Wednesday, Aug. 25, all T-Mobile customers on Magenta and Magenta Max plans can redeem the deal (as can smaller T-Mobile for Business, Sprint Unlimited Plus and

Taylor Swift started off this August week with a splash, posting her first TikTok. However, she apparently used the moment simply to remind everyone that the vinyl edition of her forthcoming re-recording of her album “Red” is now available for pre-sale, and she’s on on TikTok. “Lots going on at the moment,” she wrote, although

In today’s podcast news roundup, Westbroook’s “Red Table Talk” featuring the flagship series hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, inks an overall podcast pact with iHeartMedia; Season 3 of Payne Lindsey’s popular “Up and Vanished” series investigates an unsolved disappearance in Montana; Crooked Media pop-culture podcast hosted by Jason Concepcion gets a launch date; and more.

YouTube is boasting about its status as the biggest platform supporting the creator economy, announcing that it has surpassed 2 million creators in its YouTube Partner Program, which shares a cut of ad revenue that run on eligible channels. Under YouTube’s standard revenue-sharing terms for YPP, partner channels keep 55% of the money generated from

Angelina Jolie launched an Instagram account Friday, in what appeared to be the actor-producer-director-activist’s first-ever social media presence. She joined Instagram to call attention to the plight of people in Afghanistan — and specifically women and girls — following the Taliban’s rapid takeover of the country. Jolie’s viral first Instagram post included an image of

Political digital media company The Hill has been acquired by Nexstar Media, a broadcast TV and internet media company, for $130 million. Nexstar, which operates TV stations in 116 markets and 120 local websites, said the acquisition of The Hill would be immediately accretive to its operating results. Nexstar’s Networks Division operates NewsNation (formerly WGN

For the second year in a row, the flagship VidCon creator and fan convention in Anaheim, Calif., has been nixed because of the COVID pandemic. On Friday, VidCon announced that the 11th annual VidCon US event, which had been slated to take place Oct. 22-24, has been canceled. At the same time, VidCon has scheduled

OnlyFans is pulling the rug out from under the sex workers and performers who turned it into a billion-dollar business. And those who have relied on OnlyFans as their key source of income are furious at the about-face. As of Oct. 1, OnlyFans will ban all photos and videos depicting “sexually explicit conduct,” the company

Disney’s Asia-Pacific president Luke Kang and Greg Silverman, CEO & founder of Stampede Ventures are among the top executives who are confirmed as speakers at the September edition of APOS. They are joined by Kang Ho-sung, CEO of South Korean powerhouse CJ ENM, and Li Kaichen, head of WeTV, Chinese giant Tencent’s regional video offshoot.

Adobe announced a deal to acquire Frame.io, a cloud-based video collaboration platform, in a transaction worth $1.275 billion. Adobe said the deal is expected close during the fourth quarter of its 2021 fiscal year (which ends in late November), subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions. Upon close, Frame.io co-founder and CEO Emery Wells

Snap hired Konstantinos “KP” Papamiltiadis as the company’s first VP of platform partnerships. The nine-year Facebook veteran will lead efforts to on-board Snapchat partners ranging from individual augmented-reality creators to companies that incorporate the app’s camera and AR technology into their apps. At Facebook, KP most recently served as VP of platform partnerships. He will

Facebook removed the profile of a man who claimed he had a bomb in his truck near the U.S. Capitol building, in addition to taking down the livestream during which he made the threats. Floyd Ray Roseberry surrendered to Capitol police officers Thursday afternoon, according to the New York Times, after several hours of negotiations

OnlyFans, which has amassed a base of more than 130 million users largely for adult-oriented subscription fan pages, announced that it will ban sexually explicit content this fall. The U.K.-based company said it is making the changes “to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers,” in a statement provided to Variety.

UPDATED: The Federal Trade Commission filed an amended antitrust complaint against Facebook, after its earlier lawsuit was dismissed over insufficient evidence that the social media giant held a monopoly. The agency said the amended lawsuit includes “additional data and evidence to support the FTC’s contention that Facebook is a monopolist that abused its excessive market

ITsArt, a new streaming platform dubbed the ‘Netflix of Italian Culture,’ is set to roll out across Europe in October and in the U.S. next year.  Commissioned by Italy’s culture ministry, the ad-supported and transactional-VoD service providing access to Italian culture was conceived during the pandemic when Italy’s cultural institutions suffered from a drop in

Los Angeles chefs Niki Nakayama and Jordan Kahn are some of the country’s most innovative chefs, and they put their creativity to the test for a recent collaboration featuring the new Lyriq electric SUV, with their efforts showcased in two mini-documentaries on the 60 Second Docs platform. Nakayama, whose kaiseki restaurant N/Naka has won international

Five people, including three former Netflix employees, used confidential subscriber growth information to illegally trade in Netflix stock, netting $3.1 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint filed on Wednesday. Sung Mo “Jay” Jun, 49, of Bellevue, Wash., and three others have also been criminally charged in federal court in Seattle with three

ViacomCBS has decided to shut down the standalone version of Paramount Plus in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland — less than a year after launching the streamer in the Nordics — and will merge it with the new SkyShowtime service coming in 2022. On Wednesday, Comcast and ViacomCBS announced their formation of a joint venture