Tech

In today’s podcast news roundup, Vanity Fair’s film-noir podcast “Love Is a Crime” with Jon Hamm and Zooey Deschanel gets a premiere date; Wyatt Russell will star in QCode’s new action podcast “Classified”; comedian Dan Cummins signs with Stitcher; and more. DATES Condé Nast’s Vanity Fair announced its first-ever narrative podcast series, “Love Is a

Google, responding to critics urging the internet giant to improve child safety in its services, announced a series of changes to YouTube and Google services designed to provide additional protections for kids younger than 18. One of the biggest updates: YouTube will gradually start adjusting the default upload setting to the most private option available

Barstool Sports, the popular and controversial sports media and betting company, is in advanced talks with Major League Baseball on a deal to livestream games starting next season, Variety confirmed. The talks were first reported by the New York Post. Sources familiar with the discussions emphasized that multiple parties have expressed interest in nabbing the

AT&T has officially divested Crunchyroll, closing the sale of the anime business to Sony’s Funimation group — bringing together two erstwhile competitors under the Sony umbrella. The telco, looking for every opportunity to pay down its debt, sold Crunchyroll for $1.175 billion in cash paid at closing by Funimation Global Group, a joint venture between

DraftKings plans to buy Golden Nugget Online Gaming — letting it tap into the internet gambling company’s database of more than 5 million users — in an all-stock deal worth an estimated $1.56 billion. With the acquisition, DraftKings can “instantly reach a broader consumer base” of online-gaming fans, said DraftKings chairman CEO Jason Robins. “This

Roku is betting its fire-sale pickup of the shows from Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-lived, short-form startup, will continue to pay off for the streaming platform. On Aug. 13, the company will premiere 23 new Roku Originals (each of them from Quibi’s library) exclusively on the Roku Channel to stream for free with ads. It’s the

Dick Farrel, a right-wing Floridian radio host, has died of complications from COVID-19, according to local news station WPTV. Farrel was vocal about his opposition to vaccination and general skepticism about the severity of the pandemic. On July 1, he made a Facebook post claiming to personally know two people in critical condition with COVID-19

The extremely bad behavior of one Frontier Airlines passenger — who had to be restrained by being duct-taped to his seat — served as viral comedy gold for YouTube creator and comedian The Real Spark. The Real Spark, whose name is James Bates according to his Instagram, recorded a mock news interview pretending to be

Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez has taken El Rey Network — once a linear cable TV channel — and reformatted the Latino-focused brand for the streaming era in partnership with Cinedigm. Launched in 2013, El Rey Network at its peak reached over 40 million households stocked with a range of English-language scripted and unscripted programming catering to

Twitch is losing of its most senior execs: Chief operating officer Sara Clemens today announced internally that she will be leaving the Amazon-owned livestreaming company, Variety has confirmed. Clemens joined Twitch in January 2018, after previously serving as COO at Pandora and working at LinkedIn and Microsoft’s Xbox division. At an all-hands meeting Thursday, she

Apple is adding a series of new child-safety features to its next big operating system updates for iPhone and iPad. As part of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 updates later this year, the tech giant will implement a feature to detect photos stored in iCloud Photos that depict sexually explicit activities involving children. “This will

“Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” after getting axed by NBC, may be getting a second life at Roku. Roku, which has been bulking up its original programming slate, is in discussions with Lionsgate Television, the producer of the musical dramedy, for a movie special bringing back the original cast including star Jane Levy, Variety confirmed. Roku and

Amazon is postponing the return of employees to its corporate offices by about four months, as the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus has led to an uptick of infections. The ecommerce giant had been expecting most employees in the U.S. and other countries to come back to office locations the week of Sept. 7,

Match Group, the online dating company that recently spun off from Barry Diller’s IAC, generated $2.4 billion in revenue last year. Its biggest single expense? The 30% app store “tax” charged by Apple for purchases in Match’s apps, which include Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid — fees the company claims are on an annual run rate

A second season of animated series “Star Wars: The Bad Batch” is coming to Disney Plus in 2022. The renewal announcement comes as part one of the two-part finale of Season 1 of the show is set to debut on Disney Plus tonight at midnight Pacific. The 16-episode first season premiered on May 4, 2021,

Cent, a startup whose platform is designed to let creators make money using NFTs, announced $3 million in funding from a group of investors including Jeffrey Katzenberg and will.i.am. Other investors participating in the round included Zynga founder Mark Pincus, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and VC firms Galaxy Interactive and In/Visible Ventures. According to Cent

More than two and a half years after IMDb launched its free, ad-supported streaming service, IMDb TV is now available on iOS and Android mobile devices. The IMDb TV app launched Tuesday for Apple’s iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android mobile devices in the U.S. The addition of the two major mobile platforms comes after

Roku easily beat Wall Street forecasts for second-quarter 2021 earnings — posting record 81% revenue growth — but the net number of new active user accounts fell shy of analyst expectations. What’s more, the total number of hours streamed fell by 1 billion hours from the prior quarter. Total net revenue grew 81% year-over-year to

WarnerMedia is kicking up its investment in podcasts for HBO Max — announcing among other things that “Batman: The Audio Adventures” will be released exclusively on HBO Max in the fall. In partnership with Warner Bros. and DC, scripted audio original “Batman: The Audio Adventures” starring Jeffrey Wright as the Caped Crusader draws inspiration from

TikTok, the popular short-form video app that’s been widely copied by competing social platforms, may be about to return the favor by itself copying the “stories” vanishing-posts format. The app, owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, has kicked off a small pilot test of TikTok Stories in various countries outside the U.S., a company rep

Meghan Markle celebrated her 40th birthday on Wednesday by releasing a comedy video with Melissa McCarthy. The video, titled “40×40,” consists of Markle and McCarthy on a video call discussing the duchess’ new philanthropic endeavor, which involves Markle asking 40 friends to give 40 minutes of their time to mentor women “mobilizing back into the

Online grocery-delivery company Instacart has hired another high-level Facebook exec: Carolyn Everson, formerly the social network’s head of ad sales who left Facebook in June after a decade, is joining Instacart as president next month. Everson, who starts at Instacart on Sept. 7, is the first official hire by newly installed CEO Fidji Simo —

The gold rush surrounding non-fungible token (NFT) digital collectibles continues: MakersPlace, a marketplace for buying and selling digital artwork and other creations, has raised $30 million in funding from investors including rapper Eminem and Sony Music Entertainment. San Francisco-based MakersPlace, which launched in 2018, announced that it raised $30 million. The funding was led by Bessemer

Deepak Chopra, one of the best-known figures in the holistic-health movement, has signed a multi-project podcast development deal with Audible. Kicking off the collaboration is “Deepak Chopra’s Mind Body Zone: Living Outside the Box,” set to be released exclusively on Audible on Sept. 16. The 12-episode podcast features Chopra in conversation with a number of

After more than five years, FandangoNow is going away. Fandango, NBCUniversal’s movie-ticketing and home entertainment division, has merged FandangoNow with Vudu, the movie and TV rental and electronic sell-through service it bought from Wal-Mart last year. Starting Tuesday, the newly updated Vudu will replace FandangoNow as the official movie and TV store on Roku. Vudu

Starting this month, YouTubers in select countries can vie for a piece of the $100 million YouTube Shorts Fund — if their creations rise to the top of the heap of the most-viral clips. Every month, YouTube says, it will select thousands of eligible creators to claim a payment from the fund, which marks the

More than a year after HBO Max debuted, LG Electronics USA and WarnerMedia reached a deal to distribute the HBO Max app on recent-model LG smart TVs in the U.S. The arrival of HBO Max on LG smart TVs in the States comes after the streaming service went live on certain models of LG internet-connected

Facebook will host its first paid film premiere later this month: “The Outsider,” a documentary about the challenges and controversies involved in building the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum in lower Manhattan, will screen exclusively on the platform on Aug. 19. But for now, the one-off screening of “The Outsider” — to be available on

Vizio is adding two more premium streamers to its smart TVs: The company announced deals to soon provide Discovery Plus and ViacomCBS’s BET Plus to the Vizio SmartCast platform. Discovery Plus, the recently launched non-fiction streaming service, will be available on Vizio SmartCast by September. BET Plus, which offers thousands of hours of movies, TV

Activision Blizzard said longtime exec J. Allen Brack, president of Blizzard Entertainment, is leaving the company. Brack’s exit comes less than two weeks after Activision Blizzard was sued by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which alleged the company’s “pervasive frat boy workplace culture” resulted in women employees being continuously subjected to sexual