Tech

Leading entertainment marketing and branding whiz Kira Cohen has joined DIFF Eyewear as a vice president, Variety has learned. Cohen will spearhead integrated marketing for the company, known for best-selling celebrity and Influencer collaborations as well as capsule collections based on properties by Marvel, Star Wars and Sesame Street. In addition to talent, the brand

A new trailer has dropped for “Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry,” a new documentary about the “Bad Guy” singer and songwriter, which will premiere in theaters and on Apple TV Plus in February 2021. The film is directed by award-winning filmmaker R.J. Cutler, who previously turned his camera on the worlds of high

As part of a broader strategy revamp, Condé Nast announced that Anna Wintour — who has served as the top editor of Vogue’s U.S. edition for 32 years — will assume the role of chief content officer. Wintour will also now serve as global editorial director of Vogue while continuing her oversight of Vogue U.S.

For parents worried about what weird or inappropriate stuff their kids might stumble across on YouTube or other online video apps, a new option is coming from Common Sense Media in early 2021. Sensical, a free, ad-supported streaming service, is the first for-profit venture from Common Sense Media. It’s targeted to come out in the

Quibi’s spectacular crash this year left the short-lived short-form video company’s employees looking for work. At least one of Quibi’s top executives has moved on: Ambereen Toubassy, who had been chief financial officer at the Jeffrey Katzenberg-founded startup, is joining enterprise-software firm Airtable as CFO in January 2021. Quibi had been among the customers for

Comcast customers with Xfinity X1 or Flex service can now watch HBO Max right from their cable boxes. While the cable giant was one of WarnerMedia’s launch partners for HBO Max (inking a deal at the 11th hour), Comcast subscribers previously have had to use other platforms like iOS, Android, Apple TV or PlayStation console

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle want to bend some ears under a new deal with Spotify to produce original audio programming for the global streaming platform. Under the multiyear pact, the couple’s newly formed Archewell Audio production company will create programming exclusively for Spotify. Among those will be podcasts hosted and produced by the Duke

Public.com, the social stock-investment app startup, tapped more celebrity backers for its $65 million Series C funding round. Among those are pro skateboarder Tony Hawk and EDM-pop duo the Chainsmokers, through their Mantis VC fund. Venture-capital firm Accel led the round for the third consecutive time, joined by Lakestar and prior investors Greycroft and Shari

News junkies often develop a tight relationship with a favorite TV anchor or cable-news outlet. Mosheh Oinounou  hopes some of them will turn instead to a “news concierge.” The former executive producer of “CBS Evening News” is among the many journalists discovering they don’t need a traditional media apparatus — say a TV-network control room

Anthony Padilla, one of YouTube’s OG creators, rose to internet fame with Smosh — performing goofy, comedic sketches with his longtime friend Ian Hecox. In the three years since exiting Smosh, Padilla has been a solo act on his YouTube channel, which just hit 5 million subscribers. While he still uses humor, Padilla has increasingly

“The Office” is flying back home to NBCUniversal — after it leaves Netflix at the end of 2020 — to alight exclusively on Peacock, the media company’s recently launched streaming service. With its Jan. 1, 2021, launch on Peacock, “The Office” will introduce new “Superfan Episodes” that include never-before-seen footage and deleted scenes in extended

Chinese regulators said on Monday that they would probe the proposed merger of game live-streaming companies DouYu and Huya, in relation to the deal’s possible violation of monopoly laws. The same day, it emerged that Alibaba had been fined for not properly reporting an increased share stake in retail chain Intime. The regulator also fined

Multiple Google services — including YouTube and Gmail — were unavailable for users across the globe Monday for about an hour in what appeared to be widespread technical problems. Also affected by the issues were Google Drive, Google Docs, Adwords and Adsense, Google Home, Nest and Google’s Chromecast services. User reports of problems in accessing

Vivendi, the parent company of Canal Plus and Universal Music Group, has entered exclusive negotiations with Gruner + Jahr/Bertelsmann to acquire 100% of Prisma Media, a leading publishing group in France. “This acquisition would perfectly fit with Vivendi’s strategy as a leading media, content and communications group, complementing the scope of its existing activities,” said

Reddit announced the acquisition of Dubsmash, a TikTok-like short-form video app whose mission is to “elevate underrepresented creators.” Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Dubsmash, founded in 2015, raised $20.2 million from investors including Eniac Ventures, Heartcore Capital, Index Ventures, Lowercase Capital and Sunstone Life, per Crunchbase. Dubsmash claims its app generates more than 1

Snap, parent company of Snapchat, appointed Liz Jenkins, CFO of Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine media company, to its board of directors Jenkins, a former exec at Sony PlayStation and Media Rights Capital, joined Snap’s board effective Dec. 10. She will serve on the audit committee. “We’re all thrilled that Liz is joining the board. We’re

“The Last of Us Part II” won the biggest prize of the night at the 2020 Game Awards. In addition to game of the year, Naughty Dog’s hit sequel won several other big awards throughout the night, including best direction, narrative, action/adventure game, audio design and performance for Laura Bailey. Other big winners were Square

The Game Awards are almost upon us, and, like most award shows, it’ll be looking a little different this year. The 2020 ceremony, hosted by Geoff Keighley, will be taking place on Thursday night in Los Angeles, Tokyo and London, airing from three in-studio, audience-less locations due to the coronavirus pandemic. And it may be

Disney Plus reached a new milestone, just over a year after its debut, hitting 86.8 million paid subscribers worldwide as of Dec. 2. That’s within shouting distance of the high end of the 90 million customers Disney originally expected to land — in year four of the streaming service’s life. The new sub count is

COVID-19 forever changed many aspects of our lives this past year, and our collective media and entertainment choices certainly were no exception. The global pandemic fueled a massive industry divide where in-home entertainment choices thrived, while many out-of-home entertainment players, quite literally, died. Whereas Netflix living-room streaming reached new heights, many live music venues and

Susan Rice, an alum of the Obama administration, will exit the Netflix board of directors to take a top policy position in president-elect Joe Biden’s White House. On Thursday, Biden announced the appointment of Rice as director of his Domestic Policy Council, which will give her broad influence over the incoming administration’s approach to immigration,

UPDATED: Snap and Twitter have teamed up to let Snapchat users directly share public tweets in a Snap for the first time — a pact the companies hope will boost engagement on both their platforms. In addition, Twitter said it will soon launch a small test of a similar feature to let iOS users share

Bad Robot Games, a division of J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company, hired industry veteran Mike Booth to run its newly created in-house game development studio. Booth, most recently social VR director at Facebook (which he left a year ago), is best known as creator and lead designer of first-person shooter/survival horror game “Left 4

Trioscope Studios, the U.S. animation shingle that created the unique hybrid animation technology used in Netflix’s World War II drama “The Liberator,” has partnered with Polish visual effects and sound studio Juice to launch Trioscope Europe. Michał Misiński, director and partner at Juice, will serve as CEO of the new potential animation powerhouse that will

The 2021 NewFronts week-long marketing pitchfest for digital media and video — which wants to expand its tent to TV networks as well — has been scheduled for next spring, with the event to reprise the virtual streaming format adopted in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic. Next year’s IAB NewFronts will be held May

AT&T inked a deal to sell its Crunchyroll anime business to Sony’s Funimation group for $1.175 billion in cash, the companies announced. Funimation, a joint venture between Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment (Japan)’s Aniplex, has been a major rival to Crunchyroll in the global market for Japanese anime fandom. AT&T, looking to reduce

UPDATED: Facebook illegally acquired competitors Instagram and WhatsApp in a blatant abuse of its monopoly power, lawsuits filed by the FTC in coordination with more than 40 state attorneys general allege. The suits seek to force Facebook to divest Instagram and WhatsApp. The lawsuits allege that Facebook broke U.S. antitrust laws in maintaining a monopoly

Twitch, the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform popular with gamers, said it’s trying to make the platform a safer and more inclusive community with the adoption of updated Hateful Conduct and Harassment policies. As part of the new policies, Twitch said, displaying the Confederate flag is now prohibited “given its historic and symbolic association with slavery and

If the winds are shifting around cable-news in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Fox News Media intends to cover them: The company plans to launch an advertising-supported streaming weather service in the third quarter of 2021. Fox Weather will debut initially as a mobile app next year, accompanied by a website and streaming service

YouTube has unveiled its lists of the Top Songs from 2020, with Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” topping the list. The full tallies appear below, along with other factoids — and check out Variety‘s feature on Ricch from last week’s “Hitmakers” awards, where he won Breakthrough Artist of the Year. Head here for more YouTube year-end