Will Smith’s quarantine series “Will From Home” is getting a second run on Snapchat, with Season 2 centered on uplifting stories celebrating everyday American heroes. Available exclusively on Snapchat, “Will From Home” Season 2 will be a special 10-episode holiday edition, set to launch Monday, Dec. 14, 2020, with new episodes airing daily. The first
Tech
In a tumultuous year, Google’s top-trending searches for 2020 were led in the U.S. by queries for election results and the coronavirus. Also ranking in Google’s top 10 overall trending U.S. searches were the shocking deaths of Kobe Bryant, the NBA star and Oscar winner who died in a January helicopter crash at 41; actor
Next January, iHeartMedia is bringing back the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards for the third year in a row, with the company announcing the full list of nominees in 27 categories. The virtual awards event, to be broadcast Jan. 21, 2021, will be recorded from multiple locations as nominees won’t be able to attend in person because
UMC, the AMC Networks-owned streaming service focused exclusively on Black television and film that was created by BET founder Robert L. Johnson, will be rebranded Allblk in January 2021 with a new look and feel. Johnson’s RLJ Entertainment launched UMC (Urban Movie Channel) in November 2014. The service became part of AMC Networks two years
YouTube has supported HDR — high dynamic range, a video format offering a sharper picture, more vibrant colors and higher contrast — since 2016, but until now only for on-demand videos. On Tuesday, it’s launching HDR for YouTube livestreams, making it the first major video platform to support the tech (available to creators who use
AT&T CEO John Stankey asserted that the release of Warner Bros.’s full 2021 movie slate on HBO Max and in theaters at the same time will be a “win-win-win” — for WarnerMedia, consumers and partners. Stankey acknowledged criticism that AT&T and WarnerMedia have faced from theater owners: “I know there’s a lot of noise out
ViacomCBS has inked a broad, multiyear agreement with Amazon Web Services under which the media conglomerate will put its entire global broadcast TV operations into the AWS cloud. The companies touted the partnership as among biggest cloud-based initiatives in the media and entertainment industry to date. As part of the agreement, ViacomCBS plans to migrate
Simon Fuller is fully on board the 5G hype train: The British music impresario believes the next-gen wireless technology is a game-changer that will transform the way fans experience music and entertainment. Fuller, creator of “American Idol” and founder of XIX Entertainment, formed a partnership with Verizon to develop experimental new entertainment experiences using the
SiriusXM will be home to “The Howard Stern Show” for a lot longer. On Tuesday, the broadcasting company announced it will continue to exclusively host and produce the longtime radio host’s show for the next five years. SiriusXM will also hold the rights to Howard Stern’s audio and video archives for an additional seven years.
iHeartMedia has renewed and extended its relationship with Charlamagne Tha God, co-host of New York’s Power 105’s nationally syndicated radio show “The Breakfast Club,” the company announced Tuesday. Under the new five-year agreement, Charlamagne will continue his trademark interview style on the radio show, which airs weekdays from 6-10 a.m. ET and is heard by
Monthly, a fledgling Silicon Valley startup, has tapped celebrities and well-known creators in its bid to break into the e-learning space with its model of immersive, 30-day online classes. On Tuesday, Monthly (monthly.com) is launching a new batch of six classes, which include both video instruction and hands-on projects. Those are led by producer superstar
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., granted an injunction on Monday that will block the Trump administration from shutting down TikTok. There are now two injunctions preventing the administration from disabling the popular short-form video service. A judge in Philadelphia ordered a similar injunction on Oct. 30, in response to a suit brought by three
Roku announced that financial experts Prof. Laurie Simon Hodrick and GP Capital Partners’ Gina Luna were elected to its board of directors. Both women also join the streaming-platform company’s audit committee. “We are thrilled to welcome Laurie and Gina to Roku’s board of directors,” Anthony Wood, Roku’s founder, CEO and chairman, said in a statement.
The final tweet on Chadwick Boseman’s Twitter account, announcing the “Black Panther” star’s death at 43, was the most-retweeted post on the platform of the year — and the most-liked of all time. The actor died Aug. 28 from colon cancer. The statement from Boseman’s account that day, as of Monday (Dec. 7), had 2.1
Milan’s venerable La Scala opera house on Monday will stage a globally distributed TV gala event featuring its mask-wearing orchestra in the empty venue and a multimedia medley of arias and other performances by opera, ballet, pop music and screen stars, substituting its canceled season opener. Due to the pandemic, La Scala has been forced
Jim Keller is exiting Hulu after almost seven years to join Discovery as executive VP, digital ad sales and advanced advertising — coming on board less than a month before the debut of the cabler’s Discovery Plus direct-to-consumer service. In the new role, Keller will lead the strategic development of all Discovery’s U.S. digital ad
Dan Abrams is eager to turn a burgeoning interest in bourbon and whiskey into a new line of business. The entrepreneur and legal journalist’s Abrams Media has acquired the spirts review site t8ke.review and will use it to launch Whiskey Raiders, a new online resource that Abrams says will appeal to both whiskey aficionados and
Welcome to my fifth annual “Fearless Five”: the five companies that made the boldest and most audacious entertainment-media-tech moves of the year. This doesn’t mean these companies ultimately will be the most successful. What it does mean is that they were the most fearless and made the biggest, boldest bets in 2020. Each can be
Rooster Teeth, the WarnerMedia-owned entertainment division focused on sci-fi, gaming and fandom, is boosting its studio development team with the hires of two execs from the TV world. Rooster Teeth Studios has recruited unscripted TV development and production veteran Wayne Sampson, most recently at NBCUniversal, as head of unscripted content. Scripted comedy exec Emily Hughes,
With 3.6 million subscribers, New Music Friday is hardly Spotify’s most popular playlist (that would be Today’s Top Hits, which tops 27 million). And with 100 new songs or remixes each week sprawled across multiple genres, it doesn’t provide the sort of focused punch of powerful genre-specific playlists like Rap Caviar. Yet it’s become one of the
A live interview with an AI influencer and a virtual gathering of top internet personalities from around the world kicked off the inaugural edition of VidCon Now Asia on Thursday. Presented as one of the new additions to the Singapore Media Festival, VidCon Asia is the local, online version of the popular event for digital
Iconic drag queens Trixie Mattel and Katya will co-host the 2020 YouTube Streamy Awards — for which the duo will tool around L.A. in a party bus as they honor the year’s top digital video creators and productions. The 10th Annual Streamy Awards will livestream exclusively on YouTube on Saturday, Dec. 12, at 6 p.m.
Janet Rollé, general manager of Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment, is joining BuzzFeed’s board of directors — the first woman to serve on its board. At the same time, Andreesen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon, who has been a BuzzFeed board member since 2014, is stepping down from the company’s board. BuzzFeed founder/CEO Jonah Peretti announced the changes
Technology has stepped up its game when it comes to dealing with various production challenges brought on by COVID-19. Given the two-week quarantine requirements for entering Canada, not all producers and writers are able (or willing) to travel to set anymore. Instead, they connect via services such as Evercast, which allow execs to remotely view
The last less-regulated corner of China’s highly censored internet is about to get a lot less interesting. Chinese authorities have issued new regulations to clamp down on live-streaming, one of the country’s most lucrative and fast-growing entertainment and e-commerce sectors, seeking to use AI and big data to promote only “positive” broadcasts in line with
Roddy Ricch — who is Variety’s Breakthrough Artist of the Year in our just-released 2020 Hitmakers issue — topped Apple Music’s 2020 year-end album and songs charts, according to statistics released by the company. For the first time, Apple Music will share the Top 100 2020: Most-Read Lyrics chart, and the first Shazamed locations of
Spotify’s stock jumped 12.6% Wednesday — closing at an all-time high price of $320.89 per share — as investors rallied around new features the audio-streaming platform introduced and data signaling its podcast push is gathering steam. The surge pushed Spotify’s market capitalization to $60.8 billion, with the stock more than doubling in value since the
For just $20 a month, Philo offers consumers more than 60 cable channels. It’s a simple value proposition that has helped this venture stand out in a crowded marketplace of so-called virtual MVPDs. And as Philo CEO Andrew McCollum explains, he’s not about to make the mistake that has the prices of many of his
Amazon is in negotiations to buy Wondery, the four-year-old independent podcast producer and network, in a deal worth over $300 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. Hernan Lopez, formerly CEO of 21st Century Fox’s Fox International Channels, founded Wondery in 2016 with the mission of producing high-quality scripted and unscripted podcast entertainment. Lopez declined to
Hulu has expanded its Watch Party feature — letting you watch TV shows and movies in groups of up to eight people — to all of its subscribers. The Disney-controlled streamer first launched Watch Party in May, initially available only to subs on the $11.99/month no-ads plan. Now, Hulu has opened it up to customers