Tech

Fans of HBO’s “His Dark Materials” can now get their own personal, customized daemon — an augmented-reality creature companion at their side on Apple iOS devices and Apple Watches to encourage them to take care of themselves throughout the day. The premium programmer launched the “His Dark Materials: My Daemon” app to promote Season 2

Amazon’s Twitch hired Angela Hession, a 20-year veteran of Microsoft, as the live-streaming service’s global VP of trust and safety. Hession most recently served as Microsoft’s global head of Xbox trust and safety, where she oversaw the creation of Xbox’s Project Artemis, a “grooming detection” program to identify online predators attempting to lure children for

Spotify, keeping the pedal to the metal in its aggressive podcast buildout strategy, has acquired podcast publishing and advertising company Megaphone for $235 million in cash. Spotify is buying Megaphone, formerly known as Panoply Media, from media company Graham Holdings. Megaphone provides podcast hosting and ad-insertion capabilities for publishers and targeted ad sales for marketers.

NENT Group, the leading Nordic streaming company, is set to launch in Poland and the U.S. in 2021 and will roll out in five more European markets by the end of 2023. Viaplay, NENT Group’s streaming service, will be launched abroad as a tailored service offering premium Nordic drama series. The company is expecting to

Dish Network announced that it will permanently shut down all of Sling Media’s Slingbox services and end support for the devices in two years, at which point they’ll no longer work. On Monday, Dish’s Sling Media unit announced that Slingbox servers will be permanently taken offline 24 months from Nov. 9, 2020. “Until then, most

Will legions of remote-wielding TV viewers start to think of their set-top box or broadband hub as a kind of shopping cart? NBCUniversal struck a partnership with PayPal that it says will make the relatively new concept of buying items suggested by TV programs easier and quicker, part of a growing bid by the Comcast-owned

(Editor’s Note: Eivor can be played as either male or female, so this story will use they/them pronouns.) When “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” debuts on Tuesday, players will step into the shoes of the Viking Eivor, the latest hero in a long line of complex playable protagonists that anchor Ubisoft’s massive video game franchise. The game finds

Kevin Mayer, previously a top Disney executive and — briefly — CEO of TikTok, joined Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries investment firm as a senior adviser, focusing on the media sector. Mayer, who worked at the Walt Disney Co. for more than two decades and steered the launch of Disney Plus a year ago, will focus

Gaming and lifestyle organization 100 Thieves has joined the Call of Duty League as the Los Angeles Thieves, it was announced on Friday morning. The team will operate out of the 100 Thieves Cash App Compound in Los Angeles, which the organization unveiled earlier this year. The LA Thieves will mark the 13th franchised team

Podcast studio QCode has announced several key hires and promotions as the company becomes a growing player in the digital and adaptive filmed content space. Sandra Yee Ling has been named vice president of production and Michele Zárate as director of development. Tess Ryan has been promoted to producer and Deron Johnson to head of

Former TikTok executive Gisselle Ruiz has joined WME as head of inclusion. Ruiz will work with senior leaders to assist in recruitment and retention efforts and engagement with strategic partnerships meant to support diversity, equity and inclusion goals. WME said Ruiz’s skill set will be “instrumental to the agency’s commitment to be an anti-racist and

Steve Bannon’s “War Room Pandemic” account was permanently suspended by Twitter, after the ex-Trump strategist said in a video Thursday that the president should execute Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray. According to Twitter, the company suspended Bannon’s @WarRoomPandemic account for violating its policy banning the “glorification of violence.” Facebook and YouTube also

Filipino media network ABS-CBN Global announced the relaunch of its lifestyle content brand Myx. The relaunch will position it as a trendsetting brand with new shows and expanded digital distribution. The move hopes to reflect the shifting needs of Filipino Americans. “We’re thrilled to bring exciting new content and digital experiences to the nearly 10

After dipping its toes in production in the Middle East, Netflix on Thursday launched its most ambitious Arabic show to date with supernatural drama “Paranormal,” directed by young Egyptian helmer Amr Salama (“Sheikh Jackson”). The six-episode series out of Egypt, which is set in the 1960s, is based on bestselling Arabic horror books by late

The spoken words of music royalty will be the centerpiece of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s first podcast. The “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Vault,” premiering Friday (Nov. 6), will feature replays of the most famous induction ceremony speeches culled from the org’s past 35 years. The podcast is being produced

Comcast wants its video-streaming technology to become embedded in the guts of smart TVs to power internet media apps — and retailing giant Walmart may be among its first partners in the effort. Walmart and Comcast have engaged in very early discussions about potentially creating a cobranded, internet-connected TV that would run a version of

Snapchat is now letting everyone on its platform share the number of subscribers to their accounts — a move designed to support creators who rely on building large followings to build their business on the app. “We’ve listened to feedback from our creator community and many of them expressed interest in having the option to

Disney Plus has signed a joint subscription deal in Brazil with Globoplay, the ambitious and fast-growing SVOD platform of giant Brazilian broadcast group Globo, the biggest media company in Latin America. Announced Tuesday, the strategic partnership sees Disney Plus being made available for purchase in Brazil by Globoplay via a combined subscription offer for both

“Baby Shark,” the annoyingly catchy kids’ tune that took the world by storm two years back, is now the king of YouTube, having topped 7 billion views on the platform (and counting). The official two-minute “Baby Shark Dance” music video — with its trademark, “doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo” refrain — dethrones “Despacito,” the

Spotify will add the input of artists and labels to its personalized recommendation process, the company announced in a blog post Monday. The process will enable artists and labels to promote a new single, for example, over songs that Spotify’s algorithm might have suggested otherwise. “In this new experiment, artists and labels can identify music

For the first time, the Apple TV streaming-video app is coming to the Xbox platform, available on Microsoft’s next-generation consoles when they are set to start shipping next week. The new Xbox consoles are Microsoft’s first major introduction since the Xbox One came out in 2013: The entry-level Xbox Series S is priced at $299

Millennial and Gen Z consumers watch less traditional television than their elders, and the pay-TV sector continues to face a seeming death by a thousand cuts with the steady sting of cord-cutting: A projected 6.6 million U.S. households are expected to have canceled pay-TV service by the end of 2020. Amid this challenging backdrop, what’s

TikTok has announced a new agreement with Sony Music Entertainment to make songs from the world’s second-largest music company widely available across the short-form video app, it announced in a blog post Monday morning. According to the announcement, with this deal, the TikTok creator community will have access to sound clips from Sony Music’s giant

With just days to go before the U.S. election, politics was on everybody’s mind during an online panel “Data as the 21st Century’s Most Valuable Commodity,” held at Ji.hlava Intl. Documentary Film Festival. “Digital platforms are governing public debate. It’s a good example of the helplessness of the political sector,” said Philipp Staab, professor of

Apple One officially launched Friday (Oct. 30), offering customers discounts on bundles of up to six of the company’s subscription services — and Apple will now push the bundles to any new subscriber who signs up for its Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade game or Apple News Plus packages. The savings from the

Israel’s leading pay TV group Yes Studios has unveiled a first-look teaser for its new drama series “The Chef” in the run-up to the series’ local launch on Yes TV in November. Created by Erez Kavel and Orit Dabush, “The Chef” was selected at the Zurich Festival, Berlin TV Series Festival and the SerienCamp Festival

Netflix is raising prices for U.S. streaming subscribers, coming as it faces arguably its stiffest competition to date and while millions of Americans are struggling financially amid the COVID pandemic. Is this really the right time for Netflix to flex its pricing power in its biggest market? According to some Wall Street analysts, the answer

“When you guys put somebody in the car, please don’t be too nice,” President Trump is seen telling an assembly of police officers at the beginning of a recent MeidasTouch video. That clip is immediately followed by his spokesperson saying the president was “making a joke,” then by footage of police roughing up protesters last

Twitter beat Wall Street financial forecasts for the third quarter of 2020, but anemic user growth for the period and an uncertain advertising forecast for Q4 amid U.S. elections sent the company’s stock tumbling more than 16%. The social-media company reported a net gain of 1 million monetizable daily active users for Q3, to 187

Apple raked in record revenue of $64.7 billion for the September 2020 quarter, although that was up just 1% year-over-year. The tech giant’s Service business revenue rose 16%, to $14.55 billion in the period, also a record. However, sales of Apple’s flagship iPhone plunged in the quarter — down 21% — ahead of the rollout