Tech

Amazon Prime Video is to live stream a “behind closed doors” tournament for British tennis players in the U.K. and Ireland, while Tennis Channel has the rights in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and Eurosport will stream it in the rest of Europe. Players will include Andy Murray, who competes in a tournament for

If there’s one thing that can be said of CISAC, the global confederation of performing rights societies, its recent presidents have impeccable artistic pedigree: The organization announced today that Abba cofounder Björn Ulvaeus has been elected as the next president, replacing electronic music pioneer Jean Michel Jarre, who is stepping down from the post after

Rony Abovitz is stepping down as CEO of Magic Leap, nine years after he founded the augmented-reality company — which has raised around $3 billion but has found little commercial success. His exit comes after Magic Leap decided to shift its focus to AR applications for businesses, sidelining plans for consumer-oriented hardware. Last month, Abovitz

Disgraced Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing has spent the past two years off the radar following an explosive 2018 tax evasion scandal. But she is expected to reemerge soon in a period drama on Chinese streamer Youku. The $70 million-budgeted TV series “Win the World” is one of the most expensive TV series ever to be

President Donald Trump said he signed an executive order to “defend free speech” from social-media companies by limiting their legal protections from liability — an action he took two days after Twitter applied fact-checking labels to two of his inaccurate tweets about mail-in ballots. The White House announced Trump’s order seeking to limit legal protections

UPDATED: Reports by U.S. users of problems with Amazon’s website spiked Thursday afternoon, with people across the country complaining that it was inaccessible before the issues were resolved less than an hour later. According to DownDetector.com, problem reports for Amazon.com began soaring at just after 3 p.m. ET, with 77% reporting issues in accessing the

When Disney Plus launched last November — with all 30 seasons of “The Simpsons” — it was immediately met with a backlash from fans. The problem: Older, pre-HD episodes were truncated to fit into a 16-by-9 frame, killing many of the show’s visual jokes. Disney quickly pledged to restore the classic segments to their 4:3

If you want to put your finger on the pulse of China’s Gen Z, you’d best prepare a hot compress for your bleeding eyeballs and get ready to spend a few hundred hours watching videos on Chinese streamer Bilibili. The NASDAQ-listed site is often referred to as China’s YouTube, yet it is perhaps spiritually closer

The Locarno Film Festival, which is Europe’s preeminent event dedicated to indie cinema, is moving into the vintage cinema space, just as streamers are snapping up library titles in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The Swiss fest’s Locarno Pro industry component is launching Heritage Online, a first-of-its-kind platform that will serve as a database

With millions of Americans still under quarantine orders, Hulu is introducing a way for subscribers to sit together on the couch — virtually — to stream TV shows and movies at the same time. Starting May 28, Hulu is beginning to test Watch Party, its first social feature that will let viewers watch titles together

Disney is hoping to lure Star Wars fans back to its theme parks — once they’re allowed to reopen this summer — with the assistance of a new virtual-reality experience that extends the storylines encompassing the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge attraction. ILMxLab, Lucasfilm’s immersive entertainment studio, announced the development of “Star Wars: Tales From the

Writers Guild of America leaders are seeking major gains in writer pay for comedy-variety shows on streaming platforms. “Series like ‘Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj,’ ‘I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson’ and ‘The Iliza Shlesinger Sketch Show’ provide streaming platforms like Netflix with different types of entertaining content, which in turns helps those

Accusing Twitter of anti-conservative bias, supporters of Donald Trump — and a senior White House aide — have waged a campaign singling out one company employee who has posted tweets critical of Trump and other Republications in the past. The online attacks against Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity, came after the social network

The Verzuz DJ battles — the real-time, virtual DJ matches on Instagram Live that pit icons of R&B and hip-hop against each other in (usually) friendly musical competition —  have become an online phenomenon during the pandemic, as hundreds of thousands of people watch and comment on social media. But along with the good grooves

WarnerMedia’s HBO Max is now live, packing in twice the content of legacy HBO for the same $14.99 monthly price. But for now, it’s unavailable on Roku and Amazon’s streaming platforms, which represent more than 80 million TV households. Currently, you can’t access HBO Max on Roku or Amazon Fire TV devices, and if you’ve

Instagram creators who have used the platform to launch full-time careers have, to date, relied on indirect sources of revenue like branded content and merchandise sales to support their livelihoods. Now, the Facebook-owned social platform is rolling out new ways for creators to make money directly from their content on Instagram Live and IGTV. First,

HBO Max has sweetened the elixir for “Harry Potter” fans: It launched Wednesday with all eight of Warner Bros.’s movies based on J.K. Rowling’s popular fantasy book series. HBO Max’s film lineup — which will serve up more than 2,000 movies in the first year — includes all of the “Harry Potter” titles, which star

Japan is considering stepping up its laws against cyberbullying. The moves follow the death on Saturday of Hana Kimura, a pro-wrestler and personality in the “Terrace House” reality TV show. “It’s necessary to properly implement procedures to disclose information on senders in order to curb online abuses and rescue victims,” said communications minister Sanae Takaichi

HBO Max, WarnerMedia’s shiny new vessel into the streaming wars, is set to launch on Wednesday, May 27. It’s regularly priced at $14.99 monthly, the same as the existing HBO Now service, but with much more: HBO Max includes everything on HBO plus hundreds of additional titles, including the complete runs of “Friends” and “The

Twitter has, for the first time, added a warning label to a tweet by President Donald Trump pointing out that what he said is inaccurate. However, the social network was calling out Trump’s falsehoods about mail-in ballots — and was not taking action about Trump’s repeated use of Twitter to promote the unfounded conspiracy theory

Twitter issued a public apology to the family of a woman whom Donald Trump has repeatedly insinuated in tweets may have been murdered by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. But for now, the social network isn’t taking any actions against Trump’s account or the offending tweets on the subject. The company’s statement comes after Timothy Klausutis,

Wallace and Gromit, the delightfully goofy Brit and his preternaturally clever hound, will embark on their first augmented-reality adventure in the fall of 2020. The full AR experience in the forthcoming app will initially only be available in the United Kingdom, to be followed by the U.S. and other markets. “Wallace & Gromit: The Big

Cole Sprouse has been making good use of his time in lockdown, playing lots of video games — specifically “Animal Crossing” — and growing some epic facial hair. His mustachio’d appearance was originally for his role in the upcoming Lionsgate comedy “Undercover” and was recently documented in (socially distant) photoshoot that went viral. The “Riverdale”

Consumers have never had more options for streaming entertainment directly to their TVs, smartphones or computers. Which video streaming services are the best? Players jostling for share in the crowded subscription-video landscape include Netflix, Disney’s Disney Plus and Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV Plus, and (starting this week) HBO Max. Which of these is

Formula E driver Daniel Abt was disqualified after finishing third in a virtual race after it turned out he had been cheating by using a stand-in driver. Like most sports, Formula E events had been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the organization turned to virtual races using some of its drivers. Saturday’s Formula

Netflix is delivering the most trouble-free streaming service amid the jump in video streaming during the coronavirus crisis, according to a new study. Netflix users reported just 0.07 technical problems per hour of content streamed on average, according to a J.D. Power April 24-26 survey of U.S. streaming users. That’s meaningfully lower than problem incidents

Swizz Beatz tells a funny story about how he and fellow hitmaker Timbaland came to co-create Verzuz, the weekly, real-time, virtual DJ battle on Instagram Live that pits icons of R&B and hip-hop against each other in (usually) friendly musical competition. The series, which has seen Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds taking on Teddy Riley, Erykah Badu

The ‘Live From the Artists Den’ television series is going digital with ‘Live From My Den’ featuring musicians performing songs from their homes and walking the viewers through their creative space. Each episode will run between 20 and 30 minutes. The Head and The Heart kicks off the ‘Live From My Den’ run today (May

Larry King is gearing up to launch his first-ever podcast. Because why the hell not? King, 86, whose career has spanned more than six decades in radio and TV, is set to host “The Millionth Question,” an entertainment and celebrity interview podcast. Targeted for a mid-June debut, the hour-long podcast will feature guests across pop

“Tenet” and “Fortnite” became an unlikely duo Thursday night. Christopher Nolan’s upcoming thriller teased more action and time-bending mystery in a new trailer released in the hugely popular battle royale video game. Not much is known about the film, which is Nolan’s first since 2017’s “Dunkirk.” It follows a group of secret agents who are