October 24, 2019 1:40PM PT SiriusXM has revamped its promotions and events and talent & industry relations teams in an effort to “allow for greater focus and results in each area,” CEO Scott Greenstein (pictured above) announced in an internal memo sent to the company this week. The move sees Ross Zapin leading the company’s
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Amazon.com beat expectations on the top line for the third quarter of 2019 but fell short on earnings per share and forecast Q4 results below Wall Street expectations — driving the e-commerce giant’s stock down 7% in after-hours trading. In his remarks about the earnings, CEO Jeff Bezos said Amazon is gearing up to make
LadBaby, the social handle of the British family that’s amassed millions of fans with their Facebook videos, has signed with WME and Margravine Management. LadBaby partnered with WME to represent them across all areas of their business, in conjunction with London-based influcencer talent agency Margravine Management, which was founded last year by Joe Sugg and
WarnerMedia’s HBO Max is getting first dibs on “gen:Lock” season 2, the next installment of Rooster Teeth’s popular animated mecha series starring Michael B. Jordan. Season 2 of “gen:Lock” will premiere on HBO Max and have an exclusive 90-day run on the service (the company didn’t announce a release date). After the 90-day window on
October 24, 2019 10:58AM PT Microsoft’s streaming platform Mixer has nabbed another superstar from Amazon’s Twitch. Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, a former pro “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” player, is joining Mixer as an exclusive streamer, and announced the move on Thursday with a Twitter video. It comes after Mixer previously landed exclusivity with Twitch’s former bigger streamer,
Some of CNN’s best-known female political journalists may find themselves inadvertently taking part in Hollywood’s streaming wars. HBO Max, the WarnerMedia streaming service slated to launch next year, has greenlit four unscripted projects from CNN Films, and one of them will follow the cable-news outlet’s female political reporters as they cover the campaign to win
More media orgs are looking to rake in some quick bucks over President Donald Trump’s expected impeachment. BuzzFeed News launched “Impeachment Today,” a new daily podcast covering the Trump impeachment process, co-produced with iHeartMedia and distributed across the iHeartPodcast Network beginning Thursday (Oct. 24). NPR earlier this month launched a daily impeachment podcast, hosted by
Comcast, the U.S.’s biggest purveyor of cable television, has laid the groundwork for a future where it’s perfectly happy if you don’t subscribe to a TV package. Of course, the cable giant still wants you to buy as many services as it has on offer, including a fat bundle of TV channels and add-ons like
October 24, 2019 9:17AM PT Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) want U.S. intelligence officials to take a closer look at TikTok: In a letter to the acting director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, the two senators asked for a review of the security risks posed by TikTok’s ties to
October 24, 2019 9:00AM PT Live streaming service Caffeine has a famous new broadcaster: Offset, best known for being part of Migos, is joining the service for two weekly live shows starting this coming Sunday. Offset’s first show will have him play his favorite videos games, while a second show is going to feature celebrity
NBCUniversal chief Steve Burke predicts that things are going to get even more intense among the media and tech giants launching streaming platforms before the marketplace inevitably settles down. Burke, speaking Thursday morning on Comcast’s third quarter earnings call, said NBCUniversal is committed to its strategy of launching into the streaming arena with the advertising-supported
Sony Music Entertainment’s newest podcast push will have a British flavor. The music company entered into a joint venture with U.K.-based podcast producer Renay Richardson for Broccoli Content, a company focused on developing and distributing original programming. Richardson is a producer who has previously worked for leading podcast platforms including Acast, Audible and Panoply. As
The Apple TV app for movies and shows is now available on several of Amazon’s Fire TV models in over 60 countries, as Apple gears up for the debut next month of the Apple TV Plus streaming service. For the first time, Fire TV users will be able to watch the movies, TV shows and
Spotify has revolutionized the music industry, but profitability has remained an elusive goal for the streaming giant. Today, it announced a new effort in that direction: Alerts paid for by artists or their labels. The alerts will take the form of full-screen recommendations that have been tested on the platform’s mobile app in recent weeks.
Twitter posted third-quarter 2019 results that fell below targets, blaming snafus in its advertising products for part of the sales shortfall, sending the social network company’s stock plunging as much as 20% in pre-market trading. Revenue totaled $824 million, up 9%, under the $874 million Wall Street analysts anticipated on average. Twitter said sales were
Comcast matched Wall Street’s expectations for its third quarter revenue and beat on earnings per share despite tough year-over-year comparisons for NBCUniversal. Comcast delivered $26.8 billion in revenue, up 21.2% from the year-ago quarter, and adjusted earnings per share of 79 cents, up 16.2% from Q3 2018. The consensus among analysts had adjusted EPS coming
October 24, 2019 4:00AM PT [embedded content] YouTube has teamed up with the remaining Queen members to produce new music videos for 3 of the band’s classic hits compiled entirely out of fan submissions. The collaborative videos for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “A Kind of Magic” and “Don’t Stop Me Now” were published on Queen’s official YouTube
China blocks local access to almost a quarter of the foreign news outlets accredited to report from the country with its “Great Firewall” of strict online censorship, according to a new analysis. The more than 850 million internet users in the Middle Kingdom are barred from viewing the publicly available websites of 23% of 215
Hollywood stars are partnering with men’s health charity, Movember, to support the moustache and raise awareness about the org’s fundraising campaign. Comedians Stephen Fry, Stephen Merchant, actor David Oyewelo and survival expert Bear Grylls join former Pussycat Dolls star Nicole Scherzinger in a new public service announcement explaining why the ‘stache is so important. Watch
October 23, 2019 11:00AM PT [embedded content] YouTube is diving into interactive entertainment with a new special featuring popular gaming creator Markiplier as a black-clad super-criminal who tries to steal a priceless artifact from the world’s most secure museum. Along the lines of Netflix’s “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch,” viewers will control the outcome of the interactive
When Apple TV plus launches on Nov. 1, it will do so with what’s arguably the most expensive new-series lineup in TV history. Among the streamer’s initial offerings are the drama “The Morning Show,” bearing a price tag believed to be more than $15 million an episode, and the dystopian sci-fi series “See,” which is
Long before she became CEO of Barstool Sports, Erika Nardini had a front-row seat to the early days of the internet advertising world and she has no intention of repeating its errors. Over a career that saw stops at AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Demand Media, she watched as the digital powerhouses of yesteryear cluttered the
Dany Garcia, CEO of Seven Bucks Productions and founder, CEO and chairwoman of the Garcia Companies and TGC Management, has taken a minority investment in MeWe, a startup that positions itself as a social network rival to Facebook — but one that gives users full control over their own data and privacy. Garcia co-founded Seven
Nearly six months before Quibi is slated to hit the market, a cluster of large advertisers has committed millions in ad spending to the ambitious — and untested — premium mobile-video brainchild of Jeffrey Katzenberg. Quibi announced that it has sold out its $150 million advertising inventory for the first year. The startup’s category-exclusive ad partners
Disney Plus is going to go bigger out of the gate than Wall Street expected, with the Mouse House’s huge deal with Verizon expected to bring in millions more subscribers to the service. On Tuesday, Disney and Verizon announced that the telco will give Disney Plus free to new and existing wireless unlimited data customers,
October 22, 2019 11:29PM PT In this week’s edition of the Variety Movie Commercial Tracker, powered by the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv, Paramount Pictures claims the top spot in spending with “Terminator: Dark Fate.” Ads placed for the sci-fi action film had an estimated media value of $6.81 million through Sunday
Ronan Farrow is launching a podcast offshoot of his best-selling book “Catch and Kill.” Slated to premiere in November, “The Catch and Kill Podcast With Ronan Farrow” will feature new audio material and interviews with people Farrow interviewed about allegations involving sexual misconduct of media industry figures including Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer — and
Sending a jolt through a luxurious and excessively polite afternoon in Beverly Hills, veteran journalist Katie Couric delivered a relentless series of hardball questions to Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg on Tuesday. Speaking in conversation at the sixth annual Vanity Fair New Establishment summit at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Couric’s
Parker Posey will star in prison-break thriller “Hunted,” the first podcast from Endeavor Audio and Dick Wolf’s Wolf Entertainment. Posey (“Dazed and Confused,” “Scream 3,” “Superman Returns”) will star in the scripted podcast series alongside Brandon Scott (“13 Reasons Why,” “Dead to Me,” “Grey’s Anatomy”). In the eight-episode show, U.S. Deputy Marshal Emily Barnes (Posey)
Snapchat is growing again, and getting better at monetizing all those eyeballs: The service ended its fiscal third quarter with 210 million daily active users, compared to 203 million at the end of Q2, its corporate parent Snap Inc. revealed as part of its earnings release Tuesday afternoon. Snap Inc. generated some $446 million revenue