I’ve been talking about live-streaming to anyone within earshot for the last three years, and up to this point, I’ve been the weirdo at the party. I’d mention Twitch and people would ask me to tell them more, sometimes adding an asterisk — that they’ve heard of Twitch and their marketing department is looking into
Tech
Facebook is getting ready to launch a TV streaming device in time for the holiday season, Variety has been able to confirm with multiple sources familiar with the company’s plans. The new streaming hardware will be part of the company’s Portal family of devices, featuring a camera, and combining video chatting with TV viewing and
Apple is giving away one year free of the Apple TV Plus streaming service to customers who buy one of its devices starting in November — but the company insists the offer won’t have a “material impact” on earnings, contrary to a prediction from a prominent Wall Street analyst. “We do not expect the introduction
Disney began testing its Disney Plus streaming service in the Netherlands this week. Consumers in the U.S. will have to wait until November 12 to get access to the service, but European streaming aggregator JustWatch already makes it possible to browse the catalog available during this beta test. JustWatch is one of a number of
Fans of JoJo Siwa will be able to join the teen influencer’s dance squad on stage — virtually — in a new mobile game. In “JoJo Siwa — Live to Dance,” players will become part of the Nickelodon and YouTube star’s worldwide tour on her professional dance team and experience what it’s like to be
“The Simpsons” and “Star Wars Rebels” are the most hotly anticipated of the existing series that will be on Disney Plus in the U.S. and the first foreign countries where the service will roll out, according to new research. Parrot Analytics measures demand for content by capturing billions of data points from a variety of
As a measure of overnight popularity, the number of views a music video garners on YouTube in its first 24 hours has become a key yardstick for bragging rights for artists and fans. Now the Google-owned video giant has officially changed its methodology for YouTube Music Charts to no longer count paid advertising views in
Microsoft and Apple have both joined the Academy Software Foundation, a group designed to promote the use of open source in Hollywood. Both companies joined the foundation at the premier membership level, which helps it to surpass $1 million in annual funding. “Filmmakers everywhere use Apple products,” said Academy Software Foundation executive director David Morin
The Walt Disney Studios has partnered with Microsoft to move key parts of its movie-making and distribution processes to the cloud. The five-year partnership is being spearheaded by Disney’s StudioLab, an internal innovation incubation lab, and has the ultimate goal of using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform all the way “from scene to screen,” as the
PewDiePie, the most-followed individual creator on YouTube, has waded into a new controversy. A day after the Swedish-born YouTuber — whose name is Felix Kjellberg — announced that he would be donating $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League anti-hate group, he backtracked and said his initial decision was a “mistake” and that the contribution didn’t “feel
The Game Awards 2019, the fifth annual video game industry kudosfest, will be held Dec. 12 in Los Angeles and will be live-streamed for free again on more than 45 different platforms worldwide. The Game Awards is an annual celebration of video games and the people who make them, created and executive produced by Geoff
Rooster Teeth, for the first time in its 16-year history, has made a broad cutback in its workforce — laying off 13% of its employees, or about 50 staffers. The layoffs at Rooster Teeth, the sci-fi, gaming and fandom division of WarnerMedia’s Otter Media, were confirmed by the company Thursday. Rooster Teeth co-founder and CEO
Following its excellent Beastie Boys “Still Ill” mini-documentary, Amazon Music has released The Birth of Biggie: 25 Years of Ready to Die in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Notorious B.I.G.’s blockbuster 1994 debut album, “Ready To Die.” While this mini-doc obviously doesn’t have the same level of access that its predecessor did — its subject
Hulu has dropped support for Google’s Daydream VR platform: The video streaming service quietly removed Daydream support from its Android app in recent weeks, making it impossible for most Daydream users to watch Hulu videos on Google’s Daydream View VR headset. A Hulu spokesperson confirmed the change to Variety, but declined to comment further. A
Spotify’s Gimlet podcast studio is launching three fiction series this fall: “Motherhacker,” a cyberthriller starring Carrie Coon, and returning seasons of macabre horror tale “The Horror of Dolores Roach” and LGBTQ fairy tale “The Two Princes.” “Motherhacker,” with all episodes to premiere Nov. 13, stars Coon (“The Leftovers,” “Fargo,” “The Sinner”) as a single mom
The NFL is pumping more gridiron video across Facebook under a renewed two-year deal. The league first huddled with the social-media giant in 2017, launching recaps from all 256 regular-season games on Facebook Watch along with other content. Under the pact, which extends through the 2020 season, the NFL will continue distributing recaps on Facebook
Consumers in the Netherlands became the first in the world to get their hands on Disney Plus when an early version of the hugely anticipated streaming service went live in the country Thursday in a free trial run. Disney is testing out the platform in the Netherlands, and the soft-launch version does not have the
YouTube released the official trailer for the second season of “Impulse,” the thriller from executive producer Doug Liman, which returns to the service next month — when it will be available to watch for free with ads. The entire first season of “Impulse” is now to watch free on YouTube, and season 2 will premiere
Vudu, Walmart’s video-streaming unit, is promising parents new tools to evaluate and control what their kids watch — including a way to skip scenes with sex, nudity or violence. The family-viewing features are launching alongside Vudu’s first original series, also aimed at family audiences: “Mr. Mom,” a reboot of the 1980s John Hughes comedy, produced
Spotify, further bulking up its suite of tools for music artists, announced the acquisition of SoundBetter, a Brooklyn-based audio production and collaboration marketplace. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2012, SoundBetter says it has more than 180,000 artists registered on its network in 14,000 cities spanning 176 countries. The company lets musicians
HTC is getting ready to retire the headset that was central to its expansion into the virtual reality market 3 years ago: The company announced on Thursday that its new Vive Comos headset will effectively replace the original HTC Vive, which was first released in April of 2016. “It was time to upgrade our consumer
September 11, 2019 1:56PM PT Spotify’s chief accounting officer Luca Baratta has left the company, the music streaming service revealed in a SEC filing Wednesday afternoon. Baratta will be succeeded by Paul Sawyer, Spotify’s current controller. “Mr. Baratta’s departure is not the result of any disagreement with the Company’s accounting principles or practices,” declared the
Quibi, the short-form mobile TV and tech startup led by Jeffrey Katzenberg, announced a deal with the BBC to produce daily international news programming. Earlier this summer, Quibi announced a similar pact with NBC News, for two daily shows. The announcement of the deal with BBC Global News comes after word of the departure of
Apple has yet to officially acknowledge its work on an augmented reality (AR) headset, but code snippets discovered in the latest version of its mobile operating system suggest that employees may already be testing the device. Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Tuesday afternoon, indie game developer Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted that he
The NFL has tapped YouTube as the exclusive distributor for its latest media project: a docu-series highlighting pivotal game-day moments of players and coaches both on and off the field. Produced by NFL Films, the “NFL Game Day All-Access” original series will combine game footage, behind-the-scenes clips and wired sound to tell the game-day stories
September 10, 2019 10:01PM 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, Twentieth Century Fox claims the top spot in spending for the second week in a row with “Ad Astra.” Ads placed for the sci-fi film had an estimated media
September 10, 2019 6:30PM PT Netflix has entered into a long-term partnership with Indian filmmaker, producer and television personality Karan Johar’s Dharmatic Entertainment to create a range of new fiction and non-fiction series and films, the companies announced Wednesday. Alongside Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar and Dibakar Banerjee, Johar is one of the directors on the
Tom Brady is now on TikTok: The New England Patriots QB, in his first post on the social-video service Tuesday, shared highlights from his Week 1 game day in which the Patriots trounced the Pittsburgh Steelers. His joining TikTok comes after the NFL last week announced a new multiyear pact with the service, owned by
September 10, 2019 1:01PM PT In addition to introducing three new iPhone models and revealing key details about its video and game subscription services, Apple also announced a few other products at its phone event Tuesday. But just as notable were the things that were absent from Apple’s keynote presentation, despite many rumors about possible
Apple unveiled three new iPhone models at its annual fall media event in Cupertino, Calif. Tuesday. These include the new iPhone 11, as well as two high-end models dubbed the 11 Pro and the 11 Pro Max. The new iPhone 11 effectively replaces the iPhone XR, the company’s lower-priced phone from its 2018 line-up. It