May 20, 2019 1:58PM PT Facebook’s new Oculus Quest headset is launching with a number of high-profile gaming titles this Tuesday. Media apps on the other hand will take a bit of backseat, with some key players sitting this latest headset out for the time being. First, the good news for anyone who has pre-ordered
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Netflix continues to wear the crown as having the “best original programming” among premium TV and over-the-top subscription services, according to new research from Morgan Stanley. About 40% of consumers surveyed said the streamer is the No. 1 outlet on this front, up from 39% last year. The next highest scoring service was HBO, at
May 20, 2019 9:00AM PT Condé Nast Entertainment and Vogue have named former Vice and Fader video executive Robert Semmer as their new vice president of video. Semmer will be based in New York and report to Croi McNamara, senior vice president of programming for Condé Nast Entertainment. “Anna and I are thrilled to welcome
Disney-backed immersive media startup Tyffon has raised a new $7.8 million Series A round of funding. The company wants to use the new cash infusion for an international expansion that includes the opening of a Santa Monica, Calif.-based virtual reality (VR) center. “We will also accelerate our IP licensing activities with major Hollywood studios,” Tyffon
Google has prevented controversial Chinese tech firm Huawei from accessing the latest versions of the Android mobile phone operating system. The move follows U.S. government attempts to blacklist the Chinese firm. “We are complying with the order and reviewing the implications,” Google sources told news agencies on Sunday. “Huawei will only be able to use
Rita Moreno, Hasan Minhaj, Michael Schur, Janet Mock and Dolores Huerta were among the honorees at the 78th annual Peabody Awards who spoke movingly about the power of the medium to change lives and drive social change. The list of 30-plus Peabody winners ranged from entertainment series such as FX’s “Pose,” NBC’s “The Good Place”
Google will shut down Jump, its cloud-based video stitching service, this summer. The company emailed creators Friday afternoon to tell them that Jump would be shuttered on June 28, and detailed plans for the shut-down on its website as well. In its email, Google justified the closure of Jump with the emergence of new video
The third annual Relix Live Music Conference took place at New York’s Brooklyn Bowl earlier this week. The two-day confab, which featured panels and Q&As by executives from such companies as Live Nation, Q Prime, SiriusXM, Bowery Presents, Glassnote Music, Shorefire Media and Splice, among many others, offered a fascinating and honest look at the
A funny thing happened on the way to the upfront in a year of major transitions for the largest player in television. Numerous network and studio executives found a dealmaking environment that was more collegial and collaborative than in the recent past. With so much of the traditional TV business in flux, there was a
May 17, 2019 9:20AM PT Spotify is carefully taking a first step into the consumer hardware space: The company has begun to test a new in-car device that lets users access music and podcasts with voice commands, it revealed in a blog post Friday morning. “Car Thing,” as the device is being called for now,
YouTube star and food fanatic Hannah Hart is combining her passions for cuisine and history in a new series for BuzzFeed’s Tasty on Facebook Watch. The eight-episode show, “Edible History,” premieres Sunday, May 19, at 8 a.m PT, on BuzzFeed’s Tasty Presents show page on Facebook Watch, with episodes released weekly. In each episode (7-12
May 16, 2019 1:32PM PT The three co-founders of Songza, a music curation startup acquired by Google in 2014, have left YouTube Music, Variety has learned. Former Songza CEO Elias Roman, former chief product officer Elliott Breece and former chief operating officer Peter Asbill all quietly transitioned to new positions at Google’s startup incubator Area
Sony Music Entertainment is diving into the red-hot podcasting biz. In its first move into the space, the company has formed a joint venture with two veteran podcast producers: Adam Davidson, a New Yorker staff writer and co-founder of NPR’s “Planet Money” show, and Laura Mayer, who has worked at Stitcher, Panoply Media and WNYC.
“Game of Thrones” fans may have a few more reasons to be upset these days, but before Sunday’s episode, the biggest gripe about this final season of the show had been the lighting. Or, rather, the lack of it. Especially “The Long Night” episode, which aired in late April, incensed fans who couldn’t make out
For the first time, financial results for Sony Pictures Television’s Crackle have been made public — and the free, over-the-top streaming network appeared to be in the black, at least for the first quarter of 2019. The disclosure came from Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which this week assumed control of Crackle as majority
May 16, 2019 9:00AM PT YouTube is bringing its virtual reality (VR) app to Facebook’s Oculus Quest headset. The Google-owned video service announced Thursday that its VR app would be available on the Quest when the headset launches later this month. YouTube VR is already available on the Oculus Go and Rift, Samsung Gear VR,
May 16, 2019 8:18AM PT The second season of “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman” on Netflix will feature five episodes — in which the former late-night star raps with guests Kanye West, Ellen DeGeneres, Tiffany Haddish, Melinda Gates and Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton. On Wednesday, Netflix announced Letterman’s show would
May 16, 2019 7:54AM PT The second half of the first season of “Disenchantment,” from “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, will be sailing to Netflix subscribers this September. The 10-episode part 2 of season 1 of the animated “un-fairytale” comedy launches Friday, Sept. 20, exclusively on Netflix worldwide. “Dying for more ‘Disenchantment’ but perhaps your
Musician Scott Bradlee is the leader of Postmodern Jukebox, a collective he formed in 2011 that’s amassed an impressive following by posting YouTube videos featuring vintage jazz, swing and blues covers of pop hits from Lady Gaga and Katy Perry to the Strokes and the White Stripes. With nearly 4 million subscribers, Postmodern Jukebox’s take
Snap, as part of restructuring of its ad-sales group, upped Luke Kallis from head of West Coast sales to VP, U.S. enterprise business solutions. His new appointment comes under the Snapchat parent company’s reorganization of its U.S. advertising team under chief business officer Jeremi Gorman from a regional structure to one oriented on business categories.
TodayTix, a Broadway-born mobile ticketing start-up, is looking to expand into a bigger global media and transaction enterprise with a capital infusion of $73 million led by private-equity firm Great Hill Partners. The investment brings TodayTix’s total capital raised to over $100 million, according to CEO and co-founder Brian Fenty. Part of the new funding
Nearly all of Hulu’s 2,000-plus employees learned about Disney’s deal to take full control of their company on Tuesday the same time the rest of the world did — when the Mouse House and Comcast announced details of their agreement around 9 a.m. ET. Shortly after the official announcement, Hulu CEO Randy Freer sent an
May 15, 2019 10:13AM PT Amazon’s Fire TV platform has more active users than Roku’s smart TV platform, the e-commerce giant claimed Wednesday. Across all of its devices, Fire TV now has 34 million monthly active users, according to Amazon. That’s about 5 million more that Roku, which ended Q1 of 2019 with 29.1 million
A longtime newsstand staple is going by the wayside: Dotdash, a unit of Barry Diller’s IAC holding company, has acquired wedding and bridal property Brides from Condé Nast and will shut down the print edition of the 85-year-old title. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal news comes just two days after Condé
May 15, 2019 8:00AM PT Bay Area-based virtual reality (VR) startup Nomadic will open a new outpost in Las Vegas later this year: Nomadic’s second VR center will be part of Area 15, a new entertainment complex that will also house Meow Wolf’s second location outside of Santa Fe, N.M. “To be paired with other
Blac Chyna promises an unfiltered, revealing look at her life and relationships in a docu-series exclusively for Zeus Network, an influencer-driven subscription VOD service. Angela Renée White, known as Blac Chyna, is executive producing and starring in “The Real Blac Chyna,” set to premiere this summer on Zeus. The professional model and reality TV personality,
May 14, 2019 7:19PM PT In this week’s edition of the Variety Movie Commercial Tracker, powered by TV ad measurement and attribution company iSpot.tv, Lionsgate claims the top spot in spending for the second week in a row with “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.” Ads placed for the action thriller had an estimated media
At the 23rd annual Webby Awards in New York on Monday night, presenters and honorees reflected on the advances that led to both the highs and lows of the internet in 2019 – and how the organization itself has had to evolve to accommodate that rapid shift. “When we started in 1997, pretty much the only
In a no-brainer toy tie-in, Netflix and Lego are introducing a “Stranger Things” playset: a recreation of the Byers’ house that flips over to reveal the dim underworld of the Upside Down. With a list price of $200, Lego’s Upside Down playset is positioned as a premium collector’s item. The product comprises 2,287 individual pieces,
Queen Bey pulled in a big crowd on Netflix with the premiere of “Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé” last month — with an audience that was overwhelmingly young, black and female, according to Nielsen. On its premiere date (April 17), the concert film on Netflix reached 1.1 million U.S. viewers and garnered an average minute