Tech

Original content commissioning and localization no longer sound like particularly inspired strategies for an Asian streaming service. Everyone from global giants to regional specialists appear to expound similar mantras. But the twin tracks, employed for over three years now, have turned Viu into an operation that is admired by its competitors. The company is now

YouTube, in its biggest swing yet at the sports-media biz, landed a deal with Major League Baseball to live-stream 13 games during the 2019 season worldwide — free for viewers to watch and available exclusively through YouTube in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. YouTube’s first-ever exclusive live game distribution partnership with MLB will cover

April 29, 2019 4:24PM PT Nutopia, an entertainment blockchain-powered financing platform, has opened for project submissions, with the support of the UCLA Venture Accelerator. Nutopia is expected to launch this May. June Chu, Nutopia co-founder and CEO, created the company with the help of UCLA’s accelerator program. Nutopia has grown into a multimillion-dollar international venture.

April 29, 2019 3:30PM PT Twitter is continuing to bulk up on live video — but its strategy is less of a volume play than an attempt to build deeper connections with targeted audiences on the social platform through partnerships with media companies and sports leagues. Twitter announced a series of new and expanded deals

Investors don’t care about big fines, as long as companies still make a ton of money — but all bets are off if revenue growth doesn’t live up expectations. That’s one of the take-aways from the market’s response to Alphabet’s Q1 2019 earnings report Monday afternoon. Google’s corporate mothership generated revenue of $36.4 billion during

April 29, 2019 10:00AM PT As the popularity of podcasts continues to soar, BBC Global News is looking to get deeper into the aural action by producing automated audio versions of all BBC News’ online articles. Project Songbird, announced Monday, is BBC Global News’ initiative to build a text-to-audio commercial business across digital online platforms.

April 29, 2019 9:57AM PT Samsung unveiled its latest slate of lifestyle TVs at a press event in Seoul this week, and the company had a bit of a surprise to share: Samsung’s new Sero TV is a flat screen with a rotating display that’s meant to show off Instagram and Snapchat stories, or TikTok

For Viacom, the future of television has an increasingly online sheen. The media conglomerate is bringing a slew of content from its flagship cable networks to Viacom-owned Pluto TV — launching 14 channels on the free, ad-supported internet-streaming platform starting May 1 — and outlined its newest slate of original digital programming. As its traditional

Spotify grew its paid subscriber rolls by 32% in the first quarter of 2019 — reaching 100 million Premium customers — while the streaming-music company narrowed its losses and beat Wall Street expectations on the top line. Spotify shares were up as much as 5% in premarket trading Monday on the results before falling 1.5%

After enrolling MK2 last year, Moviechainer, the cloud-based app allowing right-holders to model and track the legal and financial structure of their film projects, has added TF1 Group, Europe’s leading private broadcaster, to its client portfolio. MovieChainer, which was launched in 2014 by the Paris-based film company Backup (“Arctic,” “Donnybrook”), is already been used by

April 29, 2019 12:55AM PT Global streaming giant Netflix has come on board “Arthdal Chronicles,” a Korean fantasy drama series. The show has a starry cast headed by Song Joong-ki (“A Werewolf Boy,” “Descendants of the Sun”), Jang Dong-gun (“Taegukgi”), Kim Ji-won (“Descendants of the Sun”) and Kim Ok-bin (“Thirst,” “Steal Heart”). The show was

India’s Zee Entertainment Enterprises is rolling out operations of its Zee5 streaming service in five new languages. The company is also upping its involvement in original content. The moves were announced last week at the APOS conference in Indonesia by Archana Anand, chief business officer ZEE5 Global and are a further step up for the

Amazon revealed in a regulatory filing Friday afternoon how much money it spent on content in the first quarter of the year — but the disclosure still doesn’t tell us a whole lot about how much the company is investing in producing originals for its Prime Video service. The company said in its 10-Q filing,

Is it possible to get a de-duplicated count of video viewers and watch time across social-media platforms? Tubular Labs, a digital-video research and measurement firm, thinks it can crack that nut — and it has pulled in more media partners to collaborate on developing standards for tracking viewership across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other

April 26, 2019 9:53AM PT Amazon is working on a high-definition tier for its paid music service, according to a new Music Business Worldwide report. The e-commerce giant has been talking to multiple rights holders about launching a high-definition service, which is likely going be priced around $15 per month, according to the report. Amazon

April 26, 2019 9:18AM PT As if “Avengers: Endgame” needed any more publicity: Google has added an easter egg to its search engine to further plug the latest Marvel flick that demonstrates just how destructive super-villain Thanos can be. To unlock the easter egg, you’ll just have to google Thanos, find the gauntlet icon hiding

Magic Leap inked a deal with NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest mobile operator, which will be the exclusive telecom partner of Magic Leap in Japan. Under the partnership, NTT DoCoMo is investing $280 million in the augmented-reality computing company. Magic Leap has now raised a whopping $2.6 billion in funding to date. Other investors include the

Comcast’s Xfinity X1 now offers Cinedigm’s subscription-based video services CONtv and Docurama, continuing the expansion of the cable operator’s internet-delivered entertainment options. CONtv, priced at $4.99 per month, offers a selection of classic cult films and series, and Docurama ($2.99 per month) provides a library of documentaries. The two Cinedigm properties follow the launch of

Asian video streaming service Hooq has committed itself to developing at least 100 original shows and films by the end of this year. They will be produced in Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and India, and range in genre terms from horror to comedy and from factual to lifestyle. The company has begun the immediate release

April 26, 2019 3:09AM PT Turner Asia Pacific and China’s Tencent are joining forces for “Second Time Around,” a Chinese drama that will air later this year. The series makes use of Tuzki, a Turner owned animated character that has become famous as an emoticon in Tencent’s WeChat universe. Turner is licensing the character and

Amazon.com handily beat Wall Street estimates for profit for the first quarter of 2019 — reporting $3.6 billion net income, more than twice the year-ago period and an all-time quarterly record for the ecommerce behemoth. In addition, the company revealed that it’s undertaking a shift in its Prime free-shipping program to deliver orders in one

Univision terminated its foray into the pureplay digital-media realm with the sale of Gizmodo Media Group and The Onion earlier this month — for a fire-sale price significantly less than $135 million the broadcaster paid for only the former Gawker Media properties two and half years ago. The new owners of the suite of websites

April 25, 2019 10:55AM PT Entertainment One (“eOne”) has tapped Bill Wilson as Senior Vice President Digital Operations and Innovation, Music, the company announced today. Wilson will oversee all aspects of digital strategy across the company’s music business, including label service, talent management, music publishing and live entertainment, according to the announcement.  Wilson will be based

Comcast is holding talks with Disney to see if they can hammer out a deal to sell Comcast’s one-third stake in Hulu to the Mouse House — which would give Disney full control over Hulu, CNBC reported. The report comes a little over a week after AT&T sold its 9.5% stake in Hulu to the

April 25, 2019 9:17AM PT UPDATED: Cox Cable is testing a new “Elite Gamer Service” that is designed to speed up connections between gamers and games, but which the company says doesn’t prioritize internet use. The service began testing in Arizona this week and Cox tells Variety it plans to run the test for about

The Shade Room, a top Instagram-based media publisher focused on black culture, entertainment and celebrity gossip, is launching three new original series on the social platform. The five-year-old venture, the brainchild of entrepreneur Angelica Nwandu, runs one of the most highly engaged accounts on Instagram: @TheShadeRoom, which has 15.3 million followers (referred to as “Roommates”),

April 25, 2019 8:50AM PT Muzik founder Jason Hardi is scheduled to speak alongside Cardi B and Offset at the Brilliant Minds Conference, taking place in Stockholm on June 13 to 15. The symposium centered around the intersection between culture and technology was founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. They join previously announced speakers Ted

San Francisco-based immersive entertainment startup Fable is premiering the second part of “Wolves in the Walls,” a VR experience based on the Neil Gaiman children’s book by the same name, at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. “Wolves in the Walls: It’s All Over” effortlessly connects to the existing story, and immerses viewers in the

NBCUniversal sees a potential $200 million-plus jackpot in adapting some of its old TV and movie franchises into an interactive storytelling game. The company’s Universal Games and Digital Platforms group on Thursday is launching a new, free-to-play mobile game, “Series: Your Story Universe” that lets players pick an avatar and play through different episodes of

Snap, as part of rebuilding its senior exec team and angling to boost growth, has hired its first chief marketing officer: Kenny Mitchell, a consumer-marketing veteran who has worked at McDonald’s, Gatorade, NBC Sports Group and NASCAR. Mitchell will join the company in June 2019, reporting to CEO and cofounder Evan Spiegel. Mitchell will lead