Tech

Netflix is gearing up to raise the prices of streaming plans without advertising “a few months” after the SAG-AFTRA actors strike is resolved, according to a new report. The streaming service is “discussing” raising prices in “several markets globally,” and likely will first increase fees in the U.S. and Canada, according to a Wall Street

Warner Bros. Discovery is hiking the price of Discovery+ without advertising by nearly 30% in the U.S. and Canada, effective immediately. It’s the first time Discovery+ has increased the price of a monthly subscription in the markets since launching in January 2021. “This will allow us to continue to provide can’t miss-stories in the food,

Happy Mean Girls Day to all who celebrate! In observance of the date, Paramount Pictures launched an official account for “Mean Girls” on TikTok (at this link) — and has made the entire one hour, 47 minute film available for free on the platform, broken up into 23 clips. The bio for the official “Mean

TikTok is exploring a new way to make money: The popular video app has kicked off a limited-scale test of a monthly subscription service that eliminates ads. However, contrary to an earlier report, the company says it is not currently available in the U.S. According to a report Monday by Android Authority, code in a

The multi-week digital project “xXPonyBoyDerekXx” will be available on X and OnlyFans starting Monday, executive producer John Cameron Mitchell announced on Instagram. Described as a “boundary-breaking digital play,” the drama will combine theater, film and mixed digital media to tell the story of an 18-year-old OnlyFans creator entirely through OnlyFans and X posts. To watch

If you’re piggybacking on someone else’s Disney+ account, you may soon have to pay up to access the streamer. The Mouse House has notified Disney+ subscribers in Canada that as of Nov. 1, “Unless otherwise permitted by your service tier, you may not share your subscription outside of your household.” The notification also informs customers

Paris Hilton is getting her X on. The influencer and entrepreneur — who has 16.6 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter — announced a deal with the social platform owned by Elon Musk for an array of content and commerce initiatives. Under the deal between X and Hilton and her 11:11 Media company,

“Million Dollar Listing UAE,” the first adaptation outside the U.S. of Bravo’s long-running luxury real estate reality franchise, is going through the roof in the Middle East. The bilingual show, featuring five United Arab Emirates brokers wheeling and dealing lavish properties in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, has been breaking all previous viewership records “across originals as

Episodes of Sean Evans’ “Hot Ones,” the hit YouTube series in which celebs try to ingest increasingly spicy buffalo wings, have a new home. FilmRise, the film, TV and streaming network, acquired worldwide digital media rights to a library of content from BuzzFeed Studios, including past episodes of “Hot Ones.” All told, the library deal

“Where am I going?,” Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of the company now known as X, asked as she wandered onto the stage at the Code 2023 conference Wednesday night. She seemed to feint toward the chair that her interviewer CNBC journalist Julia Boorstin had been sitting in, before finding her footing. It was a telling

It’s the official end of Netflix‘s DVD era: The company is mailing out its very last red envelopes on Friday, Sept. 29. As a parting gift to its loyal DVD-by-mail members, Netflix will let them keep any discs they still have out. The company, which launched as a DVD subscription service 25 years ago, announced

Epic Games is slashing its workforce by 16%, laying off about 830 employees, as it looks to cut costs and put the Fortnite maker on viable financial footing. The cutbacks were announced in an internal memo from Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. In addition to the layoffs, the company is selling Bandcamp the music store and

Netflix has been sued for breach of contract by a company that was creating a game based on the forthcoming “Rebel Moon” sci-fi films by Zack Snyder. In a lawsuit, Evil Genius Games said it had begun working with Netflix in early 2023 to develop a tabletop role-playing game based on “Rebel Moon” with a

Elon Musk earlier this month said X/Twitter is “moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system” — a step that is necessary, he said, to thwart the plague of bots flooding the platform. Is the company in fact going to implement such a fee? Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of the

Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, is retiring next year after almost three decades with the company’s PlayStation business. Ryan will step down from the post in March 2024, Sony announced Wednesday. In October 2023, Sony Group president, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki will assume the role of chairman of Sony Interactive

Meta has turned more than a dozen celebrities and influencers into robots. The tech company, at the Meta Connect 2023 confab Wednesday, announced partnerships with “cultural icons and influencers” to play and embody AI-powered chatbots that will have profiles on Instagram and Facebook. Those include Snoop Dogg, Charli D’Amelio, MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), Kendall Jenner, Tom

Digital content creator and entrepreneur Serena Kerrigan is set to launch SFKTV, a members-only platform for her own exclusive, longform content, on Oct. 1. An expansion of Kerrigan’s preexisting SFK brand, SFKTV is described as “the only destination that teaches viewers how to design their future, manifest their dreams and become the main character they

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a (virtual) trip to the Upside Down to pitch his company’s latest effort to make virtual and augmented reality a thing. The company on Wednesday announced the Meta Quest 3 mixed-reality headset, set to ship Oct. 10 and priced at $499. Zuckerberg showed off the new product in the keynote

A new trade group — the Streaming Innovation Alliance — brings together Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and other players to promote their interests to politicians and government entities. It marks the first time competing streaming-video providers have banded together in a unified lobbying front. The launch members of the Streaming Innovation Alliance (website

MrBeast continues to rake it in. The YouTube mastermind who has orchestrated dozens of over-the-top stunts and big-money giveaways pulled in an estimated $82 million over the past year — more than twice the earnings any other internet creator, according to a new Forbes report. The figure for MrBeast, whose name is Jimmy Donaldson, is

CollegeHumor is dropping its collegiate moniker after nearly 25 years… to become Dropout. The company is officially rebranding from CollegeHumor to Dropout, the name of the ad-free, subscription streaming platform it launched in 2018. CollegeHumor was founded in 1999 by Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen — back in the days before the streaming revolution

The Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, alleging that the ecommerce and technology giant is a monopolist that “uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power.” Among the accusations, the FTC’s lawsuit, which was joined by 17 state attorneys general, allege that Amazon’s actions allow

Tubi, Fox Corp.’s ad-supported video-streaming service, has turned to OpenAI’s ChatGPT artificial-intelligence agent to suggest new TV shows and movies to watch — although the feature is really just a form of natural-language search. Tubi’s Rabbit AI is powered by ChatGPT-4. The AI feature, which shows up on the bottom of Tubi’s mobile app, lets

After a six-year run, Google Podcasts will be shutting down next year. Instead, the internet company plans to double down on making YouTube Music the preferred destination for podcasters and listeners. YouTube announced that in 2024, it will be “increasing our investment in the podcast experience on YouTube Music.” As part of that, later in

In the most recent episode of Dax Shepard’s podcast “Armchair Expert,” Jonathan Van Ness broke down in tears while defending the rights of transgender kids. Shepard and Van Ness engaged in a light-hearted conversation about a range of topics before they began talking about The New York Times. When Van Ness said the publication should

After being confirmed by the US Senate earlier this month, Anna Gomez was sworn in as the FCC’s fifth commissioner on Monday, making her the first Latina to hold the position in over 20 years. “I am humbled and honored that President Biden and the United States Senate have entrusted me with the privilege to

Hablas robot? Spotify is testing out a way for podcasters to reach listeners in different languages, using artificial-intelligence technology that emulates the podcaster’s own voice. As part of the pilot, Spotify worked with a “select group” of podcasters — Dax Shepard and Monica Padman (“Armchair Expert”), Lex Fridman, Steven Bartlett (“The Diary of a CEO”)

The “Breakthrough Tech – Media Trendsetters” panel at Variety’s Entertainment and Technology Summit brought together industry leaders Vibol Hou, EVP and chief technology officer of Paramount Streaming; Shalini Govil-Pai, VP at Google TV; Erin Oremland, GM of AgilLink at City National Bank; Soumya Sriraman, president of streaming at Qurate Retail Group; and Will Cady, global

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the target of a major new lawsuit, alleging the company illegally copied the copyrighted works of authors to train the artificial-intelligence robot. Led by the Authors Guild, a New York-based professional organization for published writers, a group of 17 writers, including George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, George Saunders and Jonathan

Gallic animation house GO-N Productions was named Producer of the Year at the latest edition of Cartoon Forum, while fellow Paris-based house APC Kids claimed the top tribute in the Investor/Distributor category. Rounding out the tributes, Portuguese public broadcaster RTP was exalted and awarded Broadcaster of the Year, very much reflecting the wider industry trends