Heather Moosnick is joining Hulu as senior VP of content partnerships, exiting YouTube’s content team after more than five years where she most recently led the programming-deals team for YouTube TV. At Hulu, Moosnick will oversee the streaming provider’s content acquisition strategy for live TV and on-demand programming, spanning full library series and movies to
Tech
Disney and Random House have teamed up with Google to add an interactive soundtrack to their Little Golden Books series of children’s books. Owners of a Google Home smart speaker can now ask the device to “read along with Disney” to hear music and sound effects for select books of the series. At launch, the
With its acquisition of Time Inc. earlier this year, Meredith Corp. is home to more iconic magazine titles than ever, from People to Better Homes & Gardens. But as the president of Meredith National Media Group, Jon Werther, explains in the latest episode of the Variety podcast “Strictly Business,” he’s as focused on translating these
Skybound Entertainment is bringing its new virtual reality (VR) horror series “Delusion: Lies Within” to Samsung VR. Starting on November 2, owners of compatible headsets will be able to buy the 4-part series via the Samsung VR app for $4.99. “Delusion: Lies Within” is the brainchild of Jon Braver, who has been holding annual horror
ESPN’s streaming-subscription package, ESPN+, is now available on Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One game consoles. The ESPN+ service costs $4.99 per month (or $49.99 per year), and marked Disney’s first foray into direct-to-consumer entertainment. Customers can access thousands of additional live sports events not carried on TV, as well as original shows and
Apple’s is heavily reliant on its popular iPhone — but the tech giant hasn’t forgotten about its iPads and Mac computers. Now it’s looking to reinvigorate those product lines after sagging sales. As widely expected, Apple took the wraps off new iPad Pros, MacBook Air notebook and Mac mini at an event Tuesday at New
October 29, 2018 1:41PM PT In the wake of SoundCloud’s launch of its Premier platform earlier this month, the company came under criticism in an article published on the Verge Friday, which pointed out several restrictive elements in the contract around its payment dates and percentages, and particularly in that artists are asked to sign
Best-selling author James Patterson is bringing a multimedia, interactive-fiction experience based on his forthcoming thriller “The Chef” exclusively to Facebook Messenger. Starting Oct. 30, Messengers users will be able to delve into the book’s New Orleans-set storyline and engage with characters, locations and clues via interactive video and sound clips. The book, published by Little Brown
October 29, 2018 11:53AM PT UPDATED: YouTube was sporadically returning error messages Monday (Oct. 29) for users trying to play back videos, less than two weeks after the internet video service experienced an hour-plus-long outage. Error messages included “This video requires payment to watch” — for videos that are free to watch — as well
Evan Spiegel, CEO and co-founder of Snap, recently promoted former longtime WarnerMedia/Time Warner exec Kristen O’Hara to the company’s top sales position — but changed his mind two days later, Bloomberg reported. O’Hara is now exiting Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, after less than two months. The about-face came when Spiegel, 28, decided to instead hire Jeremi
October 29, 2018 10:43AM PT With the tax-minimization efforts of global technology firms in the spotlight, the British government unveiled a new plan Monday to ensure that Silicon Valley’s finest pay their dues. The likes of Amazon, Google, and Facebook will be taxed on revenues generated in the U.K. under a new digital services levy
October 29, 2018 9:19AM PT Nvidia has teamed up with Amazon to add Alexa voice support to its Shield Android TV streamer. Shield TV owners can now control the streamer with the help of an Amazon Echo, or any other smart speaker with Alexa built-in. Some of the functionality enabled by the partnership includes the
Twitter is reportedly set to scrap its “like” feature, a move that would be intended to improve the overall quality of the interactions on the platform. According to a report by the Telegraph, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told employees at an in-house event last week that he “was not a fan of the heart-shaped button” and
October 29, 2018 4:54AM PT Love is in the air at German broadcaster and media group ProSiebenSat.1, which has bought U.S. online dating site eHarmony. ProSiebenSat.1 owns the producers behind the “Married at First Sight” reality series, and is increasingly taking its matchmaking efforts beyond just TV. It had already bought into dating business Parship
October 28, 2018 10:15PM PT Gab.com, the Twitter-like service used by members of the fringe right, suspended its operations Sunday night after both its hosting provider and its domain name host cancelled their business relationships with the company. The backlash against Gab comes after news broke that the service was frequented by Robert Bowers, who allegedly
October 28, 2018 5:42PM PT Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos says the global streaming giant is planning an aggressive push into the Indian market. It will involve increased production and may include a reduced subscription price. “We have 10 original shows in production right now and six original films coming up for 2019 and
Have two months free — and a killer idea for a vertical-format original video? BuzzFeed and Instagram want to hear from you. The companies have launched VerticalU, a program for 15 young video creators to participate in a training program on producing content for IGTV. BuzzFeed and Instagram also will fund the vertical-video “passion projects”
Twitter accounts linked to the man arrested for allegedly sending mail bombs to an ever-growing list of Trump critics previously threatened a number of celebrities and politicians on Twitter. In at least one case, the social media company seems to have refused to take steps against such a threat. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment
Imax continues to scale down its virtual reality (VR) ambitions: The company closed its New York-based VR Center in recent days, bringing the total number of such closures up to 3. Separately, executives promised investors on the company’s Q3 earnings call that they wouldn’t spend any additional money on such projects in 2019. The closure
Netflix is a company whose unsentimental culture of firing underperforming employees has “unsettle[d] the ranks,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s lengthy, detailed piece published Thursday. But as in-depth as it was, the Journal’s 4,500-word story lacked some context. Namely: How happy are Netflix employees in general compared with other companies? And, more to the
UPDATED: In the 11 years since it was founded as a platform for DJs to post their mixes, SoundCloud has become so popular that a genre of hip-hop was named after it. But the company struggled in its efforts to become a fully-licensed, above-ground platform, and nearly went out of business last year before reorganizing
October 26, 2018 9:23AM PT Facebook took down another 82 accounts, pages and groups linked to Iran that were targeting people in the U.S. and UK with divisive messages, the company announced Friday. “The Page administrators and account owners typically represented themselves as US citizens, or in a few cases UK citizens — and they
Hollywood’s Motion Picture Association may be finding an increasingly sympathetic ear in Japanese government circles in its call for Tokyo to enable blocking of pirate websites. MPA chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin kicked off proceedings Friday at an annual presentation by the organization. As is normal at the gathering, he began emphasizing the economic impact
Hooked, a celeb-backed startup that produces serialized “chat-fiction” for smartphones, is going big with its first long-form story on Snapchat. “Dark Matter” is a five-chapter sci-fi mystery thriller set in present-day Silicon Valley. It premieres Friday (Oct. 26) in Hooked’s Publisher Story on Snapchat’s Discover Page, with subsequent chapters released daily through Oct. 30. The
In AT&T’s latest move to streamline WarnerMedia, Turner and Warner Bros. Digital Networks announced Friday that the FilmStruck indie, arthouse and classic film streaming service will shut down next month. The FilmStruck business will cease U.S. and international operations on Nov. 29, 2018, and the service stopped allowing signups on Oct. 26. A Turner rep
October 25, 2018 3:47PM PT Gen8 (‘Generate”), a team from Japan’s leading film and tech company Imagica Lab, unveiled its Motion Archive project this week. The motion capture-based effort has reached out to artists and athletes and is using the latest visual technology, including 3D imaging, to record, analyze and archive human movement. It demonstrated the
October 25, 2018 2:37PM PT Following a bombshell report by the New York Times detailing how Google shielded key male executives and even rewarded them following sexual-misconduct investigations, CEO Sundar Pichai sent a company-wide email saying Google terminated 48 employees for misconduct in the last two years. Of those, 13 were “senior managers and above” —
October 25, 2018 1:18PM PT Snapchat corporate parent Snap seems to be following Twitter’s example: The company continues to bleed users, but it is getting a lot better at monetizing its existing user base. During its most recent quarter, Snap lost 2 million daily active users compared to the previous quarter, the company disclosed as
Alphabet, whose principal business is Google, fell short on the top-line in the third quarter of 2018 but dramatically exceeded earnings per share expectations, turning in a net profit of $9.19 billion. Alphabet Q3 revenue was $33.7 billion, up 21% year over year but below Wall Street consensus estimate of $34.04 billion. Earnings per share of
It was only a matter of time: Adult entertainment studio Naughty America released one of the industry’s very first XXX-rated augmented reality (AR) apps for Android phones this week, which promises to put life-sized 3D versions of adult entertainers in your living room. Or bedroom, for that matter, with Naughty America CEO Andreas Hronopoulos touting