Tech

Netflix misled investors about declining subscriber growth over the course of six months — leading to a massive drop in its stock price, according to a shareholder lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal district court in San Francisco, alleges Netflix violated U.S. securities laws by making “materially false and/or misleading statements” and also because

May 5 means a lot to Topeka K. Sam. On that day in 2015, she was released from prison, and on May 5, 2022, she’ll be honored with Google’s inaugural Social Impact Award, for her efforts toward ending the poverty and incarceration of women and girls worldwide, at Variety’s 2022 Power of Women: New York

Elon Musk, the mega-billionaire Twitter power user who last week clinched a deal to acquire the company, has floated a new idea for the social network make money. Musk on Tuesday posted that Twitter may impose “a slight cost” for companies or government accounts to use the service, without elaborating. “Ultimately, the downfall of the

The U.K.’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee has invited Elon Musk to discuss his proposed purchase of Twitter. MP Julian Knight, who chairs the cross-party parliamentary committee, has written to Musk to extend the invitation. “My Committee has noted your proposed acquisition of Twitter and we are interested in the developments you propose,”

Howard Stern used the May 3 episode of eponymous SiriusXM radio show to blast the Supreme Court Justices who are considering overturning Roe v. Wade, which has kept basic abortion rights legal since its 1973 ruling. A majority draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked on May 2. Alito wrote that Roe v.

World-champion gymnast Simone Biles is getting her own Snap reality series, while top digital influencer siblings Charli and Dixie D’Amelio will be coming back for a second season of their competition series on Snapchat. The Snap originals announcements are part of the company’s 2022 NewFronts presentation for advertisers, unveiled Tuesday. The 10-episode “Daring Simone Biles”

Condé Nast announced its largest-ever video programming slate — with a whopping 250 new and returning originals across 17 brands, including Vogue, the New Yorker, GQ, Glamour, AD, Vanity Fair and Wired, for the 2022-23 season. The company, which unveiled the lineup at its 2022 NewFronts presentation Tuesday for marketers at The Shed at Hudson

Disney Streaming Services, which operates the Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and Star+ services globally, has tapped two tech veterans — Devika Chawla from Netflix and Arun Chandra — for senior roles. Chawla (above left) joins Disney Streaming next week as senior VP of lifecycle engineering, after nearly a decade at Netflix building out global customer communication

Roku is super-sizing its cooking entertainment lineup. The streaming platform announced co-production deals with Marquee Brands and Milk Street Studios to develop seven original series starring lifestyle and culinary personalities Martha Stewart, Emeril Lagasse and Christopher Kimball. The new programming was unveiled as part of Roku’s 2022 NewFronts presentation Tuesday for marketers. The shows, slated

Titus Welliver’s ex-cop Harry Bosch will return to crack more cases on Amazon Freevee. Amazon Freevee (formerly IMDb TV) announced the pickup of Season 2 of “Bosch: Legacy,” a spin-off of series “Bosch” that ran for seven seasons on Prime Video — ahead of the May 6 premiere of “Bosch: Legacy” on the ecommerce giant’s

Netflix’s “Heartstopper” continued to top Variety’s Trending TV chart for the week of April 25 to May 1. The series, which debuted at No. 1 last week following its April 22 drop, drew even more interactions this week, with 1.05 million engagements on Twitter. heartstopper debuted on netflix top 10 as the seventh most watched

Peacock will be the first streaming service to offer access to Bravo shows the day after they air, in a new bit of corporate-sibling synergy at NBCUniversal. For the first time on any streaming-only platform, new episodes of all Bravo shows will be available day-after-air to Peacock’s premium subscribers. The streamer also announced a multiyear

“Laguna Beach” stans will get a dose of tea from stars Kristin Cavallari and Stephen Colletti in the first-ever rewatch podcast for the fan-favorite reality TV show from the 2000s. “Back to the Beach With Kristin and Stephen,” to premiere this summer, comes from podcast production company Dear Media, which has ordered 40 episodes across

The Apple Music premium music subscription service is now available globally on the Roku platform. Apple Music subscribers can access the streaming service on any Roku device, including Roku streaming players, Roku TV models and Roku premium audio products like the Roku Streambar Pro. Current Apple Music subscribers can access the app with their existing

Amazon had pegged its deal for MGM, which it closed last month, as worth around $8.5 billion. But the actual estimated value of the studio’s library of movies and TV shows is less than half that, the ecommerce giant disclosed Friday. In its 10-Q filing with the SEC, Amazon detailed the components of the MGM

UPDATED: Elon Musk this week reaped $8.4 billion through a series of stock sales of Tesla, the electric car company he heads, evidently as part of raising money for his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. Musk, , the world’s richest individual, sold more than 4.4 million shares of Tesla on April 26 and 27

Entrepreneur and TV personality Nicole Walters has relaunched her eponymous podcast “The Nicole Walters Podcast” with a new partner — Dear Media. For the third season of the “Nicole Walters Podcast,” Walters — who is best known as the star of USA Networks’ family docu-comedy “She’s the Boss” — has teamed with the podcast company

Apple’s digital services businesses fueled top-line growth in the first three months of 2022, as overall the tech giant handily topped analyst projections despite supply-chain challenges. The services segment — which includes the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud and other subscription businesses — notched a record $19.8 billion in sales for the quarter,

Streaming platform Roku saw revenue and user growth cool down in the first three months of 2022, as the company missed Wall Street expectations on the bottom line. The company reported 61.3 million active accounts for the first quarter, up 14% year over year and a sequential gain of 1.1 million. That’s compared with 35%

Amazon dramatically missed Wall Street’s earnings expectations for the first quarter of 2022, as the world’s biggest online retailer saw a significant deceleration in top-line growth and faced higher costs in the period. Overall, the company posted revenue $116.4 billion, up 7%, in line with expectations — but representing Amazon’s slowest year-over-year growth rate in

Snap’s Spectacles, the camera-enabled sunglasses, failed to take off. But now CEO Evan Spigel is taking Snapchat to the skies with a new idea designed to funnel more content into the service — Pixy, a drone-powered camera that can fly around and record video and photos for sharing on the app. The Pixy flying cameras,

Snap wants to put Snapchat augmented-reality experiences — created with artists and festivals — in front of concertgoers through a multiyear deal with Live Nation Entertainment. Under the pact, fans will be able to use Snapchat at select Live Nation concerts to access custom-built AR experiences. As envisioned by the companies, those could let them

Emmy-winning comedy series “Schitt’s Creek” will cycle off Netflix in the U.S. later this year, to become available exclusively on Disney’s Hulu. Hulu announced that it will be the dedicated subscription video on-demand home “Schitt’s Creek” in the U.S. beginning Oct. 3, 2022. The fan-favorite show, which originally aired in the U.S. on Paramount’s Pop

Twitter, which this week accepted a deal to go private in a $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, reported income a touch lighter than Wall Street predicated in the first quarter of 2022. But the social network blew away forecasts on earnings and pulled in more users than analysts expected. Q1 revenue was $1.20 billion,

Brut, an official media partner of the Cannes Film Festival, is breaking new ground by partnering with Emily Yang, a celebrated digital artist known as Pplpleasr, to release 75 Cannes-themed non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on May 2. The proceeds will benefit the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. The values-driven digital startup, whose backers include James Murdoch and

“Wallace and Gromit,” the cult British stop-motion comedy franchise created by Nick Park of Aardman Animations, is set for a virtual reality makeover. Aardman is partnering with Meta Quest and Paris-based banner Atlas V to create an interactive, narrative-led, single player VR experience which will follow the new adventures of Wallace and Gromit. Called “The

HBO Max has announced that local versions of its original reality dating competition show “FBoy Island” have been greenlit for production in Denmark, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands. The hit series will be produced by Warner Bros. International Television Production in each of these territories The “FBoy Island” series concept was created by Elan Gale

CJ ENM, one of the companies leading the Korean entertainment wave, has acquired a minority equity stake in U.S.-based metaverse firm Hyperreal Digital. The stake was made through a private transaction with Hyperreal’s founders. The value of the stake was not disclosed. But it is known that Hyperreal previously closed an oversubscribed $7 million seed

Spotify shares closed down 12.4% Wednesday — hitting their lowest point in the company’s history as a public company — after the audio streamer’s paid-subscriber numbers disappointed investors. The chief concern pushing the stock down seemed to be that Spotify may be on the same trajectory as Netflix in hitting a wall in subscriber growth.

Meta, the social giant formerly known as Facebook, beat Wall Street estimates for earnings in the first quarter of 2022 — but fell short on the revenue front, as it reported its slowest top-line growth as a public company. For Q1, Meta reported revenue of $27.9 billion, up 7% year over year, after the company