Tech

New York City-based esports giant Andbox has rebranded as NYXL and will be making a hefty investment into the city’s gaming community over the next year, including building its new Manhattan headquarters, practice facility and live-event space in pursuit of developing New York into a gaming epicenter. “Dedicated to creating experiences and developing content that

YouTube is upping its play for cord-cutters: The video platform has released dozens of full seasons of about 100 TV shows — nearly 4,000 episodes in all — available to stream for free with ads. The free TV shows are available only to YouTube users in the U.S. The lineup includes Gordon Ramsay’s “Hell’s Kitchen”

The National Football League is coming out with its first VR game title, promising to embed fans in gridiron action like never before. The league has long been a player in video games, most notably with EA’s 34-year-old Madden NFL franchise. Now the NFL is teaming with StatusPro, a sports tech and gaming startup that

AT&T CEO John Stankey’s pay for 2021 rose 18% over the previous year to $24.8 million, per the company’s SEC filing Tuesday. His base salary for the year, his first full year as CEO, was $2.4 million, with a non-equity incentive plan compensation of $6.88 million. His stock awards totaled $13.42 million, with “other” compensation

Yuga Labs, the company that created the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, closed $450 million in a seed funding round that gives it a post-money valuation of $4 billion, the company announced. The round was led by venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z crypto fund. Other investors joining the round included game studio Animoca Brands

Netflix, still in the early days of its video-game strategy, continues to expand the selection of games in its mobile apps — and later this month, the streamer will bow its first first-person shooter. Since launching games worldwide in November, Netflix has rolled out 14 titles, available for no additional charge (and no ads) in

BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Mark Schoofs is stepping down, along with at least two other top editors, as the digital media company said it will be cutting jobs across the board. “After almost two rollicking and deeply fulfilling years as editor-in-chief, I’ve decided that it’s the right time to move on,” Schoofs wrote in an internal

National Research Group (NRG), an entertainment and tech research firm and strategy consultancy, has hired Grady Miller, previously head of consumer insights for Apple TV Plus, as chief marketing officer. It marks Miller’s return to NRG, where he was most recently VP of strategy before exiting to join Apple in November 2019. At Apple, he

Apple is adding new tools for podcasters to track audience trends, as well as boosting support for podcast subscriptions, among other feature aimed at letting creators manage their podcast businesses on Apple Podcasts. The moves show that the Silicon Valley giant is getting more serious in making Apple Podcasts a more robust rival to Spotify.

The overnight buzz surrounding last week’s Critics Choice Awards was enough to catapult the March 13 show to the top of Variety’s Trending TV chart for the week of March 14-20, as viewers continued digging into all of the night’s highlights, controversies and big wins. The live broadcast on The CW and TBS drummed up

Michelle Young of “The Bachelorette” fame will join Becca Kufrin  as co-host of “Bachelor Happy Hour,” the official recap podcast for behind-the-scenes dish on ABC’s “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette” and “Bachelor in Paradise.” The new “Bachelor Happy Hour” will premiere March 22, with new episodes to be released Tuesdays through Amazon’s Wondery across all major

Epic Games, after announcing Sunday that it was donating all proceeds from its popular “Fortnite” game toward humanitarian relief for people affected by Russia’s war on Ukraine, said Monday it has already raised $36 million for the effort. According to Epic, “Fortnite” proceeds from March 20-April 3, 2022 will go toward Ukraine relief. In addition,

Startup Creator Plus hired Peter Sherman, most recently at WarnerMedia’s HBO Max as head of marketing for the content studio and distribution platform startup focused on digital-influencer talent,. Sherman reports to co-founder and CEO Jonathan Shambroom and will work with head of studio Adam Wescott and head of product Tricia Choi. At Creator Plus, he

ABC’s freshman hit “Abbott Elementary” is the most-tweeted comedy series of 2022 so far, racking up more than 1.5 million posts on Twitter to date. The workplace comedy was created by and stars Quinta Brunson as an avid second-grade teacher doing her best to support the students of her underfunded Philadelphia school. Brunson has lit

In two weeks, actors Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher have exceeded their goal of raising $30 million to help Ukrainian refugees displaced by Russia’s savage war on the country. The crowdfunding effort has now raised nearly $35 million — and counting. The married couple had previously pledged to match up to $3 million in donations

Future Studios and women’s destination Marie Claire are teaming for digital true crime series “On the Record with Marie Claire.” The seven-part anthology series will feature female-focused stories of women seeking justice, told from the viewpoint of a central character directly linked to the case in question. Each episode, which is 7–12 minutes long, features

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell production firm says it’s satisfied that Spotify is adequately addressing the problem of misinformation on its platform — and announced that a podcast featuring Markle will hit the audio-streaming platform this summer. The latest development comes after the couple in January said they were urging Spotify to make changes

Amazon on Thursday announced that it had closed its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM. But the deal may not be out of the regulatory woods yet. The Federal Trade Commission, asked about its review of the Amazon-MGM announcement, noted that the agency has the latitude to file a legal challenge even after the parties have

Most major entertainment companies looking for the pole position in the global streaming road race have a go-big-or-go-home strategy — they’re building massive vehicles with broad, four-quadrant appeal. Sony has taken a different tack. Its primary direct-to-consumer streaming video business is Crunchyroll, geared to the Japanese art forms of anime and manga. Instead of pouring

Netflix is kicking the tires on a new way to extract money from people who have been leeching off someone else’s account. In a test rolling out soon in three countries — Chile, Costa Rica and Peru — Netflix will prompt members who share their accounts with those outside their households with an option to

Amazon has closed its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM, the companies said Thursday. The pact was first announced in May and has been winding its way through the regulatory process. Per Amazon, “The storied, nearly century-old studio — with more than 4,000 film titles, 17,000 TV episodes, 180 Academy Awards, and 100 Emmy Awards —

Subscription streamer Starz Play Arabia is getting a major cash injection from a consortium of Abu Dhabi-based companies that are acquiring a roughly 57% stake in the SVOD service. A group comprising E-Vision, which is a Hollywood and Bollywood content aggregator, and United Arab Emirates sovereign fund ADQ, has purchased a controlling stake in Starz

Kanye West has been suspended from Instagram for 24 hours for violating the platform’s harassment policy, Variety has confirmed. According to a Meta spokesperson, the platform has deleted content posted by West for violating their policies on hate speech, bullying and harassment. As a result, West has been restricted from posting, commenting and sending DMs for

Reality TV pioneer Bunim-Murray Productions is throwing its hat into the NFT ring. The production company teamed with tech startup Virtual Arts to form Wonderfuel, an entertainment company that intends to develop a slate of unscripted TV shows funded by sales of nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Wonderfuel (wonderfuel.co) plans to shop its shows to traditional TV

Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video have both pre-bought “Puffins Impossible,” a spinoff of the animated short form series “Puffins” voiced by Johnny Depp, who is reprising his role as Johnny Puff.  The 18-episode show, which is currently in production in Serbia, is being made by Andrea Iervolino and Monica Bacardi’s ILBE outfit via their

Netflix will soon launch a test letting primary account holders pay an additional fee for users outside their households — a new attempt by the company to address illicit password-sharing. According to the Netflix terms of service, a customer’s account “may not be shared with individuals beyond your household.” After years of turning a blind

For much of his childhood, Pablo Schreiber didn’t have a TV, let alone a video game system. So it wasn’t really until the 43-year-old actor was hired to star in “Halo” — Paramount Plus’ upcoming adaptation of Microsoft’s crown jewel Xbox franchise — that Schreiber sat down to play as the genetically engineered super soldier

Rooster Teeth recruited Adam Bersin to lead marketing for WarnerMedia’s fandom-focused entertainment division. Bersin most recently served as Amazon Studios’ global creative marketing lead for sci-fi, fantasy, superhero and adult animated content. While at Amazon, he headed up marketing for “The Boys,” one of Prime Video’s biggest franchises. Before joining Amazon Studios in September 2017,

One might think that, just weeks after his company scraped through the biggest crisis of its existence — its stubborn defense of giving a gigantic international platform, not to mention more than $200 million, to Joe Rogan and his destructive, malignant opinions — Spotify’s Daniel Ek might exercise a little caution and humility. One might

Best friends and comedy writers Amy Aniobi and Grace Edwards — who worked together on Issa Rae’s “Insecure” series for HBO — are launching a new weekly talk show podcast as counterprogramming to doomscrolling. The show, produced by APM Studios and distributed by American Public Media, is set to premiere March 30 on major podcast