Tech

After Mike Golic Sr. was tweeting regularly about playing DraftKings with his pals, the sports-betting company reached out to the former ESPN host and commentator — and offered him a deal for his own podcast. Golic will host a one-hour weekly video podcast alongside Meadowlark Media personality Jessica Smetana for DraftKings. The show will cover

Roku fell short of Wall Street revenue targets for the fourth quarter of 2021 and warned of ongoing supply-chain disruptions into 2022, prompting the streaming platform company’s stock to drop. The company posted overall revenue of $865.3 million for Q4, up 33%, while net income came in at $23.7 million, or 17 cents per diluted

Spotify’s deal with Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host who has attracted a swarm of controversy in recent weeks, is worth more than $200 million, according to a new report by the New York Times. Citing anonymous sources, the Times reported that “the true value” of the deal negotiated between Spotify and Rogan — spanning

UPDATED: Twitter had some widespread problems again Thursday, with users across the U.S. reporting issues accessing the social network’s website. User reports that Twitter was having technical issues began to spike at about 10:51 a.m. ET, per monitoring site DownDetector.com. About 85% of the complaints registered by DownDetector were related to accessing Twitter’s website. The

Looking to widen its podcast biz beyond English-language audiences, iHeartMedia inked a deal to use Veritone’s synthetic-voice technology to translate and produce podcasts in other languages. Initially, iHeart plans to use Veritone’s artificial-intelligence system to translate its most popular podcasts into Spanish across the iHeartPodcast Network. The company said among the podcasts first in line

The NFT train keeps steaming along:  Universal Music Group is the first major music company to ink a partnership with Curio, a nonfungible token platform focused on entertainment brands. Under the deal, Curio will serve as a dedicated global outlet for future officially licensed NFT projects from UMG’s record labels, operating companies and recording artists

Spotify, aiming to juice sales of its podcasting ad biz, has acquired two companies in the space: Podsights, a podcast advertising measurement service, and Chartable, a podcast analytics platform for publishers. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed. The addition of Podsights and Chartable will help make the audio-streaming giant a more attractive partner

Spotter, a two-year-old startup that acquires rights to the video catalogs of YouTubers, announced $200 million in new funding led by Japan’s SoftBank. Spotter said that gives it a valuation of $1.7 billion — and will let the company invest $1 billion with YouTube creators. The Series D in financing from SoftBank Vision Fund 2

ViX is the new umbrella brand for the global streaming businesses of TelevisaUnivision, the newly formed Spanish-language media powerhouse. The company on Wednesday announced ViX as the name encompassing both its free, ad-supported streaming services — which launched last year in the U.S. as PrendeTV — as well as a forthcoming subscription offering, to be

A tech-news media start-up aims to forge ahead with a look into the world of Web3. Dot Dot Dot, founded by Laurie Segall and Derek Dodge, is launching D3, a news and media network that aims to explore the human and cultural impact of the growing digital business built around companies that provide services in

The founder of the blockchain-based film sales platform Cinemarket is launching Cineverse, an ambitious start-up that will make it possible for filmmakers, distributors and producers to market films directly using blockchain and NFT tech. Established by Cinemarket CEO Adrian Lugol and partners Vincent Lopez and Daniel Siegler (pictured), Cineverse will allow users to buy, share,

Shares of Paramount, the new corporate name of ViacomCBS, took a dive after the media conglomerate told Wall Street that it was more aggressively equipping itself for battle in the streaming wars. The stock tumbled more than 20% in early trading Wednesday, coming a day after Paramount’s 2022 investor day presentation that detailed revised financial

Paramount Plus will begin integrating Showtime content this summer, launching an in-app upgrade that includes access to the pay TV channel’s programming, ViacomCBS — soon to be renamed Paramount — announced during its Tuesday investor event. “So let’s talk about how we’re helping subscribers access even more of our amazing streaming services, right there in

Disney CEO Bob Chapek appointed veteran media and tech exec Mike White to a new role coordinating the Mouse House’s “metaverse” efforts going forward. White, who has worked at Disney for a little over a decade, is assuming the new role of SVP of next-generation storytelling and consumer experiences at the Walt Disney Co., responsible

Paramount Plus and Showtime gained 9.4 million streaming subscribers, topping a combined 56 million subscribers by the end of last year, as their parent company ViacomCBS — soon to be renamed Paramount — indicated that it was relying more heavily on revenue from streaming-media operations. 80% of those new subs — or 7.3 million —

In what may be a case of unfortunate timing, Kendrick Lamar will appear in an extended Spotify podcast series that examines his classic 2015 album “To Pimp a Butterfly” — premiering Wednesday (Feb. 16). The show was actually announced at the beginning of January, but debuts in the wake of the firestorm of controversy around

Snap hired ad-industry veteran Resh Sidhu to lead Arcadia, the Snapchat parent’s global creative studio for branded augmented reality. Sidhu joins Arcadia as global director, based in New York, heading up the AR business and managing the team globally. Most recently, she served as chief creative officer for Barbarian, working with clients including American Express,

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, agreed to pay $90 million to settle a long-running data privacy lawsuit over its use of cookies in 2010-11 to track users’ internet use even after they had logged off. The settlement was submitted for approval late Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Phil Rosenthal, creator of CBS’s “Everybody Loves Raymond” and host of Netflix’s “Somebody Feed Phil,” is about to get naked — metaphorically — for his first podcast. Rosenthal is teaming with SiriusXM’s Stitcher podcast division to launch “Naked Lunch,” a weekly talk-show podcast co-hosted with his friend and longtime Rolling Stone journalist David Wild. The

Jay Ellis (“Insecure,” “Top Gun: Maverick,”) will host the inaugural Anthem Awards. The virtual awards, to be held Feb. 28, were created to honor individuals and organizations for their social impact work. “It’s a tremendous honor to host the first annual Anthem Awards,” Ellis said. “As we enter the third year of a global pandemic

Time moves differently on TikTok. For every new hit uncovered on the video-sharing app, an old one is resurrected. The latest track of a certain vintage to get new life is “That’s Not My Name.” The Ting Tings’ 2008 calling card has been embraced by an ever-expanding gaggle of celebrities — including Alicia Silverstone, the

Super Bowl LVI scored a massive touchdown on Variety’s Trending TV chart for the week of Feb. 7 – 13, tackling this week’s other televised offerings with almost 805,000 engagements during its Sunday broadcast. The game itself, during which the L.A. Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals, 23-20, was a hot ticket as celebrities like Jennifer

Christina Yuna Lee, a senior creative producer at the digital music platform Splice, was murdered over the weekend inside her apartment in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York. She was 35. The suspect, Assamad Nash. who allegedly was seen on security video following Lee into her apartment, has been arrested and charged in connection with

Will “Spider-Man: No Way Home” mount an Oscars comeback after being left out of the best picture race? A new, fan-voted category at the 2022 Academy Awards may help pave the way for the Tom Holland-led blockbuster, Twitter and the Academy have announced. Starting on Monday, Twitter users can vote on their favorite film of

After three years in the works, Critical Role’s animated “The Legend of Vox Machina” finally lit up streaming screens on Prime Video last month — delighting fans with a raucous, foul-mouthed spree of action and adventure. The show, based on Critical Role’s first Dungeons & Dragons campaign, is currently No. 3 on Prime Video’s Top

What was the most popular Super Bowl LVI ad? According to YouTube, the No. 1 most-watched spot on Sunday was Amazon’s portrayal of Alexa wreaking havoc on the domestic bliss of Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost. Johansson and Jost, who famously wed after meeting on “Saturday Night Live,” imagine what it would be like if

Less is more for Coinbase Global Inc., the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S. The company debuted a new commercial during Super Bowl LVI that didn’t bear much resemblance to any of its surrounding advertisements in the broadcast. The sixty-second advertisement is almost solely composed of a QR code ricocheting against the sides of the

UPDATED: Twitter was experiencing significant problems with its site and apps Friday, according to user reports. The company said it fixed a bug, about an hour after the issues were first reported. According to DownDetector.com, user reports that Twitter was having technical issues began to spike at 12:13 p.m. ET. Problems that Twitter users said

Gen Z won’t sit for a three-hour sporting event on boring old TV. They want an interactive, personalized experience that feels more like a video game, one that pulls them into the action with live stats, chats and alternate audio feeds — and maybe even launches them into VR. So goes a running narrative in

A leader of a notorious video-game piracy crime ring — which sold hacking software and devices to download stolen games to consoles including the Nintendo Switch — was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison. A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington handed down the prison sentence Thursday to