Tech

Aaron LaBerge, president and CTO of Disney Entertainment and ESPN, will leave the company this summer after a cumulative total of more than 20 years, after which he will join casino and sports-betting operator Penn Entertainment as chief technology officer. In a note to Disney staff Monday, LaBerge said he made a personal decision to

The three founders of Watcher Entertainment apologized to fans for their announcement that they were exiting YouTube and would put their new shows exclusively on their own subscription-streaming service. In response to a torrent of negative comments, Watcher’s Steven Lim, Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej said they were revising the plan — and will now

Eva Evans, a TikTok star known for her videos about living in New York City and the creator of the web series “Club Rat,” has died. She was 29. Evans’ sister, Lila Joy, announced the news in an Instagram post on Sunday. The cause of death has not been disclosed. “Yesterday my family received news

Watcher Entertainment has drawn millions of fans for their unscripted and comedic videos on YouTube — and now the studio’s three creators have drawn the ire of a significant number of them. On Friday, Watcher, formed in 2019 by former BuzzFeed hosts Steven Lim, Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, announced that going forward, full seasons

A media consultant sued Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, alleging he is owed “at least several million dollars” for work he did related to the company’s $370 million acquisition in 2022 of Redbox, the DVD kiosk and streaming company. Keith Knee, described in his legal complaint as an advisory and consulting services professional in

Netflix made a surprise announcement in reporting its (very good) first quarter results this week: The streaming TV powerhouse will stop reporting quarterly subscriber figures starting in 2025. In response, Netflix shares have taken a hit: The stock is down 8.7% Friday on the news, as investors fret that the lack of visibility into the

UPDATED: After building its business on YouTube and generating more than 400 million views on the platform, Watcher Entertainment will now offer full series of its original unscripted content — including “Ghost Files,” “Mystery Files” and “Puppet History” — exclusively on its new, subscription-based streaming service. Watcher was formed by former BuzzFeed creators Steven Lim,

Taylor Swift is promoting “The Tortured Poets Department” on TikTok in a huge way under a special deal with the app — while other artists on her label, Universal Music Group, remain locked out of TikTok in a licensing dispute. After Swift dropped her latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department” at midnight — followed by

Spotify’s premium plans combining music and audiobooks will mean a lower mechanical royalty rate for songwriters on those plans, the company has confirmed, although it claims that earnings for creators will continue to rise. “Spotify is on track to pay publishers and societies more in 2024 than in 2023. As our industry partners are aware, changes

TikTok says it’s going to block accounts from appearing in its algorithmically generated For You feed if they repeatedly post content that runs afoul of its updated eligibility standards. As part of a larger update to its community guidelines, TikTok is updating its For You eligibility standards. “Certain types of content may be included in

Wall Street is betting that Netflix‘s stream machine was continuing to fire on all cylinders coming into 2024. After netting a whopping 13.1 million new subs in Q4, Netflix is riding a wave of momentum that remains buoyed by the company’s paid-sharing strategy, as it converts password borrowers into paying members, according to analysts. Netflix

Max Cutler sold Parcast Studios, his scripted-audio entertainment start-up, to Spotify in 2019 under a deal in which Spotify ultimately paid about $100 million. Cutler went on to become Spotify’s VP, head of talk creator content and partnerships — inking exclusive licensing deals with podcasters including Alex Cooper, Emma Chamberlain and Markiplier, and managing the

TikTok inked a partnership with ticketing provider AXS to let users of the popular video app discover and buy tickets to live events. The feature is going live initially in the U.S., U.K., Sweden and Australia, with additional markets to follow at an undetermined date. Now, any certified artist on TikTok can use the in-app

Kyle Marisa Roth, a popular TikTok creator known for discussing controversial Hollywood blind items, has died. She was 36. Her sister Lindsay Roth announced the news on social media Monday, saying that she “passed away last week.” A cause of death was not revealed. “As a family we are still processing and deciding how to

CAA has signed Sarah Lugor, the multihyphenate content creator, model, host, fashion influencer and musician who posts on TikTok under the handle “@shreksdumpster,” for representation. Lugor, 23, is known for her comedic videos and fashion sense. She has built a following of more than 3 million followers across platforms — including 2.5 million on TikTok

DoubleVerify, which provides brand-safety measurement ratings for digital platforms to major advertisers, incorrectly displayed X‘s Brand Safety Rate — a measure of how frequently ads appeared adjacent to content that met advertiser-approved criteria — on the DoubleVerify dashboard for nearly five months. From Oct. 24, 2023, to March 14, 2024, DoubleVerify’s dashboard provided the wrong

UPDATED: Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the operator of the Truth Social social network positioned as a “safe harbor for free expression amid increasingly harsh censorship by Big Tech corporations,” closed down 18.35% at the end of regular trading Monday. That came after TMTG disclosed that it was issuing up to 21.49 million

Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles inked a deal to lead IAC’s The Daily Beast, under which the media veterans have been granted a minority stake in the news and opinion site. Effective immediately, Sherwood — one-time president of the Disney ABC Television Group — will serve as The Daily Beast’s publisher and CEO. Coles, previously

Spotter, which provides capital, services and software aimed at helping creators and brands grow their online businesses, hired former Adobe Systems and Microsoft exec Ivo Manolov as chief technology officer. In the CTO role, Manolov will be responsible for leading all technology with a focus on launching Spotter’s suite of AI-powered software tailored to YouTubers.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the company majority-owned by Donald Trump that operates the Truth Social social media network, have fallen about 50% off their high since they started trading a little over two weeks ago. TMTG stock closed at $32.59 per share Friday, rallying late in the day to close up 0.6%

YouTube’s popular “Tab Time” series, starring “America’s mom” and Emmy-winning host Tabitha Brown, just got bigger. Brown and creative studio Kids at Play have announced the launch of the “Tab Time World” app plus an all-new children’s book series and online shop as an expansion of the Emmy-winning young children’s series “Tab Time,” co-created by

Following a hack that exposed more than 15,000 Roku accounts last month, the company said Friday it discovered a second security incident that affected 576,000 additional user accounts. Roku said it reset the passwords for all affected accounts and are notifying those customers directly about the latest incident. According to the company, in fewer than

After nearly nine years, Showtime‘s streaming apps are fading to black. The Showtime standalone service will be shut down on April 30, according to notices sent to subscribers. The end of Showtime’s streaming apps comes just less than a year after parent company Paramount Global integrated Showtime’s programming into the top-tier Paramount+ plan. The company

Prime Video has a big audience, and now Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has put a new number on it: The premium video service has more than 200 million monthly viewers. Jassy revealed the number in Amazon’s annual letter to shareholders Thursday. “Recently, we’ve expanded our streaming TV advertising by introducing ads into Prime Video shows

In a surprise move, Taylor Swift‘s songs have returned to TikTok after a 10-week hiatus amid a licensing dispute between the app and Universal Music Group. As of Thursday morning, multiple Swift songs — including “You Belong With Me,” “Lover,” “Cardigan,” “Mirrorball,” “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” “Cruel Summer,” “Cardigan,” “Style (Taylor’s Version),” “Is It Over Now?

Meta, which has faced ongoing political pressure amid criticism that its apps don’t take enough measures to ensure the safety of children, announced new steps it’s taking to protect users from “sextortion” and “other forms of intimate image abuse.” Among the new measures: Instagram is introducing a new nudity-protection feature in direct messages, which blurs

Riot Games’ president of publishing Ryan Crosby has been named the next CEO of the World Surf League, effective May 13, as reported by Variety‘s sister site Sportico. Crosby joined Riot, the developer of League of Legends and Valorant, in 2021, after previous stops at Activision, Netflix and Hulu. Atop the WSL, Crosby will be responsible for continuing to

UPDATED, 2:30 p.m. ET: YouTube on Wednesday removed a warning that the “Joker 2” trailer may include “suicide or self-harm topics.” A rep for the video platform said its systems had “incorrectly” applied the warning label. “We determined that our systems applied the warning interstitial incorrectly,” a YouTube spokesperson told Variety. “The trailer remains available

Wondery and Forest Sounds are set to launch U.K. original limited series “The Price of Paradise.” Hosted by Alice Levine (“British Scandal”), it tells the true story of two women battling over an island on the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua. One is a sun-seeking Brit; the other a local human rights lawyer. “One woman is

Dave Portnoy, owner of digital media outfit Barstool Sports, said he won $2.76 million on a $600,000 wager that the University of Connecticut men’s basketball team would prevail in the championship game over Purdue. “The greatest bet of my life,” Portnoy posted on X after the game’s conclusion, alongside a screenshot showing his winning bet