Top News:
Joe Flint / Wall Street Journal:
New episodes of Sesame Street to air on HBO, nine months before airing on PBS, starting this fall — HBO Strikes Deal for ‘Sesame Street’ — Partnership means new episodes will air on HBO first, PBS nine months later; deal will double the number of episodes produced yearly — Big Bird is flying over to HBO.
Discussion:
New York Times, Sesame Workshop, CNNMoney, Current.org, Adweek, TIME, New York Times, Politico, Broadcasting & Cable, The New York Observer, Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, Wall Street Journal, @alexweprin, New York Daily News, Business Insider, EW.com, Associated Press, Vanity Fair, TIME, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, Agence France-Presse, E! Online, New York Post, Hollywood Reporter, The Week, @brianstelter, Deadline, Mashable, @jbflint, Jezebel, ABC News, @ronmwangaguhung, Engadget, Yahoo TV, Ars Technica, NBC News, Fortune, Newsweek, @robertmackey, Variety, @nickconfessore, @poniewozik, @brianstelter, The Inquisitr News and Current.org
Shan Wang / Nieman Lab:
The New York Times built a Slack bot to help decide which stories to post to social media — The New York Times publishes more than 300 stories each day. Which ones should editors feature on its many social media channels? While the humans behind the Times' social media accounts have refined …
Lukas I. Alpert / Wall Street Journal:
News Corp in advanced talks to sell off its education division, Amplify, will cease production of tablet, continue to develop software during talks — News Corp Posts Loss on Education Write-Down — Media company in advanced talks to sell off Amplify digital-ed unit
Bloomberg Business:
Sources: Apple's live TV streaming service now slated for 2016 launch as licensing talks stall — Apple Said to Delay Live TV Service to 2016 as Negotiations Stall — Apple Inc. customers waiting for the company to revolutionize live television as it did for music and phone service …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Variety, Tech Insider, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Engadget and Business Insider
Natalie Jarvey / Hollywood Reporter:
Yahoo names former Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Martha Nelson as global editor-in-chief to oversee digital magazines, reporting to Kathy Savitt — Former Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Martha Nelson Joins Yahoo — She joins the tech giant as global editor-in-chief overseeing the company's suite of digital magazines.
Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:
Vertical video gains acceptance as viewers spend more time on phones and tablets — Vertical Video on the Small Screen? Not a Crime — In 2012, Vincent Bova and Damien Eckhardt-Jacobi, two puppeteers who host a YouTube series called Glove and Boots, created a public service announcement …
Discussion:
Adweek, @brianstelter, @jackshafer, @digiphile, @ferndiaz, @ernie_mourelo, @sfshag, @shanebarnhill and @pargery
Politico:
European Commission extends deadline for Google to respond to antitrust charges to Aug. 31 — Google gets more time in EU antitrust case — Tech giant Google has until August 31 to respond to the Commission. — Google has got a second extension — until August 31 …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg Business and Search Engine Land
Sahil Patel / Digiday:
With BI Films, Business Insider ventures into long-form video — Business Insider is going long on video, quite literally. — On July 28, the business news site launched “League of Millions,” a documentary series centering on e-sports gamers Team Liquid as it pursue the annual “League of Legends” world championship.
Discussion:
The Hill
Nicole Spector / Adweek:
Advertisers increasingly investing in Facebook's autoplay video strategy, embedded instead of interstitial and sound muted as default — How Facebook's Autoplay Videos Are Ushering in a New Era of Silent Storytelling — Getting aurally blasted by a loud, autoplaying video ad …
Gerry Smith / Bloomberg Business:
SNL Kagan report: pay-TV services record biggest-ever quarterly drop in Q2, losing 625K accounts — Cord-Cutting Accelerates as Pay TV Sees Record Subscriber Losses — Cord-cutting is gaining steam. — Pay-TV services recorded their biggest-ever quarterly drop in subscribers …
Discussion:
MediaPost, Hollywood Reporter, PRWeb, Multichannel News, The Drum and Broadcasting & Cable
Jennifer Maloney / Wall Street Journal:
As reading of e-books on phones increases, publishers are rethinking content for small screens — The Rise of Phone Reading — It's not the e-reader that will be driving future books sales, it's the phone; How publishers are rethinking books for the small screen
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
GQ cut its webpage load time by 80% by reducing its server calls by 400%, using a single CMS, and decluttering articles — How GQ cut its webpage load time by 80 percent — It used to be that publishers measured their success in audience size. Now, with the rise of reading on mobile devices …
Discussion:
Vox Product Blog, @lmoses and AdExchanger