Mediagazer: Sinclair's bid to buy Tribune Media draws opposition from advocacy groups, Dish Network, and conservative outlets including Newsmax, OANN, and The Blaze (Sydney Ember/New York Times)

12:20 PM ET, August 9, 2017

Top News:

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

Disney to end Netflix film distribution deal in 2019, will launch ESPN streaming service in 2018 and Disney streaming services in 2019 — Disney will end its distribution deal with Netflix and launch its own streaming service, the company announced today. It intends to launch the service in 2019.

The Walt Disney Company:

Disney will pay $1.58B to acquire additional 42% stake in BAMTech, making it a majority stakeholder — The Walt Disney Company announced today that it has agreed to acquire majority ownership of BAMTech, LLC and will launch its ESPN-branded multi-sport video streaming service in early 2018 …

Discussion: Forbes, TechCrunch, NPR, MacRumors, Fortune, CNBC, Financial Times, MediaNama, BetaNews, FierceCable, The Walt Disney Company, 9to5Mac, TechCrunch, The New York Observer, Engadget, Business Insider, The Hill, GeekWire, LAist, Gizmodo, The Verge, The Week and @mattzeitlin, more at Techmeme »

Cynthia Littleton / Variety:

Disney's Iger: strategic shift to streaming is both a defensive and offensive move that will include sacrifices, but is ultimately a better model — Disney is ready to deploy some of the company's crown jewels — Disney- and Pixar-branded movies and ESPN — in an effort to position itself …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, The Verge, Ad Age, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and The Week

Sydney Ember / New York Times:

Sinclair's bid to buy Tribune Media draws opposition from advocacy groups, Dish Network, and conservative outlets including Newsmax, OANN, and The Blaze — The Sinclair Broadcast Group's proposed acquisition of Tribune Media has ignited expected opposition from left-leaning advocacy groups …

Discussion: HuffPost, @brucebartlett, Free Press, @melbournecoal, Media Matters for America and Variety

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Tribune Media reports a Q2 loss of $30.4M, compared with a year-ago loss of $161.6M, and quarterly revenue dropping 2% to $469.5M — Programming costs at the firm, which Sinclair has agreed to buy, rose, including $20 million of “additional expense related to the strategic shift toward …

David McCabe / Axios:

Techdirt receives $250K+ from a group of wealthy backers, including Craig Newmark, to support its legal battle with Hulk Hogan's lawyer Charles Harder — An eclectic group is financially backing TechDirt, a tech news site being sued for libel by the same lawyer who who helped take down Gawker.

Discussion: Nieman Lab, @jackshafer, @jason_kint, Talking Biz News, @dmccabe and @niemanlab

Melody Kramer / Poynter:

Interview with Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, EFF's senior staff technologist, on increasing user trust by decreasing the use of third-party trackers — Last year, Steven Englehardt and Arvind Narayanan at Princeton University looked at the top 1 million sites on the internet and found …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Alexios Mantzarlis / Poynter:

Mozilla launches the Mozilla Information Trust Initiative, with the aim of combatting online misinformation through new products, research, more — Mozilla, the nonprofit organization behind the Firefox browser, announced today a new program to combat online misinformation.

Discussion: The Mozilla Blog

David Faber / CNBC:

Sources: French telecom giant Altice and its US subsidiary, Altice USA, are working on a bid for Charter Communications — - The French telecom giant and its U.S. cable subsidiary, Altice USA, are working on an offer to buy Charter, according to people close to the situation.

Discussion: Business Insider and FierceCable

Greg Sargent / Washington Post:

President Trump continues tweeting against The Washington Post and The New York Times in apparent effort to delegitimize outside sources of information — THE MORNING PLUM: — In recent days, President Trump has escalated his assaults on the “Fake News” media and other institutions …

Discussion: @realdonaldtrump, CNNMoney, The Daily Caller, New York Magazine, Politico, Axios, @theplumlinegs, @wdlindsy, CNN, New York Daily News, The New York Observer, Mediaite, Fox 59, Vanity Fair, Associated Press and The Week

Kim Masters / Hollywood Reporter:

Interview with John Stankey, the current head of AT&T's entertainment group who will run Time Warner post-acquisition — “Investment in content is going to increase,” says John Stankey in his first interview since being named to oversee HBO, Warner Bros. and CNN as he reveals …

Chris Ariens / Adweek:

Bloomberg to launch management consultancy unit using data from terminals, research arms, and analysts, will charge businesses $150K-$200K/month — Tapping its deep resources to provide consulting services for businesses — Bloomberg is leveraging its vast reach in financial data …

Alvin Chang / Vox:

Analysis of 17 months of Fox and Friends transcripts shows how hosts speak to Trump, including using “we” statements, using “the president” not by name — How the Fox morning show evolved into Donald Trump's posse. — It was 6 am, just a few weeks after Donald Trump …

Discussion: Washington Post, Politico, @jayrosen_nyu and bookforum.com

Amanda Holpuch / The Guardian:
Less than 24 hours after criticizing the NYT on Monday night for using anonymous sources, Trump tweeted a link to a Fox News segment citing anonymous officials

Discussion: Bustle, MSNBC, Washington Post, Press Association, Axios, Business Insider, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, Fox News, CNNMoney and AFF

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More News:

Dallas Morning News:
Belo, parent of Dallas Morning News, says it will outsource much ad creation and production work to Gannett, resulting in 45 layoffs

Discussion: @nbj914 and News & Tech

Etan Vlessing / Hollywood Reporter:
Lionsgate beats estimates with Q1 net income of $174M, up from $1.3M last year, including $201M gain from Epix equity sale, on revenue of $1.01B

Discussion: Variety, The Wrap, Deadline, Deadline, Variety and Lionsgate

Natt Garun / The Verge:
ACLU sues Maine's governor for deleting Facebook comments and blocking users, a week after suing KY, MD governors and a month after Knight institute sued Trump

David Uberti / Splinter:
Breitbart names a NYT reporter working on story about government secrecy, lists those who received email from her, and says the reporting demonstrates collusion

Discussion: Breitbart, Media Matters for America, Washington Post, Mediaite, @jdawsey1, @bradheath, @postscottwilson, @ryansabalow, @janemayernyer, @samuelaadams, @andrewperezdc, @nickconfessore, @johnmcquaid and @ggreenwald

Earlier Picks:

BuzzFeed:
Study of 450+ websites, associated Facebook pages, and their owners reveals inner workings of partisan pages: FB is kingmaker, right-wing's more prolific, more

Discussion: TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Christopher Williams / Telegraph:
UK Culture Secretary Karen Bradley asks regulator Ofcom to review Murdoch's bid for Sky again, following the Seth Rich controversy

Discussion: New York Times, Variety, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, GOV.UK, The Guardian, @davidfolkenflik and Mediaite

Franklin Foer / The Atlantic:
Franklin Foer, former editor of the New Republic, on Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes' failed attempt to turn around the magazine's fortunes

Discussion: Recode, @rafat, @thetomasrios, @vanessaw, @digidave, @ennisnyt, Amazon.com, @juliaioffe and @bethanymac12

Samuel Gibbs / The Guardian:
HBO hackers demand a multimillion-dollar ransom and release emails, scripts, and personal phone numbers of GoT stars in latest dump of stolen data

Discussion: Wired, Polygon, The Verge, Vanity Fair, Variety, New York Times and Fortune

From Techmeme:

Financial Times:
Sources: the US FTC plans to investigate allegations that Microsoft is abusing its market power in productivity software to prevent customers from leaving Azure

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI says the ChatGPT desktop app for macOS can now read code from some developer-focused apps, including VS Code, Xcode, TextEdit, Terminal, and iTerm2

David Pierce / The Verge:
Google releases a free Gemini app for iOS, letting users ask questions, chat via text, voice, or their camera, and use the conversational mode Gemini Live

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