Top News:
Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:
ViacomCBS acquires 49% stake in Miramax, which is owned by BeIN, for $375M — The L.A.-based company, which has been owned by Doha-based BeIN Media Group and run by CEO Bill Block, has a library with 700-plus titles, including such Oscar winners as ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Chicago.’
Discussion:
Variety, Variety, MediaPost, Axios, Multichannel News, @variety, @viacomcbs and @richlightshed
Deanna Ting / Digiday:
Small publishers see more traffic from mobile news aggregators like TopBuzz, News Break, and Flipboard, than Facebook and Google — This November, Inquisitr CEO Dominick Miserandino noticed that TopBuzz News, the news aggregator app from ByteDance, the same company behind wildly popular …
Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Sources: NBC's Peacock to integrate NBC News Now, have a free, limited-content tier, a limited-ads tier for $5/month, and an ad-free tier for $10/month — - NBCUniversal is looking to differentiate its streaming service Peacock from rivals through its pricing structure and user interface.
Discussion:
The Streamable, @megancgraham, Digital TV Europe and Light Reading, more at Techmeme »
Keida Kostreci / Voice of America:
Albania approves a set of anti-defamation laws which critics see as an attempt to muzzle the media and give the nation's top media regulator too much power — Albania's Parliament approved a controversial set of government-proposed anti-defamation laws on Wednesday, which critics say grant …
Discussion:
Reuters, Committee to Protect …, Balkan Insight, Albanian Daily News, @penamerica, Associated Press and The Shift News
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
NY judge dismisses appeal by Michael Leidig of Central European News in libel case against BuzzFeed, saying he failed to prove BuzzFeed's reporting was false — News agency boss Michael Liedig has had his appeal against a libel judgment that backed Buzzfeed's 2015 story dubbing him the “king of bullshit news” thrown out.
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Facebook and Twitter shut down a network of fake accounts using AI-generated faces to “masquerade” as Americans; Facebook links the network to Epoch Media Group — Its accounts used AI-generated faces to ‘masquerade’ as Americans — On Friday, Facebook and Twitter shut …
Discussion:
CNN, About Facebook and @sarahfrier
Business Wire:
Triton to start publishing monthly reports on top networks and podcasts ranked by weekly downloads; NPR, Stitcher, Radio.com, and Cumulus have signed on — NEW YORK—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Triton Digital®, the global technology and services provider to the digital audio and podcast industry …
Stanford Internet Observatory:
Microsoft's Bing appears to return an alarming amount of disinformation for user queries, far more than Google does, based on a test of 13 queries — Bing's importance in the information landscape of the U.S. shouldn't be overlooked. While its share of the search market in the U.S. might …
Discussion:
The Keyword, @alexstamos, @whatthebit, @mathewi, @brendannyhan, @majorhayden, @welhai, Search Engine Land and Softpedia News
Sara Guaglione / MediaPost:
The Atlantic's feature on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which was read for 30M+ “total engaged minutes”, is #1 in Chartbeat's Most Engaging Stories of 2019 — Chartbeat, the digital publisher data and analytics company, has revealed its annual list of most engaging stories of the year.
Discussion:
Chartbeat Blog
Brian X. Chen / New York Times:
A summary of NYT reporters' favorite tech tools, based on three years of the Tech We're Using column: smartphones, encrypted communication, and spare batteries — After three years and more than 130 columns, the smartphone was tops. There were also some deliberate Luddites among us.
Megan Graham / CNBC:
Ad exchange Rubicon Project agrees to merge with video advertising management platform Telaria, to better compete with Google and Facebook — - Public ad tech companies Telaria and Rubicon Project have agreed to merge as they try to make a stronger play in the growth of connected television …
Discussion:
Digiday, @rubiconproject, AdExchanger, ir.tivo.com, @businessinsider, @tkawaja, @sarahsluis, @cnbctech, @davemorgannyc, Business Wire, MarTech Today and Engadget, more at Techmeme »
Chris Eggertsen / Billboard:
Jury finds Cox Communications liable for its customers' piracy of 10,000+ musical works, awards $1B to Sony Music, EMI, Universal, and Warner Music — Cox Communications was found liable for piracy infringement of more than 10,000 musical works by a U.S. District Court jury in Virgina on Thursday …
Discussion:
Techdirt, Variety, The Verge, @mmasnick, @future_of_music, TorrentFreak, @marcjacobsonpc, @eriqgardner, Hollywood Reporter, Axios and The Wrap
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