Mediagazer: FactSet: Amazon's “other” business unit, which is made up almost entirely of its ads business, will make $21B in revenue in 2020, up 47% YoY (Dave Lee/Financial Times)

11:40 AM ET, December 30, 2020

Top News:

Politico announces it is acquiring E&E News, a high-price subscription trade publication focused on the energy industry and environmental news — Purchase comes as Politico looks to expand its overall professional news business — Politico is adding some energy to its game.

Lisa Richwine / Reuters:

Nielsen: Fox News tops all news and basic cable channels for the fifth consecutive year, averaging 1.9M viewers/day; CNN had its most-watched year in history — LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Ratings for Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel topped all news and basic cable channels for a fifth straight year in 2020 …

Jeremy Barr / Washington Post:

Interviews with 15 longtime Fox News loyalists on why they switched to Newsmax, often seeking programming that denies Joe Biden's victory — On the morning after Election Day, Greg and Jenny Brethen, loyal viewers of Fox News who watched the channel religiously for almost 20 years …

Discussion: @ericbolling, @donal_okeeffe, @jeremymbarr, @jayrosen_nyu and Mediaite

Will Thorne / Variety:

First ever NFL game streamed exclusively had an average minute audience of 4.8M on Prime, Twitch, and others, almost as much as traditional TV viewership — The first ever NFL game to be shown exclusively on streaming platforms scored solid numbers, showing encouraging signs for future streaming-only games.

Discussion: @crupicrupicrupi, The Streamable, @aquinas82nd, @jason_kint, @richarddeitsch, Sports Business Daily and MediaPost

McKay Coppins / The Atlantic:

Washington reporters, including Olivia Nuzzi, Jim Acosta, and Yamiche Alcindor, on being recast as “resistance heroes” during the Trump era and what comes next — The day after the 2016 election, I got a phone call from an old friend. Neither of us had slept much …

Emily Birnbaum / Protocol:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is tying the fate of $2,000 stimulus checks to the repeal of Section 230 — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is tying the fate of $2,000 stimulus checks to the repeal of Section 230, an effort that will likely doom both pieces of legislation in the Senate.

Dave Lee / Financial Times:

FactSet: Amazon's “other” business unit, which is made up almost entirely of its ads business, will make $21B in revenue in 2020, up 47% YoY — Ads unit is growing faster than retail or cloud computing divisions — The surge in online shopping triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic …

Discussion: @read_cap, @financialtimes, @hughhewitt, @juokaz and @tonytassell, more at Techmeme »

Kristin Robinson / Variety:

A loophole in Spotify's copyright infringement detection tactics is allowing unauthorized remixes and bootlegs of songs to be uploaded as podcasts — Spotify has joined the ranks of streaming services like SoundCloud and YouTube as a hub for bootlegs of popular songs.

Discussion: @delgotloud and Engadget

Wall Street Journal:

Unredacted draft version of the lawsuit filed by 10 states earlier this month details a Google-Facebook ad deal that allegedly constituted illegal price fixing — Lawmakers have called for an investigation into the tech giants' contract, dubbed ‘Jedi Blue,’ which allegedly allowed for auction rigging

Discussion: @bowknowsbiz, @johnvoorhees, @jason_kint, @jason_kint, @jason_kint, @bikehugger, @jason_kint, @repkenbuck, @moonalice, @jonspaihts, @bowknowsbiz, @jason_kint, @halsinger and New York Post

Christopher Palmeri / Bloomberg:

Over Christmas holiday, Apptopia says HBO Max had ~554K app signups; Sensor Tower says Disney+ had ~2.3M global app installations, up 28% from prior weekend — AT&T Inc.'s HBO Max streaming platform set a single-day record for downloads of its mobile app following the release of the superhero sequel …

Discussion: Cord Cutters News, The Desk, DIRT, ScreenRant, The Streamable, TechCrunch, @michael_calia and Variety, more at Techmeme »

Mark Sweney / The Guardian:

Ampere: UK streaming subscribers grew 34% YoY in 2020, with a combined 32.4M for Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+, the top three services — Britons spent 40% of their waking hours watching TV during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, fuelling the biggest year for new subscribers to streaming services.

Discussion: @scottygb and Matt on Audio

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Verizon is telling Fios TV customers that nine local Hearst stations may go dark on Fios on Jan. 1, saying Hearst is demanding carriage fee hikes of 45%+ — In a new end-of-the-year TV carriage fight, Verizon on Tuesday began notifying Fios TV customers that Hearst Television stations …

Discussion: Radio & Television …

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DW.COM:
A sustained cyberattack over Christmas forced several German newspapers published by The Funke Media Group to cancel or curtail editions; the attack is ongoing

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Committee to Protect Journalists:
Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Moroccan authorities to release journalist Maati Monjib, arrested amid a money laundering probe

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Gregor Stuart Hunter / Bloomberg:
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Brooks Barnes / New York Times:
Profile of Walter Hamada, who runs DC Films and is aiming to release comics-based movies like Batman and Wonder Woman at a much faster pace

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Andrew Donohue / Nieman Lab:
Efforts to undermine the 2020 election show the necessity of a democracy beat, focused not on partisan politics but on voter suppression and other threats

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Cynthia Littleton / Variety:
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Jason Gurwin / The Streamable:
fuboTV quietly drops its $59.99/month Standard Plan for new users, making its $64.99/month Family Bundle the cheapest option

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Anna Wiener / New Yorker:
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Tim Ingham / Rolling Stone:
A look at music sample marketplaces like Beatport, Splice, BeatStars, and LANDR, which could soon become acquisition targets for major record companies

From Techmeme:

Samantha Subin / CNBC:
The Nasdaq closes down 4%, with Meta down 7%, Nvidia down 6%, Amazon down 5%, and Apple down 4%, as the White House says Trump's tariffs on China now total 145%

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI updates ChatGPT with a memory feature that references past chats for answers, rolling out to ChatGPT Pro and Plus subscribers, but not in the UK and EEA

Reuters:
The cybersecurity industry is mostly quiet after Trump canceled SentinelOne's security clearances for hiring Chris Krebs; SentinelOne says it will cooperate

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