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5:30 PM ET, April 21, 2021

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Apple's Podcast Subscriptions is costly but offers a great Apple-controlled customer experience that could reduce subscriber churn and boost conversion rates  —  There was a bit of a brouhaha a couple of weeks ago when Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee sent a letter to Apple accusing …
RELATED:
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Apple unveils in-app subscriptions for Apple Podcasts; Apple will take 30% of revenue in the first year, and 15% in following years
Cynthia Littleton / Variety:
Disney and Sony Pictures to bring Marvel films and other properties to Disney Plus starting with Sony's 2022 slate; titles go to Netflix, then Disney  —  Disney has set a massive movie licensing pact with Sony Pictures for the U.S. that promises to bring Spider-Man and other Marvel properties …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Roku rebrands Quibi content as Roku Originals and says those 75+ shows will be available to watch for free on the ad-supported Roku Channel later this year  —  Roku is officially dropping the Quibi name. … The 75-plus original shows from Quibi will be available to watch for free …
Fern Siegel / The Streamable:
Byron Allen launches Local Now, a free ad-supported streamer that aggregates 300+ hyperlocal channels across 225 markets in the US  —  Local Now, the free ad-supported streamer, has kicked off on most major platforms.  Local Now aggregates and streams local news, weather, sports, traffic and entertainment in real time.
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Creator+, which wants to build a film studio to produce feature-length movies by top creators and distribute them through a streaming service, raises $12M  —  In the words of co-founder and CEO Jonathan Shambroom, Creator+ is a new startup that will “finance, produce and distribute feature-length films …
Megan Graham / CNBC:
DoubleVerify, which builds software for digital media advertisers, closed up 33% on its first day of trading after its IPO, giving it a market cap of $5.3B+  —  - DoubleVerify, a company that builds software for digital media, began trading Wednesday.  — It attempts to help advertisers …
Discussion: @megancgraham
Elizabeth Williamson / New York Times:
A look at Knowledge Fight, a podcast started in 2017 to mock Alex Jones that grew into a profitable enterprise and is now chronicling Jones' downward spiral  —  Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes turned their Infowars-skewering podcast into a business.  In the post-Trump era, they're documenting Mr. Jones's reckoning.
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
UK's Reach says referrals to its websites from Instagram grew by more than 500% YoY in 2020 and followers across its 50 Instagram accounts grew by 40% YoY  —  The number of readers driven to Reach regional websites from Instagram grew by more than 500% in 2020.
Discussion: @ed_walker86
Edmund Lee / New York Times:
Competitors like Disney+, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime Video have cut into Netflix's share of viewer attention, but the company is in its best financial shape ever  —  The streaming service reported the addition of four million new customers for the first quarter, below the six million it had forecast.
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Netflix:
Netflix reports Q1 revenue of $7.16B, up 24% YoY, and 208M paid memberships, up 14% YoY but below its forecast of 210M; stock down 10%+ after hours
 
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 More News: 
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Editor of UK's Sunday Times apologizes after a front page story about Prince Philip's funeral claimed the public “secretly enjoyed” his racist gaffes
Alison Flood / The Guardian:
Simon & Schuster refuses to cancel a seven-figure book deal for Mike Pence's memoir, after staff open letter accused the publisher of “legitimising bigotry”
Wall Street Journal:
Researchers: fraudsters spoofed an average of 650M online ad placements per day by infecting ~1M mobile devices with software that mimicked streaming apps
 Earlier Picks: 
Rebecca Davis / Variety:
Reporters Without Borders ranks China fourth to last out of 180 countries on its 2021 World Press Freedom Index, citing “grave threat” to Hong Kong journalism
Manuel Roig-Franzia / Washington Post:
Profile of Dan Bongino, a Trump supporter who leads lists of shared Facebook posts, has a thriving YouTube channel, and will fill Limbaugh's radio spot in May
Editor and Publisher:
Publishers of 125 US newspapers have filed or announced suits against Google and Facebook, claiming the tech giants illegally monopolized the digital ad market