Mediagazer: NY AG's office says fake comments, including 8.5M funded by largest US ISPs, accounted for ~18M of the 22M+ net neutrality comments received by the FCC in 2017 (Makena Kelly/The Verge)

9:10 AM ET, May 7, 2021

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Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

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Makena Kelly / The Verge:

NY AG's office says fake comments, including 8.5M funded by largest US ISPs, accounted for ~18M of the 22M+ net neutrality comments received by the FCC in 2017 — The New York attorney general's office released a new report detailing the effort — The New York attorney general's office issued …

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News Corp:

News Corp Q3: net income of $96M on revenue of $2.34B, up 3% YoY; WSJ subscriptions up 21% YoY to 3.38M, of which 2.63M were digital; digital ad rev up 30% YoY — - Revenues were $2.34 billion, a 3% increase compared to $2.27 billion in the prior year, driven by the continued strong momentum across our key growth pillars

Discussion: Reuters

Benjamin Mullin / Wall Street Journal:

Sources: the Athletic is no longer in merger talks with Axios, sees the NYT as the leading merger contender, and had ~$80M in revenue in 2020 with 600 staff — Publisher's talks with Axios are no longer active; New York Times Co. seen as leading contender for tie-up

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Todd Spangler / Variety:

Roku beats estimates, with a Q1 net income of $76.3M on revenue of $574.2M, up 79% YoY; new active accounts grew 2.4M, reaching 53.6M, up 35% YoY; stock up ~7% — Roku gained 2.4 million new active accounts for the first quarter of 2021, showing that the pandemic-driven streaming momentum …

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Jennifer Maas / The Wrap:

AMC Networks CEO says its five streaming services are on track to have at least 9M subscribers by the end of the year as Q1 streaming revenue grew of 14% YoY — But the company smashed Wall Street's earnings expectations — AMC Networks missed revenue expectations for the first quarter of 2021 …

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Sara Fischer / Axios:

YouTube to spend $7M on two year-long journalism programs: one for independent journalists who want to start channels, another to help digital-first newsrooms — YouTube is spending $7 million to fund two new programs to help journalists looking to build an audience on YouTube, executives tell Axios.

Sara Fischer / Axios:

A record 44% of the NYT's 301K new digital subscribers in Q1 were to non-news products like cooking, games, and audio — The New York Times on Wednesday said it added 301,000 new digital-only subscribers last quarter, its slowest quarter for digital subscriber growth in over a year.

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Melissa Guerrero / New York Times:
NYT hires its first editorial director of Games, Everdeen Mason, responsible for growing the audience and ensuring puzzles reflect and cultivate diverse voices

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Protocol:

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Discussion: @bizcarson, @lanceulanoff, @pierce, @bizcarson, @andrewmartonik, Engadget and musically.com, more at Techmeme »

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