Mediagazer: AT&T is selling Vrio Corp., its DirecTV business unit in Latin America, to Grupo Werthein, after taking a $4.6B impairment charge (Jill Goldsmith/Deadline)

3:55 PM ET, July 28, 2021

Top News:

Leah Finnegan / Gawker:

Gawker, now owned by Bustle, relaunches with Leah Finnegan as editor-in-chief — When Bustle Digital Group first approached me to revive Gawker last year, I said absolutely no way in hell. Who in God's name would want to edit a website that was cratered by an evil tech lord and sullied by a botched relaunch?

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Spotify Q2: revenue of €2.3B, up 23% YoY, ad revenue up 110% YoY to €275M; paying subscribers reached 165M, up 20% YoY, total MAUs reached 365M; stock down 6%+ — Spotify, citing ongoing headwinds from the COVID pandemic, fell short of its total monthly user growth goal in the second quarter of 2021.

Michael Barthel / Pew Research Center:

State of US news media in 2020: newspapers made more money from circulation than from ads for the first time, cable news saw explosive audience growth, and more — Every two years, Pew Research Center updates its series of fact sheets on the U.S. news media industry, tracking key audience …

Discussion: Pew Research Center, American Press Institute, @pewresearch, @pewjournalism, @michaelbarthel, @pewjournalism, @jenmercieca, @pewresearch, @pewjournalism, @michaelbarthel, @pewjournalism and @pewjournalism

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:

NBA partners with iHeartMedia to develop a slate of daily and weekly podcasts using NBA's audio archives — - Basketball league will mine its archive for rare audio clips — Radio giant will handle sales, distribution and production — The National Basketball Association is developing …

Discussion: Variety, Awful Announcing, insideradio.com, @lucas_shaw and AllAccess.com

K.J. Yossman / Variety:

Comcast-owned British broadcaster Sky announces a major rebrand of its channel portfolio, including the retirement of flagship channel Sky One after 30+ years — Comcast-owned British broadcaster Sky has announced a major rebrand of its channel portfolio, including the retirement of its flagship channel Sky One.

Discussion: @sothcott, @vk_hm, @thebarrylad, @adammaguire, @scottygb, Hollywood Reporter, @grifftannen, NME, @_jamieogrady, @mohammedali_93 and Deadline

Maria Sheahan / Reuters:

Swiss publisher Ringier buys out Axel Springer in Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; Ringier and Axel Springer's Poland JV will remain — BERLIN (Reuters) - Swiss publisher Ringier is buying out its partner Axel Springer in Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, Estonia …

Discussion: Press Gazette and @jeffjarvis

Jill Goldsmith / Deadline:

AT&T is selling Vrio Corp., its DirecTV business unit in Latin America, to Grupo Werthein, after taking a $4.6B impairment charge — AT&T has sold 100% of Vrio Corp. business in Latin America to Grupo Werthhein. — Vrio provides live and on-demand video services via DirecTV Latin America …

Discussion: The Fast Mode, Business Wire and Reuters

Erik Pedersen / Deadline:

PBS leads the nominations for the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, with 52 nominations; CNN is second with 41, CBS with 30, ABC with 22, and Vice with 20 — PBS leads the nominations for the 42nd annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards, as it usually does, this year scoring 52 noms over last year's 48.

Max Willens / Digiday:

Sources: LinkedIn is testing LinkedIn Premium News, which gives Premium members access to paywalled content published by sites that use Piano's paywall tech — LinkedIn would like to broaden the base of people shelling out money for its premium membership, and it's hoping that access …

Discussion: @dmitryshishkin, @jeremarketer and @maxwillens

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

UK's ITV says its ad revenue grew 29% YoY in H1 2021, up 87% in May and 115% in June; ITV now has 3M global subs and BritBox International has 2M subs — CEO Carolyn McCall said the U.K. TV giant is “emerging from the worst effects of the pandemic.” — U.K. TV giant ITV reported …

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Contentful, which offers APIs to let companies manage content, raises $175M Series F led by Tiger Global at a ~$3B valuation, after a $80M Series E in June 2020 — Contentful this morning announced a $175 million Series F round of capital, led by Tiger Global, valuing the unicorn at around $3 billion.

Discussion: @chiefmartec and @danielnewmanuv, more at Techmeme »

Luppe B. Luppen / Pawprints:

Memo: Politico is naming its White House Correspondent Anita Kumar to the newly-created position of Senior Editor, Standards and Ethics, starting this fall — A quick bit of media news this morning: Politico is naming its White House Correspondent Anita Kumar to the newly-created position of …

Discussion: @nycsouthpaw, @nycsouthpaw and @nycsouthpaw

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More News:

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Fox News partners with Warner Bros. to offer six classic Clint Eastwood films on Fox Nation, as the streaming service expands beyond news and politics

Discussion: @bristei

Jennifer Harper / Washington Times:
Former Drudge Report editor Joseph Curl launches a conservative-oriented news aggregation site called Off the Press

Discussion: PR Newswire

Daria Litvinova / Associated Press:
Russian police raided the home of the chief editor of Latvia-based The Insider, which the country recently designated as a foreign agent

Discussion: @miriamelder, @miriamelder, VICE, Radio Free Europe/Radio … and @lorenzofb

Freddy Mayhew / Press Gazette:
Guardian Media Group's digital reader revenue grew 61% YoY to £68.7M for FY ending March 28, 50%+ of it from outside UK; digital subscriptions grew 46% to 401K

Discussion: The Guardian and @charlesarthur

Roland Kelts / Rest of World:
A look at VTubers, virtual anime-like avatar YouTube channels driven by anonymous Japanese users that are now mainstream, surpassing 1.5B+ views/month in Q4'20

Discussion: @restofworld, @mikafilm and @restofworld

Kate Kaye / Digiday:
In letters to companies, CA AG says data sharing via analytics trackers, like cookies, for ad and analytics purposes fits CCPA's definition of a data “sale”

Discussion: @moonalice, @jason_kint and @jason_kint

Katie Robertson / New York Times:
Internal email: WaPo will require all employees to show they are vaccinated against COVID-19, starting when workers return to the office, planned for Sept. 13

Discussion: @travislylesnews, The Wrap, Breitbart, @alexanderrusso, @ericfidler, @n_yang, @katie_robertson, @stevegreenlee, @palafo, @dangillmor, CNN and The Hill

Earlier Picks:

Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTube reports $7B in Q2 ad revenue, up 84% YoY from $3.81B, and says its Shorts feature now has 15B global daily views, up from 6.5B in March

Discussion: CNBC, Insider, The Wrap, @jowens510, Tubefilter, @adamsinger, @ashkan, @jasoncosta, @kyleorl, MediaPost, insideradio.com, Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap and The Wrap

@forbesunion:
[Thread] Staffers at Forbes vote 67-7 for a union with The NewsGuild of New York in a NLRB election after management failed to voluntarily recognize their union

Discussion: @sarahljaffe, @abeaujon, @jamieson, @giacomotognini, nyguild.org, @dsilverman, @dawnc331, @forbesunion, @leah_rosenbaum, @nyguild, @forbesunion, @forbesunion and @brandonetc

Samantha Hissong / Rolling Stone:
How music artists are planning to use NFTs and the underlying tech behind them to reinvent industry standards on royalty sharing, event ticketing, and more

Discussion: @rollingstone, @ataritoken, @gbracey, @daorecords_, @zoescaman, @amyxwang, @powerdubs, @lucas_shaw, TechCrunch and Cryptowriter

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter hires the team that built Brief, a subscription-based news summary app founded by former Google employees; the app will wind down July 31

Discussion: @johnkoetsier, @marshallk, @signalfire, @joshconstine, AppleInsider and The Verge

Sahil Patel / The Information:
Vox Media has sold 50 projects, including films and TV series, in the last 15 months to TV networks and to streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Apple

Discussion: New York Times, @edmundlee, @rachelysanders, @alexeheath, @davewiner, @chronotope, @jaycodon, @mylesudland, @digitalshields, @thekenyeung, @sizpatel, @loudmouthjulia, @kerrymflynn, @loudmouthjulia and @gabrielsnyder

Elizabeth Culliford / Reuters:
Facebook's restricting interest-based and web activity ad targeting for users under 18 on its platforms, only allowing segmentation by age, gender, and location

Jon Allsop / Columbia Journalism Review:
Coverage of Congress' earlier failure to form a fully bipartisan Jan. 6 commission shows how political analysis and reporting are stuck in “both sides” framing

Discussion: Washington Post, HuffPost, Axios, NPR, New York Times, @jon_allsop, @mickimaynard, @jon_allsop, @theplumlinegs, @cjr, Mediaite and The Wrap

From Techmeme:

Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Cisco details a hacking campaign that penetrated multiple governments' networks using two zero-day flaws in its VPN and firewall Adaptive Security Appliances

Ben Glickman / Wall Street Journal:
IBM agrees to buy HashiCorp, which helps companies manage cloud infrastructure, in a deal valuing HashiCorp at $6.4B and expected to close by the end of 2024

Bob Van Voris / Bloomberg:
US prosecutors charge two founders of Samourai Wallet, saying the crypto mixing service facilitated more than $100M in money laundering transactions

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