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10:05 PM ET, August 3, 2022

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Warner Bros. Discovery has been quietly culling HBO Max content, including at least six Warner Bros. films and the House Party reboot, in apparent cost cutting  —  Warner Bros. Discovery has been quietly culling content from HBO Max — including several Warner Bros. movies that were exclusively streaming …
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The Wrap:
Sources: WBD CEO David Zaslav plans to announce a combined HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming service on August 4; 70% of HBO Max's development unit could be cut  —  Hollywood is buzzing around Warner Bros. Discovery's upcoming earnings results and plans for a combined streaming service, which can upend its most popular streamer
Adam B. Vary / Variety:
Warner Bros. Discovery kills Batgirl and Scoob!: Holiday Haunt movies both for HBO Max and for theaters; Batgirl had a $90M budget; sources: Scoob! cost $40M  —  “Batgirl,” the feature film adaptation of the DC Comics character, has been killed at Warner Bros., Variety has confirmed.
Natalie Musumeci / Insider:
Alex Jones' trial reveals that Infowars made as much as $800K per day in 2018, and that the fake news site made $70M in revenue in its most recent fiscal year  —  - An attorney for Sandy parents said Alex Jones' defense attorney “messed up” and sent him a digital copy of Jones' cell phone.
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
A look at the practice of guests paying podcasters to appear on their shows; Guestio, a marketplace for brokering paid guest appearances, has raised $1M+  —  People will confess all sorts of things to podcasters, from their unpopular political beliefs or embarrassing romantic mishaps to their worst fears.
Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:
Interviews with over two dozen Triller creators and others: the TikTok rival missed payments after promising Black creators $4K per month, half paid in equity  —  Triller made its name recruiting talent with lavish perks.  Now, dozens of influencers are struggling to get paid.
Elias Leight / Billboard:
SoundCloud cuts its global workforce by ~20% “due to a significant company transformation and the challenging economic and financial environment”  —  CEO Michael Weissman announced the cuts in an email, blaming them on “the challenging economic climate and financial market headwinds.”
Discussion: Variety
Ronan Shields / Digiday:
An Apple job posting indicates the company is looking to build a “privacy-forward”, mobile-centric demand-side ad platform  —  Apple may have blown up the digital ads business but it left enough fertile ground to build its own, more focused play for media dollars.
Etan Vlessing / The Hollywood Reporter:
Lionsgate launches a podcast division that will handle production for its film and TV businesses as well as third-party clients, starting with a show by 50 Cent  —  Lionsgate Sound will handle podcasts for the Hollywood studio's film and TV divisions.  —  Lionsgate has launched …
Peter Kafka / Vox:
Sources: 1M+ people signed up for free newsletters on Meta's Bulletin service and earlier in 2022, the company was planning on expanding its roster of writers  —  The Substack frenzy seems like a thing of the past, but lots of publishers are still leaning into newsletters.  “They're a great minimally viable product.”
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta plans to shut down its Facebook Live Shopping feature on October 1, as the company shifts its focus to Reels on Facebook and Instagram  —  Facebook is shutting down its live shopping feature on October 1st to shift its focus to Reels, the company announced in a blog post.
 
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 More News: 
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with YouTube star Hank Green on YouTube's revenue value, TikTok's promotional value, how Complexly is structured, selling Subbable and VidCon, and more
Thomas Seal / Bloomberg:
Textbook publisher Pearson plans to turn its e-books into NFTs to take a cut from secondhand sales and has a team exploring “the implications of the metaverse”
Katie Robertson / New York Times:
The NYT reports Q2 revenue up 11.5% YoY to $555.7M, operating profit down 18% YoY to $76M, and 180K net new digital subscribers; The Athletic had a $12.6M loss
 Earlier Picks: 
Drew Magary / Defector:
Interviews with a dozen people in movie and TV post-production reveal that an overworked, confused, and exploited staff has led to lower-quality visual effects
Hanaa' Tameez / Nieman Lab:
Q&A with Sisi Wei, the OpenNews co-executive director who The Markup named its new editor-in-chief, on her coverage plans, work experience, challenges, and more
 

 
From Techmeme:

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Watching OpenAI's o3 guess a photo's location, including the model running Python code to examine license plates, is surreal, dystopian, and entertaining

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Q&A with Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas on Motorola partnership, Perplexity's upcoming browser Comet, TikTok bid, ChatGPT's scale, Google's DOJ trial, and more

Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
US v. Google: Chrome GM testified that other companies can not develop Chrome effectively, given the browser's “interdependencies” on other parts of Google

 
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