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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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Rick Edmonds / Poynter:
Zette plans to offer access to paywalled stories across publications via a browser extension for $10/month; founder Yehong Zhu has signed up McClatchy and more — With Zette, Yehong Zhu says she has what young readers want and can succeed where others have failed
Discussion:
@bgpolitics and @rickedmonds
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.
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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 — In October 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. On January 1st, 2007, the brothers Hank and John Green started making videos …
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@reckless, Podcast Movement, @sciencequiche, @slatchison and @12tonevideos
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” — The chief executive officer of Pearson Plc, one of the world's largest textbook publishers, said he hopes technology …
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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 — Revenue from digital advertising fell slightly in the second quarter, but subscription revenue continued to rise sharply, the company said.
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