Top News:
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
Filing: WBD forecasts 2023 adjusted EBITDA down by $300M-$500M to $10.5B-$11B, citing strikes, and $1.7B+ in Q3 2023 free cash flow due to Barbie and strikes — “The company now expects to exceed $1.7 billion in free cash flow for the third quarter of 2023, in part due to the strong performance …
Discussion:
Variety, CNN, SlashFilm, Fortune, @rfaughnder, The Wrap, CNBC, @joerussotweets, Los Angeles Times, @joerussotweets, Wall Street Journal, @richlightshed, @raypride, @mattbelloni, @stevendeknight, Forbes, @howardrodman, Deadline, TheStreet, IGN, Associated Press, Media Play News and 98 Rock Online
Wall Street Journal:
How Spotify's $1B+ bet on podcasts has not paid off: most shows aren't profitable and the company has considered an ad revenue-sharing model akin to YouTube's — The prospect of podcast riches led to aggressive investments in celebrity deals and original programming for what appeared a sky's-the-limit media frontier
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Financial Times:
eMarketer expects US podcast ad spending to hit $2.2B in 2023, up from $1.7B in 2022, or ~10% of radio; Edison: 80%+ of Americans listen to radio weekly — The rise of podcasts has not fully cannibalised other forms of entertainment — The audience for podcasts is younger …
Discussion:
RAIN News and Inside Radio
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Email: Spotify raises the listener threshold for creators in Ambassador Ads from 100 to 1,000 over 60 days, and plans to cut ad support for white noise podcasts — - Ambient sound shows will no longer be eligible for certain ads — Company raises listener threshold for ambassador ads program
Discussion:
CMU, On Substack, @bartona104, @ashleyrcarman, Insider, Engadget, The Verge, Podnews, Music Ally and Digital Music News
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
Wall Street analysts say the Disney-Charter dispute could be a tipping point for cable TV and adds uncertainty to the industry even if it's resolved quickly — Wall Street analysts debate whether the standoff between the studio and the cable giant is “the end of the end,” …
Discussion:
The Walt Disney Company, MediaPost, Bloomberg, Stratechery, Reuters, Deadline, Axios, Sports Business Journal, Fox News, Variety and CBS News
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Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Elon Musk threatens to file a defamation lawsuit against the ADL for “falsely accusing” X and him of antisemitism and blames the ADL for X's falling US ad sales — In the newest uproar you might have missed, Elon Musk says X, formerly Twitter, will file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League.
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@elonmusk, Mediaite, @elonmusk, Los Angeles Times, @anandypaul, @elonmusk, @elonmusk, Deadline, New York Post, Rolling Stone, @jgreenblattadl, The Verge, Breitbart, CNN, CNBC, The Times of Israel, Axios, Vanity Fair, @mossbergwalt@threads.net, MIT Technology Review, @markloundy@threads.net, @marcuswoitas@threads.net, The Hill, CBS News, Reclaim The Net, Quartz, @dkiesow@threads.net, @sethcotlar, @seldo@alpaca.gold, @elonmusk, @corybe@threads.net, @stuarth2o@threads.net, @andrewpaul.bsky.social, @ezraklein@threads.net, Techdirt, The Guardian, @oliverdarcy@threads.net, Ars Technica, Boing Boing, @elonmusk, @baccellij@threads.net, @jh_swanson, Reason, @mossbergwalt@threads.net, The Wrap, The Daily Beast, Insider, The Information, Forbes, The Forward and Bloomberg
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
NPR President and CEO John Lansing, who has led the organization since 2019, plans to retire at the end of 2023; NPR plans a national search for his successor — - U.S. Economy Adds 187,000 Jobs In August, Entertainment Employment Continues To Decline Amid Strikes
Discussion:
NPR, NPR, @benmullin, CNN, @hollyedgell, Current, The Desk, The Wrap and Inside Radio
Jessica Toonkel / Wall Street Journal:
Antenna: MLS Season Pass had 110K+ US signups on July 21, the day of Messi's first MLS match, up from 6,143 on July 20; July was TV+'s best signup month in 2023 — Soccer superstar attracts over 110,000 sign-ups to MLS Season Pass on day of first game — Soccer superstar Lionel Messi helped drive a surge in U.S. subscriptions to
Meta:
Meta plans to deprecate the Facebook News tab in the UK, France, and Germany in early December 2023 and won't sign new deals for news content in those countries — Today, we are announcing that in the UK, France and Germany we will deprecate Facebook News - a dedicated tab on Facebook …
Discussion:
NBC 7 San Diego, @obrien, Bloomberg, @mgeist, The Verge, @obrien, Financial Times, TechCrunch, Engadget, Press Gazette, MediaPost and The Messenger, more at Techmeme »
Miles Klee / Rolling Stone:
Sean “Diddy” Combs returns the music publishing rights from his label Bad Boy Records to artists, including the Notorious B.I.G.'s estate, Mase, and Faith Evans — In an “unprecedented” move, the estate of Notorious B.I.G. is among those to reclaim songs from the iconic label's catalog
Discussion:
Forbes, The Fader, Deadline, Variety, Billboard, Variety, New York Post, @phil_lewis_, Next TV, The Wrap and Digital Music News
Ben Werdmuller / Werd I/O:
Organizations like Tiny News Collective could help build a “wide news” commons of smaller specialized newsrooms and perspectives of individuals in a community — Doc Searls writes about what he calls wide news: … Doc's argument is that a local commons of publications can …
Discussion:
Local News Initiative, Doc Searls Weblog and @ben@werd.social
Alex Weprin / Hollywood Reporter:
Filing: a firm controlled by Steven Mnuchin, treasury secretary under Trump, acquires 5.5% of Lionsgate Entertainment, parent of Lionsgate studios, for ~$30.8M — The company controlled by the former Treasury Secretary acquired 5.5 percent of the studio for $30.8 million over the past few weeks.
Discussion:
The Wrap, Bloomberg, Dow Jones Newswires and Deadline
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