Top News:
Kim Masters / The Hollywood Reporter:
A look at the men allied with Nelson Peltz and their histories with Disney: Ike Perlmutter, the ousted Marvel chairman, and former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo — As ousted Marvel mogul Ike Perlmutter and activist investor Nelson Peltz enlist former Disney exec Jay Rasulo in their quest to reshape the studio …
Discussion:
@kimmasters, @thr and @erik_hayden
RELATED:
Variety:
Blackwells nominates three candidates to Disney's board to rival Nelson Peltz's proxy fight, and says Disney's ValueAct deal is “a disappointing defensive move” — Disney and CEO Bob Iger have secured votes of confidence from two key allies in the company's proxy fight with Nelson Peltz.
Discussion:
GlobeNewswire News Room, @xpangler, Radio & Television … and Reuters
Michael Flaherty / Axios:
Hedge funds vie for power at Disney: ValueAct supports Disney's board slate, Trian and Ancora support Nelson Peltz, and Blackwells pushes other board candidates — Trian, ValueAct, Ancora and Blackwells — it's a fight within a fight. … ValueAct, in turn, said it would support Disney's slate of directors.
Discussion:
Los Angeles Times, The A.V. Club, UPI, Reuters, IndieWire, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, The Information, The Wrap and Bloomberg
Oliver Darcy:
Internal note: Alex MacCallum, who became The Washington Post's chief revenue officer in July 2023, is leaving; sources: she's in talks to join CNN — News: Alex MacCallum, the digital product whiz who I've confirmed is in discussions with CNN about joining the org under network chief Mark Thompson …
Discussion:
Puck, @dylanbyers, Oliver arcy and @benmullin
RELATED:
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Athan Stephanopoulos plans to leave as CNN's chief digital officer at the end of January, the second turnover of digital executives at CNN since WBD took over
Discussion:
@dylanbyers, Adweek, @dylanbyers, @pressgazette, Financial Times, @bristei, trading as wdr, Deadline, The Wrap and The Hollywood Reporter
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
MPA: the Asia Pacific video industry grew 5.5% in 2023 to hit $145B in revenue, with a 13% jump in online video sales to $57B; TV revenue grew under 1% to $98B — The video industry in the region grew by 5.5 percent in 2023 to hit $145 billion in revenue, says research firm MPA.
Discussion:
Livemint, @livemint and WORLD SCREEN
Max Tani / Semafor:
Sources: The Messenger's board weighed shutting the site down, at a December 29 meeting, and Jimmy Finkelstein has expressed a willingness to sell the site — The Scoop — The board of the startup news organization The Messenger weighed shutting the publication down at a meeting on Friday …
Advanced Television:
Nielsen: Prime Video's Thursday Night Football averaged 11.86M viewers per game in the US during the 2023 season, up 24% from 2022 season's 9.58M viewers — Prime Video's second season of exclusive Thursday Night Football (TNF) in the US saw substantial viewership gains and set multiple …
Discussion:
Amazon Studios, The Streamable, Awful Announcing, MediaPost, Media Play News and Barrett Media
Kari Paul / The Guardian:
Q&A with Jacob Bakkila, who ran the popular @Horse_ebooks Twitter account for two years, on the inspiration for the language bot, AI chatbots, and more — By reusing and repurposing existing writing into viral fragments on Twitter, the account functioned like today's chatbots.
Marc Schneider / Billboard:
UMG and Tencent Music Entertainment renew their licensing agreement, allowing Tencent to distribute UMG content on QQ Music, Kogou Music, Kuwo Music, and WeSing — “UMG will continue to work with TME to bring the very best in music to these passionate music consumers.”
Discussion:
Variety, Tencent Music Entertainment … and Music Business Worldwide
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Twitch changes its sexual content policies again and says the platform won't allow streamers to “imply or suggest that they are fully or partially nude” — Twitch is changing its sexual content policies again, this time to prohibit implied nudity on the platform.
Discussion:
safety.twitch.tv, TechCrunch, Forbes, Gizmodo, @carnage4life@mas.to, ClutchPoints and @MikeElgan@mastodon.social, more at Techmeme »
Michael Schneider / Variety:
After a WGA protest, the Television Academy and Fox reverse an earlier plan and return the Emmy for variety series outstanding writing to the Emmys telecast — In a joint release sent out today, the Television Academy, Fox and the WGA said they were “happy to announce they have reached …
Discussion:
The Wrap, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire and @wgawest
Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter:
In a lawsuit, a Disney employee claims she was sexually assaulted by former VP of distribution Nolan Gonzales and that management didn't escalate concerns to HR — The plaintiff, suing as a Jane Doe, claims she was assaulted by former vice president of distribution Nolan Gonzales …
Discussion:
Deadline and Bloomberg Law
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