Mediagazer: Though the UK's ICO says it's “disappointed” with Google's not deprecating third-party cookies, the regulator has only weakly enforced data protection laws (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)

3:55 AM ET, July 24, 2024

Top News:

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Daniel Ek says Spotify is working on a deluxe Spotify tier, around a $17-$18 price point, that has “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board” — The saga of Spotify HiFi has many twists and turns. First announced over three years ago, the music service's higher …

Discussion: Neowin, Music Business Worldwide, 9to5Mac, Billboard, TechCrunch, The Media Leader, Digital Trends and RAIN News, more at Techmeme »

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:

Spotify reports Q2 revenue up 20% YoY to €3.8B, MAUs up 14% YoY to 626M, subscribers up 12% YoY to 246M, above est., and €266M operating income; SPOT jumps 12%+ — Spotify Technology SA shares surged to their highest in more than three years on Tuesday after the Swedish audio …

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:

YouTube Q2 ad revenue grew 13% YoY to $8.66B, vs. $8.93B est.; Google's subscriptions, platforms, and devices unit that includes YouTube TV had revenue of $9.3B — The Google-owned video platform still saw its ad haul rise by 13 percent compared to last year.

Discussion: RTÉ, Variety, Wall Street Journal, The Wrap, The Desk, Bloomberg, Neowin, Alphabet Inc., Quartz, 9to5Google, Deadline, MediaPost, The Verge, Next TV and TVNewsCheck, more at Techmeme »

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

Though the UK's ICO says it's “disappointed” with Google's not deprecating third-party cookies, the regulator has only weakly enforced data protection laws — In a material development that will likely have a big impact on online business models, Google is no longer proposing …

Discussion: Digiday, Security, Privacy & …, New York Times, Digital Trends, AdExchanger, Criteo, @Privacymatters@mastodon …, MarTech, RTÉ, Press Gazette, Inside Radio, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reuters, Axios, The Media Leader, Adweek and MediaPost

Digiday:
Google says it won't be “deprecating third-party cookies” in Chrome and will instead keep working on “privacy-preserving alternatives” via Privacy Sandbox APIs

Discussion: Privacy Sandbox, AdExchanger, Information Commissioner's …, Search Engine Land, The Cyber Express, Bloomberg, Caitlin Halpert on LinkedIn, Neowin, MarTech, Emil Protalinski on LinkedIn, @pedrodias, @levie, Wall Street Journal, @cmagovuk, Tech Xplore, Gizmodo, @edzitron, @ariellesgarcia, @dalmaer, @ngriffin_uk, @simonw, @vtoubiana, @jdaykin, @aripap, @aripap, @mattlanza, @jeffjarvis, @sarafischer, Silicon Republic, @murakamiwood, @rowan_m, @alextcone, @michaelmiraflor, @chronotope, @keithepetri, @samueljscott, @incloud, @thezedwards, @torgo@mastodon.social, @paperghost, @kendraebarnett, @glenngabe, @ryanbarwick, @lukolejnik, @simoahava, @robinberjon, @lukolejnik, @wolfiechristl, Google Help Center, The Verge, Mark McEachran on LinkedIn, The Information, Financial Times, GOV.UK, Search Engine Land, Fast Company, James Rosewell on LinkedIn, Marc Majewski on LinkedIn, Mahesh Narayanan on LinkedIn, @mysk@mastodon.social, Simo Ahava on LinkedIn, @wchr@mastodon.social, W Media Research, The Drum, Angelina Eng on LinkedIn, Matthias Cada on LinkedIn, Engadget, Oliver Klander on LinkedIn, Rio Longacre on LinkedIn, @lauren@mastodon …, 9to5Google, @jaffathecake@mastodon.social, Paul Bannister on LinkedIn, Alex Cone on LinkedIn, CBS News, The Drum, AdExchanger, Ad Age and @LukaszOlejnik@mastodon.social

Robbie Whelan / Wall Street Journal:

Former Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter, who backed Nelson Peltz in a failed proxy fight for two Disney board seats, sells his stake of nearly 26M Disney shares — Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, the former Marvel Entertainment executive, who for the last decade and a half has been one of Disney's …

Discussion: Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Gizmodo, Deadline, New York Post and Reuters

The Information:

Internal messages: Meta staff complained about Threads' algorithm limiting political posts, after the For You page was slow to show news of Biden dropping out — Shortly after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election Sunday, an employee at Meta Platforms posted in the company's internal forum …

Discussion: @georgescriban@threads.net, @katieharbath@threads.net, @theinformation, @fridaghitis@threads.net, @_hadasgold@threads.net, @drewharwell@threads.net and @kevinmkruse@threads.net, more at Techmeme »

Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:

Comcast reports Peacock Q2 revenue up 28% YoY to $1B, and a $348M loss, down from $651M in Q2 2023; paying subs were up 38% YoY to 33M but down from 33.5M in Q1 — Comcast and its entertainment unit NBCUniversal report second-quarter results, including the “best year-over-year improvement” …

Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Comcast President Mike Cavanagh says NBCUniversal expects an 11-year rights deal with the NBA, starting with the 2025-26 season, will be announced “soon”

Discussion: Variety, Reuters, Sportico, TVNewsCheck, Next TV, The Wrap and The Hollywood Reporter

Bloomberg:
A look at Comcast's bet on the Paris Olympics, which executives hope will greatly elevate Peacock against Netflix and Disney+; Peacock has exclusive US rights

Discussion: The Streamable, Business Insider, Next TV, Reuters, Slate, @lucas_shaw and IndieWire

Judd Legum / Popular Information:

A look at Sinclair's Rapid Response Team, which produces biased short articles; affiliates must include at least three RRT stories nightly — Eugene Ramirez, the lead anchor of Sinclair's national evening news broadcast, resigned in January over concerns about the accuracy and right-wing bias …

Max Goldbart / Deadline:

BBC plans to lay off 500 more staff by March 2026 and reports a £263M operating deficit in 2023/24, up from £193M in 2022/23, projected to be £492M in 2024/25 — The BBC will lay off 500 more staff by March 2026 as its annual report paints a worrying financial picture including …

Discussion: The Desk, London Evening Standard, Financial Times, The Independent, The Business Times, GB News, Variety, Press Gazette, The Hollywood Reporter, BBC and TVNewsCheck

Naman Ramachandran / Variety:
BBC reports BBC Commercial revenue of £1.9B in 2023/24, down from £2.1B in 2022/23, and 3.8M BritBox International subscribers, with a 25% annual growth rate

Discussion: Broadcast, BBC, WORLD SCREEN, Broadband TV News, The Hollywood Reporter and The Hollywood Reporter

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Huw Edwards tops the list of BBC's highest paid journalists for 2023/24 despite being off-air since July 2023; 46 BBC journalists earned above £178K

Discussion: LBC, Metro.co.uk, Sky News, The Mirror, The Mirror, The i Paper, The Mirror, Daily Mail, Telegraph, The Times, Daily Express, GB News, The Independent, The Independent, London Evening Standard, The Sun and Deadline

Reuters:

The US calls on Russia to free Russian-American RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who was jailed last week in what RFE/RL said was “a mockery of justice” — The U.S. Embassy in Moscow on Tuesday called on Russia to free Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist …

Andrew Deck / Nieman Lab:

An interview with WaPo CTO Vineet Khosla on its Climate Answers chatbot, and how it's been built with “adversarial testing”, newsroom feedback, and fine-tuning — “For Google, that might be failure mode...but for us, that is success,” says the Post's Vineet Khosla

Discussion: @washpostpr, Deborah Carver on LinkedIn, Craig McCosker on LinkedIn and @phoebedoris

Mike Scarcella / Reuters:

A US judge rules that Nina Jankowicz, a former Biden anti-disinformation official, could not back up her defamation claims against Fox News and parent Fox Corp — Fox News Media and its parent Fox Corp (FOXA.O) won a ruling on Monday dismissing a lawsuit by a former Biden administration official …

Discussion: ABC News, Adweek, Deadline, The Hill and Mediaite

Bron Maher / Press Gazette:

A look at The Guardian's recipes app, Feast, which costs £2.99/mo. and has reached 100K+ downloads since April, and how the outlet's bundling differs from NYT's — The Guardian says its new recipes app Feast has achieved more than 100,000 downloads since it soft-launched in April.