Mediagazer: 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 (Robbie Whelan/Wall Street Journal)

6:55 PM ET, July 23, 2024

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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 …

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

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, New York Post, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline

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 …

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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: Reuters, The Wrap, Variety, Neowin, Quartz, Bloomberg, The Information, Deadline, Wall Street Journal, Alphabet Inc., 9to5Google and TVNewsCheck, 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” …

Discussion: Variety, Comcast Corporation, Next TV, CNBC, The Desk, The Desk, The Streamable, Variety, MarketWatch, Barron's Online, @alexweprin, The Wrap, Cord Cutters News and The Information, more at Techmeme »

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, Next TV, Sportico, The Wrap, The Hollywood Reporter and TVNewsCheck

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

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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 …

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

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

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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 …

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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

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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 …

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, New York Post, Deadline, The Hill, Mediaite, NPR and Los Angeles Times

Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:

TelevisaUnivision reports Q2 revenue up 3% YoY to $1.3B, ad revenue up 6% YoY to $785M, and operating expenses up 6% YoY to $896M — The Spanish-language media giant, led by CEO Wade Davis, reports its second-quarter financials. … The company also reemphasized that its streaming business …

Discussion: New York Times, Next TV, TelevisaUnivision, Variety, WORLD SCREEN and TVNewsCheck

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Amazon begins rolling out a new UI for Prime Video to help distinguish content included with Prime, update its navigation bar, manage subscriptions, and more — And the new UI specifically addresses something that's annoyed Prime Video users for years: Now, according to Amazon …

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 …