Mediagazer: LADbible owner LBG Media reports H1 2024 revenue up 55% YoY to £42.3M, adjusted earnings up 240% YoY to £10.2M, and a global audience of 493M; LBG jumps 11%+ (Jess Jones/City A.M.)

8:00 AM ET, July 24, 2024

Top News:

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Daniel Ek says Spotify is working on a deluxe Spotify tier, costing around $17 to $18, 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, TechCrunch, Music Business Worldwide, 9to5Mac, Billboard, 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: Observer, The Register, Alphabet Inc., RTÉ, The Desk, Neowin, Quartz, The Wrap, 9to5Google, Bloomberg, Deadline, Wall Street Journal, Variety, MediaPost, Next TV and TVNewsCheck, more at Techmeme »

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 »

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, Gizmodo, New York Post, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline and Reuters

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 …

Reuters:

A Moscow court finds Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar guilty in absentia of distributing false information about the Russian army and sentences him to 8.5 years — A court in Moscow said on Tuesday it had found Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar guilty in absentia of knowingly distributing false information …

Discussion: International Center … and Committee to Protect …

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, TVNewsCheck, Reuters, Sportico, 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: Business Insider, The Streamable, 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

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: Digital Trends, @LukaszOlejnik@mastodon.social, Security, Privacy & …, AdExchanger, Criteo, @Privacymatters@mastodon …, MarTech, RTÉ, Digiday, 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: Adweek, Privacy Sandbox, Information Commissioner's …, AdExchanger, The Cyber Express, Search Engine Land, Bloomberg, Caitlin Halpert on LinkedIn, Neowin, @pedrodias, @levie, MarTech, Emil Protalinski on LinkedIn, @cmagovuk, Tech Xplore, Gizmodo, @edzitron, @ariellesgarcia, @dalmaer, @ngriffin_uk, @simonw, @vtoubiana, @jdaykin, @aripap, @aripap, @mattlanza, @jeffjarvis, @sarafischer, @murakamiwood, @rowan_m, @alextcone, @michaelmiraflor, @chronotope, @keithepetri, @samueljscott, @incloud, @thezedwards, Wall Street Journal, @paperghost, Silicon Republic, @kendraebarnett, @glenngabe, @ryanbarwick, @lukolejnik, @simoahava, @robinberjon, @lukolejnik, @wolfiechristl, @torgo@mastodon.social, The Verge, Mark McEachran on LinkedIn, Google Help Center, The Register, 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 …, CBS News, 9to5Google, @jaffathecake@mastodon.social, Paul Bannister on LinkedIn, Alex Cone on LinkedIn, The Drum, AdExchanger, Ad Age and @LukaszOlejnik@mastodon.social

Jess Jones / City A.M.:

LADbible owner LBG Media reports H1 2024 revenue up 55% YoY to £42.3M, adjusted earnings up 240% YoY to £10.2M, and a global audience of 493M; LBG jumps 11%+ — Shares in LBG Media soared 12 per cent after the company behind popular entertainment channel LAD Bible posted strong revenue …

Discussion: LBG Media

Jim Waterson / The Guardian:

BBC reports UK households paying the £169.50 licence fee fell by 500K to 23.9M in 2023/2024; 69% of Britons under 16 consume any BBC content in an average week — Corporation faces stark challenge as it struggles to reach younger audiences who are watching Netflix and YouTube

Discussion: The Sun and GB News

Bron Maher / Press Gazette:

A look at The Guardian's recipes app Feast, which costs £2.99/month and has reached 100K+ downloads since April 2024, and how its bundling differs from the NYT — The Guardian says its new recipes app Feast has achieved more than 100,000 downloads since it soft-launched in April.

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