Top News:
Cameron Coats / Radio & Television Business Report:
BIA Advisory Services: 2024 US local media ad spending is expected to rise 9.5% YoY to $173.7B, with the gap between traditional and digital media spend closing — In October, BIA Advisory Services' initial forecast for 2024 had local advertising revenues hitting $175.6 billion.
Discussion:
Aspire and Inside Radio
Deadline:
Nielsen and Adobe Analytics: the Paris Olympics opening ceremony drew 28.6M viewers on NBC and Peacock, up 60%+ from Tokyo, plus 666K on Telemundo Deportes — Good news for NBCUniversal: The Paris Olympics are off to a great start with a big win out of Friday's Opening Ceremony.
Discussion:
The Hollywood Reporter, Axios, New York Times, Sportico, TVLine, Sports Media Watch, NBCSports.com, Variety, Bloomberg, The Wrap, AV Club, Reuters and HuffPost
Kate Conger / New York Times:
Sources detail how Elon Musk undermined CEO Linda Yaccarino's efforts to repair X's business over the past year; X's US revenue fell 53% YoY to $114M in Q2 — Linda Yaccarino, the C.E.O. of X, has worked hard to bring back advertisers and fix the platform's business.
Discussion:
@rmac18, @rmac18, Awful Announcing, @documentingmeta@threads.net, @lessin@threads.net, @pkafka@threads.net, @alexandregiess@threads.net, @renee.diresta@threads.net, @lessin@threads.net, @hay_banda, @ron_fournier, @jeffjarvis, @reddirtsport, @carnage4life@mas.to, @so_treu, @amydiehl@mstdn.social, @elistuy@threads.net, @crumbler@threads.net, @moskov@threads.net, @renee.diresta@threads.net, @hunterwalk@threads.net, @cachiporra.bsky.social, @nonlinear@social.praxis.nyc and @self.agency, more at Techmeme »
Caroline Davies / The Guardian:
In a documentary, Prince Harry said his choice to take legal action against UK tabloid newspapers was a “central piece” contributing to the rift with his family — Duke of Sussex tells ITV documentary that legal battles against newspapers ‘central’ to deterioration in relations
Discussion:
Page Six, Associated Press, NBC News, SheKnows, Vanity Fair, HuffPost, CNN, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter and Newser
Gene Maddaus / Variety:
WGA West: TV and film writer earnings fell ~32% to $1.29B in 2023, the lowest level since the 2007-08 strike, and employment fell 19.5% to 5,501 working writers — TV and film writer earnings fell $603 million last year, or about 32%, as the end of “Peak TV” coincided with a 148-day strike by the Writers of Guild of America.
Discussion:
Writers Guild America West, WGA Contract 2023, The Wrap and Deadline
Wall Street Journal:
Filing: the US DOJ says TikTok collected data about its users' views on gun control, abortion, and religion, and censored content at ByteDance's direction — Justice Department defends new law requiring the sale or ban of the popular app — TikTok collected data about its users' views …
Discussion:
The Hill, @tiktokpolicy, Bloomberg, The Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times, Reuters and Toledo Blade, more at Techmeme »
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Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
WBD sues the NBA over the league's “unjustified” decision to sell a package of media rights to Amazon, to which WBD claims to have a “contractual right” — The company had sought to match a proposal from Amazon Prime Video, but the league said that it “did not match the terms” of the deal.
Discussion:
Puck, @wallachlegal, New York Times, @wallachlegal, @brandonthurston, @pkafka, @morningbrew, @sherman4949, @mmccarthyrev, @bkoo, Wall Street Journal, The Information, Washington Post, Bloomberg Law, USA Today, Axios, Forbes, Associated Press, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, ESPN, Front Office Sports, Variety, New York Times, Reuters, Quartz, Adweek, Sports Media Watch, Awful Announcing, Business Insider, Los Angeles Times, Mediaite, TVLine, Sportico, CNBC, Deadline, New York Post, CNN, The Wrap, The Streamable, Los Angeles Times, Awful Announcing, The Media Leader, StreamTV Insider, MediaPost and Media Play News, more at Techmeme »
James Warrington / The Telegraph:
Sources: Apple met with UK TV ratings body Barb to discuss options for tracking ads on Apple TV+, in another sign that it plans to introduce ads on the service — Apple has held talks with the UK's TV ratings body in the latest sign that the tech giant is planning to introduce adverts on its streaming service.
Discussion:
@tvgrimreaper and @carnage4life@mas.to, more at Techmeme »
Etan Vlessing / The Hollywood Reporter:
Charter lost 393K residential pay TV subscribers in Q2, compared to a loss of 189K in Q2 2023; overall video customers were 13.3M, down 9.5% YoY — The cable giant, led by CEO Chris Winfrey, also shed 154,000 broadband customers after the end of government subsidies.
Discussion:
The Desk, Charter Communications, StreamTV Insider, MediaPost, Media Play News, Reuters and TVNewsCheck
CBC News:
Canada's Postmedia plans to buy the SaltWire newspaper chain, which has been under protection from creditors since March, and hopes to close the deal in August — SaltWire would remain committed to local journalism, Postmedia says — Postmedia has entered an agreement to purchase SaltWire …
Discussion:
Canadian Press, CWA Canada and Postmedia
Ernesto Van der Sar / TorrentFreak:
Music industry group IFPI has been working to get Musi, a free streaming app that sources music from YouTube, removed from the App Store and weighs legal action — App stores are littered with apps that promise free access to music, but only few live up to expectations. Musi is one of them.
George Hammond / Financial Times:
Freelancer.com, iFixit, and others say Anthropic's crawler has aggressively scraped their websites, potentially breaching their terms of service — Web publishers say developer is swarming their sites, collecting content to train models and ignoring orders to stop
Discussion:
@ianb@mastodon.well.com, The Verge, @glenngabe, @jason_koebler, @matt_barrie, @barelylingual, @bobkitten, @kwiens, @ericholscher, @matt_barrie, @rahll, @readthedocs, @jordancmeyer, @dangoikhman, @dappierai, @kwiens, @kwiens, @kwiens, PC Gamer, MSPoweruser, Read the Docs, Wired, Hacker News, Hacker News and Slashdot
Bron Maher / Press Gazette:
Mail Online, The Independent, Daily Mirror, and Daily Express roll out “consent or pay” walls charging users £1.99 to £4 per month for cookie-less access — Mail Online, The Independent and the websites of the Daily Mirror and Daily Express have begun requiring readers …
Discussion:
@p0st_news, @johnspurlock, @dougfisher and @paezha@mastodon.online
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