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1:48 PM ET, February 21, 2025

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 Top News: 
New York Times:
Memo: MLB and ESPN mutually agree to end their national television deal after the 2025 season; ESPN was due to pay MLB around $550M/year in 2026, 2027, and 2028  —  Major League Baseball and ESPN have “mutually agreed” to end their national television deal after the upcoming 2025 season …
Deadline:
Sources: Amazon paid $1B+ to gain creative control of the James Bond franchise and plans to expand it into its own universe akin to Marvel or Star Wars  —  Amazon originally overpaid on its purchase of MGM in a deal orchestrated by then-MGM board chair Kevin Ulrich.
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Justin Kroll / Deadline:
Amazon MGM Studios, Michael G. Wilson, and Barbara Broccoli form a JV to house James Bond IP rights, under which Amazon gains creative control of the franchise
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Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Apple plans to launch Apple News+ Food in April, for News+ subscribers, with recipes, kitchen tips, and other content from Allrecipes, Serious Eats, and more  —  The new section will include tens of thousands of recipes from publishers like Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, and AllRecipes.
Discussion: TechCrunch, Apple and 9to5Mac
Dan Sabbagh / The Guardian:
The BBC pulls a Gaza documentary from iPlayer to conduct “further due diligence” after criticism for not clearly disclosing narrator was a Hamas leader's son  —  Show removed from iPlayer as ‘further due diligence’ carried out and critics ask if any Hamas members were paid for filming
Gene Maddaus / Variety:
Senator Warren urges the US DOJ to scrutinize Disney's deal to acquire a controlling stake in Fubo and merge it with Hulu + Live TV, citing antitrust concerns  —  Sen. Elizabeth Warren has urged the Justice Department to carefully scrutinize Disney's deal to acquire a controlling stake in Fubo …
Peter Kafka / Business Insider:
If X threatened an ad group with US government interference, we've hit a high level of coercion, and conservatives who complained of Big Tech bias should object  —  - Elon Musk's X — the thing we used to call Twitter — lost lots of advertisers after he bought it.
Reuters:
Sources: India fines BBC ~£300K for alleged foreign exchange violations over its failure to reduce foreign ownership in a company BBC launched in India in 2023  —  India's financial crime fighting agency has fined British broadcaster BBC 314,510 pounds ($397,980) for alleged foreign exchange violations …
Andrew Deck / Nieman Lab:
Some journalists are taking freelance jobs with AI training data companies like Scale AI, which recruit them for tasks such as fact-checking and prompt drafting  —  The gig work platform Outlier is one of several companies courting journalists to train large language models (LLMs).
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
YouTube plans to add a “premium lite” tier, a source says for the US, Australia, Germany, and Thailand, offering podcasts without ads and music videos with ads  —  - The service will continue to put ads in music videos  — The tier will launch in areas that include the US, Australia
 
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Matt Novak / Gizmodo:
Elon Musk says he will “fix” Community Notes as they are “increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media”, after disagreeing with notes about Ukraine
 Earlier Picks: 
Michel Rose / Reuters:
A French court upholds TV channel C8's shutdown for failures to protect human rights and protect minors, as right-wing politicians claim a free speech violation
 

 
From Techmeme:

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Sources: Meta is considering deep budget cuts to its metaverse efforts in 2026, potentially as high as 30% and most likely including layoffs as early as January

Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Apple says general counsel Kate Adams and policy chief Lisa Jackson will retire, and Jennifer Newstead, Meta's former chief legal officer, will replace Adams

Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Two studies suggest AI chatbots can shift political views more effectively than TV campaign ads, especially by presenting many claims, regardless of accuracy
 
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