Mediagazer: Business Insider hires former Daily Beast EIC Tracy Connor as the outlet's new standards editor (Jamie Heller/Business Insider)

Hulu faced technical difficulties during its live airing of the Oscars; in the Oscars' first hour, 34K+ users told Down Detector that the service wasn't working — More than 34,000 users reported the streaming site was down within the ceremony's first hour.

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:

Sources: the Academy has talked informally with Netflix and others about airing the Oscars in future years; its exclusive negotiating window with Disney lapsed — The audience for the Oscars has declined more than 50% over the last decade. Will that lead to a break-up with its home of more than 50 years?

Discussion: The Streamable, New York Post, Quartz, Boston.com, Screen Rant, @bloomberg.com, @lucas_shaw, @lucas_shaw, SlashFilm, TVNewsCheck, Cord Cutters News, Decider, Forbes, Rolling Stone, New York Times, The Wrap and Deadline

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Hulu cut its live stream before the Oscars ended, falsely stating “the live event has now ended” while Best Actress and Best Picture were still to come

Marc Tracy / New York Times:

No Other Land, about Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes, won Best Documentary at the 2025 Oscars, a rebuke after no distributor picked it up in the US — In their acceptance speeches, the Israeli and Palestinian co-directors called for “serious actions to stop the injustice.”

Discussion: The Forward, The Hollywood Reporter, Mirror, Associated Press, The Wrap, Al Jazeera, Dazed, @tiagodf.bsky.social, @sana.msf.ca, Reuters, GoldDerby, Variety, NPR and New York Daily News

Julia Jacobs / New York Times:
Trump and politics were largely absent from the 2025 Oscars, as host Conan O'Brien avoided it; Palestinian activist Basel Adra called “to stop the injustice”

Discussion: The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, SlashFilm, Us Weekly, The Hill, Vanity Fair, Reuters, Variety, IndieWire, Variety, Orange County Register, The Forward, Screen Rant, Business Insider, Extra, Washington Examiner and CNN

Jamie Heller / Business Insider:

Business Insider hires former Daily Beast EIC Tracy Connor as the outlet's new standards editor — I'm thrilled to share that Tracy Connor has joined Business Insider as Standards Editor. — In this critical role, Tracy will work with our journalists on questions during the reporting process …

Discussion: @maxwelltani

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

Lachlan Murdoch says Fox Nation has 2M to 2.5M subscribers, suggests a new stand-alone Fox streaming outlet would be aimed at “cord nevers” and “cord cutters” — At Fox Corp., executives are counting more heavily on streaming subscribers.

Discussion: The Streamable, The Wrap, Reuters, @franmacp.bsky.social, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, @chris_ciaccia and @jbflint

Wall Street Journal:

MLB plans a TV model where teams cede local rights to MLB for a unified streaming package; teams get ~25% of revenue from local media, the most of any US sport — The big sports network is walking away from the national pastime, accelerating baseball's need to cope with the demise of the TV economy that fueled its growth for decades.

Discussion: The Streamable, Gideon Clark on LinkedIn, Dan Rayburn on LinkedIn, Awful Announcing and @vtuss

Rebecca Rubin / Variety:

Disney hires ex-Warner Bros. exec Andrew Cripps as head of theatrical distribution, replacing Tony Chambers, who was named the president of Disney in Europe — Walt Disney Studios has hired former Warner Bros. executive Andrew Cripps as head of theatrical distribution.

Discussion: The Wrap and The Hollywood Reporter

Dawn Chmielewski / Reuters:

Independent films triumphed over more popular titles at the 97th Academy Awards, with Neon's Anora claiming five Oscars and A24's The Brutalist winning three — The 97th Academy Awards marked a celebration of independent film, with Neon's “Anora” claiming five Oscars, including for best film, lead actress and director.

Discussion: NPR, Simon Cuthbert on LinkedIn, WPXI-TV, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Deadline

Sahil Patel / The Information:

Sources: YouTube is preparing a Netflix-like redesign of its TV app, with paid content from other streamers like Max and Paramount+ on the homepage — It should have been easy. — YouTube in late 2022 began including in its app video-streaming services operated by other media companies …

Discussion: The Verge, more at Techmeme »

Kendra Barnett / Adweek:

Letters: Google, Amazon, and other ad companies respond to US senators' inquiries about ad placement on pages with CSAM, saying they blocked the sites and more — Amazon has issued refunds to affected advertisers — Under pressure from bipartisan lawmakers, Google, Amazon …

Ben Mankiewicz / CBS News:

Interviews with Ted Sarandos, Sony's Tom Rothman, and Nancy Meyers on how movies have changed in the era of streaming — Hollywood has been re-inventing itself for more 100 years. Change is part of the culture. But a pocket-sized “Sunset Boulevard”? That's not a close-up!

Jason Leopold / Bloomberg:

How FCC Chair Brendan Carr was cleared by ethics officials to write a chapter for the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 when he was a commissioner — Dozens of pages of emails reveal how Brendan Carr, the FCC's Republican chairman and close confidante of President Trump …

Discussion: TVNewsCheck, Reason and C-SPAN.org