Mediagazer: G. Elliott Morris, the data journalist who took over 538 in 2023, launches Strength In Numbers, a paid Substack; his relationship with ABC deteriorated in 2024 (Max Tani/Semafor)

12:45 PM ET, May 12, 2025

Top News:

Scott Macfarlane / CBS News:

The Trump administration fired US Copyright Office head Shira Perlmutter; her office had raised concerns about xAI using copyrighted content to train AI — The Trump administration has fired the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, two sources familiar with the situation confirmed to CBS News Saturday.

Discussion: Copyright Lately, Politico, Committee on House …, American Crisis, TechCrunch, Law Dork, Billboard, PC Gamer, CMU, New York Post, Daily Caller News Foundation, Washington Post, Fortune, Karim B. Boughida on LinkedIn, Jens Bammel on LinkedIn, @alexpanetta.bsky.social, Breitbart, The Register, Townhall, @macfarlanenews, @kortizart, Fox News, The Ankler, @repjoemorelle, @khshan.bsky.social, Kevin Erickson on LinkedIn, The Hill, Digital Music News, Axios, Business Insider, UPI, @mrddmia, Music Ally, WTIC, Music Business Worldwide, Susan Dodes on LinkedIn, The Verge, Courtney Radsch, PhD on LinkedIn, Cedar Boschan on LinkedIn, Drew Thurlow on LinkedIn, @mrsdeborahlynn.bsky.social, Washington Examiner, @leap44.bsky.social, @jedbrown@hachyderm.io, @lisalibrarian.bsky.social, @americalabs.org, Edward Lee on LinkedIn, Bloomberg and @justinhendrix.bsky.social, more at Techmeme »

Jill Goldsmith / Deadline:

Lachlan Murdoch says the new Fox streaming service will be called Fox One and Fox plans to launch it the start of football season in fall 2025 — Lachlan Murdoch said the new Fox streaming service he's been teasing for months will be called Fox One and will launch before the start of football season this fall.

Discussion: Variety, Variety, Reuters, Awful Announcing, The Desk, MediaPost, Bloomberg, The Streamable, The Wrap, CNBC, Advanced Television, Sports Business Journal, Motley Fool, @jbflint, TV Insider and The Verge

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Fox Corp reports Q3 revenue up 27% YoY to $4.37B, ad revenue up 65% to $1.2B, driven by Super Bowl, Tubi, and news, and a $354M net income, vs $704M in Q3 2024

Discussion: The Wrap, Adweek, Wall Street Journal, TVNewsCheck, Reuters, The Times, @jbflint, Benzinga, Media Play News, @jbflint and Deadline

The Guardian:

Sources: the UK Foreign Office asks the BBC World Service to draw up a budget of up to £70M per year lower than the BBC management says it needs — Exclusive: David Lammy asks BBC bosses to draw up tightened budget amid criticism move could harm UK's global influence

Discussion: @katyataylor, @emmaharding.bsky.social, @stephenkb.bsky.social, @piercepenniless.bsky.social, @_felixsimon_, @rohyakobi, @davidhendy.bsky.social, @edwinhayward.com and @Wen@mastodon.scot

Max Tani / Semafor:

G. Elliott Morris, the data journalist who took over 538 in 2023, launches Strength In Numbers, a paid Substack; his relationship with ABC deteriorated in 2024 — The Scoop — The former head of 538, shuttered last year by ABC News, is building a new media outlet aimed at recapturing …

Discussion: Strength In Numbers, @maxwelltani, @mediaevan.bsky.social and Strength In Numbers

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:

Amazon says the ad tier of Prime Video now reaches 130M+ US customers and it plans AI-powered tools for advertisers on Amazon including contextual ad copy — The tech giant says that Prime Video's main offering has added 15M customers since its last update.

Discussion: MediaPost and Adweek

Andi Ortiz / The Wrap:

More than 600 actors and filmmakers sign an open letter to BBC demanding the release of a documentary, originally scheduled to air in January, about Gaza medics — “This is not editorial caution. It's political suppression,” the open letter in support of “Gaza: Medics Under Fire” reads

Discussion: The Guardian, Variety, GB News and Deadline

Alisa Vasquez / Politico:

Politico announces The Playbook Podcast, a daily audio companion to its flagship newsletter, hosted by Jack Blanchard and new Chief Correspondent Dasha Burns — The Playbook Podcast hosted by Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns to launch on May 12 and The Conversation with Dasha Burns debuts on June 1

Discussion: @michaelsavage, @playbookdc, @hugobebb, @kyletblaine, @adamwren, @maxwelltani, Status and Barrett Media

Clare Malone / New Yorker:

How WaPo is struggling during Trump's second term: Jeff Bezos aligning himself with Trump, staff remain skeptical of Will Lewis' vision for the paper, and more — How the paper that brought down Richard Nixon is struggling to survive the second term of Donald Trump.

Discussion: GeekWire, @claremalone, @benmullin and @claremalone.bsky.social

Dade Hayes / Deadline:

With upfronts kicking off today, major media companies and streaming giants prepare to pitch ad buyers amid economic anxieties and Trump's tariff threats — The year has gotten off to a clamorous start for corporate America (not to mention the rest of us), with epic stock market gyrations …

Discussion: The Streamable, Variety, Ad Age, Wall Street Journal, The Wrap, TVREV, @sherman4949, @sherman4949, TVNewsCheck, The Hollywood Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter, Sports Business Journal, Bloomberg, Awful Announcing, @sherman4949, Sportico, CNBC and Adweek

Ernesto Van der Sar / TorrentFreak:

How OpenDNS, Cloudflare, and Google responded to EU court orders to block DNS resolution for pirate sites; OpenDNS left France and Belgium instead of complying — The frontline of online piracy liability keeps moving, and core internet infrastructure providers are increasingly finding themselves in the crosshairs.

more at Techmeme »

Nicole Sperling / New York Times:

A look at the costs, incentives, benefits, and tradeoffs of filming in California as experienced by the show Fallout, which is shooting its second season in CA — The show's producer, Jonathan Nolan, has put himself at the forefront of Hollywood's push to get California to approve $750 million in tax rebates.

Zach Schonfeld / The Guardian:

The line between documentaries and PR is blurring as streaming platforms opt for docs produced by the subjects themselves and shy away from controversy — As Netflix scraps an epic series exploring the Purple Rain star's complexities, and Max takes down Leaving Neverland, we ask …

Discussion: Screen Rant, The Wrap, Spyglass, @joshejnes, @djlouiexiv, @zzzzaaaacccchhh, @joshejnes, GoldDerby, Us Weekly, Variety, @jonsternfeld.bsky.social, @scotttobias.bsky.social, @zachschonfeld.bsky.social, @jonsternfeld.bsky.social and Mirror

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Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
French film producer Pathé sells a 20% stake to logistics magnate Rodolphe Saadé and plans to focus on “internationally-oriented films and series”

Discussion: Variety and Deadline

Jake Kanter / Deadline:
YouTube suspends several fake movie trailer channels from its partner program after an investigation showed the scale of AI-generated fake movie trailers

Discussion: TVNewsCheck

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Propagate Content acquires a majority stake in Parker, which represents dozens of influencers; sources: CAA Evolution is raising money to buy YouTube channels

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Luke Plunkett / Aftermath:
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Anthony D'Alessandro / Deadline:
Sony Pictures' Motion Picture Group Chairman and CEO Tom Rothman signs a multiyear contract extension, making him the longest-serving film chief in Hollywood

Discussion: Screen, Variety, IndieWire, The Wrap, The Hollywood Reporter and Reuters

Nicholas Kristof / New York Times:
Court filing: internal Pornhub documents show it had 706K videos in May 2020 flagged for child rape or other problems, often not removed until flagged 16+ times

Discussion: @elisethomas.bsky.social

Earlier Picks:

CNN:
Memo: the Pentagon orders all military academies to identify and remove books from their libraries promoting “divisive concepts” like race and gender ideology

Murray Stassen / Music Business Worldwide:
WMG launches the WMG Pulse app in beta to let artists and their teams access real-time information about streaming performance and more across various platforms

BBC:
Over 400 British musicians, writers, and artists ask Keir Starmer to back a rule requiring developers to be transparent about using their material to train LLMs

Discussion: The Register, The Guardian, @kradke.bsky.social, Rolling Stone, City A.M., Bloomberg, Financial Times and The Bookseller

Gene Maddaus / Variety:
WGA members vote to uphold the expulsion of two writers accused of performing forbidden “writing services” during the 148-day strike in 2023

Discussion: Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter and The Wrap

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Trump Media reports Q1 net sales up 6.6% YoY to $821.2K, a net loss of $31.7M, vs. a $327.6M net loss in Q1 2024, and $759M in cash and investments

Discussion: Forbes, US Securities and Exchange Commission, Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch and Reuters

Andrew Marchand / New York Times:
Sources: YouTube is favored to stream the NFL's opening week Friday night game, its first exclusive NFL broadcast, which may be available globally for free

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From Techmeme:

Joe Rivano Barros / Mission Local:
Waymo says it temporarily suspended its ride-hailing service in San Francisco during a citywide blackout, as downed traffic lights appeared to halt its vehicles

Mitchell Peters / Billboard:
Pirate activist group Anna's Archive says it scraped 86M music files and 256M rows of track metadata from Spotify, and releases them in ~300TB of torrent files

Sri Muppidi / The Information:
Source: OpenAI's share of revenue after the cost of running AI models for paying users has jumped to ~70% in October, up from ~52% at the end of 2024

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