Top News:
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
Filing: WBD lowers 2023 adjusted EBITDA forecast from $300M-$500M to $10.5B-$11B, citing strikes, and expects $1.7B+ free cash flow due to Barbie and strikes — “The company now expects to exceed $1.7 billion in free cash flow for the third quarter of 2023, in part due to the strong performance …
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Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Elon Musk threatens to file a defamation lawsuit against the ADL for “falsely accusing” X and him of antisemitism and blames the ADL for X's falling US ad sales — In the newest uproar you might have missed, Elon Musk says X, formerly Twitter, will file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League.
Discussion:
@elonmusk, Los Angeles Times, @elonmusk, @anandypaul, Deadline, @elonmusk, @elonmusk, Vanity Fair, The Wrap, @stuarth2o@threads.net, @jgreenblattadl, @markloundy@threads.net, @marcuswoitas@threads.net, @oliverdarcy@threads.net, @baccellij@threads.net, @corybe@threads.net, @dkiesow@threads.net, @sethcotlar, The Times of Israel, CNN, CNBC, @ezraklein@threads.net, Axios, @mossbergwalt@threads.net, @mossbergwalt@threads.net, Techdirt, Reclaim The Net, Breitbart, Quartz, Mediaite, MIT Technology Review, The Hill, CBS News, @seldo@alpaca.gold, @elonmusk, @andrewpaul.bsky.social, New York Post, The Guardian, Ars Technica, Boing Boing, @elonmusk, @jh_swanson, Reason, Insider, The Daily Beast, The Information, Forbes, The Forward and Bloomberg, more at Techmeme »
Wall Street Journal:
How Spotify's $1B+ bet on podcasts has not paid off: most shows aren't profitable and the company has considered an ad revenue-sharing model akin to YouTube's — The prospect of podcast riches led to aggressive investments in celebrity deals and original programming for what appeared a sky's-the-limit media frontier
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Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Email: Spotify raises the listener threshold for creators in Ambassador Ads from 100 to 1,000 over 60 days, and plans to cut ad support for white noise podcasts — - Ambient sound shows will no longer be eligible for certain ads — Company raises listener threshold for ambassador ads program
Discussion:
CMU, @bartona104, @ashleyrcarman, Insider, Engadget, The Verge, Podnews, Music Ally and Digital Music News
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
NPR CEO John Lansing says he plans to retire at the end of 2023; he has been CEO since 2019; NPR will now conduct a national search for his successor — - U.S. Economy Adds 187,000 Jobs In August, Entertainment Employment Continues To Decline Amid Strikes — John Lansing, the president …
Discussion:
NPR, NPR, CNN, The Desk, The Wrap, Inside Radio, @benmullin, Current and @hollyedgell
Meta:
Meta plans to deprecate the Facebook News tab in the UK, France, and Germany in early December 2023 and won't sign new deals for news content in those countries — Today, we are announcing that in the UK, France and Germany we will deprecate Facebook News - a dedicated tab on Facebook …
Discussion:
NBC 7 San Diego, The Messenger, Financial Times, Press Gazette, Engadget, @obrien, Bloomberg, @mgeist, The Verge, @obrien, TechCrunch and MediaPost, more at Techmeme »
Miles Klee / Rolling Stone:
Sean “Diddy” Combs returns the music publishing rights from his label Bad Boy Records to artists, including the Notorious B.I.G.'s estate, Mase, and Faith Evans — In an “unprecedented” move, the estate of Notorious B.I.G. is among those to reclaim songs from the iconic label's catalog
Discussion:
@phil_lewis_, Forbes, The Fader, New York Post, Deadline, Variety, The Wrap, Billboard, Digital Music News, Variety and Next TV
Ben Werdmuller / Werd I/O:
Organizations like Tiny News Collective could help build a “wide news” commons of smaller specialized newsrooms and perspectives of individuals in a community — Doc Searls writes about what he calls wide news: … Doc's argument is that a local commons of publications can …
Discussion:
Local News Initiative, @ben@werd.social and Doc Searls Weblog
Eva Hartog / Politico:
Politico Europe's reporter in Moscow, expelled after 10 years in Russia, on how journalists from Western countries are being slowly squeezed out of the country — Moscow is quietly cracking down on the country's last independent observers. — During my 10 years as a Moscow-based journalist …
Reuters:
Indian police file criminal charges against four journalists covering ethnic violence in the country and accuse their reporting of trying to “provoke clashes” — Indian police in Manipur state have filed criminal charges against four journalists, accusing them of misrepresenting facts …
Discussion:
Breitbart
Zoe Williams / The Guardian:
An interview with Marianna Spring, the BBC's first disinformation correspondent, on her Conspiracyland podcast, online abuse becoming offline action, and more — The broadcaster's first disinformation correspondent spends her time pursuing trolls and dismantling conspiracy theories.
Discussion:
@ianRobinson@mastodon.social
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
WBD rebrands its preschool network Boomerang to Cartoonito, available as a pay TV channel, in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa — “Cartoonito is Warner Bros. Discovery's biggest commitment to programming for children aged 2 to 6.”
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