Mediagazer: 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 (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter)

1:48 PM ET, February 21, 2025

Top News:

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.

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

Discussion: @jeffbezos, Screen Rant, Puck, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, BBC, FemaleFirst, Benzinga, Variety, Mirror, The Hollywood Gossip, GB News, About Amazon, Frontpage Mag, Breitbart, The Hollywood Reporter, @joerussotweets, Variety, @cpmaz.bsky.social, @librarythingtim.bsky.social, @richlightshed, Associated Press, @mgsiegler, @deeketweak, @jacobkleinman, @nextbestpicture, @benroyturner, @bunndumm, @autismsupsoc.bsky.social, @sonnybunch, @marcusjdl.bsky.social, NPR, CBR, Collider, CBS News, @courier12.bsky.social, Geoff Hollingworth on LinkedIn, The Daily Wire, @bennomatic@appdot.net, SlashFilm, @autismsupsoc.bsky.social, @illdave.bsky.social, @_patmurray@mastodon.social, Forbes, Gizmodo, Syracuse Post-Standard, Esquire, @billhuntbits.bsky.social, Engadget, Rolling Stone, GQ, Steve Siskind on LinkedIn, New York Times, @mutarada.bsky.social, Town & Country, Business Insider, Fortune, @benschwartz.bsky.social, The Playlist, @nedraggett.bsky.social, CNN, Yahoo Finance, LADbible, @vinzenzhediger.bsky.social, Axios, @davidjcourt.bsky.social, Financial Times, @michaelthec@poweredbygay …, Bloomberg, Carlo Bertucci on LinkedIn, WPXI-TV, CNBC, The Verge, The Information, Quartz, Wall Street Journal, @mrfengi.bsky.social, Los Angeles Times, Cord Cutters News, @taraconlan.bsky.social, Comic Book, @ronmarz.bsky.social, LADbible, CBR, Consequence, IndieWire, Gizmodo, Reuters, @moviessilently.bsky.social, Collider, World of Reel, @gigawattconduit.bsky.social, @jjdotbiz.bsky.social, @josie.zone, The Wrap, Screen Rant, @caseym.org, @gigawattconduit.bsky.social, Just Jared, NDTV, Oh No They Didn't! and Tatler

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

Bron Maher / Press Gazette:

Similarweb: traffic from ChatGPT to the top 14 publishers globally rose 8x from 435,000 in August to 3.5M in January, but is still less than 0.1% of all visits — The amount of referral traffic to top news sites from ChatGPT is increasing quickly, new data from Similarweb shows, but still accounts for a miniscule proportion of visits.

Discussion: CNBC, Kate Rooney on LinkedIn, Matt Shaw on LinkedIn, The Wrap and TechCrunch

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

Discussion: BBC, The Wrap, Fox News, Variety, The Times of Israel, The Independent, @tamhussein, @robertjenrick, @hamza_a96, @archrose90, @garyspedding, Deadline, GB News, BBC, The Sun, Mirror, Daily Caller News Foundation and HotAir

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 …

Discussion: TV Tech, The Streamable, Radio & Television …, The Hollywood Reporter, Cord Cutters News, @tvgrimreaper, TVNewsCheck, Reuters, Awful Announcing, The Desk, Business Insider, Benzinga, Light Reading, Deadline, Media Play News, The Wrap and Yahoo Finance

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.

Discussion: Geekout Newsletter, @pkafka, Kennon Fleisher on LinkedIn, Kevin Drum, @fricker.bsky.social, @businessinsider.com, @briantylercohen.bsky.social, @joshsternberg.com, Gizmodo, The Information and Wall Street Journal

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).

Discussion: @tylerborchers.com and Rest of World

Lauren Easton / Editor and Publisher:

Memo: AP is launching its Local Investigative Reporting Program, to be led by Ron Nixon, to support US state and local newsrooms in investigative reporting — In a memo to staff Thursday, Executive Editor Julie Pace announced AP will launch a Local Investigative Reporting Program led by Ron Nixon:

Discussion: Poynter, Ron Nixon on LinkedIn, @rebuildlocalnews.bsky.social, @sdkstl.bsky.social and TVNewsCheck

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

Discussion: TechCrunch, Dexerto, BGR, Ars Technica, The Information, Gizmodo, Music Ally, MacRumors, The Media Leader, Beyond Search, Adweek, Cord Cutters News, 9to5Google, The Desk and The Verge

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

Bloomberg News promotes Mark Gurman to managing editor for global consumer tech and adds senior editor Dana Wollman and two others to his team — Tom Giles, senior executive editor of global technology coverage at Bloomberg News, sent out the following on Thursday:

Discussion: @dsilverman@threads.net, @markgurman, @markgurman and @whatthebit

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Discussion: Cord Cutters News, Inside Radio, @christopherterry.bsky.social, @kv417.bsky.social, TV Tech and Barrett Media

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Discussion: Passionfruit, Fast Company, On Substack and TVNewsCheck

CNBC Press Releases:
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