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Some independent movie theaters are launching "virtual cinemas" to let patrons stream first-tier films from home as a temporary revenue source amid the pandemic
Analyst estimates Facebook and Google could lose $44B+ in 2020 global ad revenue due to COVID-19; Facebook says its ad business has weakened in affected places
Ampere Analysis study of Disney+ US subscriptions finds 50% of households with kids under 10, 42% with kids under 18, and 41% of 18-24-year-olds are subscribers
Netflix creates a $100M fund to support cast and crew members laid off from Netflix projects, with $15M to go to third parties and nonprofits
SEC filing: AT&T called off plans to repurchase $4B in stock during Q2 to keep the cash to invest in its networks and take care of employees during the pandemic
Broadcom sues Netflix for infringement of eight patents dealing with video playback and data transmission, claims cord-cutting reduced demand for Broadcom chips
Twitter Tests ‘Fleets,’ Tweets That Vanish After 24 Hours
Moviefone, Worth 1% of Its Former Value, Is Being Run by One Employee
CBS All Access and Showtime have 11M subscribers; Pluto TV had 22.4M MAUs in Q4 2019, up 75% YoY; revenue from all three hit $1.6 billion in 2019
Dish's Sling TV now has 2.5M subscribers, losing 94,000 in Q4, the first time it lost subscribers since its 2015 launch
Traditional Pay-TV Operators Lost 6 Million Subscribers in 2019 as Cord-Cutting Picks Up Speed
SEC filing: Spotify bought The Ringer for ~$141M to $196M in cash, some of it deferred and subject to closing adjustments
Research: over the past year, 95M people in the US used a major streaming service, 25M had a family plan, 13M had a free trial, and 10M+ were sharing a login
Sundar Pichai says YouTube Music and YouTube Premium together have more than 20M paying subscribers, and YouTube TV has more than 2M subscribers in the US
Verizon eliminates bundles and contracts for Fios line of TV, broadband, and phone services, will now sell them as standalone products via "Mix & Match on Fios"
Change or Die: 50% of Media and Entertainment Execs Say They Can’t Rely on Old Biz Models, Survey Finds
TiVo unveils TiVo Stream 4K, a streaming video dongle, with Sling TV as its subscription TV partner, available initially for $49.99 in April and then for $69.99
Techmeme · 3 months ago
Facebook makes an initial commitment of $130M to its upcoming Oversight Board and says it will not announce the first members this year as originally expected
YouTube updates guidelines, easing restrictions on simulated violence in gaming content as long as violent or gory imagery is not the sole focus of a video
E-book and audiobook subscription service Scribd raises $58M led by Spectrum Equity, bringing its total raised to $106M
Sonos has acquired voice assistant startup Snips for $37M, says it has sold 6.1M speakers in 2019, reports fiscal Q4 revenue of $294.2M, up 8% YoY
Patreon says it has paid out $1B+ to creators since its 2013 launch, up from $500M in Q4'18, has 4M+ members, up from 3M in Jan., and plans European expansion
Jennifer Lopez and Robert Pattinson Chat in ‘Actors on Actors’ – Variety
Verizon releases a Stream TV device running Android TV, heavily featuring YouTube TV, with none of Verizon Media's properties promoted and Netflix app blocked
Hulu to raise its Hulu + Live TV price by 22%, from $44.99/month to $54.99/month, for all subscribers starting on December 18
Oculus CTO John Carmack says he is stepping down but will remain as a "consulting CTO", will work on an artificial general intelligence, as a personal project
Instagram to Start Hiding Like Counts in the U.S.
Reddit · 5 months ago
Roku Q3: revenue of $260.9M vs. $257M est., up from $173.4M YoY, net losses up from $7.9M to $26.5M YoY; active accounts up 1.7M QoQ to 32.3M; stock down 13%+
At an event with News Corp's Robert Thomson, Mark Zuckerberg says every internet platform has a responsibility to fund and form partnerships for news
Verizon is giving away Disney+ for free for one year to all of its wireless customers on unlimited-data plans and to FiOS and 5G home internet customers
Mike Isaac's book, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, will be the basis for a Showtime series by Billions creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien
Google debuts a stream transfer feature that lets users move ongoing music and video streams between devices, coming first to Chromecast, Google Home, and Nest
Sony drops the price of PlayStation Now by 50% to $10 per month or $25 per quarter in the US, with similar cuts in Japan, EU, and UK
Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood
Netflix CEO warns of a "whole new world" when streaming services from Disney and Apple drop in November, reiterates that Netflix isn't in "acquisition business"
YouTube reverses course, says channels with verification badges will keep them without appeal and channels that reach 100k subs can still apply for verification
Sources: Tinder will release a six-episode choose-your-own-adventure series in October and intends to use viewers' choices to make matches
VENN, a Cheddar-like TV network that wants to mix esports with Twitch-like game streaming, raises $17M seed round, plans to launch in 2020
Walmart's Vudu is launching family-friendly features, like Family Play, which lets viewers automatically skip or mute "objectionable" content, and a kids' mode
Netflix Loses Title as No. 1 Bandwidth-Eating Application
Patreon CEO Jack Conte says the company is considering providing HR support, capital funding, health insurance, and other services to creators
Plex to launch an ad-supported streaming service this year, plans to begin reselling video subscription services and add transactional VOD, in H1 2020
'Matrix 4' officially a go with Keanu Reeves
Google's Area 120 incubator is testing Fundo, a service for YouTube creators to sell invites to online events, personalized shoutouts to fans, and more
YouTube will stop letting copyright holders seize revenue via manual claims on very short music clips.
Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell is leaving Facebook, seven years after launching the first Oculus Rift headset via Kickstarter
Light Field Lab raises $28M Series A with Samsung Ventures, Comcast, and others investing, to start building modular holographic displays for commercial venues
French regulators approve a plan by the country's heavyweight broadcasters to launch Salto, a joint streaming service expected in Q1 2020, to battle Netflix
Techmeme · 8 months ago