A la carte pricing is coming to basketball. Instead of paying $7 to access a full game with an NBA League Pass, which offers matchups audiences don’t get on their local TV channels, fans will be able to jump into those games during the final quarter for just $2.
Facebook made a tool to help people protect their information. Instead, it compromised 50 million accounts.
Amazon streams its first NFL game of the season tonight. As the Minnesota Vikings face off against the Los Angeles Rams, the e-commerce giant will launch a way for fans to shop directly from their TV sets without pausing the game.
Sweeping privacy rules in the European Union changed the way internet platforms, telecoms, publishers—really anyone who processes personal data—do business in the region earlier this year. It shook things up for tech giants like Google and Facebook that profit from using customer data to sell advertising.
Where would we be without Google during heated debates, lapses in memory, or when life’s mysteries plague us, such as why the sky is blue? The solution for many of us in those moments is to “just Google it.” It’s an action so ubiquitous that “to google” is now in the dictionary.
As if you didn’t already have enough TV shows clogging up your DVR, we’re about to get a whole lot more.
Amazon is working on a new live-streaming video project. The e-commerce giant is searching for an experienced media executive to head up programming for the new initiative, according to a job listing for a “Head of Content” posted to LinkedIn two weeks ago.
CJ 4DPLEX, the South Korean company behind the 4DX movie format, has developed a new way to enjoy fine cinema: a 270-degree, movie-viewing experience that makes use of the side walls in theaters, known as ScreenX. This is how I saw The Nun, the latest horror movie in James Wan’s The Conjuring universe. Everything about it was utterly unremarkable.
Live sports are about the last thing holding the traditional ad-supported TV ecosystem in place in the US. Sports are one of the few programs US audiences still watch live, and TV networks depend on the advertising revenue they bring in. A new streaming service wants to blow that model up.
Perhaps Les Moonves thought he was too powerful to be toppled by the #MeToo movement. Perhaps the CBS board agreed with him. After all, Moonves was the chairman and CEO of the most-watched TV network in the US, who’d shepherded his company through one of the most tumultuous periods in media history over the last 12 years. And so when six women came forward in August, accusing Moonves of sexual misconduct in a New Yorker report by Ronan Farrow (paywall), the CBS chief denied the claims.
Watching live NFL broadcasts is like navigating a labyrinth. The networks and platforms that broadcast the games, which are among the most watched on US TV, have complicated rights deals with the NFL that grant them specific matches on specific platforms in specific parts of the world. The contracts betray little logic to anyone outside the negotiating rooms.
T-shirts from Serena Williams are a hot commodity.
About a year ago, Sony had the brilliant idea of re-releasing some of its hottest titles without the sex, violence, and language of the original cuts. DVDs weren’t selling as they used to and the company wanted to make some of its older titles more family friendly. Think Spider-Man without the more-violent action scenes, or Ghostbusters without the cuss words (“We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!“). Creators like Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen pushed back against Sony’s plans to clean up their movies, and the company didn’t move forward with them.
US millennials get most of their news from the internet. But in breaking news situations, even young adults look up from their smartphones.
Apple is arriving late to the streaming video party and has been sparing no expense to make a fashionable entrance. It’s signed deals with A-listers like Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston, and Reese Witherspoon, along with the people behind Sesame Street, to create original shows. And it’s reportedly dropping more than $1 billion on original video content this year.
Netflix’s scripted original series are turning out to be remarkably middle of the road.
One of the biggest reasons to cut the cord has little to do with canceling your pay-TV service. It’s about untethering yourself from the cable box—you know, the one you’re always losing the remote for.
Facebook wants to be the new water cooler.
Summer at the movies in the US this year was full of the usual popcorn flicks—a dozen or so sequels, shark movies, and animated films—but some of the best-reviewed and buzzed about titles weren’t your typical summer fare. They were films like the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians, and the dramedy BlacKkKlansman that would usually be reserved for the fall, when studios release movies hopeful of Oscar nominations, or at other less-crowded times of the year.
Our taste in movies is now universal.
A former board member at MoviePass’s parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, is raising concerns about the company’s corporate governance.
Rotten Tomatoes is opening itself to more reviews.
The White House is “taking a look” into regulating Google, Donald Trump’s top economic advisor said Tuesday morning, after the US president tweeted in the early morning hours that googling “Trump news” turned up too many negative results.
Screenwriter John August recently wanted to watch Garry Marshall’s 1984 movie The Flamingo Kid. The coming-of-age dramedy starring Matt Dillon wasn’t exactly a cornerstone of American cinema, but August recalled, from catching the film on cable TV once, that it deftly captured the 1980s US east coast beach culture he was researching for new project.
