BRUSSELS Viacom’s (VIAB.O) Paramount Pictures has offered EU regulators concessions aimed at averting a possible fine over geographical restrictions within Europe on movie licensing deals between Sky UK (SKYB.L) and six U.S. studios. The European Commission sa... More »
The parent of Britain’s Daily Mail said on Wednesday it had not submitted its own bid to buy Yahoo Inc’s core Internet business, but was still in talks to partner with other suitors of the U.S. company. Yahoo, which has been struggling with falling ad revenue ... More »
The parent company of the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, is in talks with several private equity firms about a possible bid for Yahoo Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. Daily Mail & General Trust PLC’s potential bid could take one of two form... More »
Lawyers for Viacom Inc Chairman Emeritus Sumner Redstone are in talks to settle a lawsuit challenging the 92-year-old media mogul’s mental competency, people familiar with the situation said on Tuesday. Depositions of Viacom Chief Executive Officer Philippe Da... More »
Time Inc (TIME.N) is considering partnering with a private equity firm on a bid for Yahoo Inc’s (YHOO.O) core Internet assets, according to people familiar with the matter, as the U.S. publishing company seeks to boost its digital presence. The deliberations o... More »
Media buyers expect record political ad spending driven by the U.S. presidential race will create a tight market for advertisers and drive up rates. Super PACs, which rose to prominence after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court campaign finance decision in 2010, are... More »
Healdsburg, CALIFORNIA Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) executives are in early talks with potential Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) investors about contributing to financing to buy the troubled Internet company, a person familiar with the situation said. The talks are preliminary,... More »
Playboy Enterprises [ICONAP.UL], the owner of Playboy magazine, is exploring a sale, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters, in a move that comes after the storied magazine stopped publishing nude photos of women and put up the iconic Playboy Mansion u... More »
NEW YORK Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz turned to Twitter to defend their wives’ honor after a Super PAC put out an ad featuring Trump’s wife nude and Trump threatened to “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife. Trump’s threat came on Tu... More »
MILAN Italian broadcaster Mediaset (MS.MI) poured cold water on Tuesday on speculation it was planning to sell part of its pay TV unit to French group Vivendi (VIV.PA). Chief Financial Officer Marco Giordani told analysts Mediaset Premium was part of the compa... More »
AUSTIN, Texas Online harassment and sexism is demeaning women and can no longer be brushed aside as an ugly side of social media and the gaming industry if they are to thrive, panelists on Saturday said at the South By Southwest (SXSW) tech meeting in Austin. ... More »
U.S. networks are changing the way they develop and release new shows, and even commercials, as they seek to adapt to new TV viewing habits and profit from the “binge-watching” made popular by video streaming services like Netflix. The changes could help offse... More »
NEW YORK iHeartMedia Inc, the largest owner of U.S. radio stations, on Wednesday secured a temporary restraining order from a state court in Texas rescinding notices of default it received from a small number of its senior creditors. The San Antonio, Texas-bas... More »
In the day following Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova’s admission that she failed a drug test, sponsors Nike, Porsche and Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer dropped her like a hot potato. Before social media demanded instant responses, sponsors often waited weeks o... More »
Twenty-First Century Fox Inc’s YES Network is looking to hit a home run with one of its most valuable assets in a fight with cable provider Comcast Corp: the New York Yankees. The sports regional network, which is 80 percent owned by Fox and 20 percent owned b... More »
iHeartMedia Inc has hired Moelis & Co as a financial adviser, the most significant step yet by the largest owner of U.S. radio stations to deal with its $21 billion debt pile, according to people familiar with the matter. The move comes as iHeartMedia, one of ... More »
SYDNEY Pushed out of the limelight by cuddly koalas and kangaroos, Australia’s less glamorous native bats and rodents have failed to catch the eyes of scientific researchers, a new study shows. Just 11 percent of scientific studies on Australian wildlife since... More »
NEW YORK Five months ago, Facebook Inc (FB.O) began trying to transform its picture-sharing app, Instagram, into a money-making business. Since then, Instagram has attracted more than 200,000 advertisers, the company announced Wednesday, a clear sign of its po... More »
Time Inc (TIME.N), publisher of Sports Illustrated, People and Time magazines, has been exploring a bid to acquire Yahoo Inc’s (YHOO.O) core Internet business for several weeks, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Tuesday. Time Inc has been re... More »
NEW YORK Verizon Communications Inc, which launched its pay TV plan “Fios Custom TV” last year to let viewers choose bundles of channels they want to watch, has redesigned the offering. The revamped Custom TV now offers a choice of one of two packages with ove... More »
BARCELONA Most consumers feel they lack control over personal information on their phones, are suspicious of attempts to use it for marketing appeals and many think the problem is getting worse, a survey in major countries of the world has found. The findings ... More »
NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES Advertisers played it safe and light with the most expensive ever Super Bowl ad slots on Sunday, shunning previous years’ attempts to be outrageous, emotional or thought-provoking. Mountain Dew rolled out a creature made from a puppy, a mo... More »
NEW YORK The hashtag #RIPTwitter became the top trending U.S. item on Twitter on Saturday, after a report from BuzzFeed said the company is planning to change how it displays users’ tweets. The BuzzFeed report, which went live on Friday night and did not discl... More »
WASHINGTON President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday will be more available to “cord cutters,” a nod to the changing television viewing habits of Americans, the White House said on Sunday. Cable and satellite providers have been grappling ... More »
The National Football League is planning to live-stream all three games scheduled to be played in London next season, and Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) subsidiary Google are among the technology companies in talks to buy the rights to conduct t... More »
Activist shareholders could push media company Time Warner Inc to sell itself or spin off its lucrative HBO business, the New York Post reported late on Thursday. While the activist shareholders have not approached Time Warner officially, New York-based firm C... More »
Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it launched its instant articles service for Android users which allows media firms to publish articles directly to the social network’s news feeds. The service involves more than 350 publications worldwide including the New York... More »
LONDON Global spending on advertising will accelerate to 4.7 percent next year, helped by the United States presidential elections, the summer Olympics and the UEFA soccer championship in Europe, ZenithOptimedia said on Monday. The ad trend forecaster, which i... More »
SAN FRANCISCO Yahoo Inc’s board of directors on Friday is in the third and final day of meetings that could decide the future of one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent but troubled companies. One option on the table for the nine board members is whether to sel... More »
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether Comcast Corp, the biggest U.S. cable TV provider, is hindering competition in cable advertising sales, a source told Reuters. The department’s Antitrust Division has sent documents known as civil investig... More »
SAN FRANCISCO Snapchat, maker of a free mobile app that lets users send videos and messages that disappear in seconds, is struggling to gain traction with advertisers, fuelling investor concern that its $16 billion valuation isn’t justified by a business that ... More »
NEW YORK It is not just millennials looking to cut the cable television cord: famed 73-year old billionaire value investor Mario Gabelli is planning to make a similar move. “I just got my bill for cable and it was outrageous,” Gabelli said at the Reuters Globa... More »
Viacom Inc is cutting the number of TV advertisements it airs in a bid to boost ratings. But the owner of MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon has drawn skepticism by saying the move will also help it raise ad prices. A cut in ads would not necessarily improve ... More »
WASHINGTON Representatives from Republican presidential campaigns on Sunday demanded a more active role in negotiations with TV networks over how presidential debates are conducted and sought a more limited role for the Republican National Committee. Officials... More »
LONDON Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper the Sun is to take down its online paywall, after the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid failed to win enough readers in the latest troubled digital experiment for a traditional publisher. The scrapping of the online subscr... More »
FRANKFURT German publisher Axel Springer appointed Jens Mueffelmann as head of its U.S. business on Thursday, a new post created in recognition of the growing importance of the market. Springer, which narrowly missed buying the Financial Times from Pearson thr... More »
Media mogul Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp said it has extend its partnership with Alphabet Inc’s Google through March 2020. Under the agreement, which has been in place for 14 years, Google will continue to provide IAC and its partners with sponsored list... More »
The New York attorney general is probing whether three major Internet providers could be short-changing consumers by charging them for faster broadband speeds and failing to deliver the speeds being advertised, according to documents seen by Reuters. The lette... More »
Walt Disney Co’s sports network ESPN said it will not make its content available on YouTube, due to the recently announced ad-free subscription-based offering coined YouTube Red. Alphabet Inc’s YouTube said on Wednesday it will launch YouTube Red, a $10-a-mont... More »
FRANKFURT Google says European media firms, often the search giant’s harshest industry critics, share a common threat because a surge in ad-blocking technology is a threat to all businesses dependent on advertising. Carlo d’Asaro Biondo, Google’s president for... More »
Yahoo Inc has dropped the price of advertising for its first Web-streamed National Football League game on Sunday from an early price of $200,000 to less than $100,000, two media buyers familiar with the situation told Reuters on Wednesday. The match between t... More »
Fans of the New York Mets had bemoaned the negative impact of the Bernie Madoff financial scandal on the Major League Baseball team’s payroll until Thursday night’s series-clinching victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers. With believers now dreaming of the team’... More »
NEW YORK AT&T Inc said it does not oppose the proposed merger of Charter Communications Inc and Time Warner Cable Inc, but in a letter to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission it asked for a careful review on the impact of cable deals on emerging online v... More »
The New York Times Co said it aimed to double its annual digital revenue to $800 million by 2020 with a concentrated effort to win over more readers on smartphones. The company has crossed 1 million digital subscribers and it needed to create the same “must-re... More »
SYDNEY Australian businesses are turning their backs on bitcoin, as signs grow that the cryptocurrency’s mainstream appeal is fading. Concerns about bitcoin’s potential crime links mean many businesses have stopped accepting it, a trend accelerated by Australi... More »
Google Inc has morphed into Alphabet Inc. After U.S. markets closed on Friday, Alphabet replaced Google as the publicly traded company that will house Google’s search and Web advertising businesses, maps, YouTube and its “moonshot” ventures such as driverless ... More »
In a sign that what is old is new again, U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co is producing its own science fiction podcast series in an effort to raise its profile among a younger, tech-savvy audience. GE, in partnership with The Slate Group’s podcast network... More »
SAN FRANCISCO Facebook Inc introduced a slate of new advertising products on Sunday, most of which are aimed at luring television advertisers onto the 1.5-billion user social network. The advertising options, most of which will also be available on Facebook-ow... More »
LONDON Britain is considering selling the Channel 4 public broadcaster as part of its drive to pay down debt, a government official has accidentally revealed. An official was photographed on Thursday outside No. 10 Downing St, the residence of Prime Minister D... More »
Time Warner Cable Inc’s shareholders approved the company’s $56 billion takeover by Charter Communications Inc, according to preliminary votes at a special shareholder meeting. Later on Monday, Charter also said more than 99 percent of the votes cast at its sp... More »
Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment, who developed the most popular paid ad-blocker on Apple Inc’s U.S. app store, has pulled the product, citing concerns that the tool could hurt independent Web publishers. In a blog post on Friday, Arment, wrote that he was pulli... More »
The Walt Disney Co on Tuesday named two executives to newly created positions in its Disney/ABC Television Group to focus on digital media and consumer experience at a time when TV viewing habits are rapidly changing. Cindy Davis, most recently head of global ... More »
WASHINGTON Days before a Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Library, an immigration advocacy group invoked the former president to attack the tough immigration rhetoric of certain candidates, including front-runner Donald Trump. A television a... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Friday started a non-binding 180-day countdown to review the proposed $56 billion merger of cable rivals Charter Communications Inc (CHTR.O) and Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC.N) The FCC said it will collect th... More »
Google Inc’s YouTube is planning to provide advertisers with data on how many of the ads on its internet video service can be seen by viewers, in response to advertiser complaints, according to the Financial Times. The online story, which cited unnamed people ... More »
LONDON Rebekah Brooks will return to her old job heading Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper division, the Financial Times reported, just over a year after being cleared of criminal charges in a phone-hacking scandal. Her return to News Corp could be as soon as... More »
FRANKFURT European broadcaster RTL will focus on buying online businesses and content producers as it seeks to build itself into a video powerhouse that goes beyond traditional broadcast, its finance chief told Reuters on Thursday. RTL has TV and radio channel... More »
SANTIAGO When the creators of an elaborate 2013 Cadillac commercial began to scout for shooting locations three years ago, they began in Argentina, where varied landscapes and creative talent had long attracted ad producers. But when it came time to import the... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on Wednesday called for an emergency meeting with Dish Network Corp and Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc over the continuing blackout affecting 129 TV stations. Sinclair, the largest U.S. broad... More »
Financial news agency Bloomberg plans to cut about 100 jobs in its editorial division, the New York Post reported. The announcement could come as soon as Labor Day in early September, the Post said, citing sources. Many of the layoffs will affect political and... More »
News Corp (NWSA.O) reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Wednesday, helped by cost cuts in its news and information services business that includes Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal. Shares of the company, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, rose a... More »
SAN FRANCISCO/MUMBAI, August 12 Facebook is trying to lure skeptical advertisers in India with features such as free email support for questions about advertising and advice on increasing sales in a bid to boost revenue from its second biggest market. Facebook... More »
NEW YORK A U.S. judge has ordered Cablevision Systems Corp to stop running advertisements accusing rival Verizon Communications Inc of lying about having the fastest wireless network. The ruling on Monday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Gary Brown in Central Islip, N... More »
AMC Networks Inc’s (AMCX.O) shares fell as much as 14 percent despite the company’s strong results, continuing a slide triggered by Walt Disney Co’s (DIS.N) forecast that suggested that more customers were deserting paid TV than expected. Walt Disney Co (DIS.N... More »
New York Times Co reported lower-than-expected quarterly revenue as its print advertising sales fell for the fourth straight quarter. Shares of the company, which also forecast a decline in its current-quarter ad revenue, fell as much as 6 percent on Thursday.... More »
Viacom Inc reported weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue, hurt by lower advertising revenue from its U.S. cable TV business as viewers increasingly shift to online streaming services. The results add to investor concerns over the U.S. cable industry after di... More »
Media company Twenty-First Century Fox Inc (FOXA.O) on Wednesday reduced its profit expectation for the coming year, citing foreign currency impacts, the timing of film releases, and sports and digital investments in India. Fox had projected earnings in the mi... More »
KUALA LUMPUR Olympic chiefs must pump more content to mobile devices, and extend the allure of the Games outside its 17-day window to stay relevant to young people, marketing guru Martin Sorrell said on Sunday. “You need to evolve to new consumption behaviors ... More »
NEW YORK Dish Network Corp said on Friday that Comcast Corp’s broadcast television network NBC is not airing ads promoting its Sling TV video streaming service in some markets. While NBC, part of Comcast’s NBCUniversal film and TV unit, has banned Sling TV ads... More »
ANAHEIM, California For the first time, cable TV network Nickelodeon staged a casting call at VidCon, a convention that draws stars of YouTube and social media like Vine, Instagram and Snapchat and their passionate followers. The Viacom-owned channel’s talent ... More »
NEW YORK A U.S. judge ruled on Thursday that online television service FilmOn X LLC should be treated like a traditional cable system in order to transmit the programs of the nation’s broadcasters over the Internet. The ruling, coming as consumer TV-watching h... More »
LONDON Britain’s telecoms regulator is seriously considering a break up of dominant provider BT, after rivals accused it of abusing its market position and failing to invest in the broadband networks they rely on. Ofcom floated the idea of a forced separation ... More »
NEW YORK Which would you prefer: Naked pictures of yourself circulating on the Internet or a breach of your financial data? According to a new survey from Mastercard, 62 percent of Millennials would rather have their nude photos leaked online than have their f... More »
SEATTLE Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) said on Monday it will hand over its display advertising business to AOL Inc and sell some map-generating technology to ride-hailing app company Uber, as it slims down its money-losing online operations. The moves mean Microsoft... More »
CANNES (This version of the story corrects figures on Publicis contract wins, paragraph 13) The reluctance of big companies to spend at a time of lacklustre global growth and fewer major sporting events this year are dampening demand for advertising, said the ... More »
