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 »
Little-known San Jose optical-parts maker Oclaro became the face of a U.S. ban on Tuesday as its shares led telecom-components makers lower over restrictions on selling components to China’s ZTE Corp. Shares of Oclaro, the rare component maker to issue a state... More »
DirecTV, the satellite TV provider owned by No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier AT&T Inc (T.N), said all channels have been restored after experiencing loss of audio and video for at least two hours on Tuesday. “All channels have been restored. We apologize for the in... More »
BRUSSELS The United States has set out limits to its use of data collected in bulk about European citizens after a new information-sharing pact was agreed this month, according to documents seen by Reuters. A clear explanation of what information could be used... More »
Viacom Inc (VIAB.O) is considering selling a “significant” minority stake in its Paramount Pictures movie studio, Chief Executive Philippe Dauman said on Tuesday In the face of weak advertising sales and poor ratings at its cable networks, investors have been ... More »
Hollywood studio DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit, helped by the worldwide television release of its movie “Home” and higher licensing fees. Shares of the company, which produced the popular “Shrek” and “K... 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 »
BOSTON Institutional Shareholder Services on Friday recommended Viacom Inc investors withhold support for six of the media company’s directors, as the largest proxy adviser cited several concerns including their oversight of executive compensation. ISS, which ... More »
FRANKFURT The vast troves of consumer data held by big Internet companies should be scrutinized in merger probes because they have a big impact on competition, the president of the German antitrust watchdog told a newspaper. “Until now, markets in which no mon... More »
WASHINGTON Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) has shut down more than 125,000 terrorism-related accounts since the middle of 2015, most of them linked to the Islamic State group, the company said in a blog post on Friday. Twitter has said it only takes down accounts when th... More »
WASHINGTON Facebook Inc (FB.O) prohibited global users from coordinating person-to-person private sales of firearms on its online social network and its Instagram photo-sharing service on Friday, countering concerns that it was increasingly being used to circu... More »
Amazon.com Inc posted its most profitable quarter ever on Thursday but the world’s No. 1 online retailer still managed to disappoint Wall Street by badly missing estimates, sending its shares down more than 13 percent in after-hours trading. The results, as we... More »
Xerox Corp (XRX.N) will split into two companies, one holding its legacy printer operations and the other its business process outsourcing unit, it said on Friday, in a bid to be more nimble after years of trying to integrate the businesses. Activist investor ... More »
Apple Inc has assembled a large team of experts in virtual and augmented reality and built prototypes of headsets that could one day rival Facebook’s Oculus Rift or Microsoft’s Hololens, the Financial Times reported. A secret research unit, housing hundreds of... More »
Wells Fargo & Co and Bank of America Corp are working to integrate mobile payment system Apple Pay into their ATMs, technology news website TechCrunch reported. The banks have deployed engineers to build the Apple Pay options, TechCrunch reported on Thursday, ... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. President Barack Obama will propose in his upcoming budget measures to help more than 30 million Americans save for retirement, such as automatically enrolling workers in Individual Retirement Accounts and making it easier for workers to keep s... More »
Al Jazeera America, the cable television news outlet controlled by Qatar’s royal family, has issued a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) notice, stating that it will lay off 197 employees with the shut down of its operations in America. T... More »
European pay-TV group Sky Plc has struck a deal to screen programs from CBS Corp’s popular Showtime stable, including Billions starring Damian Lewis, as competition for top shows heats up among European broadcasters. The licensing deal will allow Sky to offer ... More »
HONG KONG One of Hong Kong’s staunchest pro-Beijing lawmakers said a bookseller’s tearful confession on state television to a hit-and-run accident more than a decade ago in China is unlikely to appease public concerns that he may have been abducted. The Sunday... More »
BRUSSELS The European Union wants guarantees of effective limits on U.S. authorities’ power to request people’s personal information from companies to conclude a new EU-U.S. data transfer pact, a top EU official said on Monday, as a deadline from EU privacy re... More »
MIAMI – The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that exploded into a fiery ball just after landing at sea off California on Sunday had descended with pinpoint accuracy onto an ocean barge before a landing leg buckled, causing the booster to tip over, a landing video showed... More »
Foursquare’s chief executive, Dennis Crowley, is stepping down and will be succeeded by Jeff Glueck, the company’s current chief operating officer. Foursquare, which makes apps that helps users find restaurants and stores and “check” into them, also raised $45... More »
TORONTO Canada’s Shaw Communications Inc said on Wednesday that it would sell its media unit to Corus Entertainment Inc for C$2.65 billion ($1.9 billion), gaining funding for its Wind Mobile purchase and sending its shares up nearly 7 percent. Corus, which ope... 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 »
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 »
Ride-hailing app Lyft Inc, Uber Technologies Inc’s biggest competition in the United States, expects to raise up to $1 billion in a new round of financing, Bloomberg reported citing a Delaware state filing. The document filed by Lyft on Friday evening did not ... More »
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Friday it approved the $9.1 billion sale of U.S. regional cable company Suddenlink Communications to European telecoms group Altice NV. The Dutch firm announced in May its acquisition of a majority stake in Su... More »
Walt Disney Co’s shares slumped after BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield cuts his rating to “sell” from “neutral”, saying the likely success of the latest Star Wars movie would not be enough to offset the impact of subscriber losses at ESPN. Disney’ shares fell a... More »
Dell Inc’s cybersecurity unit SecureWorks Corp filed for an initial public offering with U.S. regulators on Thursday. SecureWorks named Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs & Co and JPMorgan among the underwriters to the IPO, according ... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. intelligence agencies can now reach almost all domestic phone records, far more than they collected under a now-scrapped program by the National Security Agency, according to Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. That estimate of the amou... More »
Business software maker Oracle Corp on Wednesday delivered a third-quarter profit forecast that did not quite meet analysts’ expectations, and the company’s shares fell about 1 percent in extended trading. Oracle forecast third-quarter profit of about 63-66 ce... More »
NEW YORK The verdict is nearly unanimous: The Force is strong with this one. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” won rave reviews on Wednesday with critics saying it has breathed new life into the almost 40 year-old franchise that has spawned three original movies ... More »
Google plans to make its self-driving cars unit, which will offer rides for hire, a stand-alone business under its parent company Alphabet Inc next year, Bloomberg reported. The service could be launched in San Francisco and Austin, Texas locations, where it h... 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 »
Mobileye NV’s (MBLY.N) stock is “short of the year: 2016”, influential short-selling firm Citron Research said in a tweet on Wednesday, pushing down shares of the driving assistant software maker nearly 7 percent. The tweet provided a link to a report on elect... More »
Satellite radio company Sirius XM Holdings Inc and “shock jock” Howard Stern have renewed their five-year deal for his popular “Howard Stern Show,” ending the uncertainty around the fate of the decade-long association. The news comes after years of Sirius, maj... More »
SYDNEY Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Monday unveiled a A$1.1 billion ($806 million) package to boost innovation in Australia, using his first major economic policy statement since becoming leader to map out a pathway beyond the country’s fading resources ... 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 »
TOKYO Japan’s securities watchdog will recommend that Toshiba Corp should be fined 7.37 billion yen ($59.84 million) for accounting violations, a person familiar with the process told Reuters on Saturday. The source said the Securities and Exchange Surveillanc... More »
Gannett Co Inc (GCI.N), the publisher of USA Today, said on Thursday it would bring its local and national publications under the USA Today Network. Gannett was separated from its broadcasting and digital arm, Tegna Inc (TGNA.N), in June and the new brand mark... More »
HONG KONG/SINGAPORE Almost a year after students ended pro-democracy street protests in Hong Kong, they face an online battle against what Western security experts say are China-sponsored hackers using techniques rarely seen elsewhere. Hackers have expanded th... More »
U.S. media stocks fell on Friday after Walt Disney Co’s disclosure of a drop in subscribers at ESPN spooked investors, underscoring concerns that viewers are increasingly opting for online streaming over pay TV. Disney’s shares were down 3.6 percent at $114.44... More »
BEIJING/HONG KONG Google, part of Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), aims to launch the China version of its Google Play smartphone app store next year, according to people familiar with the matter, its first major foray in the market since ending localized product suppo... 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 »
GAZA Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed an agreement to allow a long-awaited third-generation (3G) mobile network in Gaza and the West Bank, they said on Thursday. Israel said the decision was made after it concluded a security examination as well as ... More »
BEIJING/HONG KONG China’s Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd plans to invest 300 billion yuan ($47 billion) over the next five years in a bid to become the world’s third-biggest chipmaker, the chairman of the state-backed technology conglomerate said on Monday. Chairman Zh... More »
MOSCOW Russia’s biggest search site Yandex said on Friday it had asked the European Commission to investigate Google’s practices in relation to its Android mobile operating system in the European Union. The new complaint could strengthen the case against Googl... More »
Viacom Inc (VIAB.O), the owner of MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, reported weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue on Thursday, although declines in ad sales for its U.S. cable TV business were not as steep as analysts had anticipated. Chief Executive Offi... More »
Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc’s (CSCO.O) forecast adjusted profit and revenue growth for the second quarter below analysts’ estimates, citing a slowdown in order growth and weakness in its enterprise business outside the United States. Shares of Ci... More »
NEW YORKThe number of videos viewed each day on Snapchat has tripled since May to 6 billion as the messaging app closes the gap with social media giant Facebook Inc, according to a report in the Financial Times that cites people close to the company. The Finan... More »
SAN FRANCISCOMobile payments company Square Inc set a price range on Friday for its highly anticipated initial public offering that values the company at up to $4.2 billion, a 30 percent discount to its valuation at its last fundraising round. San Francisco-ba... More »
NEW YORKVerizon Communications Inc is exploring a sale of its enterprise assets which could be worth as much as $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, as the largest U.S. wireless carrier seeks to focus on its core business. The sale would ... More »
Activision Blizzard Inc has launched a film and TV studio to create original content based on its popular videogame franchises such as “Call of Duty” and “Hearthstone” in its latest push to expand beyond console-based games. Activision Blizzard Studios’ first ... More »
New York Times Co (NYT.N) reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit, and said it expected digital revenue from its international business to account for a significant portion of its revenue in five years. The newspaper publisher said earlier this month ... More »
Charter Communications Inc (CHTR.O) said its acquisition of Time Warner Cable Inc (TWC.N), which is awaiting clearance from U.S. regulators, is now expected to close in the first quarter of 2016, and not by the end of 2015 as planned. The $56 billion deal, ann... 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 »
TOKYO Toshiba Corp is set to sell its image sensor business to Sony Corp for around 20 billion yen ($164.68 million) as part of a restructuring plan laid out earlier this year, sources with knowledge of the deal said on Saturday. Toshiba, whose businesses rang... 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 »
AT&T Inc (T.N), the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier and the world’s largest pay-TV operator, raised its 2015 earnings forecast as quarterly earnings beat expectations on cost cuts and gains in wireless and DirecTV subscribers. AT&T shares rose 1.7 percent in after... 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 »
CNN said on Wednesday it has launched ‘Great Big Story’, a video network that promises to deliver more than “empty clickbaits and cat videos” through various social media. The videos will not be based on news, but on “awesome, untold and inspirational stories ... More »
HONG KONG China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd on Monday said it will spend $1 billion to support information and communication technology developers over the next five years. “The aim is to help developers create innovative services and rapidly respond to custo... More »
Russian hackers had infiltrated Dow Jones & Co to steal information to trade on before it was made public, and the breach was “far more serious than a lower-grade intrusion” disclosed by the company, Bloomberg reported, citing sources. The Federal Bureau of In... More »
SAN FRANCISCO International Business Machines Corp said on Friday it allows certain countries to review, under strict control, portions of the U.S. technology company’s product source code to detect any security flaws in its software. China is among those coun... More »
Micron Technology Inc said Chief Executive Mark Durcan will take a voluntary 50 percent cut in his base salary, amid cost-cutting at the memory chipmaker. The cut, which is temporary, reduced Durcan’s annual base salary to $525,000, effective Oct. 18, the comp... More »
Satellite TV provider DirecTV said it would restate financial statements for the quarter ended June, citing an incorrect measurement of assets of its Venezuelan subsidiary. Statements related to the quarter are being restated to record a pre-tax charge of abou... More »
Investors questioned Netflix Inc’s premium valuation after the video-streaming service reported U.S. subscriber additions below its own expectations, a sign that competition from the likes of Hulu is intensifying. Netflix shares fell more than 9 percent to $10... More »
EMC Corp, the data storage company that is preparing to unveil an agreement to be acquired by personal computer maker Dell Inc [DI.UL] as early as Monday, is also planning to seek out other suitors, according to people familiar with the matter. EMC has asked f... More »
Netflix Inc said on Thursday it has increased the subscription rate for some new members by $1.00 a month to $9.99 in the United States, Canada and Latin America. The price increase only affects new customers to the company’s “standard” plan, which allows two ... More »
Sony Corp (6758.T) is proceeding with a plan to sell its half of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the world’s largest music publisher, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sony, which owns the unit with Michael Jackson’s estate, recently triggered a clause in its contr... More »
Gannett Co Inc, publisher of USA Today, said on Wednesday it will buy Journal Media Group for $280 million. The price of $12 a share represents an almost 45 percent premium to Journal Media’s closing share price of $8.29 Tysons Corner, Virginia-based Gannett s... More »
Amazon.com Inc is considering the creation of a live online TV service and has reached out to networks such as CBS Corp and Comcast’s NBCUniversal to express interest in carrying their channels, Bloomberg reported. The e-commerce giant’s talks with the network... 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 »
Troubled teen apparel retailer American Apparel Inc (APP.A) filed for voluntary chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday and said it had reached a restructuring support agreement with most of its secured lenders. American Apparel said it would continue to op... 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 »
Dish Network Corp’s affiliates on Thursday surrendered 197 spectrum licenses to the U.S. government after they were held ineligible for $3.3 billion in small-business discounts earlier this year, according to a senior U.S Federal Communications Commission offi... More »
News Corp said it sold its digital education brand, Amplify, to a management team supported by a group of private investors following slowing growth in the digital curriculum market. The company did not disclose financial terms of the deal. News Corp said in A... More »
MTV, the music and reality-TV focused television network owned by Viacom Inc, on Wednesday named veteran media executive Sean Atkins as its president. Atkins, who will replace Stephen Friedman, joins MTV from Discovery Communications Inc, where he was an execu... More »
Twenty-First Century Fox Inc said it agreed to nominate ValueAct Capital Chief Executive Jeffrey Ubben for election to its board as long as the hedge fund maintains a stake of at least 5 percent in the film and TV company. ValueAct, which owns about 5.9 percen... More »
BEIJING/WASHINGTON On Friday morning, Chinese President Xi Jinping enjoyed the symbolic high point of his first state visit to the United States – a 21-gun salute as he stood with President Barack Obama outside the White House. For most Americans, it was a sid... More »
SYDNEY A decision by Australia’s biggest tech company, Atlassian, to pursue a $3 billion listing in the United States is a blow to Australia’s ambitions to make technology a driver of the economy, a tech executive said on Monday. Atlassian’s defection comes ju... More »
SHANGHAI/BEIJING China’s most popular ride-hailing app Didi Kuaidi said on Monday it has invested in Indian peer Ola, forging a new alliance within a network of companies challenging U.S. rival Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL]. Didi joins existing investors inc... 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 »
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 »
Cable network operator AMC Networks Inc was in preliminary talks to buy billionaire John Malone’s premium TV cable network Starz, Bloomberg reported. Starz’s shares rose 8 percent to $41.89 in extended trading. The company had a market value of about $4 billio... More »
Google Inc said it named auto industry veteran John Krafcik as chief executive of its self-driving car project from late September. With the hiring of Krafcik, currently the president of automotive pricing terminal Truecar Inc and a former CEO of Hyundai Motor... More »
Want to own the new iPhone without burning a hole in your pocket every month? Sprint seems to be the cheapest option in the United States. Sprint Corp’s offer for the 16 GB iPhone 6S with a basic data, calling and text plan costs between $3 and $10.50 less per... More »
Microsoft Corp on Friday appointed its general counsel, Brad Smith, as the company’s president and chief legal officer, effective Friday. Smith, who is also Microsoft’s corporate secretary and chief compliance officer, joined the company in 1993 and became gen... 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 »
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said on Friday he had bought NBC’s share of the Miss Universe Organization and that all lawsuits against the media company had been settled. “Just purchased NBC’s half of the Miss Universe Organization and settl... More »
Twenty-First Century Fox Inc said it will expand its 18-year partnership of operating National Geographic TV channels to include the latter’s magazines and digital platforms, in a deal valued at $725 million. Fox will own 73 percent of the joint venture and th... More »
SAN FRANCISCO Ride services Lyft and Uber have poached dozens of key Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) employees over the past year, including top engineering managers, to help personalize their apps. Twitter’s management turmoil and 44 percent stock fall over the last 12 ... More »
Mozilla, creator of the Firefox web browser, said hackers had stolen security-sensitive information from Bugzilla, its bug tracker, and used it to “attack” Firefox users. The account that the hackers broke into was shut down shortly after the company discovere... More »
PARIS French media group Vivendi (VIV.PA) reported higher second-quarter profit on Wednesday, helped by strong growth in its Universal Music division, and said recent asset sales could enable it to consider more acquisitions in the future. The company, with a ... More »
, Brussels – The European Commission will launch a study in September of the ride-hailing app Uber in an effort to settle legal disputes that have pitched the U.S. start-up against conventional taxis across Europe, three people familiar with the matter said on... 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 »
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 »
Dish Network Corp said subscribers have lost access to more than 100 local stations due to a distribution dispute with Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc, affecting viewers of a string of ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC channels. Dish said 129 stations in 36 states and the D... More »
Infidelity website Ashley Madison and its parent company have been sued in federal court in California by a man who claims that the companies failed to adequately protect clients’ personal and financial information from theft, saying he suffered emotional dist... More »
Apple Inc’s Chief Executive Tim Cook took an unusual step of reassuring shareholders on Monday in comments to CNBC about the iPhone maker’s business in China ahead of a dramatic 13 percent drop and rebound in its stock that put it in positive territory. Chines... More »
