Why Is It So Hard to Use NBC’s Peacock to Watch the Olympics?
Jake Dean, Slate
Ahead of the Olympics, NBC heralded its streaming app Peacock as a new outlet for sports coverage where users could watch live events and commentary for free. But kind of like actual peacocks in Southern California, the app has been an annoying mess.
2020 Summer Olympic ratings are a bust for NBC but a boost for streaming
Stephen Battaglio, Los Angeles Times
In another sign of the reshaped TV landscape, ratings for NBC’s telecasts of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo are down significantly from 2016 but still among the most-watched TV events of the year.
How Vice, Vox and BuzzFeed Are Cashing In on the Streaming Boom
Sahil Patel, The Information
“Land of the Giants” is a podcast series from Vox Media’s Recode covering the history of tech companies including Amazon and Netflix. It will soon be a TV show, made by Vox for a major cable network for a fee of several millions of dollars, according to people familiar with the matter.
Apple Services Revenue Hits $17.5B, CEO Tim Cook “Proud” of Emmy Nom Haul
Alex Weprin, The Hollywood Reporter
Apple continues to grow at a torrid pace. The company said Tuesday that its services business, which includes Apple TV+, Apple Music, the App Store and iCloud, delivered $17.5 billion in revenue in the third fiscal quarter of 2021, which ended June 30.
YouTube Q2 Ad Revenue Hits Record $7 Billion as Alphabet Trounces Estimates
Todd Spangler, Variety
YouTube accelerated back into high growth for the second quarter of 2021, as ad revenue hit a record $7.0 billion for the period.
BuzzFeed Is Going Public. What Now for Vice and Vox?
Edmund Lee and Lauren Hirsch, The New York Times
Not so long ago, when newspapers and magazines were going out of business all across the country, BuzzFeed and a few other fast-growing web publications seemed like the future of the news business.
Blizzard is encouraging its own employees to attend Wednesday’s walkout with paid time off
Sean Hollister, The Verge
On Wednesday, Activision Blizzard employees will walk out of work to protest the company’s response to a giant sexual harassment and workplace discrimination lawsuit filed by the state of California.
Television Industry Braces for a ‘Bumpy Road’ as Connected TV Scales Up
Kelsey Sutton, Adweek
With connected TV ad spend expected to hit $10.8 billion by the end of 2020 and balloon to $13 billion by 2021, the CTV space is undoubtedly having a growth spurt. But that acceleration comes with growing pains—and they are being felt by people on all sides of the industry.
How Streaming Has ‘Opened the Floodgates’ for Spanish-Language Content
Tim Baysinger, The Wrap Pro
In the streaming era, the appetite for Spanish-language shows and films has been driven by the most unlikely of consumers — those who can’t speak a single palabra of Spanish.
NBCU Says Time Spent on Digital Platforms Will Equal Linear By Late 2022
Mollie Cahillane, Adweek
On the TV side, NBCUniversal is best known for its linear networks like NBC, USA and Bravo—but the company now projects that consumers will spend an equal amount of time with its digital properties within 18 months—or roughly the end of 2022.
Meet the Studio Behind Substack’s First Podcast Deal
Nicholas Quah, Vulture
Around this time last week, Axios exclusively reported that Substack, the venture-backed newsletter publishing platform that doubles as a synecdoche for a certain strand of digital media anxiety these days, has given out its first official “Pro deal” in the audio world.
Spotify makes paid shows from Slate, Acast, and more playable from its app
Ashley Carman, The Verge
Spotify wants to be the place you listen to all your podcasts, even the ones you pay for outside the app, so today’s it’s making that a possibility.