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Amazon has plans to launch a free, advertising-supported video service for its Fire TV streaming video devices, according to a report on tech-focused website The Information. The service, which is expected to be called Free Dive, will not be part of Amazon’s ad-free Prime Video service. Amazon is allegedly in talks with major studios to license older TV shows, which have already aired on TV networks, for the new service. The company currently programs ad-supported shows on its IMDB vertical, and runs ads on NFL games on Prime Video. Amazon competitor Roku says its Roku Channel, an ad-supported app that runs on its devices as well as on smart TVs, brought in $90 million last quarter. YouTube and Facebook have also started up ad-supported services. Amazon generated $2.03 billion in advertising revenue in the first quarter of this year.
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Craigslist founder Craig Newmark has made a $1 million gift to left-leaning news and commentary magazine Mother Jones. The gift comes with no guidelines about how it should be used. The magazine launched a fundraising initiative called “Moment for Mother Jones” in 2016, and says it has raised almost $20 million in gifts and pledges toward its goal of $25 million. The magazine says that the money will be earmarked for areas such as improving its investigative reporting, covering disinformation and investing in audience engagement. ProPublica and the Columbia Journalsm Review are among the other organizations that have received donations from Newmark. “We’re in the middle of an online information war, and the stakes are a free press, an informed public and strong democratic institutions,” Newmark said in a piece posted on the magazine’s website.
 Jemele Hill |
Jemele Hill, the ESPN on-air personality who started up a controversy when she called president Trump “a white supremacist” on Twitter, will be leaving Aug. 31, according to a report in the New York Post. Hill's exit comes as ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro works to remove political commentary from the network’s programming. “I have been very, very clear with employees here that it is not our job to cover politics,” Pitaro said. Hill, who joined ESPN in 2006 as a national columnist for ESPN.com, was one of the anchors of ESPN’s “SportsCenter” prior to the Trump dustup, at which point she was taken off the program. Since January, she has been chief correspondent and senior columnist for The Undefeated, ESPN’s content initiative covering sports, race and culture. She is now developing Lodge Freeway Media, an independent media company, in collaboration with Undefeated writer Kelley Carter.
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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