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| Jason Kilar |
WarnerMedia has named Hulu co-founder Jason Kilar CEO, effective May 1. Kilar succeeds John Stankey, who was promoted to AT&T president and chief operating officer in September. (Warner Media became part of AT&T in June 2018.) In addition to serving as CEO of Hulu from 2007 to 2013, Kilar was co-founder and CEO of video streaming service Vessel and senior vice president of worldwide application software at Amazon. His appointment comes ahead of AT&T’s May launch of streaming service HBO Max. Kilar’s “experience in media and entertainment, direct-to-consumer video streaming and advertising is the perfect fit for WarnerMedia,” said Stankey.
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Bustle Digital Group, which includes such properties as Nylon and Elite Daily, has laid off 24 staffers, according to a report on website TechCrunch. In addition, the company has shut down The Outline, a culture site that it acquired in 2019 and its seven staffers are all among those who have been axed. A BCG spokesperson said that it will still host The Outline’s archives online and that the site’s founder, Josh Topolsky, will explore other options that would allow it to continue. “The unprecedented impact of COVID-19” was cited as a major factor behind the decision.
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The News Media Alliance, a nonprofit organization that represents nearly 2,000 news organizations across the US, is part of group of industry leaders that have asked the United States Postal Service to institute a five-cent-per-piece rate reduction for the next 90 days—or until the end of the COVID-19 crisis, according to a report on MediaPost. The group’s letter says that the failure to do so could hurt the USPS as well as the industries that depend on it. “The long-term viability of the Postal Service will depend on preserving commercial and nonprofit mail volume,” it notes. The move follows a request in March from a coalition including the Association of Magazine Media that the USPS reconsider proposed rate hikes that “would authorize a cumulative 41 percent rate increase on magazines and periodicals over five years that will cost mailers about $8 billion per year.”
Fox News Media issued a pretty sparse release to announce the departure of one of its stars. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media,” it reads.
Brunswick Group partner John Simons has joined CNN as senior director of business & media. He held top jobs at Time and the Wall Street Journal.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
Boston Globe Media acquires InstaTrac, a company that provides subscription-based services aimed at making government information easier to find, track, and understand... AARP names former New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso as its SVP and chief content officer, unifying the organization's portfolio of media, live events and digital platforms... The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit, awards its inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellowships.
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. has replaced CEO and former California Congressman Devin Nunes with Kevin McGurn, a seasoned media sales executive.
