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CBS Television Studios and the NAACP are forming a multi-year partnership to acquire, develop and produce premium content intended to increase the visibility of Black artists. Under the partnership, CBS creative leaders will work with the NAACP to establish both a dedicated team of executives and the infrastructure necessary to support the initiative. In addition to developing content for the CBS Television Network, the partnership will also have the ability to sell programming to third-party platforms. “Programming and content have the power to shape perspectives and drive conversations around critical issues,” said NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson. “This partnership with CBS allows us to bring compelling and important content to a broad audience.”
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Vox Media, citing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, is shedding 72 employees, six percent of its staff. Vox publishes New York magazine, Recode, SB Nation and Eater, among other titles. Most of those getting pink slips had already been furloughed by the company earlier this year. About 30 percent of the furloughed staffers will be brought back. Employees who were subjected to salary cuts in May will see their pay return to its earlier level, Vox CEO Jim Bankoff said in a staff memo. According to CNBC, Vox met its revenue targets for the first two months of 2020, but the company’s second-quarter earnings were 40 percent less than had been forecast, and it plans to miss its full-year target by 25 percent. Vox merged with New York Media last year.
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Despite increased competition from such newcomers as AppleTV, HBO Max and Disney+, Netflix added 10.2 million subscribers in the second quarter, exceeding expectations by over 20 percent. That number is more than three times the amount of subscribers the platform normally picks up in a quarter and brings its year-to-date increase to nearly 26 million. The company earned $720 million on revenue of $6.15 billion, according to an AP report. However, Netflix projects that it will only add 2.5 million subscribers in the third quarter, down from 6.8 million in Q3 for 2019. The news comes as the company promotes chief content officer Ted Sarandos to co-CEO, serving alongside founding CEO Reed Hastings.
Underscore Media, a new creator-led media venture dedicated to New York sports, is built around three established New York sports personalities, Sal Licata, Jimmy Traina, and John Jastremski.
McClatchy, which owns 29 daily papers across 14 states (including The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star), launches a wave of layoffs that extends to at least 13 of those papers... The Toledo Blade, which was founded in 1835, is set to shut down on Dec. 31, unless owner Block Communications manages to find a buyer for it... A bill awaiting approval by California governor Gavin Newsom would give local newsrooms a boost. 
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.
