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Hearst scooped up Rodale’s magazine and publishing business in yet another example of the consolidation trend of reshaping the business. Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Runner’s World, Bicycling and Prevention are among the titles in deal worth in the $225M range. The transaction is expected to close in early ’18. Rodale, which has been on a profit slide, sold off real estate and went through multiple rounds of staff reductions before the entire company was put up for sale earlier this year.
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Verizon is under increasing pressure to release its own streaming service, as consumer flight from basic cable to those services picks up steam. While the company added 66,000 net Internet connections during Q3 2017, it lost 18,000 net Fios Video connections, more than the 15,000 it lost in the second quarter and its dip of 13,000 in the first. Verizon’s new online TV service is now scheduled for a spring 2018 launch, According to Bloomberg, the debut of the service has been delayed at least twice. Verizon earlier this year acquired Yahoo, which it is combining with AOL to form the new Oath unit.
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VidAngel, a service intended to filter out offensive content such as nudity and violence from movies and programs on outlets such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in an attempt to hit the pause button on its copyright battle with several major studios. The company is at loggerheads with Disney, 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros, New Line Cinema, Marvel and Turner Entertainment, all of whom claim that the 2005 Family Movie Act—which allows filtering in the home—does not apply to modern streaming devices such as iOS, Android and ROKU. VidAngel launched a new platform in June that covers those devices. VidAngel CEO Neal Harmon said that the filing “gives us breathing room to reorganize our business around the new streaming platform, promote and perfect the new technology, and seek a legal determination that the new system is fully legal and not subject to the preliminary injunction entered in California.”
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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