Archives for July 2018

His frustration over creative matters involved the studio’s sibling network ABC, which is led by Channing Dungey and passed over pilot programs that Mr. Barris created.

Last year, the network moved “black-ish” out of a desirable prime-time slot after the top-rated “Modern Family.” The breaking point came in February, when ABC pulled an episode of “black-ish” that examined race relations in the United States in pointed fashion, airing a rerun instead.

A critical success, “black-ish” follows the Johnsons, an upper-middle-class family living in a mostly white suburb. The series became known for hot-button story lines centered on race, delving into police brutality, fallout from the election of President Trump and the use of the N-word among children.

Freeform, a cable network owned by Disney, runs the spinoff “grown-ish,” which focuses on the Johnsons’ college-age daughter. A third comedy from Mr. Barris and his collaborators, “Besties,” will join the Freeform schedule in the coming months.

The departure of Mr. Barris was expected, but it represents another setback for the Disney-ABC Television Group, which is run by Ben Sherwood. Last year, Netflix poached Shonda Rhimes, the creator of ABC hits like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal.” This spring, “Roseanne” was canceled after its star, Roseanne Barr, was fired for posting a racist tweet.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/business/media/kenya-barris-abc-netflix.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

CBS, for years the No. 1 TV network with hits like “The Big Bang Theory,” “Survivor” and the “CSI” franchise, has been one of the best performing businesses in the media industry. Its success has largely been attributed to Mr. Moonves, who has been praised for his uncanny ability to pick shows that become hits with mass audiences. He also moves comfortably among both Wall Street investors and Hollywood producers, speaking as easily about negotiating carriage fees as he does programming for prime-time audiences.

But as technology giants like Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Facebook have pushed into entertainment, media businesses have responded by bulking up through acquisitions. . This year, Ms. Redstone asked the boards of CBS and Viacom to explore the possibility of a merger.

Mr. Moonves and the majority of the CBS board, however, concluded that a combination would not benefit CBS’s shareholders. The company has a far more robust business, while revenues at Viacom, which includes the cable networks Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central, have been shrinking over the last few years.

In May, CBS and Mr. Moonves lost one of the early rounds of the dispute when a judge ruled against CBS’s effort to reduce Ms. Redstone’s influence over the network. She, through her family company, controls nearly 80 percent of the company’s voting rights.

Issues over those rights and the leadership of CBS will be decided in the court case this year. That lawsuit had already put Mr. Moonves’s storied career at stake; if he loses, he may end up leaving the company.

In the #MeToo era, a number of prominent media figures have faced allegations of improper behavior. In November, CBS fired the anchor Charlie Rose after The Washington Post published an article in which multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. Mr. Rose had been a host of the CBS morning show since 2012. He joined the network’s “60 Minutes II” as a correspondent in 1999. After that show was canceled, he joined “60 Minutes” in 2008. (PBS also cut its longtime ties with Mr. Rose.)

Three of the women who made the accusations against Mr. Rose have since sued him and CBS, saying that they were sexually harassed while working for him and that the network did not do anything to stop it. CBS has said it was not aware of any allegations regarding Mr. Rose’s behavior until The Post published its article.

At the time, Mr. Rose expressed “embarrassment” for pursuing what he believed to be “shared feelings” with women who had accused him.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/business/media/les-moonves-cbs-new-yorker.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Disney has had some recent setbacks with its existing businesses. Exhibiting rare vulnerability, Walt Disney Studios released two big-budget misfires — “A Wrinkle in Time” and “Solo: A Star Wars Story” — and forced out its longtime animation chief, John Lasseter, after employees complained about inappropriate workplace behavior. ABC in May suffered the meltdown of “Roseanne,” its biggest hit; Shonda Rhimes, ABC’s biggest hitmaker, decamped for Netflix.

Disney is expected to replace Ben Sherwood, who leads the Disney-ABC Television Group. Fox has a strong roster of candidates, including Peter Rice, president of 21st Century Fox. Mr. Rice is widely seen in Hollywood as a possible successor to Mr. Iger. Dana Walden, a co-chief executive of the Fox Television Group, may also join the Magic Kingdom. (Mr. Sherwood may receive another perch inside Disney.)

Mr. Iger said in a statement after the meetings that he was looking forward to “welcoming 21st Century Fox’s stellar talent to Disney and ultimately integrating our businesses to provide consumers around the world with more appealing content and entertainment options.”

The 21st Century Fox acquisition is Disney’s largest, surpassing its 1995 purchase of Capital Cities/ABC for $19 billion, or roughly $31 billion in today’s money. That deal, which brought ESPN into the Disney fold, powered Disney for two decades. But the cable business is now in decline, and Mr. Iger is betting his legacy on repositioning Disney as a streaming giant that can compete with titans like Apple and Amazon. Mr. Iger believes that the Fox assets will supercharge that plan.

There is no guarantee, however, that he will pull off the herculean task of integrating Fox, which has a drastically different corporate culture.

And the clock is ticking: After delaying retirement multiple times, Mr. Iger is scheduled to depart in late 2021.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/business/media/disney-fox-merger-vote.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The scooter companies are part of Silicon Valley’s push for driverless cars, which advocates say are on the verge of happening in a major way. As a result, my colleague Emily Badger reported, they advise holding off on big mass transit projects that may soon be unnecessary. Some futurists go further. Brad Templeton, a software architect, argues the subway should be paved over to transport autonomous vehicles instead.

Readers commenting on the story smelled a rat. “Autonomous cars are the new mechanism to kick the can down the road further instead of dealing with current realities,” wrote JeffB of Plano, Texas. “A reality where federal, state, and city governments are so dysfunctional and uncoordinated that they no longer have the political will to fund large infrastructure projects.”

San Francisco still has some political will left. A law was recently proposed to ban new corporate cafeterias in the city. The measure stems from the tax break that Twitter and other companies got for moving into a struggling part of town. Restaurants followed them, hoping to capitalize on the generous tech salaries and refined tech palates. But the employees generally ate in the cafeterias, and the restaurants failed.

Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who co-sponsored the legislation, said he recognized it may be controversial, but that he wanted the tech companies to be more outward facing. He received the usual criticism on Twitter and in story comments, although I also saw one interesting counterproposal: Force the companies to open up their cafeterias to outsiders. If Twitter insists on supplying us with bile, the least it could do is subsidize our lunch.

I have to get back to the press releases now, although I don’t even understand the subject headings on announcements like this: “Hitachi Vantara Named a Leader in 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays.”

But that’s my problem. For you, I’ve got more compelling reading:

■ Facebook stock lost $120 billion in value on Wednesday afternoon after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said its two billion users really needed to get a life. Kidding! All that really happened was its quarterly numbers came in a little short and Facebook said that they would not immediately get better, but Wall Street thought it was the end of the world. For those who can’t get enough of tech’s favorite whipping boy, Casey Newton of the Verge has an excellent daily newsletter discussing the day’s social media tribulations.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/technology/the-week-in-tech-inequality-rising.html?partner=rss&emc=rss