Archives for July 2021

Netflix, he said, is really competing against traditional television, and the “shakeout” won’t happen until streaming makes up the majority of viewing. He cited the latest study from Nielsen, which showed that streaming accounts for about 26 percent of television viewing in the United States, with Netflix making up about 6 percent. Disney+ is far behind at 1 percent.

In other words: If Disney+ is hurting us, we haven’t seen it.

The argument that Netflix has been competing with regular television and other streamers for a long time overlooks the fact that new rivals like Disney+ and AppleTV+ are much cheaper than Netflix (and subscription television). And although those services produce far fewer originals than Netflix, they appear to be getting more bang for their buck.

In the second quarter, Disney+ got a big boost of demand interest from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” a series based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has thoroughly dominated the box office in recent years. “Loki,” another Marvel spinoff, also helped, according to Parrot.

Amazon Prime Video got a boost in the period with “Invincible,” an animated superhero series for adults. And AppleTV+ attracted new customers with three originals: “Mosquito Coast,” a drama based on the 1981 novel; “For All Mankind,” a sci-fi series; and “Mythic Quest,” a comedy series that takes place in a game developer studio.

Speaking of, Netflix said this month that it planned to jump into video games. It has hired a gaming executive, Mike Verdu, formerly of Electronic Arts and Facebook, to oversee its development of new games. It’s a potentially significant move for the company, which hasn’t strayed far from its formula of television series and films.

The company called gaming a “new content category” that will be a “multiyear effort” and said it would be included as part of a subscribers’ existing plans at no extra cost. Games will first appear on its mobile app, an environment that already allows for interactivity. The vast majority of Netflix’s customers watch on big-screen televisions.

Gaming isn’t meant to be a stand-alone or a separate element within Netflix. “Think of it as making the core service better,” Mr. Hastings said. “Really, we’re a one-product company with a bunch of supporting elements.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/business/media/netflix-earnings-disney.html

Aides to Mr. Biden say they are wary of criticizing Fox News directly, reasoning that it would be counterproductive to promoting a pro-vaccine message to Fox News viewers.

“We need every media platform to step up and ensure their coverage provides accurate, objective information,” a White House spokesman, Kevin Munoz, said in a statement that avoided an aggressive attack against Fox News. “As with any misinformation, we don’t shy away from calling it out.”

Some right-wing media outlets have generated mixed coverage in recent days about vaccines. Breitbart News, for instance, still features articles on its website grouped under the category “Mask/Vax Cult.” But Newsmax, a cable network whose opinion shows run further to the right than Fox News, ran an essay on Tuesday by its chief executive, Christopher Ruddy, that praised Mr. Biden’s vaccination efforts.

“I myself have gotten the Pfizer vaccine,” Mr. Ruddy wrote in the piece, which was published on the Newsmax website. “There’s no question in my mind, countless lives would have been saved if the vaccine was available earlier.”

In an interview, Mr. Ruddy said the White House had not contacted Newsmax regarding its coronavirus coverage. He said he wanted to credit Mr. Biden for “doing a good job,” though he also cautioned that his network would not censor alternative views. “I don’t want to be the thought police,” he said.

Fox News has produced its own 30-second vaccine public service announcement, featuring the hosts and anchors Mr. Doocy, Harris Faulkner, Dana Perino and John Roberts. “If you can, get the vaccine,” Ms. Faulkner says in the ad. The anchor Bret Baier said in April that he was “grateful” to be vaccinated. Mr. Hannity and Mr. Doocy have previously told viewers to consider whether a vaccination would be beneficial to their lives and their families.

On Monday’s “Fox Friends,” Mr. Doocy echoed government officials in noting that nearly all coronavirus deaths now involve unvaccinated people. After acknowledging that some people, such as pregnant women, might be hesitant, he said: “Everybody else, if you have the chance, get the shot.” Mr. Doocy also cited examples of online disinformation claiming the vaccine is “killing lots of people” or “changes your D.N.A.” or comes with “little microchips.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/business/media/fox-news-covid-vaccines.html

Over the next decade, the firm arranged the sale of Diamandis Communications, which published Women’s Day and Car and Driver, to Hachette Publications for $712 million; Details, the fashion magazine, to Condé Nast Publications; and Walter Annenberg’s Triangle Publications, the owner of TV Guide and Seventeen, to Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation for $3 billion.

“John Veronis was very much the entrepreneur and outward-facing partner, with many key relationships with the important media leaders and owners from around the world,” said Jeffrey Stevenson, managing partner of what is now Veronis Suhler Stevenson, which is no longer involved in media but invests in information, business services, health care and education industries.

The firm was also involved in the sale of Capital Cities’ television station in Buffalo and the acquisition of two TV stations by the Telemundo Group, the operator of Spanish-language networks that is now part of NBCUniversal.

In 1990, Mr. Veronis helped broker the merger between two nascent satellite services in Britain — Mr. Murdoch’s Sky Broadcasting and British Satellite Broadcasting, which had accumulated total losses of more than $1.5 billion in a short time — by easing tensions between Mr. Murdoch and Peter Davis, the chief executive of Reed International, a key British Satellite shareholder.

“The two men were not just fierce competitors,” Mr. Veronis wrote in his memoir, “they despised each other.”

During dinner at Claridge’s in London, Mr. Veronis wrote, he advised the rivals that if they continued to compete, “they were doomed to fail.”

The merger, announced in November 1990, created British Sky Broadcasting, also known as BSkyB. Mr. Veronis earned $1 million from Mr. Murdoch — a cut-rate fee, Lauren Veronis said in a phone interview, “because Rupert was busted.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/business/media/john-veronis-dead.html

He was born Kurt Vestergaard on July 13, 1935, in Jutland, Denmark, the peninsula flanked by the North and Baltic Seas. His parents ran a grocery store.

Raised in a conservative Christian family, he experienced what he described as a religious liberation as a high school student. He later enrolled at the University of Copenhagen to study psychology and then taught German and worked in a school for disabled students in Djursland. Fellow journalists said that he had always wanted to be an illustrator. He worked briefly for the newspaper Den Ny Demokrat, then joined Jyllands-Posten in 1983. He retired in 2010, when he was 75.

His survivors include his wife, Gitte; their five children; 10 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

In 2008, Mr. Westergaard won the Sappho Award from the Free Press Society of Denmark. In 2010, he received the M100 Media Award from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for his contributions to freedom of opinion.

“I want to be remembered as the one who struck a blow for free speech,” he once said. “But there is no doubt that others will instead remember me as a Satan who insulted the religion of a billion people.”

Mr. Westergaard and his wife lived under tight security after the authorities foiled the first assassination attempt against him, although it was difficult to hide a man so often nattily attired in red trousers, a broad-brimmed black hat and giraffe-headed walking stick.

In recent years he chose to live openly in Aarhus, with bodyguards.

“I do not see myself as a particularly brave man,” he told The Guardian in 2010, adding: “But in this situation I got angry. It is not right that you are threatened in your own country just for doing your job. That’s an absurdity that I have actually benefited from, because it grants me a certain defiance and stubbornness. I won’t stand for it. And that really reduces the fear a great deal.”

Jasmina Nielsen contributed reporting.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/world/europe/kurt-westergaard-dead.html