ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro says the sports network is “all hands on deck” to attract more women and younger viewers, a crusade that includes a new streaming service launched last year. The Walt Disney Co.-owned cable giant introduced its ESPN+ online service a year ago, and it has drawn over 2 million subscribers who pay $5 a month. But its ambitions are much greater, part of a broader streaming push at Disney that includes a new family-oriented platform and the Hulu TV service. To bolster ESPN+, the company has signed new sports rights deals with college conferences, boxing promoters and the UFC mixed martial arts league, Pitaro said. The idea is to draw an audience that doesn’t watch much traditional TV. “When you’re on traditional television, everyone is seeing the same thing,” Pitaro said in an interview Thursday on Bloomberg Television. “The promise of the internet is the right content to the right user at the right time—you and I can get different things. My 15-year-old son and I can experience different things within the ESPN app or on ESPN+.” There was a time when Disney stock rose and fell on the results of its traditional ESPN network, long the company’s single most profitable channel. But with Disney’s new focus on streaming services, the pressure is off Pitaro somewhat. Network Challenges The ESPN network has continued to lose subscribers, though its operating income grew last quarter. “I wouldn’t characterize it as a turnaround,” Pitaro said. “I would... Continue reading at 'Advertising Age'
[ Advertising Age | 2019-05-23 22:01:09 UTC ]
Book authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson are accusing Anthropic of copyright infringement. A group of authors is suing artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, alleging it committed “large-scale theft” in training its popular chatbot Claude on pirated copies of... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2024-08-20 12:37:17 UTC ]
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It’s 1995, and I’m trying to watch a video on the internet. I entered the longest, most complex URL I’d ever seen into AOL’s web browser to view a trailer for Paul W.S. Anderson’s long-awaited film adaptation of Mortal Kombat. I found it in an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, tucked away in... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2024-03-01 17:00:14 UTC ]
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Adobe’s suite of photo and video editing software has long leveraged the assistance of machine intelligence to help its human users do their jobs, having employed the Sensei AI system for more than a decade to power features like Neural Filters in Photoshop or Acrobat's Liquid Mode. On Tuesday,... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-03-21 13:00:34 UTC ]
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Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Perks now include freebies from an erstwhile rival. The company now offers Ultimate subscribers three-month free trials of Apple Music and Apple TV+ to newcomers for either media service. You can stream tunes in the background while you're playing Halo... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-11-16 16:50:43 UTC ]
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Publishers have been talking about diversification for as long as the tech companies have insisted they’re not media owners. The challenge for publishers, however, is moving beyond charging people to read content to make money. The post ‘Big steps’: Slowly, but surely French publisher Groupe... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2022-04-13 04:01:00 UTC ]
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The CEO of Storyblocks discusses three considerations for companies that want to compete in this immersive new world—one of which is to spread the wealth. Tech companies are currently stumbling over themselves to see who can make a bigger bet on the metaverse. However, beyond a massive financial... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2022-02-28 05:00:22 UTC ]
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Record sales show that even the ability to carry thousands of books in one portable electronic device is not enoughIn 2009, when Amazon’s Kindle ebook was launched in the UK, it seemed impossible to imagine that a dozen years later booksellers would be reporting a record year of sales of... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-01-15 17:00:27 UTC ]
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Social media firm announces deal after long-running battle with national and regional newspapers France has hailed a victory in its long-running quest for fairer action from tech companies after Facebook reached an agreement with a group of national and regional newspapers to pay for content... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-10-21 14:21:02 UTC ]
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Vice Media Inc., the youth-oriented media company, agreed to acquire the online publisher Refinery29, seeking to reignite growth by reaching a young female audience. The deal marks the biggest move yet by Vice Chief Executive Officer Nancy Dubuc, who has been trying to revive the once... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-10-02 19:51:02 UTC ]
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The esports industry, notorious for its lack of reliable streaming viewer figures, is trying to get its act together and provide third-party ratings to make its broadcasts attractive for rights buyers and advertisers. Companies like Tencent Holding Ltd.’s Riot Games and World of Warcraft’s... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-09-26 18:44:54 UTC ]
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Farmers seeking government assistance knew where to make their case: on Fox News, in TV ads with tractors and corn stalks designed to snag the attention of President Donald Trump. U.S. airlines, opposed to subsidies for foreign competitors paid by Qatar, took the same broadcast route to the... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-08-28 16:12:29 UTC ]
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Notice more TV ads lately? You’re not imagining it. The amount of commercial time on cable TV keeps increasing as networks try to make up for shrinking audiences by stuffing more ads into every hour of television. That’s despite years of promises to cut back on ads. Last quarter, commercial... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-08-02 17:18:39 UTC ]
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Lee Iacocca, the U.S. auto executive and television pitchman whose feel for consumers’ changing tastes helped produce the Ford Mustang and the Chrysler minivan and made him one of the first celebrity CEOs, has died. He was 94. His death was confirmed Tuesday by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in a... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-07-03 14:58:55 UTC ]
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AT&T Inc. is weighing a sale of its regional sports networks as part of a plan to cut as much as $8 billion in debt by the end of the year, according to people familiar with the matter. The four regional networks, which includes rights to teams such as the hockey’s Pittsburgh Penguins,... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-07-02 19:54:11 UTC ]
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AT&T Inc. named Ann Sarnoff as the first woman to lead Warner Bros., filling a key vacancy created by the departure of Kevin Tsujihara following a sex scandal. Sarnoff is currently president of BBC Studios America and has more than 30 years of business and media experience, AT&T’s... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-06-24 21:32:18 UTC ]
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Facebook Inc. is under pressure to rid its site of hate speech and fake news but warned it can’t build a platform impervious to human nature. “This is not a fully solvable problem,” Carolyn Everson, a vice president responsible for marketing at the social media giant, said on a panel Tuesday at... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-06-18 20:37:03 UTC ]
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News Corp. said it is evaluating options for its News America Marketing business that could include a sale, which would leave the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and New York Post more purely focused on media while removing what’s been a troubled unit. The review of News America, which... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-06-18 20:05:16 UTC ]
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At the 2019 Cannes Lions festival, the Netflix star and best-selling author charmed the ad industry, while P&G launched a new initiative it says will improve your life. For 66 years, the advertising industry has gathered in the South of France to make deals, get inspired by work from around... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2019-06-17 16:30:37 UTC ]
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Large restaurant chains Red Robin and White Castle are reporting shortages of Impossible Foods Inc.’s popular meat-free patties, even as the plant-based food producer embarks on a nationwide expansion with Burger King. Calls to a dozen Red Robins and the same number of White Castles on Thursday... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-06-14 15:48:17 UTC ]
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