Amazon struck a $8.45 billion deal Wednesday to buy MGM, the iconic Hollywood studio known for releasing movies in the James Bond and Rocky franchises. The deal sets a course to amp up Amazon Prime Video with new programming mined from MGM’s long history and to bolster Amazon’s existing original production arm, Amazon Studios. MGM’s beloved …
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HBO Max plans to launch in 39 Latin American and Caribbean countries on June 29, for the first time widening the streaming service’s footprint beyond the US and offering a discounted mobile-only subscription option for as little as $3 a month. HBO Max, for now owned by AT&T’s WarnerMedia, will also have a seven-day free trial available in the new markets. HBO …
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HBO Max’s video playback was disrupted for a few hours Tuesday, but the problems have been resolved. During the outages, the service and app itself were functioning, but users reported they couldn’t watch videos and were getting repeated error messages to “please try again.” The disruptions came with little more than a day before HBO Max’s highly anticipated Friends reunion …
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HBO Max‘s cheaper, ad-supported tier will cost $10 a month and launch in the first week of June, owner WarnerMedia said Wednesday. A $5 discount to HBO Max‘s ad-free subsciption, it’ll arrive the week after — possibly just days after — HBO Max premieres its highly anticipated Friends reunion special on May 27. The new tier, called simply HBO Max with Ads, is …
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HBO Max‘s plot to take on Netflix and Disney Plus just got a lot twistier. In a seismic jolt to the media industry, parent company AT&T said Monday that it plans to spin off its WarnerMedia division — home to its entire media business, including streaming service HBO Max — and merge it with Discovery, known for reality shows and other unscripted programming on its …
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Disney Plus grew to 103.6 subscribers as of April 3, Disney said Thursday in its fiscal second-quarter report, up from just 33 million a year earlier. It added a total of 8.7 million more members since the start of this year, a period when its first Marvel original series, WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, debuted on the service. By …
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YouTube is creating a $100 million fund to pay people who make clips for Shorts, its take on TikTok, and it hinted it’ll soon start testing ads in earnest on these short, vertical, looping clips, as the world’s biggest source of online video starts figuring out how payments could make Shorts more competitive to its viral, upstart rival. The $100 …
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Google‘s YouTube is tweaking its app for Roku to include access to its live-TV streaming subscription service, YouTube TV, the search giant said in a blog post Friday, as it also explores sending free streaming devices to YouTube TV subscribers. It’s the latest escalation in a standoff between Google and Roku over a new distribution deal for YouTube TV, a subscription service that …
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Twitter unveiled a slate of new video programming for its social network on Wednesday, announcing deals to make live and on-demand shows with partners including Billboard, NBC, Tastemade, the WNBA and others. The shows are fodder for its Amplify advertising program, which runs ads before free videos like these on Twitter. The announcement was part of the so-called NewFronts, a …
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YouTube commercials are going to become more interactive on connected TVs this year, Google’s massive video service said Tuesday. It’ll start with a marketing tool that lets viewers get information about an advertised product without interrupting the actual video they want to watch. YouTube said this tool for advertisers, called Brand Extensions, would roll out later this year. YouTube dropped the news, as …
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