All stories by Todd Spangler on BroadwayStars

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Above Average Steers Focus to Original Comedy Series for TV, Digital Services by Todd Spangler

Above Average started life in 2012 as the digital-comedy arm of Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video, the company best known for producing “Saturday Night Live.” Now, Above Avera…

SOURCE: Variety at 05:12PM[SHARE]

Four Disney-Managed YouTube Stars Launch Twitch Channels by Todd Spangler

Twitch will get exclusive content from four of Disney’s biggest YouTube content-creator partners — Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, LuzuGames and Strawburry17 — under a multiyear…

SOURCE: Variety at 12:00PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Disney-ABC TV Chief Ben Sherwood Touts Iger's Streaming Strategy at CES by Todd Spangler

Ben Sherwood, president of Disney-ABC Television Group, said that his division will be the largest contributor to Disney’s planned 2019 internet-video subscription service — and …

SOURCE: Variety at 02:24PM[SHARE]
Monday, January 8, 2018

Alex Hofmann, Musical.ly's President of North America, Exits After Bytedance Acquisition by Todd Spangler

Alex Hofmann, after three years at Musical.ly as president of North America, is departing the social-video app company after it was acquired by Chinese tech giant Bytedance. Hofmann’s …

SOURCE: Variety at 12:54PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Musical.ly Establishes $50 Million Creator Fund by Todd Spangler

Musical.ly, maker of a short-form video app popular among teens, announced that it is investing up to $50 million in a fund to support its users (or “Musers,” as it calls them). …

SOURCE: Variety at 11:52AM[SHARE]
Friday, December 15, 2017

Disney Will Get More Vice After Acquiring 21st Century Fox's $70 Million Stake by Todd Spangler

Disney will be adding a little more Vice into its life. The media conglomerate will obtain 21st Century Fox’s $70 million stake in Vice Media under the mammoth asset deal Disney and Fo…

SOURCE: Variety at 11:26AM[SHARE]
Thursday, December 14, 2017

Wall Street Cheers Disney-Fox Deal as Media Stocks Get Lift From M&A News by Todd Spangler

Shares of both Disney and 21st Century Fox rose Thursday after they announced their deal for Disney to acquire major assets of Fox, an event that pushed other media stocks up as well. 21st C…

SOURCE: Variety at 04:16PM[SHARE]

Disney-Fox Deal: Media Stocks Rise After Megadeal Announcement by Todd Spangler

Media investors reacted Thursday to the blockbuster Disney-21st Century Fox deal, with stocks of several big media companies ticking up in early trading as Wall Street processed the implicat…

SOURCE: Variety at 09:37AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Redbox Launches Digital Movie and TV Service, Without Disney Titles by Todd Spangler

Redbox is finally opening a bridge to an online digital-entertainment future. The company, known for its nationwide network of DVD-rental kiosks, publicly launched Redbox On Demand on Wed…

SOURCE: Variety at 04:00PM[SHARE]
Monday, December 4, 2017

'House of Cards' Sixth and Final Season Shooting to Resume in Early 2018, Without Kevin Spacey by Todd Spangler

Netflix has reached an agreement to resume production on “House of Cards” season 6 — the show’s final season — in early 2018, according to chief content officer…

SOURCE: Variety at 12:24PM[SHARE]
Friday, December 1, 2017

Disney Sues to Block Redbox's Digital Movie Sales by Todd Spangler

Disney has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Redbox from selling digital codes for purchasing Disney movies to download or stream. In October, Redbox launched a service offering “digital…

SOURCE: Variety at 11:18AM[SHARE]
Friday, November 10, 2017

Beijing's Bytedance Steps Up Global Video and Entertainment Profile With Musical.ly Buy, Live.me Funding by Todd Spangler

Live, from China: It’s Bytedance. If you live outside of Asia, you’re about to get more familiar with the five-year-old internet news and video aggregator. Bytedance is already a…

SOURCE: Variety at 04:48PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Kevin Spacey's Online Acting Course Pulled by MasterClass by Todd Spangler

Kevin Spacey’s $90 online class on acting is no longer available from MasterClass, a move that comes after the actor was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy two decades ag…

SOURCE: Variety at 02:02PM[SHARE]
Friday, October 13, 2017

Fandango Buys Rival MovieTickets.com, Amassing Broader Theater Reach by Todd Spangler

Fandango plans to acquire longtime competitor MovieTickets.com, in what would be the union of the industry’s two biggest online movie-ticketing services. Financial terms of the deal…

SOURCE: Variety at 01:30PM[SHARE]
Thursday, September 28, 2017

Disney Unifies Kids' Cable Channels in 'DisneyNow' App by Todd Spangler

Disney’s cable networks group has brought together shows, movies, games, and other content from its three networks — Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney Junior — into a si…

SOURCE: Variety at 02:00PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Disney Invests More in Interactive-Content Startup Playbuzz as Part of $35 Million Round by Todd Spangler

Playbuzz, which develops tools for creating interactive media and distributes branded content, has raised $35 million in Series C funding. The round was led by Viola Growth with participatio…

SOURCE: Variety at 08:00AM[SHARE]
Friday, September 8, 2017

Disney Launches 'Club Mickey Mouse,' Rebooting Classic Kids' Show for Social Media by Todd Spangler

Disney’s internet-media group on Friday is debuting “Club Mickey Mouse,” which puts a social-media spin on the 62-year-old “Mickey Mouse Club” franchise, and in…

SOURCE: Variety at 09:00AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Musical.ly Launches Major Update to Video App, Aimed at Fanning Out to Wider Audience by Todd Spangler

Musical.ly has rolled out a significant redesign of its social video app, with the goal of expanding service’s appeal beyond the millions of teen girls who make up its core user base. …

SOURCE: Variety at 07:00AM[SHARE]
Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Disney Researchers Create Mixed-Reality 'Magic Bench' for Shared Experiences by Todd Spangler

You’re sitting down in front of a screen looking at an image of yourself, as if facing a mirror. Then a tiny elephant saunters into the frame, plops down next to you " and proffers …

SOURCE: Variety at 02:22PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Disney Invests in 11 Tech and Media Companies for 2017 Accelerator Program by Todd Spangler

The Walt Disney Co. is launching its fourth annual incubator program, announcing 11 technology and media companies " including Epic Games, Brit + Co and Samba TV " that will receive fundi…

SOURCE: Variety at 12:00PM[SHARE]
Thursday, June 15, 2017

Musical.ly Launches Original Shows From MTV, NBCU, Hearst by Todd Spangler

Musical.ly, the lip-syncing social video app popular among teen girls, is stirring professionally produced content into its mix of user-generated content. The fast-growing startup has inked …

SOURCE: Variety at 08:00AM[SHARE]
Thursday, May 25, 2017

Disney CEO Bob Iger: Hacker Threat About Stolen Movie Was a Hoax by Todd Spangler

Disney chief Bob Iger confirmed the company received a threat from cybercriminals who claimed to have stolen the digital copy of a movie — reported to be “Pirated of the Caribbea…

SOURCE: Variety at 04:57PM[SHARE]
Friday, May 19, 2017

NBCUniversal, Viacom Discussing Producing Original Shows for Musical.ly Video App (Report) by Todd Spangler

Musical.ly, a startup that has more than 200 million users for its video-sharing app, is planning to launch original programming on the service this summer and is in talks with media compani…

SOURCE: Variety at 01:09PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Financial-News Startup Cheddar Raises $19 Million From Amazon, AT&T, NYSE, Broadway Video and Others by Todd Spangler

Cheddar, which bills itself as a “post-cable” financial news network for millennials, announced $19 million in third-round of financing led by Raine Ventures, along with strategi…

SOURCE: Variety at 02:48PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Disney Sets More Family-Friendly Path for Maker Studios by Todd Spangler

Maker Studios was once a sprawling agglomeration of some 60,000 YouTube channels. Now Disney, which has owned Maker since 2014, has dramatically pared back the unit’s focus " …

SOURCE: Variety at 09:01AM[SHARE]
Monday, May 1, 2017

Live.me Live-Streaming Startup Raises $60 Million to Take on YouTube, Facebook, Musical.ly by Todd Spangler

Live.me, a one-year-old startup that makes a live-streaming video app, has banked $60 million from investors including its majority owner, Chinese app developer Cheetah Mobile. Live.me is in…

SOURCE: Variety at 02:52PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Verizon CEO Says Telco Is Open to Merger Talks With Disney, Comcast, CBS by Todd Spangler

Verizon, which is in the midst of closing its deal for Yahoo, is open to M&A talks with the likes of Comcast, Disney and CBS, CEO Lowell McAdam said in an interview with Bloomberg. A …

SOURCE: Variety at 04:15PM[SHARE]
Thursday, April 13, 2017

Could Apple Buy Disney? Wall Street Revives Rumor of Mega-Deal by Todd Spangler

Apple could potentially find the cash to pull off a $200 billion-plus takeover Disney " creating a company worth $1 trillion with “almost limitless opportunities in content and tech…

SOURCE: Variety at 10:00AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 4, 2017

YouTube to Live-Stream 2017 Coachella for Free Featuring Lady Gaga by Todd Spangler

YouTube is heading back to the desert: The video giant will exclusively live-stream the first weekend of Coachella 2017 for the seventh year in a row. From April 14-16, Coachella’s You…

SOURCE: Variety at 03:32PM[SHARE]
Thursday, March 30, 2017

Club Penguin 'Classic' Is Officially Dead, and Disney Launches Cheaper Mobile App to Replace It by Todd Spangler

Disney’s Club Penguin " the multiplayer online game that has kept kids entertained for more than 11 years " shut its doors for good at 12:01 a.m. PT on March 30. But Disney is hopin…

SOURCE: Variety at 09:00AM[SHARE]
Thursday, March 9, 2017

AT&T Expands Free Movie-Ticket Deal to DirecTV and Internet Subs, Adds Cinemark Theaters by Todd Spangler

AT&T is aiming to herd more moviegoers into theaters with its buy-one-get-one-free ticket offer for customers " though it’s still limited to Tuesday screenings. The telco announced…

SOURCE: Variety at 10:39AM[SHARE]

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