CIA Launches First Podcast, ‘The Langley Files,’ Which Reveals That Working at the Agency Is More Boring Than Hollywood Makes It Seem

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix has taken peak TV to a new peak. In a data point sure to fuel more quantity-versus-quality debate, Netflix broke its own record for number of original episodes released in a single quarter — with 1,026 in the third quarter of 2022, according to a tally by Wall Street firm MoffettNathanson. That’s more than five times any other streaming rival: Amazon Prime Video and Hulu released 223 and 194 episodes, respectively, and Disney+ debuted 140 original episodes, per the report. HBO Max, now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, released 114 episodes in the third quarter — significantly fewer episodes than usual and comprising the lightest slate for the service since Q2 2020, the second quarter after launch. WBD has been paring back HBO Max’s content slate in recent months as it looks to cut costs.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Streaming soon on Roku devices: your front door? Roku is expanding beyond its streaming-media players, Roku-branded TVs and home-entertainment speakers with the launch of an array of new smart-home products. The smart-home products include security cameras, video doorbells, smart lightbulbs and smart plugs. Walmart is the exclusive bricks-and-mortar retailer for the Roku Smart Home line, which will be available in nearly 3,500 Walmart stores in the U.S. beginning Oct. 17. The smart-home products also will be sold via roku.com and walmart.com. At launch, customers with Roku devices will be able see who is at their door with their the Roku video doorbell. Users will also be able to view live streams from their Roku cameras or use a Roku voice remote to bring up video feeds.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Ready to mingle with the Dunder Mifflin gang in virtual reality? Meta, looking to spark broader interest in VR, announced a partnership with NBCUniversal under which the companies will team to bring the media company’s Peacock streaming app and a range of properties to the Meta Quest VR headsets. Meta announced the NBCU pact at Meta Connect 2022, its annual developers conference, alongside other content partnerships and product news. The new VR content from NBCU, set to come to Quest headsets in 2023, will include virtual-reality experiences for hit sitcom “The Office,” Universal Monsters, DreamWorks Animation, Blumhouse and Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor YouTube’s popular “Tab Time” preschool series is coming back for Season 2, starring “America’s mom” Tabitha Brown — alongside celebrity guests including Liza Koshy, Terry Crews and Tamron Hall. The hybrid live-action/animated series, one of YouTube’s marquee kids originals, is hosted by Brown, an actor, vegan foodie, author and mother. Brown, or “Ms. Tab” as the kids call her, brings her skills as a cook, storyteller, mom, and motivational leader to teach children how to live their best life. YouTube’s renewal of the show for Season 2, from from Kids at Play and Scale Productions, was announced earlier this year. While YouTube has largely scrapped scripted original productions, it has maintained a slate of kids and family originals, select documentaries and programming through the YouTube Black Voices fund.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Spotify terminated at least 38 employees across the Gimlet and Parcast studios as the company canceled 11 original shows, according to the unions representing employees of the divisions. In a joint statement Friday, the two unions said the layoffs represented about 30% of their members. “These aren’t small cuts, they are massive restructurings,” the Gimlet and Parcast unions said. Some Spotify employees were given as little as an hour to close out their work, according to the unions. The statement does not allege that the company violated the terms of its agreements with the unions. “Yesterday, Spotify chose to create chaos instead of treating employees with the dignity and respect they deserve,” said the Gimlet and Parcast unions, both of which are affiliated with the Writers Guild of America East. “The fact that Spotify chose to handle these cuts in this way shows their disregard for both their employees and their audiences.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Spotify has appointed new managing directors for its Gimlet and Parcast podcast studios — Nicole Beemsterboer and Liliana Kim, respectively — coming amid the company’s cancellation of 11 original podcasts from the two divisions. Spotify elevated Beemsterboer (above left), a former longtime NPR exec who joined Spotify this year, to the role of Gimlet’s managing director. She takes over for Lydia Polgreen, who left Spotify this spring to rejoin the New York Times as an opinion columnist. Prior to joining as Gimlet’s head of news and knowledge in March, Beemsterboer spent more than 15 years at NPR as a producer where she led the creation and reorganization of the public media org’s first longform podcast unit, the Enterprise Storytelling Unit. At NPR, Beemsterboer worked on shows including “Embedded,” “Invisibilia” and “White Lies.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Twitter at long last will give users in the U.S., its biggest geographic region, the ability to edit their tweets. However, for now, the company will limit access to the “Edit Tweet” feature only to subscribers of Twitter Blue, its service with enhanced features for power users that costs $4.99 per month in the U.S. The tweet-editing function will roll out to Twitter Blue users starting Thursday, according to the company. That came after it opened up the option to edit tweets on Oct. 3 for Twitter Blue members in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Edit Tweet button, which for years has been the most-requested feature among Twitter users, will let you edit tweets a few times within a 30-minute window after they’re posted. Twitter said it is limiting the ability to make edits to only the first 30 minutes to “help protect the integrity of the conversation and create a publicly accessible record of what was said.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Has Peacock regained its forward momentum? NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell claimed the media company’s flagship streamer notched healthy growth in the third quarter — thanks to a strong content lineup, including Peacock’s reclaiming day-after-air rights to episodes of NBCU shows from Hulu. Shell, in an appearance Tuesday on CNBC, said Peacock added more than 2 million paid subscribers in Q3, to top 15 million. Overall, Peacock’s active user accounts is now at 30 million, he said, up more than 3 million in the September quarter. “If you have the right content, and you offer a broad distribution platform, your consumers are going to find you — and that’s what we’re doing with Peacock,” Shell said.

talk of Idris Elba being the next 007, as well as Tom Hardy. “Bridgerton” star Regé-Jean Page is also tipped to become the martini-drinking secret agent.“We’ve tried looking at younger people in the past,” Wilson said at a Bond event at the British Film Institute on Friday, according to Deadline. “But trying to visualize it doesn’t work.”Craig, who took over as Bond from Pierce Brosnan in 2006, was 38 years old, and went on to appear in four 007 films in total.“Remember, Bond’s already a veteran,” Wilson said.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor More than two years after Kim Kardashian inked an exclusive deal with Spotify for a podcast series focused on criminal-justice reform, the series is finally out. On Monday, Spotify released the first two episodes of original podcast “Kim Kardashian’s The System: The Case of Kevin Keith,” available worldwide. Following the series premiere, new episodes will be released each Monday thereafter. The eight-episode podcast is narrated by Kardashian alongside veteran true-crime producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi, produced by Spotify and Tenderfoot TV. It follows the story of Keith, an Ohio man convicted of triple homicide who — for nearly three decades — has been working alongside his family to prove he was wrongly accused.

James Bond film producer Michael G. Wilson, who runs Eon Productions with Barbara Broccoli, has revealed that a seduction scene from the 1963 thriller From Russia With Love is always used to test those aspiring to play Ian Fleming’s ruthless spy.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The three remaining members of the Try Guys need time to process the events that led the popular YouTube comedy troupe to kick out their friend and co-founder Ned Fulmer, after he confessed to having a workplace extramarital affair. The Try Guys trio — former BuzzFeed staffers Keith Habersberger, Zach Kornfeld and Eugene Lee Yang — said they will take a one-week break from their regular podcast release to “formulate our thoughts” given the announcement Tuesday that Fulmer is no longer part of the group. The next episode of the TryPod is slated for next Thursday, Oct. 6. “The TryPod will be taking a week off, and returning next week on Oct 6. We wanted to take some time to formulate our thoughts before recording the episode,” the group tweeted late Wednesday. “Thanks for being patient.”

Dancing With the Stars, meet James Bond!

Action is calling and Noah Centineo looks ready.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Kickstarter announced that marketing exec and entrepreneur Everette Taylor has been named CEO of the crowdfunding platform company.  Taylor most recently served as chief marketing officer for Artsy, an online marketplace for buying and selling fine art. He takes over as CEO of Kickstarter from COO Sean Leow, who served as interim CEO since former chief exec Aziz Hasan announced earlier this year that he was stepping down after three years at the helm. “I am humbled to take on the role of CEO of Kickstarter at a very transformative time for the company,” Taylor said in a statement. “Kickstarter has made such a positive impact on the world, and I’m honored to continue the mission of bringing creative projects to life and support amazing creators across the globe.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Ed Helms has managed to find the amusing parts of impending nuclear Armageddon. The actor, writer and comedian hosts “Snafu,” a nonfiction comedy series in which he’ll dissect some of history’s most notorious screw-ups. In the inaugural season, set to premiere Oct. 5 on major podcast platforms, Helms tells the story of Able Archer 83, the NATO military exercise that may have almost triggered a real nuclear war in November 1983. “It kind of felt like a story that needed to be told, and it also seemed like a story that would be fun to tell – it’s loaded with drama and spy-thriller intrigue,” Helms told Variety. “There’s a lot of comedy baked in. But ultimately it’s an intense and somewhat mortifying chain of events.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor OnlyFans has become synonymous with sexually explicit content and providing a way for adult creators to earn money online. Now the social-media platform wants to tickle some funny bones, as well. OnlyFans announced the launch of its Creative Fund: Comedy Edition, which will let creators in the U.K. and Ireland compete for the chance to win a total of £100,000 — more than $100,000 at current exchange rates — and appear in a reality-competition series on OFTV, its non-pornographic streaming service. While continuing to support adult performers, London-based OnlyFans stepped up efforts to recruit mainstream celebrities to its platform and expand into non-sexual genres. It recently ordered a reality show, slated to stream on OFTV, from British reality TV stars Chloe, Demi and Frankie Sims after their exit from “The Only Way Is Essex.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Courtney Coupe, most recently SVP of content strategy and operations for CNN Digital, is joining LinkedIn as the company’s first head of original programming. In the new role, Coupe reports to LinkedIn editor in chief Dan Roth. She will oversee the strategy, development and production of all original video and audio content at the business-oriented social media platform. LinkedIn has been investing in original content for a decade and is now bringing those efforts together under a newly formed original programming team, led by Coupe. “Courtney has spent her career creating high-quality, economy and career-focused audio and video content for some of the top brands in media,” Roth said in announcing her hire. “We’re excited that she’s bringing her talent for developing groundbreaking content to LinkedIn and helping us deliver insights that drive conversation.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Chrissy Teigen expected vicious online attacks after she announced that she had an abortion to save her life two years ago — and had a message for the trolls: “I’ve already seen you do your worst.” The model, TV personality and influencer on Thursday revealed that the loss of her unborn son in September 2020 with husband John Legend had ended in an abortion; she had previously said the pregnancy had ended with a miscarriage. Teigen said she was speaking out after the Supreme Court this summer struck down Roe v. Wade, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion and prompted a number of states to drastically roll back abortion rights.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Brooke Shields is coming soon to a pair of earbuds near you with her first podcast — in which the actor, model and author explores pivotal moments in people’s lives. “Now What? With Brooke Shields,” produced by iHeartMedia, is set to launch Oct. 11, to be available on the iHeartRadio app and all major podcast platforms. In each episode, to be released weekly on Tuesdays, Shields will chat with experts, authors and celebrity guests about the things that “knocked them off their feet and what they did to get back up,” according to iHeart. “Every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice is the answer to one question: ‘Now what?’”