Noggin Is Shutting Down After Paramount Global Laid Off Subscription Service’s Entire Staff

TalkTV, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, is set to go off air in the summer, just two years after its launch. This decision comes after Piers Morgan left TalkTV and moved his show, Uncensored, to YouTube for good. Scott Taunton, the President of broadcasting for TalkTV, has announced plans to move the channel online.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Facebook appeared to be experiencing widespread technical problems Tuesday, with thousands of users logging errors in accessing the social media service. Users reported problems including being logged out of Facebook.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Jamie Foxx is returning to once again host Fox’s musical game show “Beat Shazam,” after he took last season off in the wake of his hospitalization for a still-undisclosed medical emergency. Nick Cannon took over as host last season. Foxx’s daughter, Corinne Foxx, is also back as the show’s co-host DJ, after she was temporarily replaced last season by Kelly Osbourne.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Oprah Winfrey will leave the board of WeightWatchers after almost 10 years, following the entertainment mogul’s revelation that she is using a weight-loss drug. Winfrey informed the company this week that she decided to not stand for reelection at the annual meeting of shareholders to be held in May 2024. She has served on the company’s board since 2015.

“I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice,” Patrick Swayze’s James Dalton says in the original Road House from 1989.

Bradley Walsh didn’t share the same feelings as viewers about a recent contestant on The Chase.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege creative director Alexander Karpazis has shut down talk of a sequel to the online tactical shooter.Despite being released in 2015, Rainbow Six Siege still has a huge playerbase, with over 100,000 concurrent players logging in over the weekend (via SteamDB) and regular updates from Ubisoft. However, Karpazis has no interest in a sequel.​​”I can confidently say that we have probably one of the best engines in the world when it comes to live PvP shooters,” he said at the 2024 Sieve International in Brazil [via PC Gamer].

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Whoopi Goldberg, famed EGOT and business mogul, is adding another entry to her résumé: streaming entrepreneur. Goldberg is an equity investor in Blkfam, billed as the first and only Black-owned and Black-focused family streaming platform. The free, ad-supported service launches Feb.

In the latest sign of difficulty for niche streaming, Warner Bros. Discovery is shifting programming from its MotorTrend+ streaming service onto Max and Discovery+ and will shut down the stand-alone auto enthusiast app.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor It’s the end of the road for Warner Bros. Discovery‘s MotorTrend+ automotive streaming service. The media company announced that MotorTrend+ will be shut down after content from the service is fully migrated to Discovery+ and Max at the end of March.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Reddit, the popular internet discussion “community of communities,” filed a registration statement Thursday for its long-awaited initial public offering. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. Reddit intends to list its Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “RDDT.” In the S-1 filing with the SEC, Reddit reported 2023 revenue of $804.0 million, up 21% year over year, and a net loss of $90.8 million in 2023, compared with a $158.6 million loss the year prior.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix says its ad-supported plan includes “the vast majority” of TV shows and movies available on the standard no-ads tiers — but more than a year after the streamer introduced the cheaper option, several popular titles remain unavailable to customers with the ad plan. Most recently, Netflix customers noticed that Eli Roth’s horror film “Thanksgiving” (pictured above), added Feb. 17 for subscribers on ad-free tiers, is unavailable on the ad plan.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After critics slammed Google‘s “woke” generative AI system, the company halted the ability of its Gemini tool to create images of people to fix what it acknowledged were “inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions.” Google’s Gemini, formerly known as Bard, began offering text-to-image generative features this month. The problem appeared to be that, in trying to compensate for gender- and racial-representation bias in AI, the system was creating ahistorical images of people.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor BuzzFeed has sold Complex — the youth-culture media company it bought three years ago — and will pink-slip another 16% of BuzzFeed’s remaining staffers in a restructuring designed to get back on financial track. BuzzFeed announced Wednesday that it closed the sale of Complex to ecommerce platform Ntwrk in a $108.6 million all-cash deal.

Noggin, Paramount Global‘s interactive learning subscription service for preschoolers, is shutting down. The Nick Jr.-affiliated app is slated to sunset this year, with the majority of its staff let go in the latest round of layoffs at Paramount Global on Tuesday that impacted about 800 U.S. employees.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After more than a year away from the mic, Dr. Brené Brown is bringing back her two podcasts — “Unlocking Us” and “Dare to Lead” — under a new partnership with Vox Media. Brown, a renowned researcher, author and speaker whose work explores emotional facets of the human experience, on Wednesday announced a deal to bring her shows to the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Mandy Moore stars in a new Audible podcast series as Sue Brewer, the unsung hero of the outlaw country music movement whose home became the epicenter of the scene in 1960s Nashville. Moore — singer, songwriter, producer and actor (“This Is Us”) — leads the cast of “The Boar’s Nest: Sue Brewer and the Birth of Outlaw Country Music,” a scripted podcast from Fresh Produce Media for Audible.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Meghan Markle is back in the podcast game — with a new partner. Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, inked a partnership with podcast network Lemonada Media. That comes after Spotify‘s exclusive podcast deal with Prince Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Productions ended in mid-2023 with the couple having had delivered just one show — the Markle-hosted interview series “Archetypes” — under the agreement.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Paramount Global, amid a swirl of M&A discussions, is laying off about 800 employees worldwide — an estimated 3% of its headcount — as it looks to trim costs. CEO Bob Bakish announced the layoffs in a memo Tuesday to staff that was obtained by Variety. According to the memo, U.S.

EXCLUSIVE: We are hearing that Apollo Global Management, who was mulling an offer for National Amusements, the Redstone family company that controls Paramount Global, is no longer considering that now.