Todd Spangler Ny Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Meta filed a motion Friday requesting the dismissal of the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against the social media company — arguing the agency still hasn’t provided any basis for its litigation, which could potentially force Meta to divest Instagram and WhatsApp. In December 2020, the FTC and more than 40 state attorneys general sued the company (then called Facebook), alleging it illegally acquired competitors Instagram and WhatsApp in an abuse of its monopoly power.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Women’s pro hoops are coming back to Amazon‘s Prime Video for at least two more years. Prime Video and the WNBA on Friday announced a rights renewal deal under which Prime Video will continue to be the exclusive U.S. streaming partner for a package of 21 games each season, including the Championship Game of the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Some subscribers to Disney‘s streaming services will start seeing some new messaging up this summer: Pay up for anyone outside your main household who’s illicitly piggybacking on the services — or face potentially getting disconnected. According to Disney chief Bob Iger, the Mouse House this June will “be launching our first real foray into password sharing” enforcement.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Trian Partners founder Nelson Peltz has accepted defeat — for now. Peltz, a day after the activist investor lost a costly proxy battle with Disney, went on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Thursday to discuss what happened. “The shareholders have voted.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor A day after Disney declared victory over activist investor Nelson Peltz, CEO Bob Iger said the board is proceeding with “urgency” in trying to identify the next chief executive with the “distraction” of the proxy fight over. “This was decisive in terms of how shareholders voted,” Iger said in an appearance Thursday morning on CNBC from Disney’s Burbank, Calif., headquarters, about the results of the April 3 meeting. Succession “is the board’s No.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Spotify announced the appointment of Christian Luiga, a senior executive at European defense and security company Saab AB, as its next CFO. Luiga is expected to start in the third quarter of 2024. Ben Kung, Spotify’s VP of financial planning and analysis, will serve as interim CFO until Luiga’s start date.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Private-equity giant Apollo Global Management made a $27 billion offer to acquire all of Paramount Global this week, sources familiar with the bid told Variety. However, the special committee set up by the Paramount Global board of directors to consider M&A options declined to engage with the bid. Apollo submitted an all-cash bid on Sunday, March 31, to acquire Paramount Global in a deal worth more than $27 billion of total enterprise value, encompassing equity and debt, according to people familiar with the situation.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Patrick Whitesell, executive chairman of WME parent Endeavor, is launching a new media company backed by Silver Lake as part of the private-equity firm’s deal to take Endeavor private. Silver Lake will invest $250 million of seed equity into a new business to be founded, managed and controlled by Whitesell, according to an Endeavor SEC filing Wednesday.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney had won enough of the shareholder votes cast for its 12 board candidates as of Tuesday evening to successfully defeat an aggressive, months-long proxy fight waged by Nelson Peltz‘s Trian Partners hedge fund, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources. Enough votes had been cast as of Tuesday evening to put Disney’s board directors “safely ahead” of Trian’s two nominees for the board — Peltz and ex-Disney CFO Jay Rasulo — per the Reuters report. In addition, the three board candidates proposed by investment firm Blackwells Capital failed to win enough votes, according to the report.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney and CEO Bob Iger have pulled into the lead for their 12 board candidates to win reelection — with activist investor Nelson Peltz trailing — with more than half of shareholder votes cast ahead of the Mouse House’s April 3 annual meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal. Two of Disney’s institutional investors — BlackRock (which owns about 4.2% of outstanding shares) and T. Rowe Price (0.5%) — support the company’s own slate of directors, which include Iger, per the Journal, citing anonymous sources.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The Webby Awards have announced nominations for the 2024 ceremony, recognizing excellence in internet content. Variety landed three Webby nominations, for: best website (in the general websites and mobile sites – entertainment category); 2023 Actors on Actors (in the video series and channels – entertainment category); and “I’m Not a Victim: Pamela Anderson Opens Up About Money, Abuse and the ‘Assholes’ behind Pam & Tommy,’” by Tatiana Siegel, Variety executive editor, film and media (in the websites and mobile sites’ features and design – writing category).

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Steven Miron and Steven Newhouse resigned from the Warner Bros. Discovery board after the Justice Department informed them it was investigating “whether their service on the Board of Directors violated Section 8 of the Clayton Antitrust Act,” the company announced Monday. Miron, CEO of media company Advance/Newhouse Partnership and a senior executive officer at the Newhouse family’s investment business Advance, and Newhouse, co-president of Advance, were both independent directors of Warner Bros.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Usually, shareholder votes for corporate board directors have all the suspense of a Soviet-style election. Most of the time, director candidates are backed by the company, and they run unopposed — winning election or reelection in a landslide. In 2022, only 75 board-endorsed candidates at companies in the Russell 3000, less than 0.5% of almost 17,500 board members on the ballot that year, failed to get elected by shareholders, per an analysis by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (which also noted that, while small, the number had dramatically risen vs.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Vince McMahon, the founder and former CEO of wrestling entertainment company WWE, received about $100 million through a sale of about 3.5 million shares of TKO Group. TKO Group was formed last year through the Endeavor-led merger of UFC and WWE. Endeavor maintains a majority interest in TKO.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The battling factions of “Red vs. Blue” are getting one last adventure — in which they must team up to fight a common enemy — that will soon available on a screen near you, even though Rooster Teeth is closing its doors. “Red vs.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the failed FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a federal judge Thursday. A federal jury in November 2023 convicted Bankman-Friend on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of his cryptocurrency company and related hedge fund. The charges had carried a maximum prison term of 110 years.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Entrepreneur and model Karlie Koss, together with her husband, billionaire investor Joshua Kushner, is bringing LIFE back to life, more than two decades after the more than century-old iconic photo magazine ceased regular publication. Kloss and Kushner’s Bedford Media on Thursday announced a deal to bring LIFE Magazine back to print and digital distribution, as part of an agreement with Dotdash Meredith to relaunch LIFE as a publication on a regular cadence and vibrant media property. IAC formed Dotdash Meredith after the it bought Meredith was acquired by for $2.7 billion coming after Meredith had acquired Time Inc.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Joe Rogan‘s massively popular podcast not only drives millions of listens of his show on Spotify — it also can boost music streams of guests featured on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” too. One of Spotify’s theses behind its investment in podcasts is that they spur higher engagement for the music side of the house: Users who listen to podcasts on average listen to more music, according to the company. Now Spotify has new stats it says demonstrate that flywheel effect as it relates to Rogan’s show, which has more than 14 million followers on the platform.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Stassi Schroeder Clark’s weekly lifestyle podcast, “Straight Up With Stassi,” has joined Dear Media’s roster of 80-plus shows — and it’s getting a new name. Beginning today, the podcast will be renamed “Stassi.” With distribution deal for Schroeder Clark’s podcast, Dear Media has announced a “refreshed content format” along with new visual branding across all podcast distribution platforms.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor UTA announced Eric Iverson as chief technology officer, where he will lead information-technology strategy — joining the company as artificial intelligence and other tech developments are threatening to disrupt the industry. Most recently, Iverson served as director of product strategy Amazon MGM Studios, where he led product, user experience and AI efforts, and before that was chief technologist for media and entertainment in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) division.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor A federal judge Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk‘s X against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, ruling it was “evident” the litigation was intended “to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp.” X, the Musk-owned social network formerly known as Twitter, in July 2023 sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an independent nonprofit research group, over the organization’s findings that since the multibillionaire acquired the company hate, racism and disinformation on the social platform has substantially increased. Musk has not commented on X about the decision.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor UPDATED: Nelson Peltz claims Disney‘s board, not CEO Bob Iger, is the problem. But his investment firm, Trian Group, withheld its votes for Iger’s reelection to the Disney board. With just over a week before Disney’s annual shareholder meeting on April 3, Peltz’s Trian — which has been aggressively campaigning to get two seats on the Mouse House’s board — issued a new statement Monday saying the battle is not about any dispute with Iger but rather about forcing change on the board’s composition to boost the company’s financial returns.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Actor and entrepreneur Blake Lively said she’s “mortified” about her joke about Kate Middleton‘s “Photoshop fails” — with the apology coming after the Princess of Wales confirmed Friday that she has undergone treatment for cancer. “I’m sure no one cares today but I feel like I have to acknowledge this,” Lively said in a message shared Friday on her Instagram account.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Without fanfare, Joni Mitchell‘s music catalog is again on Spotify — a little over two years after she pulled her work from the streaming platform in solidarity with longtime friend and collaborator Neil Young in a protest over Joe Rogan’s podcast spreading COVID misinformation. Mitchell didn’t announce her return to Spotify, but as of Friday it appeared that her original albums were again available including 1969’s “Clouds” with her original recording of “Both Sides Now.” Also back on Spotify are “Blue” (1971), “Court and Spark” (1974) and “Mingus” (1979), as noted by the New York Times.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Michael Eisner, the former Disney CEO who exited the company in 2005, is the latest member of the extended Disneyverse to weigh in with support for current chief exec Bob Iger, who’s facing a proxy fight with activist investors including Nelson Peltz in a vote for board candidates at Disney’s April 3 annual shareholders meeting. “[I]n 1983, Disney was under attack by corporate raiders trying to take over the company,” Eisner wrote in a post on X, referring to the unsuccessful attempt by financier Saul Steinberg to stage a hostile takeover of the company.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor A federal judge has dismissed all charges against seven social-media influencers the SEC and Justice Department had accused of perpetrating a “stock manipulation scheme” on Twitter and Discord. On Wednesday, March 20, U.S. District Judge Andrew S.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Shari Redstone looks like she remains firmly opposed to breaking up Paramount Global. Redstone, president of National Amusements Inc. — the controlling shareholder of Paramount Global — was “unconvinced” by Apollo Global Management’s $11 billion offer to buy Paramount’s film and TV studio, the Financial Times reported, citing anonymous sources.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney was handed a setback in its boardroom fight with activist investor Nelson Peltz after proxy-advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services recommended that shareholders vote him onto the Mouse House’s board. ISS, whose recommendations are influential among institutional investors, cited Disney’s “failed” succession planning in the CEO role in its report backing Peltz, whose Trian Partners.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of UFC, disclosed that it will pay $335 million to settle two class-action lawsuits filed by former UFC fighters alleging the MMA promoter violated antitrust laws. Zuffa, the predecessor entity that owned and operated UFC, was the defendant in five related class-action lawsuits filed between December 2014 and March 2015, which were consolidated into a single action in June 2015 (Le et al. v.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Streaming video services continue to face challenges like high costs, high churn rates and competition from other media — while a good chunk of U.S. audiences still questions whether the price of their subscriptions is worth it. On average, Americans households that subscribe to streaming video entertainment services said they spend $61 per month for four services, according to Deloitte’s 18th annual Digital Media Trends report.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor China hawks in the House have propped TikTok on a political football tee, passing legislation that threatens to kick it off the phones of millions of Americans unless TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, sells its ownership in the app. Right now, there appears to be much less urgency in the Senate to move forward on a measure aimed at forcing TikTok to cut its China ties, while President Biden has said he would sign such a bill (even as his re-election campaign just launched an account on TikTok). Meanwhile, to China, the saber-rattling looks like a trade dispute — wherein the U.S., on the pretext of “national security” concerns, is looking to thwart a successful overseas internet app that has been grabbing share of viewing time and ad dollars from American tech companies.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney‘s current strategic direction under CEO Bob Iger got the thumbs-up from independent proxy voting and corporate governance advisory firm Glass Lewis, amid a campaign launched by two activist investor groups to win seats on the Mouse House’s board. Glass Lewis, in a March 18 report, recommended Disney shareholders vote for the Disney-selected 12 director nominees — and reject those put forward by Nelson Peltz‘s Trian Partners and another firm, Blackwells Capital — at the company’s annual meeting on April 3.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor MrBeast, the YouTuber known for big-money giveaways, is going bigger than ever with his new show on Amazon’s Prime Video. The mega-popular YouTube creator, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, announced a deal with Prime Video for “Beast Games,” a reality-competition show promising the winner a $5 million cash prize — believed to be the largest single payout ever in TV history.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Will Keenan has returned to the entertainment industry, joining Coy Creator, a startup touting a full-service “business-in-a-box” platform for digital creators, as chief revenue officer. Keenan had joined Endemol Shine North America in 2013, where he launched the company’s Endemol Beyond division.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney+ is officially in its Taylor Swift era. With the launch of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version)” on Disney+ on March 14 at 6 p.m. PT, the megastar is getting a homepage takeover on the streamer.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Pornhub and other affiliated adult websites have blocked access to users in Texas, amid a legal battle with the Lone Star State’s attorney general over an age-verification law. Last week, a federal appeals court upheld a Texas law requiring pornography sites to institute age-verification measures to ensure only adults 18 and older are able to access them, while it also struck down a part of the law requiring porn sites to display “health warnings” about the content.