Roku Says 576,000 Streaming Accounts Compromised in Security Breach

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor SAG-AFTRA will license Nielsen‘s streaming content data, which the union will to enforce the terms of its 2023 contract with Hollywood studios. Under the deal for Nielsen’s Streaming Content Ratings, SAG-AFTRA will have “an objective source of domestic viewership data for original streaming programming,” the parties announced.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Crunchyroll, the Sony-owned anime streaming service, is raising prices for its two top tier packages in select countries — the first pricing hike in five years. The pricing is increasing for Crunchyroll’s Mega Fan and Ultimate Fan subscription tiers in select countries. “The price change reflects the increase in content on Crunchyroll in recent years, expanding its catalog to more than 45,000 episodes via 1,400 series and films,” the company said in a blog post.

EXCLUSIVE: Roku is bringing some laughter to the 1950s drama series Tightrope!

Roku had a busy Tuesday leading up to its annual NewFronts presentation for advertisers, announcing an Olympics team-up with NBCUniversal as well as measurement and ad pacts with iSpot and The Trade Desk.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Oprah Winfrey is off the board of WeightWatchers — but she’s continuing to work with the company as part of her efforts to change the cultural conversation about weight. Winfrey will host “Making The Shift: A New Way to Think About Weight,” a three-hour event on Thursday, May 9, from 6-9 p.m.

EXCLUSIVE: Keanu Reeves and Gard Hollinger are embarking on a quest to find the origins of human creativity, which will be chronicled in a docuseries for Roku. The friends, longtime collaborators and Arch Motorcycle co-founders are headlining and executive producing the series, tentatively titled The Arch Project.

Roku CEO Anthony Wood collected a total pay package of $20.2 million in 2023, according to the company’s latest proxy filing.

Following the massive success of “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” there was a time when the Russo Brothers were the biggest filmmakers on the planet, and most fans presumed, don’t worry, they’ll be back to direct “Avengers: Secret Wars.” But much has changed in the ensuing years. The Russos, via their AGBO company, have delivered two films in that time that they themselves have directed, the drama “Cherry” with Tom Holland for Apple and the would-be Netflix franchise “The Gray Man” with Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, an expensive affair that never took off with critics.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, had a pay package worth just over $20.2 million in 2023, while Roku’s media boss, Charlie Collier, received $6.8 million in salary. Wood’s compensation last year included salary of $1.2 million, stock awards worth $7.57 million and stock option awards ​valued at $11.43 million.

Taylor Swift was always destined to be a poet!

Roku posted solid first-quarter financials, with positive results in several key metrics illustrating the benefits of ongoing price inflation in the streaming sector.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Roku reported its first-quarter 2024 earnings Thursday, revealing the company reached 81.6 million active accounts, an increase of 1.6 million from the previous quarter, and streaming hours rose to 30.8 billion, up from 29.1 million in Q4 2023. Wall Street forecast a loss per share of 61 cents on $848.62 million in revenue, according to analyst consensus data provided by LSEG, formerly Refinitiv. Roku reported adjusted loss per share of 35 cents on $882 million in revenue (+19% year over year).

Angelique Jackson Tracee Ellis Ross is packing her bags and inviting audiences to join her solo travel adventures with the new Roku Original series “Tracee Travels.” The series will chronicle the award-winning actor (“Girlfriends,” “Black-ish,” and most recently the Oscar-winning film “American Fiction”) and Pattern CEO and founder as she “meticulously, laboriously, and sometimes ridiculously prepares for and travels solo to spectacular locations.” The series will shoot later this year, following Ross as she “charts her own path, exploring the intersection of beauty, fashion, design, food and culture at each stop.” “I took my first solo trip when I was 22 years old. I decided way back then that I wouldn’t wait to do the things I wanted to do or for my life to come to me,” says Ross.

The Spiderwick Chronicles creeped out of the woodwork to become a resounding success for The Roku Channel.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Wall Street is betting that Netflix‘s stream machine continued to fire on all cylinders coming into 2024. After netting a whopping 13.1 million new subs in Q4, Netflix is riding a wave of momentum that continues to be buoyed by the paid-sharing strategy, as it converts password borrowers into paying members, according to analysts.

Following a data breach earlier this year affecting 15,000 user accounts, Roku has revealed a much larger security episode.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After nearly nine years, Showtime‘s streaming apps are fading to black. The Showtime standalone service will be shut down on April 30, according to notices sent to subscribers. The end of Showtime’s streaming apps comes just less than a year after parent company Paramount Global integrated Showtime’s programming into the top-tier Paramount+ plan.

UK fans of Vanderpump Rules, Below Deck, or The Real Housewives can now indulge in their favourite Hayu episodes for free, thanks to Sky's latest streaming deal. What makes this deal even better is that it won't cost you a penny more than your TV subscription.

Spotify have now officially demonetised all songs on the platform with less than 1000 streams.The policy was launched on April 1 and came after the streaming giant released a report last year, Modernising our royalty system, in which news of the decision first appeared. The move has been planned by the platform for some time.The new regulations come following months of speculation about new policies the streaming service would be introducing, including rumours that the company would be making it harder for artists to generate royalties from their music.According to Spotify data, there are around 100million songs on the service, yet only around 37.5million meet the new requirements to generate revenue.This means that around 60 per cent of tracks will not qualify for the new threshold, although Spotify did recall that these songs make up less than one per cent of the total number of streams on the service.Spotify said that 99.5 per cent of all streams on the platform “are of tracks that have above 1,000 streams.” They went on to claim that demonetising the tracks won’t result in a “change to the size of the music royalty pool being paid out to rights holders”.It argued that instead it will “use the tens of millions of dollars annually to increase the payments to all eligible tracks, rather than spreading it out into $0.03 payments.”Spotify also went on to say it requires a minimum number of unique listeners now if royalties are to apply – a measure brought in to attempt to stop the rise in fake streams after a rise in fraudulent activity was detected.Late last year, Spotify announced that it was cutting down 17 per cent of its workforce in order to save costs.

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.