YouTube Pulls Roseanne Barr Podcast Episode for Hate Speech Violation After Holocaust Denial Jokes

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor For the first time since Peacock debuted in 2020, NBCUniversal is hiking the monthly prices on the streaming service. Starting at midnight ET Monday evening, NBCU will notify existing Peacock customers that their rates will be increasing as of next month. Effective Aug. 17, for existing users on their next billing cycle and immediately for new customers, the price of Peacock Premium (with ads) will increase by $1, to $5.99 per month, and Peacock Premium Plus (which is mostly commercial-free) will rise $2, to $11.99 per month. In the three years since Peacock’s launch, the platform has added more than 80,000 hours of content, and will reach nearly 100,000 hours total over the coming year, according to NBCU. That includes exclusive pay-1 window movies from Universal Filmed Entertainment Group; NBC and Bravo episodes next-day; streaming channels from Hallmark and Reelz; and daily mornings news from CNBC and MSNBC.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Anjali Sud is taking over as CEO of Tubi, Fox Corp.’s free, ad-supported streaming TV service, after she stepped down as chief exec of video-hosting platform Vimeo. Sud will officially start as Tubi’s CEO on Sept. 1, 2023, succeeding founder Farhad Massoudi. Sud reports to Paul Cheesbrough, CEO of Tubi Media Group, which Fox formed this spring to house its digital businesses including Tubi (acquired in 2020) and Blockchain Creative Labs. Sud spent nine years at New York-based Vimeo, originally serving as VP of global marketing before assuming oversight of the creator business unit and getting promoted to CEO in 2017. Under Sud, Vimeo has undertaken employee layoffs and made other cost-cutting moves to improve its financial profile.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The 11 remaining dates on Colleen Ballinger’s Miranda Sings live tour have been canceled, and the “Oversharing” podcast she co-hosted with YouTube creator Trisha Paytas has come to an end. The cancellations come after Ballinger, the YouTuber and performer who rose to fame with the awkward, lipstick-smeared Miranda Sings character, has faced accusations that she engaged in inappropriate conduct with young fans several years ago. Ballinger last month responded to the allegations that she formed improper relationships with teenagers, denying that she had “groomed” fans who were children. In a June 28 video, she denied the “lies” and “gossip” about her partly in song, while accompanying herself on a ukulele. “The only thing I’ve ever groomed is my two Persian cats / I’m not a groomer, just a loser / who didn’t understand I shouldn’t respond to fans / and I’m not a predator even a lot of you think so / because five years ago I made a fart joke,” Ballinger sang in the video.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Roku is getting its first voice-activated game: a version of enduring TV hit “Jeopardy!” The game was developed by Volley, a creator of voice-enabled AI games, for the Roku platform. To play the “Jeopardy!” game on Roku, players respond to clues with their voice — just like the actual contestants on the game show. It’s available in single-player mode in which you compete against answers submitted by other real players that have been prerecorded. A leaderboard at the end of each session shows how you stack up against other players. “Jeopardy!” is available now on all Roku devices; a version of the game also is available for Amazon Alexa. Users will be able to play for one week for free; after that, they must buy a $9.99/month subscription to the Volley app on Roku. Initially, “Jeopardy!” is the only game in the Volley app on Roku; the company says it has several additional titles in development but declined to name them.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The majority of Americans — about 59% — say TikTok a threat to the national security of the United States, according to a recent survey of U.S. adults. The findings from Pew Research Center’s survey of U.S. adults come as TikTok, the popular short-form video app owned by Chinese internet conglomerate ByteDance, continues to be targeted by American lawmakers wary over its ties to China and how TikTok handles user data. Just 17% of Americans say the platform is not a threat to national security, while 23% say they are unsure, per the Pew survey. Opinions about the national security threat posed by TikTok differ by political affiliation and age. Roughly 70% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say TikTok is either a minor or major threat to national security in the U.S., compared with 53% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. The perception of TikTok as a threat also varies by age: Just 13% of adults 18-29 say TikTok is a “major” threat; that rises to 24% among those 30-49, 35% among those 50-64; and 46% among Americans 65 and older.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Not a joke: Comedian and author Sarah Silverman is one of the lead plaintiffs in a pair of lawsuits against Meta and OpenAI accusing the tech companies of illegally using copyrighted works to train their artificial-intelligence systems. The books cited in the lawsuits include Silverman’s 2010 best­selling memoir “The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee.” The federal lawsuits, filed Friday, July 7, allege that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA both ingested text from “The Bedwetter” and other works to train their large language models (LLMs) — without the consent of (or compensation to) authors such as Silverman.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Bradley Cooper wants to bring a new slate of “real people telling real stories” to your earbuds. The actor and filmmaker’s Lea Pictures production company signed a multiyear audio deal with iHeartPodcasts, the podcast division of iHeartMedia. The collaboration will encompass several co-produced shows including “The Good Stuff Podcast,” which debuted earlier this month and marks Lea Pictures’ first audio project. Cooper will serve as executive producer for the entire slate, which will be distributed by iHeartPodcasts on the iHeartRadio app and other audio platforms. “Sharing stories that inspire, motivate and resonate is one of the reasons I started Lea Pictures, and I’m excited to team up with iHeartPodcasts to bring them to life for millions of listeners,” Cooper said in a statement provided to Variety. “Our shows will feature real people telling real stories, and we knew iHeart was the perfect partner to reach as many people as possible. I look forward to dreaming up more extraordinary stories together.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Internet pay-TV provider Fubo named Dan Sormaz, a 10-year Spotify veteran, to lead its product design operations as senior VP. Sormaz joins Fubo this week, based out of the company’s New York headquarters, reporting to chief product officer Mike Berkley (who is also a Spotify alum). Sormaz brings to Fubo 20 years of experience as a user-experience design exec at companies including Spotify, Sorare, Boxee (acquired by Samsung), News Corp and AOL. At Fubo, he’s tasked with leading the design organization, which is responsible for how customers interact with and experience its live TV streaming products.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Should you ditch Twitter in favor of Instagram’s Threads — which looks quite a lot like a clone of Twitter? Meta launched Threads, a “conversational” text-centric app tied to Instagram, on Wednesday, a day earlier than expected. The internet giant sees an opportunity to take on Twitter, controlled by tech mogul Elon Musk, which has been beset by various technical and business issues since he acquired the company. “I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Threads post. “Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Spotify hasn’t let new Premium subscribers pay for service using in-app purchases via Apple’s App Store since May 2016 — objecting to the tech giant’s “tax” on purchases made through the App Store. There was only about a two-year window (from June 2014 to May 2016) during which Spotify Premium subs could opt to sign up and pay through the Apple App Store. Now, Spotify is no longer letting those customers continue paying through Apple’s in-app purchases. In recent emails to those subscribers, Spotify said, “We’re contacting you because when you joined Spotify Premium you used Apple’s billing service to subscribe. Unfortunately, we no longer accept that billing method as a form of payment.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor NBCUniversal is cracking open its TV and movie archives to launch around four dozen free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels — significantly expanding its footprint in the free streaming space. In July, the company said, it will launch the new portfolio of FAST linear channels, with content from across the NBCU Television & Streaming and the NBCUniversal Global Distribution library, on Amazon Freevee and Xumo Play (the streaming platform operated as a joint venture between Comcast and Charter). The lineup includes dedicated free streaming channels for “Saturday Night Live,” “The Real Housewives” franchises, “Top Chef” and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” along with Spanish-language entertainment and news from Telemundo including “Historias de Amor,” “Lo Mejor de Telemundo” and “Telemundo al Día.” NBCU’s FAST channels also include those for older TV series “Little House on the Prairie,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Saved by the Bell” and “The Lone Ranger,” plus genre-based channels for sitcoms, action, crime, Westerns and monster movies. (See list below.)

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Colleen Ballinger, the YouTube creator whose awkward character Miranda Sings rose to internet fame, has publicly responded to accusations that she formed inappropriate relationships with teenagers. Ballinger posted a video Wednesday to her Colleen Vlogs channel in which she denies the “lies” and “gossip” about her — partly in song, while strumming a ukulele. “Some people are saying things about me that just aren’t true,” she said at the beginning of the 10-minute video. She continued, “Even though my team has strongly advised me not to say what I’m going to say, I realized they never said I couldn’t sing about what I want to say.”

Meghan Markle is reportedly keen to forge ahead in her own career without Prince Harry as she focuses on solo projects.

nobody died in the Holocaust.”On a recent episode of the podcast “This Past Weekend With Theo Von,” Barr, 70, commented on what “truth” means in America and how platforms can limit discussions of certain topics.“Like for the real truth that, you know, and I’m glad that they did set up all these guidelines so that we only are allowed to speak the truth,” Barr said.She later continued: “And that is the truth. And nobody died in the Holocaust, either.

Lizzo should “thank” her for “paving the way” for her in a recent Instagram post.The stand-up comedian is known for her controversial remarks, which resulted in her eponymous sitcom Roseanne being cancelled in 2018.On Monday (June 26), Barr shared a throwback photo of herself on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1994 – posing on a chair in lacy black lingerie and heels, in an image shot by Annie Leibovitz.In the caption, the 70-year-old voiced her thought on curvy body type representation in Hollywood, saying: “When is @lizzobeeating going to thank me for paving the way? An homage to Botero.”A post shared by Roseanne Barr (@officialroseannebarr)Lizzo hasn’t responded to the comment, however the ‘Special’ singer has often spoken out for for body confidence and self-love.

with alleged sarcasm — during the podcast. “And the truth is that Biden got 81 million votes by winning 36 counties. And that is just incredible.

was canceled after racist tweets, Roseanne Barr found herself trending on Twitter after more stunning statements — this time she appeared to deny that the Holocaust happened. Or did she? "Nobody died in the Holocaust," she's said on a recent episode of This Past Weekend with Theo Von. "That's the truth.

Roseanne Barr is once again in the news for vile remarks that she’s made.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Later this summer, Stitcher — one of the biggest podcast-listening apps — will be going silent after about 15 years. The Stitcher apps and web-streaming audio service will be shutting down on Aug. 29, 2023, according to a notice posted to its site Tuesday. In the “Stitcher Farewell” notice, the service explains it this way: “SiriusXM, the owner of Stitcher, is focused on incorporating podcasts into its flagship SiriusXM subscription business. Subscribers can listen to podcasts within the SiriusXM app and will see an all-new listening experience later this year.” The Stitcher name isn’t totally disappearing, though: The company said it “expect[s] to continue to operate our Stitcher Studios and Earwolf networks” that produce original podcast shows.

was canceled after racist tweets, Roseanne Barr found herself trending on Twitter after more stunning statements — this time she appeared to deny that the Holocaust happened. Or did she? "Nobody died in the Holocaust," she's said on a recent episode of This Past Weekend with Theo Von. "That's the truth.