Billionaire investor Mario Gabelli still has not decided whether he’ll mount a legal challenge to Skydance Media’s merger with Paramount Global. Gabelli is the founder, chairman and CEO of GAMCO Investors, which represents clients who own about 12.5% of the Class A voting shares of Paramount Global. That makes the firm and its clients the […]

RIP, Freevee. Amazon is officially shutting down Freevee, its free, ad-supported video streaming service originally launched under the IMDb brand nearly five years ago. Freevee will be phased out over the course of the next several weeks. Going forward, content that had been on the service will be subsumed under Amazon’s Prime Video brand. In […]

Endeavor agreed to sell OpenBet and IMG Arena, its sports gambling and technology businesses, in a $450 million management buyout backed by Endeavor chief Ari Emanuel with participation from OpenBet CEO Jordan Levin and other execs. The deal “is a necessary step” for the closing of the proposed Endeavor take-private deal with Silver Lake, expected to […]

Here’s your chance to outwit “SmartLess” co-host Sean Hayes. SmartLess Media, the company behind the popular “SmartLess” podcast hosted by Hayes, Jason Bateman and Will Arnett, is gearing up to launch “ClueLess,” a quick-hit brainteaser game show. Hayes will serve as the inaugural season’s “permanent contestant.” “ClueLess” is hosted by Emmy-winning writer and comedian Elliott […]

A snafu by Mattel — which accidentally printed the URL for a porn site on packaging for dolls based on Universal Pictures’ “Wicked” movie — has yielded a bonanza of traffic for Wicked Pictures, the adult-entertainment company that actually owns the web address. In the last two days, searches for “wicked.com” (the URL misprinted by […]

Elwood Edwards, an announcer and local TV staffer who became internationally famous as the voice of AOL’s “You’ve got mail!” prompt to millions at the dawn of the internet era, has died. He was 74. He died Tuesday at his home in New Bern, N.C. His daughter Sallie Edwards said the cause of death was […]

President-elect Donald Trump took to Truth Social to deny “fake, untrue and probably illegal rumors and/or statements” that he is interested in selling his shares in the service’s parent company. Trump owns 56.6% of the shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the money-losing Truth Social social network that’s similar to X. TMTG […]

Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav expressed hope president-elect Donald Trump will make changes and put policies in place that would ease media-industry consolidation — which he said would be “a real positive.” Referring to Trump’s election victory, Zaslav said, “We have an upcoming new administration. It’s too early to tell, but it may offer […]

Mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos congratulated Donald Trump on his election-night victory. The comments by the Amazon founder and one of the world’s richest people came after Bezos fomented a major backlash when he decreed that the Washington Post, the iconic newspaper he bought more than a decade ago, would not endorse a U.S. presidential candidate this […]

Donald Trump’s return to the White House next year could lead to a new wave of industry consolidation in the media and entertainment biz — and beyond. A second Trump administration is likely to usher in deregulation and “more aggressive M&A activity,” said Lucinda Guthrie, head of financial data company Mergermarket. She said 2025 “could […]

Donald Trump has retaken the White House — and excited investors are eagerly buying shares in his social-media company, driving up his wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars. The former reality TV host and real estate mogul’s presidential victory turbocharged the share price of Trump Media & Technology Group on Wednesday morning. Shares of […]

The New York Times’ Needle lives: The newspaper’s popular election-prediction gauge made its return on Tuesday night — despite the ongoing strike called Monday by the union representing tech employees at the paper. The NY Times’ Needle, first introduced in 2016, estimates the final outcome of an election based on partial election results. As more […]

UPDATED: A new conspiracy theory implying Google was meddling in the closely watched presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump took root on Election Day — but the search giant said there’s a logical explanation for why searches about where to vote for each candidate were different. Earlier Tuesday, searches on Google for “Where […]

Amid a pullback in TV spending, unscripted production companies Fulwell 73, behind Hulu reality hit “The Kardashians,” and SpringHill Co., founded by NBA superstar LeBron James and Maverick Carter, are in talks to combine forces. The companies have been discussing a potential merger for several months, two sources confirmed to Variety. Execs at both companies […]

It’s no surprise, but Shari Redstone will officially part ways with Paramount Global for good once the media conglom’s deal with Skydance Media closes in 2025. Redstone will exit the Paramount board after Skydance and RedBird Capital Partners complete the two-part transaction to acquire Redstone’s National Amusements Inc. and then merge Skydance and Paramount, Variety […]

Popular podcaster Joe Rogan has officially endorsed Donald Trump for president — not that it comes as much of a surprise. Rogan announced his backing of Trump, coming a day before Election Day on Nov. 5, in posting an impromptu episode of podcast with Elon Musk, the mega-billionaire and ardent Trump supporter. On the podcast, […]

Amazon has turned to AI to create recaps for TV shows on Prime Video — starting with its own original series — in a way the company claims won’t risk revealing spoilers. On Monday, Amazon announced X-Ray Recaps on Prime Video, touting the generative-AI-based feature as “delivering a new way to get up to speed […]

Hundreds of employees of the New York Times represented by The Times Tech Guild — the union affiliated with the NewsGuild of New York that manages the technology behind the newspaper’s election coverage, among other things — have gone on strike one day before the 2024 U.S. elections. The Times Tech Guild represents more than […]

Kamala Harris’s surprise appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” on Nov. 2 was “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” Republican commissioner Brendan Carr claimed in a social media post. Harris appeared in the “SNL” cold-open sketch as herself, interacting on stage with Maya Rudolph, who has portrayed the Democratic […]