Media

Apple’s main focus — at least for now — will be helping other people sell streaming video subscriptions and taking a cut of the transaction. Apple may also sell its own shows, at least as part of a bundle of other services. But for now, Apple’s original shows and movies should be considered very expensive giveaways, not the core product. – Recode

Fox employees knew that when Disney wrapped up its $71.3 billion acquisition of much of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets, thousands of jobs would be eliminated. But, as they found out on Thursday, there is a difference between anticipating a painful future and watching that feared reality come to pass. The ax fell at the film division with brutal efficiency, wiping away much of the senior leadership at Fox’s marketing, distribution, and consumer products arms. – Variety

Justin Peters: “Listening to the show is sort of like crashing an intense, intimate dinner party in which the only courses are whiskey and weed. … The Joe Rogan Experience has become one of the internet’s foremost vectors for anti-wokeness. With its mellow, welcoming vibe, its pretense of common sense, and its general reluctance to push back on any of its guests’ ideas save for only the battiest, the podcast has become the factory where red pills get sugarcoated. So how did Rogan — the Fear Factor guy! — become the Larry King of the Intellectual Dark Web? Don’t ask him.” – Slate

It is estimated that the merger gives Disney control of 40% of all theatrical box office and puts it in a position to take on the digital streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple.  – The Guardian

Caryn James: “A nude scene! Abortion; birth control; prostitution! In the silent-movie era, Lois Weber’s films were shockingly ahead of their time – and also immensely popular. She wrote, directed, produced and sometimes starred in her films, and in 1916 was the highest paid studio director in the US, man or woman. She pioneered techniques including split screen and double exposure, for a time ran her own studio, and along with Alice Guy-Blach​é was one of the two women who contributed the most to cinema at its start. But she died alone, broke and nearly forgotten in 1939. What happened?” – BBC

Just since the beginning of this year, Spotify has bought podcast producer-distributor Gimlet Media for $230 million and a $100 million startup called Luminary is developing a paid-subscription-only lineup of 40 new podcasts. As one exec said, “The capitalists are here!” Yet, asks Boris Kachka, “What distinguishes a boom from a blip — the beginning of a golden age from a spike of irrational exuberance?” – New York Magazine

Adam Sternbergh: “When you first heard about podcasts, do you remember how excited you weren’t? Do you recall the first person who said, ‘Did you know you can now download audio files of people talking?’ … They’ve spent a decade in a state of perpetual arrival, [but] they’re here. What’s more, these humble chunks of audio have emerged as the most significant and exciting cultural innovation of the new century.” – New York Magazine

Apple didn’t need stars before, but it needs them now. Although the company was the first publicly traded American firm to be valued above $1 trillion, its most recent earnings report showed flat profits and falling revenue. So the plan now is not only to sell devices, but to fill them with content. That has led the company into the alien territory of Hollywood, where local customs can clash with Silicon Valley folkways. – The New York Times

The company deems a community unsuitable for Today In if it cannot find a single day in a month with at least five news items available to share. But the social media giant said it has found that 40% of Americans live in places where there are not enough local news stories to support it. – The Guardian

It survived bankruptcy, the threat of closing and the death of its charismatic founder. In 2014, it became a nonprofit. And now, after 30 years, with more than 132,000 titles — many on VHS, laser disc and DVD — it is as much a cultural warehouse as anything else. – New York Times

More people are creating than ever before, and they’re using the tools that Article 13 will punish to do so. When people have fewer places to share their content or to make money from their content, that’s not helping creators or the “creators industry.” Sure, it might help a very small number of old gatekeeper companies — record labels, book publishers, movie studios — be in a position to demand more money from internet companies, but thinking that those old gatekeepers represent the “creators industry” is ludicrously out of touch. – TechDirt

So The Perfectionists – a show on Freeform “about a scandal involving college students striving for excellence by any means necessary” – premiered Saturday night. The pay channel’s president said, “We have the best marketing and PR team in the business, but even I was not sure that they would be able to create a college cheating scandal this big to launch our show. … But we’re very grateful that they did.” – Variety

As true-crime podcasts, books, and films explode onto Netflix and many, many other platforms, ethical questions should arise. “It may be impossible to make documentaries or write about horrific crimes without causing someone distress. Should that stay the hand of film-makers?” – The Observer (UK)

The CBS Corporation’s directors agreed to a payout of $1.25 million for an investor lawsuit over money paid to Redstone after his health deteriorated in 2014. Is this the last lawsuit around Redstone, his daughter Shari Redstone, Viacom, and CBS? Maybe. – Bloomberg

And yes, it’s in Captain Marvel too: White superhero, POC sidekick. To be fair, “The characters would probably balk at the classification of ‘sidekick.’ Yet they’re designated by the films as such, by virtue of their stories ultimately working to support the main character’s arc. All of them exist to help the lead work through some issue or trauma and provide logistical backup.” – The Guardian (UK)

One of his accusers “said that this case was ‘always the word of a low-level assistant and a perceived eccentric woman of color against an extremely powerful and wealthy TV personality,’ so she was not at all surprised by the news.” – The New York Times

There are spoilers in this article, just FYI – but not in this excerpt: “In addition to [experienced cat actor] Reggie and another experienced animal actor, Archie (yes, they’re named after Archie Comics characters), Brauner found two more orange tabbies, named Gonzo and Rizzo in a nod to the Muppets, at a shelter. Each one had a specialty.” – The New York Times

James Gunn’s firing from the Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was controversial because Disney fired him when “two far-right provocateurs, Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec, threw a spotlight on the [offensive tweets] — written between 2009 and 2012 — after Mr. Gunn harshly criticized President Trump online.” – The New York Times

Famous people who spend a lot of time online become especially defensive; experts point to the explosion of social media for the increase in conflating bullies with critics. After all, bullying has been around forever. Now, there are just more opportunities for anyone to weigh in on any subject they want, and it’s far more likely the intended target will see or hear the criticism. – Washington Post

The studio judges that its “Bandersnatch” project was a success and it’s exploring extending its experiments in letting viewers have more control of the stories they’re watching. But what kinds of stories should these be? – The Guardian

“The new streamer, [called PBS Living and] costing $2.99 per month after a seven-day free trial, will offer classic PBS series like The French Chef, This Old House and Antiques Roadshow, along with more recent series like No Passport Required and Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. The new channel will offer subscribers hundreds of episodes of PBS series across the food and cooking, home, culture and travel genres, with new content to be added each month.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“The 83-person staff of Gimlet Media, a podcasting startup acquired by music streaming service Spotify for $230 million in February, is unionizing with the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE). Gimlet was founded in 2014 and produces popular podcasts including Reply All, StartUp, and Crimetown.” – BuzzFeed

People in a Quebec town and across the province were shocked after learning in January that footage from a derailment and explosion that killed 47 people was used in the drama starring Sandra Bullock. – Toronto Star

The nightly two-hour show, which is carried on nearly 200 radio stations nationwide and boasts an estimated audience of 1.3 million, might not identify as ideological or political, at least not overtly. But Lee Habeeb has clearly positioned it as a right-of-center alternative to NPR, whose programs such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered also emphasize skillful story-telling, but which many conservatives perceive, rightly or not, as inhospitable to anything that isn’t progressive or politically correct. – The Daily Beast

The service’s parent company revealed in its third-quarter financial report “that the money-losing subscription service has fewer subscribers than previously disclosed, causing the firm to restate its revenue downward by 8.2 percent [$6.6 million] and its losses upward by 7.7 percent [$6.7 million].” – The Hollywood Reporter