Total advertising revenue fell 13% year over year to $2.5 billion, while revenue from studio content plunged 25% to $2.4 billion during the quarter, which included the disappointing release of “The Flash” from Warner’s DC superhero franchise. - The Wall Street Journal
Warner Bros. Discovery lost 1.8 million streaming subscribers from April 1-June 30, the quarter during which it launched new combined streamer Max. - Variety
The line between film critics and influencers has gotten blurrier. From a studio’s perspective, it’s using both groups to promote a film. Critics provide a stamp of journalistic legitimacy on a project, while influencers parlay their personal brand to put a movie on their followers’ radar. - The Wrap
"Tech sector regulator the Cyberspace Administration of China said on Wednesday that people under 18 will not be allowed to access the internet via a mobile device between 10pm and 6am each day … and young people have different amounts of internet access depending on their age." - Variety
"As a result, the proportion of people watching any traditional TV broadcast in a given week has declined from 83% in 2021 to 79% in 2022, the sharpest fall on record, … according to the media regulator Ofcom." - The Guardian
"In order to provide clarity to the millions of Canadians and businesses who use our platforms, we are announcing today that we have begun the process of ending news availability permanently in Canada," Rachel Curran, Meta's head of public policy in Canada, said in a statement. - CBC
If all discussion of a film’s merits before release is left to influencers, whose driving ambition is to receive free merchandise by speaking well of the studio’s products, what can we expect the film landscape to look like? - The Guardian
"Some recent job listings are for fairly traditional tech-world roles, such as software engineers (who write code) and product managers (who guide projects to completion). And many of them don't appear to directly touch the content development pipeline that has striking writers and actors so worried." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
An individual with knowledge of the matter told TheWrap the AMPTP has not reached out to SAG-AFTRA with a similar request. This suggests that the studios have not yet coordinated new positions to respond to SAG’s demands. - The Wrap
Netflix is looking to hire an AI product manager who will “define the strategic vision for” the streamer’s machine-learning platform, according to a job posting. - Wall Street Journal
"(The app's fast creation and launch) has become something of a marvel inside Meta. … Many see its quick rise as a reminder that well-executed product launches might not need all the bureaucratic trappings that a company with some 66,000 employees had grown accustomed to." - MSN (The Washington Post)
"(The show) made perfect sense. Kids are wigged-out surrealists by nature; it takes grown-ups to regiment their impulses into predictable TV formats. ... Maybe a 5-year-old could imagine something like Pee-wee's Playhouse, but only a genius like Reubens could do it as an adult." - The New York Times
Hollywood has a history of treating evolving consumer habits first as a threat to theatrical dollars and then as a tool to be co-opted in the pursuit of earning ever-greater profits. - The Atlantic
Not surprisingly, "games and adjacent discussion sites like Discord and Steam are becoming online platforms for Russian agitprop, circulating to new, mostly younger audiences a torrent of propaganda that the Kremlin has used to try to justify the war in Ukraine." - The New York Times
But, just like the shambling husks in movies, it's ambling on until someone can fire the right shot. "Twitter was a go-to source for news, politics, sports, and entertainment—along with misinformation and hate speech. ... Each new day, it’s still there." - Wired
