James Bond has a new home: Amazon and MGM announced a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire MGM for $8.45 billion. From a report: MGM, founded in 1924, complements Amazon Studios, which has primarily focused on producing TV programming, the companies said. Amazon will help "preserve MGM's heritage and catalog of films," and provide customers with greater access to these existing works, the companies said. For Amazon, snapping up MGM -- which has more than 4,000 movies and 17,000 TV shows in its catalog -- is a way to supercharge its Prime Video service with a slew of well-known entertainment properties. In addition, Amazon is anticipating being able to tap into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer properties like the Pink Panther, Rocky, and, yes, the 007 franchises for new originals.

"The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of [intellectual property] in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM's talented team," Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, said in announcing the deal. "It's very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality storytelling." Hopkins noted that MGM productions collectively have won more than 180 Oscars and 100 Emmys. The studio has roughly 800 employees globally.

The Telegraph reports: Video-sharing platform YouTube has announced changes in its terms of services, which confer the company the right to monetise all content on its platform by placing advertisements along its videos from channels that are not covered by its partner programme. From June onwards, content created by those who have not enrolled for the YouTube partner programme will also run advertisements curated by YouTube.

The creators/uploaders will not earn any revenue from these promotions...

"You grant YouTube the right to monetise your content on the service (and such monetisation may include displaying ads on or within content or charging users a fee for access)," said the updated terms of service. "This agreement does not entitle you to any payments...." This was already in effect in the U.S. from November last year and will now be extended across other geographies effective from June. According to industry observers, the change in terms of service is motivated by the fast growing revenue channels from YouTube advertisements. For the March quarter of 2021, Alphabet, Google's parent, earned a revenue of $6 billion from YouTube advertising, posting a year on year growth of 49 per cent...

Philipp Schindler, senior vice president and chief business officer, Google explained to the analysts on what is driving such growth... "Advertisers are using YouTube now to reach the audiences they can't find anywhere else. And remember, more 18-to-49-year-olds are actually watching YouTube than all linear TV combined...." According to official figures, over 2 billion logged in users visit YouTube every month and every day people watch over a billion hours of video on the platform...

"Today there are two models in place - either the subscriber pays or the advertiser pays. It is inevitable that all platforms will follow one or the other and viewers and content creators have to accept that," said a media and entertainment industry analyst requesting anonymity.
YouTube reminds users that its Terms of Service also "already state that you cannot collect any information that might identify a person without their permission. While this has always included facial recognition information, the new Terms make that explicitly clear."

Rotten Tomatoes is continuing on its quest to grow into something substantially bigger than its Tomatometer movie and TV rating scores. From a report: The website -- owned by NBCUniversal's Fandango -- expands its entertainment footprint with the launch of The Rotten Tomatoes Channel, a new over-the-top streaming service that will initially debut on on The Roku Channel. The OTT service will then come to NBCU's Peacock platform and Comcast-owned Xumo, with other distribution deals in the works including with internet pay-TV providers, according to Fandango. The first 24-hour linear video channel from Rotten Tomatoes will loop about 100 hours of premium programming around the clock on the channel, culled from RT's stable or original shows.

With the launch of The Rotten Tomatoes Channel, Fandango wants to expand its audience reach and provide new entry-points into the entire Fandango ecosystem (i.e., to push movie tickets and digital sales or rentals). Some of the shows on The Rotten Tomatoes Channel will include "Countdown," a show discussing the best upcoming movies and shows according to the Tomatometer and panelists; "The Vault," a nostalgic look back at star interviews, red carpet chats, games and more from the Rotten Tomatoes archives; "Trailers Reloaded," recapping the biggest movies and shows with an extensive collection of trailers; and "Rotten Tomatoes Essentials," a look back at movies, shows, stars and directors that defined genres and eras.

AT&T has agreed to spin off its media operations in a deal with Discovery that will create a new entertainment company, merging assets ranging from CNN and HBO to HGTV and the Food Network. From a report: AT&T will receive $43 billion in cash, debt securities and debt retention, with AT&T shareholders getting stock representing 71% of the new company, the companies said in a statement Monday. The deal is structured as a tax-advantaged Reverse Morris Trust. Discovery Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav is to lead the new entity. WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar's future is to be determined, AT&T CEO John Stankey said on a conference call discussing the deal. The plan, first reported by Bloomberg News, would combine Discovery's reality-TV empire with AT&T's vast media holdings, creating a formidable competitor to Netflix and Walt Disney. It marks a retreat for AT&T's entertainment-industry ambitions after years of working to assemble telecom and media assets under one roof. AT&T, now the world's most heavily indebted nonfinancial company, gained some of the biggest brands in entertainment through its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, completed in 2018. Further reading: Jason Kilar, the WarnerMedia chief, is said to be negotiating his exit.

In Vizio's first public earnings report today, the company revealed that in the first three months of 2021, profits from its Platform+ business -- the part that sells viewer data and advertising space via the SmartCast platform -- were $38.4 million. Engadget reports: As execs said on the call, the company continues to court relationships with brands and agencies, following the same plan laid out six years ago with a business built on its Inscape Automated Content Recognition tech. Its device business (the part that sells TVs, sound bars and the like) had a gross profit of $48.2 million in the same period, up from $32.5 million last year. While the hardware business has significantly more revenue, profits from data and advertising spiked 152 percent from last year, and are quickly catching up.

Vizio did say that hardware profits were affected by products getting stuck at ports due to a shipping glut that has impacted many companies over the last year, buts forecast is that Platform+ revenue and profit will continue to grow in Q2, as device profit margins "trend toward the single digits." Vizio said it now has 13.4 million active SmartCast accounts, with viewers spending 52 percent of their viewing time on SmartCast inputs (the built-in apps, or casting from another device). 34 percent of viewing time went to linear TV, with 7 percent for game consoles or over the top devices. If you have a Vizio TV, you can opt out of anonymized tracking by following these steps.

Chinese television maker Skyworth has issued an apology after a consumer found that his set was quietly collecting a wide range of private data and sending it to a Beijing-based analytics company without his consent. From a report: A network traffic analysis revealed that a Skyworth smart TV scanned for other devices connected to the same local network every 10 minutes and gathered data that included device names, IP addresses, network latency and even the names of other Wi-Fi networks within range, according to a post last week on the Chinese developer forum V2EX. The data was sent to the Beijing-based firm Gozen Data, the forum user said. Gozen is a data analytics company that specialises in targeted advertising on smart TVs, and it calls itself Chinaâs first "home marketing company empowered by big data centred on family data."

The user did not identify himself, and efforts to contact the person received no reply. However, the post quickly picked up steam, touching a nerve among Chinese consumers and prompting angry comments. "Isn't this already the criminal offence of spying on people?" asked one user on Sina.com, a Chinese financial news portal. "Whom will the collected data be sold to, and who is the end user of this data?"

NBC News reports on what exactly happened during Elon Musk's appearance on Saturday Night Live — starting with a surprisingly personal monologue: "I don't always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak," Musk said, "which I'm told makes for great comedy." He admitted he's socially awkward and said he was the first person with Asperger syndrome to host the show — "or at least the first to admit it."

"I know I sometimes say or post strange things but that's just how my brain works," Musk, 49, said. "I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars on a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?"
ET Canada notes that Twitter users later pointed out that former SNL castmember (and later episode host) Dan Aykroyd has also said he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. But NBC notes that Saturday's show was focused on the interests and eccentricities of Elon Musk. His mother, Maye Musk, appeared as part of the show's pre-celebration of Mother's Day. "I'm excited for my Mother's Day gift," she said, before mentioning a form of cryptocurrency hyped by her son. "I just hope it's not Dogecoin."

"It is," said Musk, a big investor in the cryptocurrency...
And later in a skit with Michael Che, Musk had also played a fictional cryptocurrency expert who's asked repeatedly to explain Dogecoin. "It actually started as a joke based on an internet meme but now it's taken over in a very real way," Musk said. "It's the future of currency." Asked again by Che, he said, "I keep telling you, it's a cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money."

"Oh," Che said. "So it's a hustle."

"Yeah," Musk said, "it's a hustle...."

Dogecoin tracker Darren Rovell tweeted that the cryptocurrency had, at one point, lost $30 billion in value during the show.
In fact, by early Sunday Dogecoin was down 40%, trading as low as 44 cents, reports CNN: It's unclear what was driving the dogecoin selloff. Perhaps investors wanted Musk to say something more supportive of the cryptocurrency. But more likely, there was some "buy the rumor / sell the news" strategy, trying to capitalize on investors' predictions coming true by selling high. Dogecoin traded so actively that Robinhood announced early Sunday morning it was having issues processing crypto trades and was working to resolve the problem.

This afternoon Elon Musk tweeted a special URL allowing viewers outside the U.S. to simultaenously livestream his 90-minute appearance on Saturday Night Live for the first time in more than 100 countries, starting at 11:30 p.m. EST. The A.V. Club had a sardonic reaction to the livestreaming on YouTube: Good news for anyone looking at tonight's upcoming broadcast of Saturday Night Live — in which labor-busting vaccine skeptic Elon Musk will be given a platform to broadcast his techno-dystopian brain contents to the world — and thought, "Wow, there's not enough Google involved here." Well, not anymore.
Musk has already appeared in a two promos for the show. (Though CNN quips that the tonight's live show means NBC is "relying on Musk to filter his thoughts in real time, despite little evidence, historically, of him holding back on just about anything he wants to say — even when under scrutiny by federal regulators.") And the rest of the world is getting ready too. While Tesla brought the Cybertruck prototype to its New York City store, Lucid Air made plans to broadcast an ad for its coming 500-mile-range electric car that will compete with cars from Musk's Tesla.

Meanwhile, Bleeping Computer reports that Twitter scammers have been hacking into verified Twitter accounts and changing the profiles to impersonate SNL's, then replying to Musk's tweets with URL's lead to cryptocurrency giveaway scams. "We have determined that the scammers have made at least $97,054.62 over the past two days. The Ethereum giveaway scams also earned them $13,758." And the Dogecoin scammers netted at least $42,456.

And this week Slate also noted a spike in the price of Dogecoin. The joke cryptocurrency based on a shiba inu meme is up — uh, let me check — about 20 percent since this time Tuesday, has just about doubled in price since April 27, and as of this moment is up about 26,000 percent for the year (lol). It's trading around 64 cents as I type this... [I]t's probably not worth overthinking this. We're living in the stonks era. Elon is going on a sketch comedy show and is hinting that he might bring up a dumb digital token that everyone finds inherently funny. Now CNBC is hauling on experts to illuminate what the hell is going on, and members of the financial media are having to write earnest explainers about why you should invest in the dog money with caution, as if a single sane person would think otherwise.

What makes the whole rally uniquely amusing, compared with, say, the rise of Bitcoin, is that it's a willfully dumb affront not just to traditional finance, but also to the broader crypto community — which has, shall we say, mixed feelings about Dogecoin, mostly because they think it makes their project, which they tend to treat with self-righteous seriousness, look very silly... Dogecoin is the, well, underdog of the crypto world, the currency that was looked down upon by much of the Bitcoin- and Ethereum-boosting elite. Except now it has an $82 billion market cap. The dogecoiners — basically the sweet, dumb, bong-ripping frat of the crypto world — find all this hilarious.
So what will happen tonight? Ultimately castmember Michael Che, who co-hosts the show's parody newscast segment Weekend Update, joked that while some of the show's performers objected to Musk's appearance, he saw the selection of Musk as both "polarizing" and "exciting."

"You know, what's funny is that I would say I know about 20 to 25% of the white people that get to host the show anyway. So Elon, I was like, 'Oh, I know who he is at least.'"

Share your own reactions in the comments.

From Now is one of the most popular sci-fi podcasts on the market that is now being turned into a TV series, thanks to Amazon Studios. Engadget reports: From Now, which debuted in December, stars Richard Madden (Game of Thrones, Marvel's Eternals) and Brian Cox (Succession) as identical twins separated by time. Madden plays astronaut Edward Fitz, whose spacecraft unexpectedly shows up in Earth's orbit after disappearing 35 years previously. The story deals with the aftermath of the brothers' reunion, with Edward appearing to be the same age as when he left and his twin now an old man. From Now shot up to number two in the overall Apple Podcast charts.

From Now creators Rhys Wakefield and William Day Frank, are adapting the podcast for TV. It's unclear whether Madden and Cox will reprise their roles, but they'll act as executive producers. Madden is already working with Amazon. He's currently filming Citadel, an ambitious-sounding Prime Video spy series from the Russo brothers.

A week after their broken-down negotiations spilled into the public, Google and Roku still haven't been able to reach a deal to renew YouTube TV's presence on the huge streaming platform. But Google has come up with a workaround in the meantime: it's going to let people access YouTube TV directly from the main YouTube app. From a report: YouTube users will start seeing a "Go to YouTube TV" option in the main YouTube app over the next few days. When they select that, they'll then be switched over to the standard YouTube TV user experience. This option is coming to Roku devices first -- where it's currently most needed -- but will also come to YouTube on other platforms as well. [...] Google also said today that it's "in ongoing, long-term conversations with Roku to certify that new devices meet our technical requirements," yet more confirmation that the company is insisting hardware makers implement support for AV1 decoding

Nintendo's worst-selling home console, the Wii U, continues to be the source for some of its biggest hits on the record-setting Nintendo Switch. From a report: With the Switch, Nintendo is putting on a clinic about how to turn prior failure into fortune as it repurposes games from the disastrous Wii U and tries selling them again on its newer hit device. The latest example of this salvaged success is the Switch's "Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury," which sold 5.6 million copies in its first seven weeks of release this year, according to new Nintendo financial data. Compare that seven week total to the just over seven-year total of 5.9 million copies sold of 2013's "Super Mario 3D World" for Wii U. The newer Switch game is basically the old game with a fun bonus adventure. The Wii U was a disaster even by Nintendo's usual cycles of occasional struggle and phenomenal fortunes. The 2012 successor to the popular Wii (remember swinging that controller?) bombed, with just 13.6 million units sold lifetime. Its big innovation: a home console with a controller that contained a screen, allowing players to keep playing their games using that screen when others needed the TV. But people didn't care and it was discontinued by early 2017.

Custom TV show playlists? In memoriam pages? They're all things that Netflix is weighing for "N-Plus," a project it describes as a "future online space where you can learn more about the Netflix shows and things related to them." From a report: In a survey sent to users, including Protocol reporter Biz Carson, Netflix queried people about a wide range of features and content, including podcasts, user-generated playlists, how-tos and more. "N-Plus is a future online space where you can learn more about the Netflix shows you love and anything related to them," the survey said. Contacted by Protocol, a Netflix spokesperson said that the survey was part of regular efforts to poll its audience on things the company was exploring, but said that it didn't have anything further to share for now. Netflix has long produced behind-the-scenes interviews, podcasts and other supporting content to promote its originals, and shared it through YouTube, Instagram and other platforms; examples for this include its Netflix Family Instagram account or Strong Black Lead Twitter following. The survey now suggests that the company may double down on those promotional efforts, while also adding some additional social features.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: There remains "little association" between technology use and mental-health problems, a study of more than 430,000 10 to 15-year-olds suggests. The Oxford Internet Institute compared TV viewing, social-media and device use with feelings of depression, suicidal tendencies and behavioral problems. It found a small drop in association between depression and social-media use and TV viewing, from 1991 to 2019. There was a small rise in that between emotional issues and social-media use. "We couldn't tell the difference between social-media impact and mental health in 2010 and 2019," study co-author Prof Andrew Przybylski. said. "We're not saying that fewer happy people use more social media. We're saying that the connection is not getting stronger." The paper is published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.

A farmer in Belgium has caused a stir after inadvertently redrawing the country's border with France. From a report: A local history enthusiast was walking in the forest when he noticed the stone marking the boundary between the two countries had moved 2.29m (7.5ft). The Belgian farmer, apparently annoyed by the stone in his tractor's path, had moved it inside French territory. Instead of causing international uproar, the incident has been met with smiles on both sides of the border. "He made Belgium bigger and France smaller, it's not a good idea," David Lavaux, mayor of the Belgian village of Erquelinnes, told French TV channel TF1. That sort of move caused a headache between private landowners, he pointed out, let alone neighbouring states. The border between France and what is now Belgium stretches 620km (390 miles). It was formally established under the Treaty of Kortrijk, signed in 1820 after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo five years earlier. The stone dates back to 1819, when the border was first marked out. "I was happy, my town was bigger," the Belgian mayor added with a laugh. "But the mayor of Bousignies-sur-Roc didn't agree."

"After more than 25 years of Canadian governments pursuing a hands-off approach to the online world, the government of Justin Trudeau is now pushing Bill C-10, a law that would see Canadians subjected to the most regulated internet in the free world," argues the Vancouver Sun (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader theshowmecanuck): Although pitched as a way to expand Canadian content provisions to the online sphere, the powers of Bill C-10 have expanded considerably in committee, including a provision introduced last week that could conceivably allow the federal government to order the deletion of any Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or Twitter upload made by a Canadian. In comments this week, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh indicated his party was open to providing the votes needed to pass C-10, seeing the bill as a means to combat online hate...

The users themselves may not necessarily be subject to direct CRTC regulation, but social media providers would have to answer to every post on their platforms as if it were a TV show or radio program. This might be a good time to mention that members of the current Liberal cabinet have openly flirted with empowering the federal government to control social media. In a September Tweet, Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna said that if social media companies "can't regulate yourselves, governments will." Guilbeault, the prime champion of Bill C-10, has spoken openly of a federal regulator that could order takedowns of any social media post that it deems to be hateful or propagandistic...

Basically, if your Canadian website isn't a text-only GeoCities blog from 1996, Bill C-10 thinks it's a program deserving of CRTC regulation. This covers news sites, podcasts, blogs, the websites of political parties or activist groups and even foreign websites that might be seen in Canada...

The penalties prescribed by Bill C-10 are substantial. For corporations, a first offence can yield penalties of up to $10 million, while subsequent offences could be up to $15 million apiece. If TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are suddenly put in a situation where their millions of users must follow the same rules as a Canadian cable channel or radio station, it's not unreasonable to assume they may just follow Facebook's example [in Australia] and take the nuclear option.

"Always the innovator, Elon Musk is crowdsourcing ideas for his upcoming Saturday Night Live appearance," writes USA Today.

SFGate reports: Both Musk fans and critics weighed in, with the tweet drawing over 4,500 quote tweets at time of publication (and 113,000-plus likes from his devotees). One of the top responses skewered his recent move to Texas.

"How about a skit where a selfish billionaire has a tantrum and makes a showy to-do about moving his factory to another state, but that new state is so dysfunctional it has a third-world power grid and runs out of electricity to run his factories and cars? That would be hilarious...."

As a result of his controversial image, "SNL" announced that cast members will not be required to act alongside him if it makes them uncomfortable. No cast member has publicly decline to perform yet, but cast member Chris Redd did jump into the Twitter fray to correct Musk on his use of the word "skit."
Page Six describes more of the suggestions from Twitter: Some commenters suggested ideas, including, "Extraterrestrials found your Tesla Roadster sent to space in 2018 & are trying to figure out what it is," "You play Chris Hansen on "To Catch a PP loan" with Ross Gerber," and, "Something about how it is all a simulation," while many of the responses to Musk's tweets were real zingers.

"You meeting with SNL writers using the same motivational techniques you use with $TSLA engineers. Elon: I need this done tomorrow or you're fired. SNL Writer: In your dreams a-hole," one user responded.

Business Insider reports: Former Netflix vice president of IT Michael Kail was convicted by a federal jury on Friday of 28 counts of fraud and money laundering, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in a press release.

Kail, who was indicted in 2018, used his position to create a "pay-to-play" scheme where he approved contracts with outside tech companies looking to do business with Netflix in exchange for taking bribes and kickbacks, according to evidence presented to the jury, the release said. Kail accepted bribes or kickbacks from nine different companies totaling more than $500,000 as well as stock options, according to the Department of Justice's press release...

Netflix sued Kail after he left the company in 2014 to take a role as Yahoo's CIO, accusing him of fraud and breaching his fiduciary duties.
One FBI agent says that Kail "stole the opportunity to work with an industry pioneer from honest, hardworking, Silicon Valley companies," according to the details in the Department of Justice statement: To facilitate kickback payments, the evidence at trial showed that Kail created and controlled a limited liability corporation called Unix Mercenary, LLC. Established on February 7, 2012, Unix Mercenary had no employees and no business location. Kail was the sole signatory to its bank accounts...

Kail faces a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or twice his gross gain or twice the gross loss to Netflix, whichever is greater, for each count of a wire or mail fraud conviction, and ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for each count of a money laundering conviction.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Amazon has embarked on a campaign to derail a nascent union drive at its warehouses in Staten Island on the heels of a historic union election at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama, which the union lost in early April. On Monday, Amazon began displaying anti-union messaging on TV screens at one of its Staten Island warehouses, known as JFK8, which employs more than 5,000 workers. "KNOW THE FACTS BEFORE YOU SIGN A UNION CARD," one of the screens in the warehouse reads, according to a photo obtained by Motherboard. "If someone asks you to provide your personal information or sign a union card, do not release your personal information without knowing all the facts."

Unions must collect signed union authorization cards from at least a third of workers who are eligible to vote in a union election to qualify for an election with the National Labor Relations Board. In recent days, Amazon has also sent out notifications to warehouse workers on its internal portal, known as Amazon A to Z, with a list of reasons for not signing union authorization cards. "Speak For Yourself: Union authorization cards are legally binding and authorize the union to act as your exclusive representative. This means you give up the right to speak for yourself," the message reads. "Don't Sign Away Your Choices: Signing a union authorization card may also obligate you to pay the union a monthly fee," it continued. "We've only been out there for five days and they're already posting this stuff," Christian Smalls, one of the lead organizers of TCOEW, told Motherboard. "This is a union state," Smalls said. "There are husbands, wives, and brothers and sisters who are in unions. Workers know this is a bunch of B.S. and it's upsetting them."

YouTube TV has been removed from Roku's channel store, after Roku and YouTube TV parent Google failed to come to a distribution agreement amid accusations that the tech giant made anti-competitive demands. From a report: These spats happen regularly between Pay-TV providers and linear TV networks. But in the digital era, this is one of the rare times in which consumers will have a major streaming network removed from their platform's channel store due to a breakdown in negotiations. The channel will still be available for existing YouTube TV customers, but new users that wish to download the app from Roku's channel store will no longer have the ability to do so. Roku is keeping the app available to existing users so that customers don't get caught up in the messy negotiations. Earlier this week, Roku notified customers that YouTube TV may be forced off its platform if it couldn't come to an agreement with Google over a distribution deal. Notably, the dispute between Google and Roku is not over financial terms.

Ever spent way too long browsing Netflix's catalog? You're not alone. From a report: "We've all been there" Netflix Product Innovation Director Cameron Johnson admitted in a conversation with Protocol this week. "People have a really hard time choosing. It's just kind of a human problem." To help consumers overwhelmed with choice, Netflix is adding a "Play Something" button to its TV interface this week. Pressing it automatically launches a new show or movie based on the service's existing personalized recommendations. And if it's not the right title for the moment, consumers can click to play something else. The button seemingly represents a small update to Netflix's ever-evolving TV UI. However, the many months of testing that went into it show that the company is well aware of the challenges that come with building brands around original content from scratch, and the way Netflix implemented the feature sets it apart from attempts of others in the industry to bring a more TV-like experience to streaming.