☀️AMAZON Keeps Buying Movies
UTA changes CEOs / NETFLIX WWE ad 💰 snapshot / ABC enlists Chris O’Donnell
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LINKEDIN here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on TUESDAY, March 18, 2025.
Where GOOGLE is in talks for its next big acquisition, with a price tag in the low $30B range . . . and somehow it’s not going with a company that has static or falling annual revenues and core assets mired in a declining business.
Uh, no, Hollywood studios, I don’t mean you . . . I’m talking about, uh, radio companies of course. 🥴
Instead, GOOGLE is putting that $33B-ish of cash into a cloud cybersecurity company called WIZ, a company that it unsuccessfully tried to buy previously for $23B, which has $500M of annual revenue (on a trailing 12 months/TTM basis).
After all, GOOGLE and OPENAI are now publishing proposals to the U.S. gov’t to allow them to rip-off use copyrighted material to train their bots, in the name of staving off China’s AI advances. How noble.
But given the new YOUTUBE numbers down below today — yeah, I’m pretty sure GOOGLE is fine with just being a wholesaler for your streamers and remaining cable TV networks out there as that business shakes out.
SO: Enjoy your “First Four” men’s college 🏀 games on TruTV tonight and tomorrow, as we enter the roughly 10 days of the year that “justify” what cable TV operators charge you for the network the other 355 days (or you can just stream the games on MAX).
BUT: Don’t tell West Virginia you’re watching — the state’s Attorney General has launched an investigation into the NCAA and its selection process . . . which left out WVU this year, but included UNC — a team with seemingly a worse record, but one whose Athletic Director was the chair of the selection committee.
A selection which resulted in the AD getting a nice $68k paycheck as well UNC getting its share of the TV money for “making” the tournament. Nothing to see here, folks.
NOW: With Conan and Glaser already set to host the Oscars and Globes respectively next year — what are we supposed to speculate about in the last 4 months this year? Oh right, DISNEY succession. Phew.
THEN: The NBCU Upfront will be Monday, May 12 in the morning at RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL.
AH: Nothing like a fun read from the Yale Review (free subscription with your college application fee!), with former VF writer Bryan Burrough giving his insider take on Graydon Carter’s new memoir, When the Going Was Good.
KUDOS: To NYT Games guru Will Shortz who has returned from two strokes in 2024 to his game-making ways at the Times as profiled here in Vulture.
YUP: FCC Chair Brendan Carr has another missive, this time with the catchy title of “Delete, Delete, Delete,” asking for public comment on ideas for “deregulatory initiatives” that will cut “existing rules that have outlived their usefulness.”
Like say, oh, I dunno . . . station ownership caps? Just an idea — we’ll see what ideas “the public” has to eliminate in the American communications business.
HUH: Lotta theories here about this shift 👇, but either way that’s quite a change (sorry MISSOURI — maybe get better at sports? Or have a sorority rush doc shot at your campus).
BUT: HARVARD is doing its best to keep folks in New England, offering free tuition for any kid from a family making under $200k a year (hopefully that won’t uh, affect how many of those students HARVARD accepts each year 🧐).
BTW: MIT, UPENN and CALTECH all already have similar policies.
OH: Here is your NIELSEN Gauge for February.
YT viewing on TVs hit a new high share of 11.6%.
TUBI hit a 2% share, with the Super Bowl playing a large part of course.
That’s the highest share it’s had since July 2024.
Although note that ROKU channel had a bigger share in Feb.
Streaming viewership also had its largest share of the pie to date with 43.5%.
AND: APPLE is planning to include a ‘live translation’ function into iOS 19 for AirPods, which could come in handy on any 2026 trips (GOOGLE Pixel Buds have had the feature for some time).
PLUS: A new iPHONE “Air” that’s slimmer by a 1/5 margin. Perfect for the bulky case you’ll be putting on it anyway — enjoy your 2mm of extra pocket space.
THEN: xAI (aka Elon’s GROK) is acquiring a text-to-video AI company called HOTSHOT, with Elon saying earlier this year that he expects a GROK Video function in a few months.
BTW: 404 Media dove into something I’ve long maintained will be the net long-term effect of the AI-generated video era — your social media feeds will be flooded with it, and apparently it’s already taking place.
ALTHOUGH: Don’t worry about Elon being spread too thin with his new VP job . . . or TESLA, say, losing its edge in the EV market — well, except that leading China EV maker BYD just announced tech that can give its EVs about a 280-mi. charge in 5 mins.
ALSO: JD Vance told NBC NEWS that we should expect to see at least the, uh, outlines of a deal for TIKTOK to continue operating in the U.S. by the Apr. 5 deadline of the Trump 75-day Executive Order extension / delay of enforcing the legally mandated ban.
An EO that certainly could be extended again . . . because simply not enforcing the laws that the President declares inconvenient increasingly seems to be how we operate our democracy.
Larry Ellison’s ORACLE is reportedly in significant talks to run the operation or have a large role in TIKTOK U.S.
WOW: Quite a NYT read here on systemic abuse, slavery-like conditions and sometimes death that some African women get in Saudi Arabia when they come to the country to work as maids in order to send money back home — a system where many African government officials own the staffing businesses that facilitate the work.
About 500k Kenyan and Ugandan people work in Saudi Arabia, mostly women as maids or childcare givers.
The pay rate for the jobs is about $200 to $250 a month.
The work used to be done by folks from countries like the Philippines, until that country insisted that Saudi Arabia raise the pay rates.
Saudi Arabia then looked toward Africa as a source for those kinds of workers in the late 2010s instead.
HOWEVER: Let’s finish out today with this story 👇 from 60 Minutes on Sunday, which shows that even in the face of crappy decision making from leadership — individuals can still come together to make a difference, and the media that everyone “hates” can still shine a light on that to inspire others.
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
