Happy Wednesday. Here's the latest on the Los Angeles Times, Comcast, Sheinelle Jones, Mike Lindell, "September 5," Ms. Rachel, and much more... |
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As we all await the Supreme Court's ruling about TikTok, check out Apple's top free apps chart right now. As Semafor editor Ben Smith asked, "Who would have predicted this lineup for Jan. 2025?"
Watch Duty is in the top ten due to the catastrophic fires in California. Threads and Bluesky are high-ranking as people try out alternatives to X. But the real standouts are the potential TikTok replacements, and there are a bunch:
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This morning the #1 free app on both Apple and Android is still Xiaohongshu, which gained popularity in the U.S. among self-described "TikTok refugees" about 48 hours ago. Reuters says more than 700,000 users have joined in the past two days. Sources told the wire service that RedNote's developers are "scrambling to find ways to moderate English-language content and build English-Chinese translation tools."
Some American users have downloaded the app "purely out of spite," Vulture notes, as a form of protest against the looming TikTok ban.
But the overnight interest in this Chinese lifestyle app "has provided a rare opportunity for mass cross-cultural exchange between the two superpowers," Semafor reports. People are posting tongue-in-cheek memes. They're comparing grocery store selections. CoolPlay Labs, a Chinese tech blog, says the app "suddenly became the cyber version of the China-US cross-sea bridge."
I think we should pay attention to the other apps that are rising in popularity...
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Other apps 'waiting in the wings' |
The #2 app right now, Lemon8, is another ByteDance creation, and "on TikTok, advertisements for Lemon8 appear to have ramped up," NBC's Kalhan Rosenblatt reports. "In short, it feels like Lemon8 is waiting in the wings to take over if TikTok is immediately unusable after the ban goes into effect Sunday."
Other Chinese-owned apps could be blocked under the same U.S. law – emphasis on could. As the Washington Post puts it, all this App Store action "shows how the ban-or-sell law may set up American policymakers for years of 'whack-a-mole' with various apps that violate requirements not to be controlled by a foreign adversary."
Here's something else noteworthy: The other top trending apps are American creations that are having a "moment." Flip, a social commerce app with TikTok-like videos, has measured "unprecedented traffic," according to a Sunday message to users apologizing for the technical difficulties. Clapper, which promotes itself as a friendlier TikTok, has added hundreds of thousands of users, according to its official X account. #TikTokRefugees is the top trending hashtag on the site.
Two short-form streaming video apps, ReelShort and DramaBox, are also high up on the charts. As Fast Company recently reported, "they present feature-length films, diced into consumable minutes-long bites akin to a TikTok." Will any of these apps truly catch on?
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"TikTok needs a US buyer so bad it might seek out Elon Musk," CNN's Allison Morrow wrote in the CNN Business Nightcap newsletter. Musk, who tweets about everything, hasn't opined on this possibility. Meantime, The Information reported overnight that TikTok is planning "to shut off its app for U.S. users on Sunday," rather than "allowing people who have already downloaded it to continue using it." This would "bring home the impact of the ban to all TikTok's users..."
>> In other Musk news, the SEC sued him last night "for allegedly failing to properly disclose his Twitter ownership stake..."
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In retrospect, Breitbart was right on when the site asked, last July, if Mark Zuckerberg was "Zucking up" to Trump. Two more examples were reported on Tuesday: Zuckerberg (along with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman) will be seated on the platform at Trump's inauguration on Monday, and he will co-host an inaugural ball reception later in the day.
>> In other Zuck news, Meta "is planning to cut about 5% of its lowest performers with the intent of backfilling their roles this year," Riley Griffin scooped. (Bloomberg)
>> The 5% cut "keeps remaining employees on their toes, likely giving them less reason to complain about other moves from Zuckerberg, like relaxing content moderation, pulling back on DEI and buddying up" to Trump, Martin Peers observes. (The Information)
>> Speaking of... Casey Newton reports that the Meta staffers "responsible for ranking content in the company's apps" have been told "to stop penalizing misinformation." (Platformer)
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Biden's prime time address |
NBC, ABC and CBS have adjusted their prime time schedules to make room for President Biden's farewell address to the nation tonight. He'll speak at 8 p.m. ET. The speech will also be carried wall-to-wall on cable news... |
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There are some big questions looming at MSNBC. Will the network alter its approach to political coverage as Trump regains power? Once Comcast's spinoff takes effect, will the network move out of its iconic Rockefeller Center office space?
But two other questions were resolved yesterday. Rashida Jones confirmed that she is stepping down after four years running the network. And Rebecca Kutler – a 20-year veteran of CNN who became one of Jones' top lieutenants in 2022 – is now the interim network president. "SpinCo" CEO Mark Lazarus made her appointment sound pretty permanent, though. He said Kutler will be hiring a head of talent and a head of newsgathering. He also resolved another big Q: MSNBC, he said, will not be changing its name...
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"In an early morning rant" yesterday, Trump "went off on Seth Meyers' late-night NBC show," Deadline's Ted Johnson writes. Trump said NBC is "run by a truly bad group of people," adding, "remember, they also run MSDNC." He said shows like Meyers are "political hits," called the people who run Comcast "Scum" with a capital S, and said "Comcast should pay a BIG price for this!"
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Lindell ordered to pay Smartmatic |
CNN's Marshall Cohen writes: A judge ordered MAGA conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell to pay more than $56,000 to the voting tech company Smartmatic. The MyPillow CEO needs to cough up this cash because he filed a now-dismissed countersuit against Smartmatic that the judge said "fell on the frivolous side of the line." No, this isn't a massive payday – Smartmatic requested nearly $550,000 in compensation – but it shows how the victims of smears can slowly chip away at the liars. Smartmatic’s more substantial defamation lawsuit against Lindell is still in pretrial discovery. Lindell denies wrongdoing.
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>> This morning Sheinelle Jones "announced she is taking some time off the air from 'Today' in order to attend to 'a family health matter.'" (NBC)
>> Sinclair Television Group is trying to "strengthen its balance sheet." (TheWrap)
>> Substack is "making livestreaming available to all publishers." (TechCrunch)
>> Yesterday's roundup of this week's new nonfiction releases omitted a couple of notable titles. Wash Post reporter Eva Dou is out with "House of Huawei," about the Chinese tech giant. (Reuters)
>> "Hope," an autobiography by Pope Francis that was "six years in the making and one of the publishing world's best kept secrets," came out yesterday in 18 languages. (NYT)
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Wildfires coverage boosts L.A. outlets |
Liam Reilly writes: One full week into the wildfire disaster, Los Angeles-based news organizations are seeing a big boost in paid subscriptions and reader interest as misinformation flourishes on social media. The Los Angeles Times says new subscriptions have climbed more than 250% and web traffic jumped 800% compared to last month. Local NPR affiliate LAist has also seen soaring audience interest, with daily readership rocketing 20 times above normal last week when the wildfires first broke out and remaining 400% above average, a spokesperson said. That's more traffic in the last week than the prior two months combined. And that's not all:
>> At the Los Angeles Daily News, traffic has "increased substantially over the past week," and "readers appear to have found our maps and breaking news updates particularly valuable," a rep said.
>> Local TV stations in L.A. "saw their normal viewership double and even triple in some cases" during wall-to-wall coverage last week, Variety's Michael Schneider reports.
Hopefully some of these new fans can be converted into longtime customers. LAist has seen 10,000 sign-ups for its daily newsletters since the fires started...
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"Shari Redstone, the chair of CBS parent company Paramount Global, expressed satisfaction with the appointment of Susan Zirinsky as interim executive editor of CBS News on Monday — after the media mogul publicly criticized the network's leadership last fall for its handling of internal divisions over its Israel coverage," Jewish Insider's Matthew Kassel writes.
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>> "A group of news organizations, led by The New York Times, took ChatGPT maker OpenAI to federal court on Tuesday in a hearing that could determine whether the tech company has to face the publishers in a high-profile copyright infringement trial," Bobby Allyn writes. (NPR)
>> Speaking of OpenAI, it "is introducing a beta feature called Tasks to ChatGPT, signaling the company's foray into the virtual assistant space, competing with Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa." (Reuters)
>> OpenAI has also "quietly removed language endorsing 'politically unbiased' A.I. from one of its recently published policy documents." (TechCrunch)
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'Sing Sing' in theaters and in prisons |
"The A24 movie Sing Sing is about to redefine the concept of a wide release," THR's Rebecca Keegan writes. On Friday, the Colman Domingo film about a group of men in a prison theater program "will return to more than 500 theaters — and become the first movie to be simultaneously available to nearly a million incarcerated people across the U.S." The screenings for prisoners are made possible via Edovo's tablet computers in correctional facilities…
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>> BAFTA nominations just came out, and "Conclave" and "Emilia Pérez" led the shortlist "with 12 and 11 nominations respectively." (BBC)
>> With "September 5" opening wide this Friday, Sonia Rao takes a look at director Tim Fehlbaum's decision to focus "on the practical and ethical challenges faced by ABC's journalists" who covered the Munich massacre. (Wash Post)
>> "In just under three weeks, 'Squid Game' season two has become the third most-watched season of TV ever on Netflix," Katie Campione reports. (Deadline)
>> Jeremy Fuster says 2025 *should* be the year we "finally get a sense of what the new box office normal looks like." (TheWrap)
>> "Ms. Rachel" is coming to Netflix at the end of this month. (THR)
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