The Evening Paper - Media, Culture and the Modern Condition

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James Brown on the Netflix show Inventing Anna as allegory for voting.

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Maury Povich's daytime talk show will end after three decades.

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Another dark day for one of the largest newspaper publishers in the country.

 

Alden Global Capital is buying Tribune …… a publishing company whose papers include The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel, The New York Daily News, among others. 

 

The deal is valued at six hundred thirty million dollars

 

Why all the gloom? It’s because of who the buyer is. The hedge fund’s nickname is the destroyer of newspapers. And last year Vanity Fair called Alden the “hedge fund vampire that bleeds newspapers dry.” CNN recently called it a “corporate strip miner”

 

Alden owns about 200 newspapers and often slashes newsroom budgets typically by cutting crucial reporters and editors.

 

And they’ve been aggressively expanding. In the last two years, the hedge fund attempted —— and failed to buy America’s largest newspaper chain, Gannett, and the McClatchy chain

 

A post on News Guild dot org… the largest newspaper labor group…. calls the sale —- “a short-sighted view of the value of the company, and an utter disregard for the value of quality news coverage.”

 

CNN quotes Alden’s president Heath Freeman who says that's not so...

 

"The purchase of Tribune reaffirms our commitment to the newspaper industry, and our focus on getting publications to a place where they can operate sustainably over the long term."

 

And if Alden’s playbook for what it calls long teen success is the same... waves of layoffs are to come. Employees and former employees of alden newspapers say those layoffs happen at twice the rate of other newspapers. And the company gains twice the profit … of course. 

 

All this speeds up the slow death of local papers in communities across the country.

 

A blow that tough to calculate until it’s gone and rarely replaced.

 

I’m James Brown and I good you bid night

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Baseball Fans don’t have a strong opinion on expanding its postseason.

 

26 percent of fans told the morning consult that they want to keep this year's 16 team format. the league expanded their format because the regular season was shortened by labor strife abd the covid-19 pandemic

 

28 percent of fans that they wanna return to its typical ten team structure. They’ve had it since 2012.

 

More than a third of fans say they have no opinion on it. 

 

Commissioner Rob Manfred and media partner ESPN have expressed interest in keeping a larger playoff field.  But Manfred says he doesn’t expect to keep 16 teams.

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Nintendo Switch has surged during the pandemic.  

 

The company said it expects to sell 24 million of them by March 2021, up from a forecast of 19 million. Nintendo also hiked its operating profit forecast by 50% to $4.3 billion.

 

A CNBC report says a new version of Animal Crossing brought new consumers to the Switch in its fourth year. 

 

Sony and Microsoft will release next-generation consoles next week, adding to competition for the Switch.

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Pokemon Go has some staying power, this according to the Morning Brew

 

So far this year, players have spent about $1 billion in the app, that’s a 20% increase over the year it debuted.

 

Players in the US account for the biggest share of the app’s lifetime revenue and downloads and they’ve installed on 109 million devices.

 

Japan and Germany are the app’s second and third largest markets

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More than a third of all YouTube views are on tvs, that up from a little over a quarter this time last year. 

 

Collab, a network of around 300 youtube channels noticed the trend.

 

“What we have is a generation of consumers who have been trained to think of YouTube as a TV solution,” said Dave Rosner, a Collab executive 

 

 A Digiday article says the average view time in tv is longer too. 7 minutes versus 3 three and a half minutes for mobile and almost 6 minutes on desktops and laptops.

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A recent lawsuit makes me long for the days yore—-back when i bought cassettes—- and yes i mean cassettes—and  cds—— dvds—- and more—-from record stores and yes even Amazon.com

why the trip down memory lane—- 

Well Amazon admitted in a response to a recent lawsuit that any digital content purchased on site can be erased at any time. 

for any reason. it’s in their terms of service. 

a customer of amazon’s prime video service

claims the company—— misleads—- consumers into thinking they actually own movies and tv shows and videos they bought on it service.

today—- we don’t own much content that buy online in fact we rent everything from netflix and disney plus——to spotify and apple music—- to microsoft office and adobe’s creative suite——

as PC magazine described Amazon’s process—

“the content you purchased will be available until it isn't anymore. That means it could remain attached to your account for years to come, or disappear in a few months if licensing terms change.”

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 jon stewart signed a deal with apple tv.

stewart agrees to come back to TV in a much different world for comedy commentary—- than the one he left in 2015.

back then he was a mainstream yet novel voice in the space——  grabbing good viewership numbers and outsized acclaim for his work—-  for more than a decade—-

today—- his protégés— stephen colbert— john oliver—- samantha bee— and their less successful brethren have duplicated elements of his formula

as has most of late night tv. 

headlines are written about what these hosts think about politics.  many expect them to address hot button issues political issues daily—- often without a shred of funny

the novelty is gone—

 as is the appeal of a self proclaimed fake newsman——

even that phrase means something very different than it did a half decade ago—-

also gone is most of the power of cable tv. 

viewers have fled to streaming platforms like netflix—— disney plus—— youtube and parts unknown—-

hence stewart’s shrewd move—- joining apple’s overpaid—- little watched— roster of shows..

stewart like fellow returning—- cable tv mainstay keith Olbermann, finds themselves rebuilding in a world that overgrew their thrones. 

And I’m betting on Olbermann on YouTube more than Stewart on an obscure streaming network.

the barrier for entry is too high for stewart and he’ll likely get lost in the shuffle...

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