Todd Spangler Ny Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In front of a panel of skeptical and often hostile U.S. representatives, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew tried to make the case for why the popular app is not a security threat to the country — and why a government ban of the app would be the wrong course of action. A U.S. ban of the app would hurt the country’s economy, reduce competition and “silence the voices of over 150 million Americans,” Chew said in testimony submitted to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The hearing, titled “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms,” was held Thursday morning in Washington, D.C. The Biden administration recently demanded that ByteDance divest its ownership stake in TikTok or potentially be banned in the U.S. over national-security concerns given TikTok’s Chinese ownership. Under pending congressional legislation, which has bipartisan support, President Biden would have the authority to ban TikTok under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Vince McMahon has paid WWE $17.4 million for costs the wrestling entertainment company incurred in investigating misconduct allegations against the exec. McMahon, WWE’s executive chairman and controlling shareholder, returned to the company in January after he “retired” from the company last year. WWE’s board had formed a special committee to look into allegations that he paid millions of dollars in hush money to multiple women to stay quiet about affairs and other misconduct. Under an agreement reached with the company, McMahon on March 23 paid WWE about $17.4 million, according to an SEC filing by WWE Friday. That was to reimburse the company “for the costs that have been incurred and paid by the company and/or its subsidiaries, through January 31, 2023, in connection with and/or arising from the investigation conducted by a special committee of the company’s board of directors,” as well as related revisions to the company’s financial statements and other related matters, WWE said.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Funko, less than a year after acquiring high-end collectibles brand Mondo, has wound down Mondo’s movie-poster business and let go several employees — including Mondo co-founders Mitch Putnam and Rob Jones, Variety has confirmed. Mondo, based in Austin, Texas, was founded in 2001 and was previously a subsidiary of indie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse before Funko’s deal to buy it last year for $14 million. Mondo had gained a strong following for its limited-edition screen-printed movie posters. Notable artists who worked with Mondo on its posters have included Olly Moss, Shepard Fairey, Ken Taylor and Kevin Tong. Sources said that Mondo’s vinyl records and collectibles businesses are intact.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor As Elon Musk promised, Twitter’s previous blue check-mark verification regime will soon be history. The social network, which the mega-billionaire bought last year in a debt-heavy $44 billion deal, announced on Thursday that starting April 1, it will remove the verified check-mark status of accounts that Twitter had been verified as notable before Musk’s takeover unless they have subscribed to Twitter Blue or the business-focused Twitter Verified Organizations plan.On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks. To keep your blue checkmark on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue here: https://t.co/gzpCcwOpLp Organizations can sign up for https://t.co/RlN5BbuGA3… The only individual Twitter users who will have verified blue check-marks are those paying for Twitter Blue, which in the U.S. costs $8/month via the web and $11/month through in-app payment on iOS and Android. Earlier Thursday, the company announced that Twitter Blue was now available worldwide.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The odds of the U.S. banning TikTok are higher after the app’s CEO testified before a House committee, according to some analysts. During the hearing, American politicians expressed frustration over what they saw as evasive and unconvincing answers about China’s influence over TikTok — and the communist regime’s ability to track user data — as well as its efforts to curb misinformation and harmful content, particularly in relation to children who use the app. In his D.C. appearance Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said the popular app, used by more than 150 million American users monthly, as committed to ensuring privacy and security. He insisted, as TikTok has claimed before, that the company has never furnished U.S. user data to the Chinese Communist Party (nor has the CCP ever made such a request). Chew talked up TikTok’s “Project Texas,” intended to bring user data fully under the aegis of U.S.-based personnel and hosted on Oracle infrastructure.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Amazon may be laying off thousands of employees, but it’s still selling a ton of stuff — including streaming devices and connected TVs. The company said sales of Fire TV streaming devices and smart TVs have now surpassed 200 million units to date. Amazon, which doles out such stats selectively, previously announced a milestone of 150 million Fire TV devices sold in January 2022.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Say goodbye to Rooster Teeth’s longstanding rebus-style logo of the rooster and the windup chattering teeth. The fandom and comedy entertainment company, a division of Warner Bros. Discovery, is turning 20 years old on April 1. To mark the two-decade milestone, Rooster Teeth is introducing new logos (pictured above) along with a new tagline: “Just Playing.” The new branding will be rolling out over the next several weeks. Last year, Rooster Teeth approached Austin-based creative agency Guerilla Suit to create a new visual brand identity that was “as dynamic, playful and unconventional” as the organization itself, said head of marketing Adam Bersin (who joined RT a year ago from Amazon Studios). “At the core of the strategy, it’s making people realize Rooster Teeth is a digital media company that brings together all of these different interests of our creators… with comedy being the backbone of it,” Bersin said.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor A bumper crop of Steve Martins will be on display in a new audiobook coming out this spring from Pushkin Industries. “So Many Steves: Afternoons With Steve Martin” will be published on May 2, 2023, by Pushkin, the audio production company co-founded by Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. The project condenses a year’s worth of conversations between Martin, 77, and his friend of more than three decades, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik. In the audiobook, according to Pushkin, Martin is “more candid than he’s ever been” about his many lives — as a comedian, actor, writer, musician, magician, art collector and more. Over several sessions, all recorded in Martin’s Upper West Side apartment, “So Many Steves” features commentary about Martin’s creative pursuits along with never-before-shared anecdotes from life on set. In their conversations, Martin reflects on his career, from his early days working as a magician to his rise to Hollywood stardom, and what inspires him to keep challenging himself as an artist. Martin, with banjo in hand, scores the audiobook himself.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor TikTok, trying to fend off potential U.S. government ban over security fears related to the app’s Chinese ownership, is touting new figures reflecting how pervasive and popular it is in America. TikTok announced that as of February 2023, the short-form video app has more than 150 million monthly active users in the U.S. In addition, it said, it has almost 7,000 employees in the United States. And it also claims that TikTok “has evolved into the preferred platform” for nearly 5 million American businesses, most of which are small and midsize companies. “We’re honored to be a home for our immensely diverse community in the United States, made up of nearly half the country’s population, including book lovers, foodies, families, emerging artists and so much more,” the company said in the announcement.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Spotter, a digital media company that pays YouTube creators cash for the rights to monetize their video libraries and helps them grow their fanbases, hired Paul Bakaus as executive VP, product and creator tools. At Spotter, Bakaus will focus on developing products and tools to serve creators and deliver on Spotter’s mission to provide value and resources to YouTubers in addition to capital. Bakaus will dual-report to Spotter CEO and founder Aaron DeBevoise and chief strategy officer Rob Gabel. Bakaus most recently served as head of creators at Koji, ecommerce platform designed for for social media sellers. Prior to joining Koji in April 2022, he spent more than eight years at Google, most recently as head of creator relations where he launched and led the “Google for Creators” program. Before Google, Bakaus worked at games company Zynga. He also is the creator of jQuery UI, a widget and interaction library that has been used by millions of websites to build interactive web applications.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After a strategic review, Amazon intends to lay off 9,000 more employees — on top of the 18,000 job cuts it previously announced, CEO Andy Jassy announced Monday. The latest round of cuts will mostly affect employees in Amazon Web Services (AWS), People, Experience and Technology (PXT), advertising and Twitch divisions, according to Jassy. The company’s senior management team expects to make final decisions on which jobs will be eliminated by “mid to late April,” the CEO said. “This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term,” Jassy wrote.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix is continuing its push to bring out a diverse set of games — ranging from casual puzzle titles to AAA games — included for no extra cost with its streaming plans, on the theory that it will help drive up and retain subscribers. Since bowing its first games globally in November 2021, the company has released 55 games. About 40 more are slated for later this year, which would bring the lineup to 95. In addition, Netflix Games has around 70 titles in development with partners, plus 16 games currently being developed by its in-house game studios, which include one in Southern California built around Chacko Sonny, the former Activision Blizzard executive producer behind “Overwatch.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After more than two years, YouTube has lifted its suspension on Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former U.S. president who was booted from major internet platforms in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. “Starting today, the Donald J. Trump channel is no longer restricted and can upload new content,” YouTube said in a statement Friday. “We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.” YouTube added that Trump’s “channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube.” The channel currently has 2.64 million subscribers. The most recent videos uploaded to it (on Jan. 12, 2021) are clips from the far-right OANN (One America News Network) coverage a Trump press conference on the border wall in Texas.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor MindGeek, the embattled parent company of Pornhub, has a new owner. Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), a private-equity firm based on Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, announced that it has acquired MindGeek. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. ECP says it is managed by a “multidisciplinary team with regulatory, law enforcement, public engagement and finance experience.” Founded in 2004, MindGeek operates a large portfolio of adult entertainment sites, including Pornhub, YouPorn, Redtube, Brazzers, Men.com, Sean Cody, Trans Angels and Nutaku. The company says it has “industry-leading compliance and content moderation practices” that “set the standard for trust and safety,” claiming it institutes compliance measures “that surpass those of other platforms on the internet.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Emmett Shear, longtime CEO of video game-centric livestreaming platform Twitch, announced that he’s leaving effectively immediately. Dan Clancy, currently Twitch’s president, will succeed Shear as CEO, effective immediately. In a blog post Thursday announcing the decision, Shear said he will continue to work at Twitch in an advisory role. Shear said he was stepping down as Twitch CEO following the birth of his first child. “With my first child just born, I’ve been reflecting on my future with Twitch. Twitch often feels to me like a child I’ve been raising as well,” Shear wrote. “And while I will always want to be there if Twitch needs me, at 16 years old it feels to me Twitch is ready to move out of the house and venture alone. So it is with great poignancy that I share my decision to resign from Twitch as CEO. I want to be fully there for my son as he enters this world and I feel ready for this change to tackle new challenges.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor YouTube TV is getting pricier, as Google has raised the monthly subscription fee of the service by $8 — an increase of 12.3%. In a notice to customers, YouTube TV said, “As content costs have risen and we continue to invest in our quality of service, we’ll be adjusting our monthly cost, after 3 years, from $64.99/mo to $72.99/mo, in order to bring you the best possible TV service.” New subscribers to YouTube TV will see the higher price effective Thursday (March 16), and existing members will see the price hike on their first monthly bill on or after April 18. The price hike comes after YouTube TV dropped MLB Network from its lineup after the streamer’s previous deal with Major League Baseball expired Jan. 31, 2023 — and the two sides failed to reach a new agreement.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The White House has told TikTok that parent company ByteDance, the Chinese internet giant, must sell its ownership position in the popular video app or face a ban in the U.S., TikTok said on Wednesday. The U.S. government made the demand citing national security concerns. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), which is an interagency group oversees national security risks led by the Treasury Department that has the authority to block foreign transactions involving U.S. entities, “recently” demanded that ByteDance divest TikTok, per the Journal. 

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor UPDATED: Reddit was suffering an hours-long issue on Tuesday that made the popular discussion site inaccessible for many users — and the company didn’t have an ETA on when it will be resolved. In an update at 2:43 p.m. PT, Reddit’s status page said, “We’ve identified a fix which may take some time to implement, in the meantime ready your bananas (or eat them!).” User reports of problems accessing Reddit’s website and apps spiked around noon PT on Tuesday, topping more than 60,000 outage reports, according to monitoring site Downdetector. The Reddit status page, at 12:18 p.m. PT, posted, “Investigating – Reddit is currently offline. We’re working to identify the issue” and subsequently said the problems stemmed from an “internal systems issue.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After 16 years with WWE, the sisters professionally known as the Bella Twins announced that they are leaving the wrestling entertainment company — and that they are going back to their real names, Brie and Nikki Garcia. “Today we are officially from here on out the Garcia Twins, Brie and Nikki Garcia,” Nikki said Tuesday in the new episode of their SiriusXM show, which is now called “The Nikki & Brie Show.” The twin sisters signed with WWE in 2007 and made their debut that year as The Bella Twins. WWE declined to comment. In the episode, Nikki acknowledged that dropping the Bella Twins identities was a difficult decision but that the sisters felt it was time to move on to focus on a “new chapter” as moms, entrepreneurs, podcast hosts and executive producers. She also noted that they will be turning 40 later this year (their birthday is Nov. 21). When their WWE contract came up for renewal, according to Nikki, they “just knew it was time to head into this next chapter,” per People, which first reported the news.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor J.K. Rowling said she knew her comments about trans women nearly three years ago would land like a “hand grenade” on Twitter but claimed that despite the backlash, “a ton of Potter fans were grateful that I’d said what I said.” “I absolutely knew that if I spoke out many people who would love my books would be deeply unhappy with me,” the best-selling author said in the latest episode of podcast “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” released Tuesday. “Personally, it has not been fun and I have been scared at times for my own safety and, overwhelmingly, for my family’s safety. Time will tell whether I’ve got this wrong. I can only say that I’ve thought about it deeply and hard and long and I’ve listened, I promise, to the other side.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is pink-slipping another 10,000 employees, coming on the heels of laying off 11,000 last fall. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s co-founder and CEO, announced the planned cuts in a memo to employees Tuesday as an “update on our Year of Efficiency.” The 10,000 layoffs represent 11.6% of the 86,482 full-time employees Meta reported as of the end of 2022. Zuckerberg said Meta also is instituting a hiring freeze, canceling about 5,000 open job positions. “Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired,” Zuckerberg wrote in the memo (read it below).

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Rhett & Link are taking shows produced by their Mythical entertainment company — including the hugely popular “Good Mythical Morning” — and packaging them in a TV-like, around-the-clock stream on Roku Channel. The duo’s Mythical launched Mythical 24/7, an always-on free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel with a curated feed of its shows, which include flagship talk show “Good Mythical Morning,” “Good Mythical More,” “Mythical Kitchen” and “Ear Biscuits.” It also features “Mythical Specials,” comprising content from the company’s archives and other special projects like Rhett & Link’s comedy sketches and music videos.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Me want… nonfungible token? Sesame Workshop is introducing the first digital collectibles based on the iconic Sesame Street kids’ brand. The first NFTs from the initiative will feature Cookie Monster, the beloved blue cookie fiend from the show, with the initial drop scheduled for March 19 on the VeVe digital collectibles app. There will be one Cookie Monster NFT collectible with 5,555 editions for sale, priced at $60 each. According to Sesame Workshop, additional Sesame Street collectibles will be released later this year. NFTs are unique identifiers that verify ownership of digital content. The craze for NFT collectibles kicked off in earnest in early 2021 and has continued since. A number of studios, TV networks, sports leagues and athletes, actors, musicians, artists, gaming companies and more have launched NFT initiatives, looking to generate revenue and engage with fans.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Sarah Rosen, who left Twitter last year shortly after Elon Musk’s takeover over the social network, has joined Reddit as senior director of content partnerships. At Twitter, Rosen most recently was head of North America content partnerships, leading all efforts in the region across entertainment, news and sports. After eight and a half years at Twitter, Rosen quit in November, less than a month after Musk closed the $44 billion acquisition. In her new role at Reddit, Rosen will oversee the content partnerships team focused on media, sports, gaming and entertainment verticals. According to Reddit, in the last year, the content partnerships team has expanded collaborations with organizations including the NFL (for the Super Bowl), Netflix (for “Stranger Things”), Lionsgate (“John Wick 4”), HBO (“The House of the Dragon”), Amazon’s Prime Video (“The Lord of the Rights: The Rings of Power”) and the Washington Post.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix picked up big wins at the 95th Academy Awards, including the international feature film Oscar for “All Quiet on the Western Front” and its first animated feature film Oscar for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.” Overall, Netflix won six Oscars on Sunday, after receiving 16 total nominations this year. “All Quiet on the Western Front,” directed by Edward Berger, won four Oscars (on nine nominations), picking up the trophies for international feature, cinematography (James Friend), original score (Volker Bertelmann) and production design (Christian M. Goldbeck, Ernestine Hipper). The film — a grim, disquieting adaptation of the famous World War I novel — had dominated the U.K.’s BAFTA Awards with a record-breaking seven wins, including best film, director (Berger), adapted screenplay, cinematography, sound, original score and non-English language film.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor CNN has scored its first Oscars win: “Navalny,” the harrowing film following Russian dissident and former presidential candidate Alexei Navalny, took the prize for documentary feature film at Sunday’s Academy Awards. The documentary, directed by Daniel Roher, gained new relevance after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The CNN Films/Warner Bros. documentary is a fly-on-the-wall account of the rousing populist who was once a presidential candidate — and posed such a threat to Putin that Navalny was poisoned in a botched assassination plot ordered by the Kremlin in 2020. Navalny was detained in January 2021 and currently is serving a nine-year sentence in a Russian gulag. He has spent much of the sentence in solitary confinement.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In the wake of the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Wrapbook, a company that provides payroll services for TV and film productions, said payments submitted through its platform will be subject to delays. In messages to clients Friday, Wrapbook said payroll-processing delays caused by the failure of SVB — which came after a historic run on the bank’s deposits — may continue into next week. The shutdown of SVB “will cause payroll to be delayed today, March 10th 2023, and impact the processing of uncashed checks,” Wrapbook said in a statement. The company said it is working to resume payroll processing with SVB while at the same time seeking to process payroll payments with another banking partner.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor About one-fourth of Roku’s cash and equivalents — nearly half a billion dollars — has been held in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was shut down by financial regulators Friday after it collapsed. And the streaming platform company said it’s unsure the extent to which it will be able to recover that cash. SVB, after it faced a run on deposits and failed to raise capital to make up the shortfall, was closed by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which appointed the FDIC as receiver of its assets. Roku disclosed in an SEC filing that about $487 million of its $1.9 billion in cash and equivalents is held at SVB, or about 26% of the company’s cash and cash equivalents balance as of March 10. The remaining $1.4 billion is “distributed across multiple large financial institutions,” Roku said in the filing.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After nearly 10 years on Netflix, comedy “New Girl” will be leaving the streaming service to get a new dual home on Hulu and Peacock. “New Girl” will be available on Hulu and Peacock beginning April 17, 2023. Under a shared agreement between Disney and NBCUniversal, Peacock and Hulu will share streaming rights to all seven season of the show, comprising 146 episodes in total. “New Girl,” starring Zooey Deschanel, first began streaming on Netflix in the U.S. in the summer of 2013. The show’s ensemble cast includes Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, Lamorne Morris and Hannah Simone. “New Girl” originally aired on Fox from 2011-2018.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Meta, parent of Facebook and Instagram, said it is considering launching a new Twitter-like social network. “We’re exploring a standalone, decentralized social network for sharing text updates. We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to Variety. The rep said the company had no additional info on the prospective social network to share. News site Moneycontrol first reported on the potential Meta service, which is code-named “P92.” The new Meta app would be based on — and interoperable with — the framework that powers Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that launched in 2016 and has seen a surge in popularity since Musk’s takeover of Twitter last October.