Month: March 2019

NBCUniversal’s Oxygen Media has been in the podcasting business for two years, but this is the year that the cable network hopes that business becomes a real source of revenue.

Since its debut in January 2017, episodes of Oxygen’s flagship podcast, “Martinis & Murder” — a weekly talk show focused on true crime stories — have been downloaded more than 8 million times, according to Lisa Hsia, evp of digital for Bravo, Oxygen and Universal Kids Media. However, with the exception of one-off series tied to its TV programming, “Martinis & Murder” remains Oxygen’s sole regular podcast show because the company is still waiting to see whether podcasting can generate meaningful revenue before it looks to add more shows and enter the podcast network business, Hsia said.

The post ‘On the precipice of being a real business’: NBCU’s Oxygen wants to make money from podcasts appeared first on Digiday.

Roger McNamee was a mentor Mark Zuckerberg and an early investor in Facebook. Now he has written a book about the “Facebook catastrophe.”

An early investor–and now major critic–of Facebook wants to make the regulation of tech giants a central issue for the 2020 presidential race. Roger McNamee, an outspoken critic and former mentor to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, said at South by Southwest that he’s been advising several Democratic presidential nominees on how to potentially regulate tech…

The internet has rapidly proliferated western culture around the world, but one photographer wants to use artificial intelligence to heighten the online presence of some of Earth’s most remote people groups. On Saturday at South by Southwest, photographer Jimmy Nelson and JWT-Amsterdam unveiled a technology that will use AI to both aggregate–and disseminate–photos of indigenous…

It’s hard to top the baby goats that dominated Instagram feeds last year, but Viceland is trying its hardest with its biggest SXSW activation yet. For its third SXSW presence, the Vice-owned channel turned a downtown Austin parking lot into a pop-up roller skating park, offering attendees happy hour drinks, cotton candy, swag (obviously) and…

Just one day after dropping a Medium post laying out her proposal to break up big tech giants, Sen. Elizabeth Warren appeared at a famed tech conference to detail how Amazon (and tech giants like it) now have a monopoly similar to that of the railroad in the early 1900s, which had to be broken…

Foursquare is using South by Southwest (SXSW) to test out something new–just like it did a decade ago with the original app. This week during SXSW in Austin, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley elaborated on company’s week-long demo of “Hypertrending,” a feature within the FourSquare and Swarm apps that shows real-time visualizations of the area’s most…

The New York Times thrives off of subscription revenue and print advertising. But at SXSW, its focus has been on its show, “The Weekly,” which airs on FX and Hulu. While the Times isn’t in charge of selling the advertising, it’s an investment in growing their brand, said Sebastian Tomich, the Times’ global head of advertising. Digiday spoke with Tomich at SXSW about the success the Times has had on platforms like podcast apps and newsletters. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Why did you create “The Weekly”? Are you going after TV money, or is it something else?
I think of “The Weekly” very tactfully. It doesn’t play a role in the ad business. We’re not responsible in selling the advertising. I think it has residual effects, though, because when you have a really successful TV show, I’m not selling the inventory around it, but it has a good brand effect, and I think it exposes more people to the Times. Everyone’s instinct is “The Weekly” is the next iteration of “The Daily,” but it’s not that similar — completely different in form and in talent. But you think about “The Daily’ and the impact its had on advertising. I walk into rooms of media agencies now, rooms filled with 20 to 25 year olds, and I ask if they subscribe to the Times, and they’re like, “I see [the Times] sometimes on Instagram and Facebook,” and I ask, “Who here listens to ‘The Daily’?” and everyone raises their hand. “The Daily” is the best brand campaign we’ve ever had, exposed an entire new generation. From a financial perspective, I definitely don’t think it would be the most profitable thing we do. It’s a tough game to win.

The post ‘We as a company are very hesitant about our relationship with platforms’: NYT global ad head Sebastian Tomich appeared first on Digiday.