100% Media Roundup: 25 April- 29 April

This is a daily digest of news stories from around the media world, updated by The Media Leader team, to ensure you’re 100% up-to-date.

Friday April 29

IPG posts 12% organic growth

IPG reported organic net revenue growth of 11.5% in the first three months of 2022. of $2.23bn in Q1 2022, a year-over-year increase of 9.8%.

The company’s net revenue grew 9.8% year on year to $2.23bn.

Growth increased in every region; organic net revenue increased by 12.2% and 1.5% in the US and UK, respectively.

IPG raised its annual forecast from 5% to 6% organic growth because of the stronger-than-expected quarter.

Comcast beats estimates with Peacock growth

Comcast beat analyst estimates on its latest earnings report, helped in part by growth in subscription service Peacock.

Peacock added 4 million paid subscribers in Q1 – a 40% increase – to reach 13 million subs and 28 million monthly active users.

However Comcast’s stock sunk over 6% yesterday as it reported underwhelming broadband customer numbers.

James Corden to leave Late Late Show next year

British comedian James Corden is leaving The Late Late Show next year, CBS announced.

Corden has been host of the Los Angeles-based talk show since 2015, which became popular for its Carpool Karaoke segments featuring music artists.

Though his contract was originally due to expire in August, Corden agreed to continue the show through next Spring before moving on.

Other late night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert also have contracts expiring in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Netflix to lose fan favorite Schitt’s Creek to Hulu in US

Canadian comedy series Schitt’s Creek will leave Netflix US to become exclusively available on Disney’s Hulu in October of this year.

The show, which ended its six-season run in 2020 with a record-setting Emmy Awards sweep of the comedy categories, has been one of Netflix’s most popular shows in recent years.

Thursday April 28

Comcast and Charter Communications to develop streaming platform

Cable giants Comcast and Charter are teaming up to challenge the likes of Roku and Amazon by developing and launching a nationwide streaming platform.

The 50/50 joint venture will see Comcast license Flex, its aggregated streaming platform and hardware, its line of XClass TVs, and Xumo, a streaming service it acquired in 2020. Charter will offer 4K streaming TV devices and voice remotes.

The platform will be available on 4K streaming devices and smart TVs through nationwide retailers when it launches in 2023.

Ogilvy’s David opens new NYC office

Creative ad agency David has opened a New York City office as part of its global expansion under parent company Ogilvy.

David has offices in Miami, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Bogota, and Madrid, but the New York opening will bring the agency closer to existing clients such as Coca-Cola and AB InBev.

The office will be led by managing director Luiza Prata Carvalho.

CNN+ to cease operations two days earlier than originally announced

CNN+ will cease operations today, two days earlier than was originally announced.

The cancellation of CNN’s subscription service was announced last week following the merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery; Discovery executives reportedly had disagreements with Warner Bros. over the new company’s streaming strategy.

Subscriptions will be officially terminated today, and active subscribers will receive a full refund.

Twitter sees boon in conservative accounts and a liberal exodus after Musk’s purchase

Twitter’s userbase has reacted to Musk’s purchase of the company as left-leaning users have left the service while conservative accounts have seen an increase in followers.

According to data from Social Blade, followers of former First Lady Michelle Obama and pop singer Taylor Swift are down nearly 20,000 and 15,000 respectively, while far-right senator Ted Cruz and far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have gained more than 60,000 and 100,000 followers each, and Boris Johnson has also gained 10,000 followers.

In addition, Twitter’s policy and legal head Vijaya Gadde has been met with “vitriolic” harassment from users after Musk replied to a tweet that criticized her for temporarily suspending The New York Post from Twitter after it published a story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Twitter has begun preemptively reaching out to advertising agencies to assure them Musk does not intend to make the platform inhospitable to brands, according to a report by The Financial Times.

Twitch ‘considering changes’ to content creator payment

Twitch is considering reducing the amount of money it pays top talent in an effort to boost profits, according to reports.

One proposal would see a revenue cut from 70% to 50% for the top-tier streamers in its partner program, which could alienate the livestreaming service’s biggest stars.

Another potential change could be the introduction of new tiers to its partner program and loosening of restrictions on creators’ ability to stream on non-Twitch services even if they are a partner.

The Amazon-owned company is considering the restructuring of monetization as a way to incentivize running more ads on the site.

Meta reports smallest ever quarterly revenue growth but beats daily active user estimates

Meta earned $27.91bn in revenue compared to expected $28.2bn in Q1 2022, but bounced back on daily active users with 1.96 billion versus 1.95 billion expected.

The recovery of daily active users is a boon to the social media company, which reported a decline in users for the first time in its history last quarter.

Revenue grew 7% quarter-to-quarter, the first time the company has posted single-digit growth since it went public in 2012.

Meta announced it expected revenue for Q2 between $28bn-$30bn, which is below analyst estimates.

Shares in Meta soared nearly 18% in aftermarket trading, though the stock is still down 30% year-to-date after its Q4 2021 earnings release sent shares tumbling.

Wednesday April 27

iSpot.TV receives $325m Goldman Sachs investment

Nielsen competitor iSpot.TV has received a $325m investment from Goldman Sachs.

The TV measurement company had previously raised a comparatively small $58m in funding over its decade-long existence.

The cash influx will boost iSpot’s ability to compete with Nielsen, who was recently purchased by private equity following widespread complaints about its measurement performance.

The deal also gives Goldman Sachs a minority stake in the company and a seat on the board of directors.

WPP registers nearly 7% Q1 growth, ups predictions for 2022

WPP, the global holding group, reported 6.7% like-for-like growth across Q1 2022 in its latest earnings release.

Like-for-like revenue, minus pass-through costs, totalled £2.57bn.

Global integrated agencies experienced 8.6% growth, and within that GroupM revenue grew 12.8%.

WPP announced it won $1.8bn of net new business including Mars, JDE Peet’s and Sky.

Top five markets for growth included the USA (5.8%), the UK (8.1%), Germany (16.1%), China (11.9%) and India (25.1%), excluding pass-through costs.

The agency group revised its revenue predictions for 2022 to 5.5- 6.5% from 5% previously.

Alphabet misses on revenue, weighed down by YouTube

In its quarterly earnings report, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported a 23% year-over-year sales growth increase to $68.01bn, which was below average estimates of $68.11bn.

YouTube missed its advertising revenue expectation, registering $6.87bn compared to $7.51bn.

The company attributed its lower earnings to the growth of TikTok as a serious competitor to YouTube as well as Google’s halting of Russian operations following the invasion of Ukraine.

Shares of Alphabet sunk more than 2% in pre-market trading, and have been down 18% year to date.

NYT announces new state and local investigative journalism fellowship led by Dean Baquet

Dean Baquet, who is stepping down as executive editor of The New York Times in June, will lead a new local investigative journalism fellowship at the paper.

The year-long fellowship will produce project-focused on the state and local level, and hopes to find up-and-coming journalists from underrepresented backgrounds.

Baquet, the first Black executive editor at The Times, will be succeeded by Joe Kahn.

NFT hack steals $3m worth of assets

A hack of Yuga Labs, the collective behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a popular brand of non-fungible tokens, led to the theft of around $3m in NFTs.

The hack occurred through a phishing scheme targeting Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Instagram followers following the successful hack of the company’s Instagram account.

In a statement, Bored Ape Yacht Club creators said: “Yuga Labs and Instagram are currently investigating how the hacker was able to gain access to the account. Two-factor authentication was enabled and the security practices surrounding the IG account were tight.”

Read more: Too big to ignore? Why attitudes over NFTs in media are changing

Warner Bros. Discovery issues mixed guidance amid Discovery’s revenues increase

Despite declines in traditional TV audiences, Discovery’s profit rose in Q1 2022 thanks to the company’s streaming initiatives.

Discovery’s streaming services, including Discovery+, added two million subscribers in the first quarter to reach a total of 24 million global subscriptions.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s earnings results, which did not include Warner Bros. (which reported earnings through former parent company AT&T last week), showed Q1 net income rose to $456m from $140m in Q1 2021.

However, shares of the merged company fell nearly 8% yesterday as CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels warned against “unexpected projects” and weaker Q1 operating profits from WarnerMedia.

The statement comes following the shutdown of CNN+ just three weeks after its debut.

CEO David Zaslav added the company will not spend wildly to boost its various streaming assets.

Tuesday April 26

Meadows texts show coordination with Fox News’ Hannity

Former Trump administration chief of staff Mark Meadows’ text messages between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden’s inauguration include exchanges between Meadows and Fox News host Sean Hannity, according to a report by CNN.

The messages show direct coordination between Hannity and Meadows.

For example, on Election Day, Hannity messaged Meadows: “NC gonna be okay?” to which Meadows replied “Stress every vote matters. Get out and vote.”

“Yes sir”, he replied, before inquiring in what states the administration needed a push.

The report revealed Meadows also texted journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, Politico, and Bloomberg, as well as NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN.

Meadows provided the logs to the January 6 Committee in December, but later stopped cooperating with the committee’s investigation.

7digital announces eMusic Live to livestream iHeartCountry Festival

B2B end-to-end digital music provider 7digital announced that its eMusic Live venture has partnered with iHeartMedia to exclusively livestream this year’s iHeartCountry Festival in the US.

The eMusic Live platform stages virtual concerts over livestream and will include exclusive backstage content and interviews from the Austin-based music festival.

iHeartCountry Festival will take place on 7 May.

Monday April 25

Law Roach announced as British Vogue’s contributing West Coast editor

British Vogue has announced Law Roach will be the publication’s new contributing West Coast editor.

The American fashion stylist has previously worked as creative director for the Tommy x Zendaya fashion line by Tommy Hilfiger and has been a judge on HBO Max’s reality voguing competition, Legendary.

Apart from working with celebs such as Kerry Washington and Hunter Schafer, Law has been named ‘Most Powerful Stylist of the Year’ by The Hollywood Reporter for the past two years.

Twitter, Musk in ‘advance talks’ for sale

Twitter’s board is in advance talks with Elon Musk to sell the multi-billionaire ownership of the company, according to reports.

Negotiations between the parties continued into the early hours of the morning Monday.

Twitter had previously taken a defensive stance over Musk’s bid, deploying a ‘poison pill’ strategy, but have appeared to reconsider following Musk’s securing of financing for the deal.

Musk’s bid of $54.20 per share is a 54% increase in value over the share price the day before he began investing in the company, though still well off from the stock’s all-time high of $77.06 per share in February 2021.

In case you missed it last week:

• Google rolls out ‘reject all’ cookie option in Europe after fines
• Future appoints UK group commercial director
• GroupM appoints Wignall, Humphreys to leadership in UK, EMEA
• Why Chris Kenna is getting ‘divorced’ from his company Brand Advance
• Netflix mulls ads tier after first subscriber loss in a decade
• UK households with SVOD services drop as inflation hits
• AOP leads by example by adopting image streaming to cut emissions