Nonfiction TV producers at the companies behind unscripted series 90 Day Fianc, To Catch a Smuggler and The Food That Built America have ratified new union contracts. Writers Guild of America East members at Stamford, Conn.-based Lucky 8 unanimously ratified their first union contract on Thursday, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Lucky 8 produces shows including Marines, To Catch a...

Online advertising is the driving force in the global advertising market, and the online growth story is weighted towards social media. That was one of the many takeaways from a presentation by Maria Rua Aguete, head of media entertainment at research and data firm Omdia, in a session entitled Smarter Screen, Smarter Ads: The New Era of Advertising at StreamTV...

Indie banner Blink49 Studios is getting into the microdramas business. With Canada already a major production hub for the bite-sized dramas, the indie studio has hired Tieren Hawkins as vp of vertical content, with an eye to making mobile-first soapy series across the country. Tieren brings a rare combination of creative instinct and executional expertise in a format that is...

Layoffs are hitting The Walt Disney Co., beginning Tuesday. CEO Josh DAmaro, only a month into the job, informed staff of the cuts in a memo. A source familiar with the matter tells The Hollywood Reporter that around 1,000 jobs are expected to be eliminated. Cuts are expected in the companys unified marketing organization under Asad Ayaz, which Disney announced...

Global advertising revenue will surpass $1.67 trillion by 2030, up from $1.15 trillion in 2025 and $1.28 trillion this year, according to a new forecast by research and data firm Omdia, unveiled on Tuesday. But, of course, this growth trajectory could be severely impacted depending on the situation in the Gulf, Maria Rua Aguete, global head of media entertainment at...

Netflix has unveiled a deal with the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf) to stream in Mexico the Nations League finals and the Concacaf Gold Cup tournaments, starting in 2027. The four-year deal will make Netflix the exclusive home in that Latin American market for the 2027 and 2029 editions of both competitions, where the Mexican...

Thanks to the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, NBCUniversal with an assist from the recently spun off Versant dethroned YouTube for the largest share of TV viewing in February. Nielsen released both its monthly Gauge summary of viewing by platform and its Media Distributor Gauge for the reach of TV use by company on Tuesday. The stats were held back...

Former Fox News host-turned-podcaster Tucker Carlson is getting his own book imprint. Skyhorse Publishing, which earlier published memoirs by Woody Allen and Melania Trump, is giving a home to Tucker Carlson Books after the conservative pundits previous bestsellers like The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalism and Tucker Carlson Ship of Fools were released by Simon Schuster. It also...

Evan Shapiroraised eyebrows, and provided laughs, during a keynote for an industry crowd in Lisbon on Monday at the first-ever StreamTV Europe conference. His topic, The New Normal in Streaming, led him to talk about such success stories as Bluey and a key fork in the road for the industry, which he illustrated via what he called the battle of...

Over 1,000 Hollywood boldface names released an open letter Monday morning, expressing unequivocal opposition to Paramounts mega-deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. The letter, which was released by a consortium of groups including Norm Eisens Democracy Defenders Fund and Jane Fondas Committee for the First Amendment, counts a whos who of signers, including actors like Bryan Cranston, Glenn Close, Ben...

Lionsgates Laurel Pecchia is climbing at the Hollywood studio with a promotion to senior vp, corporate communications. Having joined in June 2022 as vp of corporate communications, Pecchia in her expanded role will work with Lionsgates Motion Picture and Television Groups on communications around film and television slates and its 20,000-title library sales. She will also manage communications for the...

The Hollywood Reporters Access Canada Summit will return for a second edition during the TorontoFilm Festival in September. And organizers of the Canadian industry conference have teamed up with the inaugural TIFF: The Market during Torontos 2026 edition to offer joint programming sessions and a dual pass option to allow global creators and decision makers to attend both events. At...

The Trump administration appears to be launching a full-throated investigation into the most valuable programming in all of television: Games from the National Football League. Earlier this year the Federal Communications Commission opened a public notice review into the sports broadcasting marketplace, sparked by concerns that more and more sports are leaving broadcast TV and putting their games exclusively on...