Entertainment:
·
Google published a short blog post alleging that the Motion
Picture Association of America (MPAA), alongside a number of film studios,
funded what was essentially opposition research about the company - the
resulting material was later fed to state attorneys general
·
Danny Zappin (ex-CEO of Maker Studios) is announcing Zealot’s
first acquisition: It has bought a majority stake in AudioMicro, which itself
owns multiple digital media companies
·
VHX is working to make it easier for consumers to find and
enjoy the content that they’ve bought off the platform, with the introduction
of a video library that stores all their purchases in one place, along with the
launch of an iOS app
·
The FBI has officially pointed the finger at North Korea in
regards to the Sony hack
o
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-official-north-korea-hacked-sony-and-china-may-have-helped-2014-12
·
Hulu has inked an expanded SVOD deal with MGM, and gained the
exclusive streaming rights of Fargo
·
IMG has been hit with an intern class action lawsuit
·
THR will be the official industry media partner of Sundance
beginning in 2015, replacing previous sponsor Entertainment Weekly
·
Stephen Colbert said goodbye to the ‘Colbert Report’ last
evening
·
Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton will break his
silence on the devastating hack attack that has brought the studio to its knees
in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria slated to air this Sunday
·
The German government has reversed a cut in funding for the
German Federal Film Fund, which has given coin to Hollywood pics like Wes
Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men”
·
Please see below for an interesting article on Peter Jackson
and his Hobbit films
·
Phoenix-based Cable One and NBCUniversal are obliging with a
war of words as the Dec. 31 expiration of their existing contract approaches
·
Channing Tatum, along with Oscars producers Craig Zadan and
Neil Meron, have announced the return of Team Oscar, a short-video competition
seeking young filmmakers
o
http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/channing-tatum-returns-for-3rd-team-oscar-competition-1201382831/
·
Clooney is pushing for a VOD release of ‘The Interview’
·
Katy Perry's tour broke the venue record at Sydney's Allphones
Arena, and sold a total of more than 350,000 tickets across Australia
·
Vessel employs a "freemium" business model as well
as a windowing release strategy to give payers the perks while also offering
content to free viewers
·
Sony executives received an email from the hacking group last
night with a message saying that it would withhold further data, but only if
the studio never let anyone see The Interview or pretty much any sign that The
Interview ever existed
·
DirecTV has purchased exclusive rights for the pan-American
competition La Liga de Las Américas
Tech:
·
Citigroup raised the valuation of Instagram this morning from
$19B to $35B since it now has over 300 million users (it was acquired for $1B
by Facebook in April 2012)
·
Stripe openly detailed the internal system it uses to achieve
what it calls “email transparency,” saying “almost all” messages inside the
company can be read by all employees
·
Secret 2.0, available on iOS and Android, has added several
tools to facilitate more frequent anonymous connections among its users
·
Rothenberg Ventures launched a VR accelerator called River to
provide a shared office and $100,000 investments to 10 startups
·
Please see below for an article on why Amazon’s Prime annual
membership is too good to pass up
·
For the first time in a year, Oracle beat quarterly earnings
as Web-based cloud software sales surge 45%
Deals:
·
Please see below for today’s top
tech funding stories
·
Xerox has agreed to sell its IT
outsourcing unit to French IT services firm Atos for $1.05B
·
Interactive One, the online unit of
Radio One, has bought Russell Simmons-founded GlobalGrind, an online site
focused on hip hop culture that will anchor iOne's collection of websites
targeting urban millennials
·
Bumble Bee Seafoods is being
acquired by Thai Union Frozen Products, owner of Chicken of the Sea, for $1.51B
Business:
·
The central bank in Switzerland has decided that beginning
January 22, it will introduce a negative interest rate on deposits held by
lenders
·
Apple spent $56 billion on buybacks in 2014
Exec Moves:
·
Goldman Sachs is expanding its board
to 14 people with the addition of two members, Mark A. Flaherty and Mark O.
Winkelman
·
Goldman Sachs has promoted one of
its star deal makers, John E. Walrdon, to become a co-head of its investment
bank
Retail:
·
American Apparel has been approached by private equity firm
Irving Place Capital for a possible takeover, just a day after CEO Dov Charney
was terminated by the clothing chain
Startups:
·
Polling startup Wedgies.com is
announcing that it has raised $700,000 in seed funding led by Greycroft
Partners
·
Neurence has launched its long term
platform play: a machine learning cloud platform for object recognition which
it’s hoping will underpin the next wave of search queries as computing becomes
increasingly immersed in the physical world — thanks to the rise of wearables
and the Internet of Things
·
Everest, a Peter Thiel-backed mobile
startup that launched an app last year to help you “achieve your dreams” is
shutting down - the company had raised $2.2MM over three rounds
Government:
Other:
·
Please see below for footage
and photos of the world’s (recorded) deepest dwelling fish
·
Authorities confirmed eight children,
reportedly between the ages of 18 months and 15 years, were found stabbed to
death at a home in the northern Australian city of Cairns
(I'm going to be on vacation for two weeks, the reports will be back on January 5)
