Tag Archives: NBCUniversal

Weekly output: TikTok (x3), Apple TV+, social-media satisfaction, AMC, TV metrics, NBCUniversal (x2), 5G flavors, Disney, Fox, tech journalism, Facebook and Twitter vs. Trump, Roku, Instagram Reels, election security, influence operations online

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This week was kind of nuts. I knew I’d be busy covering breaking news in the mornings for my trade-pub client FierceVideo while one of their reporters was on vacation, but I didn’t factor in how many entertainment and TV companies would be announcing their quarterly earnings. This put a dent in my ability to follow the now-virtual Black Hat and DEF CON security conferences that, were this a normal year, would have had me in Las Vegas this week. (Hacker summer camp friends, I miss you too and will try to catch up on your talks over the next few days.)

8/3/2020: Microsoft gets Trump green-light to buy TikTok, FierceVideo

I started this week by writing a bit about the biggest story in tech this week.

8/3/2020: Apple TV+ comes to American Airlines flights, FierceVideo

Writing about this addition to AA’s in-flight entertainment gave me an excuse to get a few quotes from one of my favorite avgeek bloggers, Seth Miller.

8/4/2020: Survey Shows Facebook Barely More Satisfying Than Comcast, Forbes

I got an advance look at the latest report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, allowing me to have this post up right as the ACSI published these findings.

8/4/2020: AMC’s second-quarter earnings could have been worse, FierceVideo

This was the first of four earnings stories.

8/4/2020: Time spent on TV viewing soars, says Samba, FierceVideo

My editor at Fierce pointed me to this study and asked if I’d heard of Samba TV; I said I had, and that a friend had tried to connect me with their CEO at CES last year.

8/4/2020: Layoffs loom at NBCUniversal, FierceVideo

I wrote up a WSJ report about pending layoffs for my third post of Tuesday.

8/5/2020: Thinking of buying a 5G smartphone? Finding your carrier’s flavor of 5G requires a taste for investigation, USA Today

We had to correct this column because I said a study released in May came out last year, an error I could only laugh about once it was brought to my attention.

8/5/2020: After a disaster movie of a quarter, Disney bets on Mulan, FierceVideo

The big news in Disney’s earnings call: It will debut Mulan in September as a $29.99 extra for Disney+ subscribers instead of sticking to a theatrical release.

8/5/2020: Fox forges ahead despite ad-revenue shortfall in Q4, FierceVideo

The optimism Fox executives voiced on their earnings call about sports returning this fall seemed unfounded at the time.

8/5/2020: Tech journalism, Lobsterclass

My friend Rakesh Agrawal (aka rakeshlobster on Twitter) quizzed me about the state of tech journalism and how startup founders might improve their interactions with the media for the latest in a series of product-management classes he began in May. Our Zoom chat got interrupted a couple of times by incoming WhatsApp calls that I couldn’t answer with “sorry, can’t talk right now” messages because my phone was already in use as my Zoom camera.

8/5/2020: Facebook and Twitter suppress Trump coronavirus video, Al Jazeera

The reason behind those calls: AJ’s English-language channel wanted me to opine about the two social networks taking down Trump shares of a Fox News video in which the president said children are “almost immune” to COVID-19. So at 11 p.m., I put my phone back on the tripod for yet another video call.

8/6/2020: Roku Q2: 43 million active accounts, $43 million loss, FierceVideo

I wrapped up my earnings coverage for Fierce by covering Roku’s quarter.

8/6/2020: First take on Instagram’s Reels: Yes, it’s a TikTok clone, FierceVideo

In addition to gathering quotes from a couple of analysts, I cobbled together my own art for this story by taking screenshots of Instagram’s new TikTok-ish feature.

8/7/2020: What becoming a poll worker taught me about securing the 2020 election, Fast Company

Security researcher and Georgetown Law professor Matt Blaze’s Black Hat keynote gave me an opportunity to share my own experience as a poll worker with a larger audience than this blog ever gets. We had to correct one error after posting; the National Vote At Home Institute, a non-profit whose CEO I quoted in the piece, is based in Denver, not D.C. as listed in its Twitter bio.

8/7/2020: From Russia With Lure: Why We’re Still Beset By Bots And Trolls Pushing Disinformation, Forbes

Stanford Internet Observatory researcher Renée DiResta gave an excellent keynote on day two of Black Hat about influence operations online and how China and Russia’s efforts compare.

8/7/2020: Trump issues executive order to ban business with TikTok, FierceVideo

I scrambled to get an explanation of what, exactly, Trump’s order would ban U.S. companies and users from doing with TikTok, and Public Knowledge’s telecom-law guru Harold Feld came through.

8/7/2020: NBCUniversal reshuffles entertainment leadership, FierceVideo

My week filling in at Fierce wrapped up with this recap of a reorg at NBCU.

8/9/2020: TikTok’s suitors, Al Jazeera

I usually don’t shave on Sundays but had to for this appearance on AJ’s Arabic-language channel to talk about why Microsoft and, reportedly, Twitter, might want to buy TikTok.

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Weekly output: 5G possibilities, Comcast-NBC revisited, switching to Windows, big-media serfdom, Face ID hack, online abuse

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Good luck with your Thanksgiving family tech support, everybody!

11/13/2017: 5G’s Economic Prospects: Flexibility and Fuzziness, FierceWireless

Researching this piece about possible business models for 5G wireless helped inform me about story angles I’ll want to look into over the next few years. As with my past work for Fierce’s e-book bundles, you’ll have to cough up an e-mail address to read this one.

11/13/2017: Comcast + NBCUniversal Produces Mixed Bag, FierceCable

Disclosure: Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal has benefited me directly, in the form of Comcast PR inviting me to NBCUniversal movie screenings in D.C.

11/13/2017: How Apple sold me on buying a Windows laptop, Yahoo Finance

An angle I didn’t have room to address in this post: Windows 10’s “tablet mode” represents a long-delayed fulfillment of the promise of Windows XP’s watching-not-creating Media Center interface.

11/14/2017, Barry Diller says big media will be ‘serfs on the land’ of tech giants, Yahoo Finance

The media mogul’s pessimistic assessment of traditional media’s future was an easy sell from the Internet Association’s Virtuous Circle conference in San Francisco.

11/17/2017: You should still use the iPhone X’s Face ID even though hackers say they beat it, Yahoo Finance

I’ve written a few posts over the past year or two on the theme of “security nihilism”–the unhelpful belief of many infosec types that if a defensive measure can’t protect you from the most experienced and motivated attackers, then it’s worthless. Maybe this was more persuasive than the others?

11/16/2017: Technical and Human Solutions to Problematic Behaviors, Family Online Safety Institute

I moderated this panel at FOSI’s conference about ways to deal with people being jerks online. My thanks to TeenSafe’s Tracy Bennett, Verizon’s Ginelle Brown, Twitter’s Patricia Cartes and the Born This Way Foundation’s Rachel Martin for making me sound smarter on the subject on a day when I had to function on about four hours of sleep after a fuel leak forced my flight back from SFO to divert to Denver, after which I didn’t land at Dulles until after 1 a.m.