Tag: Media

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Meta Portal owners can now use their devices as a second screen for PCs and Macs

Portal, the beleaguered brand of smart displays released in 2018 by Meta (then Facebook), is reportedly slated for a phase-out as the company refocuses the product line on the enterprise. Ahead of the transition, Meta is releasing new features — perhaps some of the last for current owners, as the case may be — that turn Portal displays into a second screen for PCs and bring the video calling experience to Macs.

Select Portal devices (specifically the second-gen Portal Plus and Portal Go) now support Duet Display, an app that extends the screen of a PC or Mac to allow users to drag open windows like they would with a second monitor. Meanwhile, the new Meta Portal Companion app for Mac puts Portal call controls in a MacOS widget, providing shortcuts for screen sharing, muting and volume adjustment, as well as sending meeting, video and website links to a paired Portal.

Meta Portal Duet Display

Image Credits: Meta

“In today’s hybrid work environment, having a comfortable and convenient working space is more important than ever,” Meta wrote in a blog post. “Meta Portal is now an even more useful productivity tool for your home office.”

Portal was Meta’s attempt to make a splash in the smart display market, which some analysts estimate is already worth billions of dollars globally. Among its unique features were a camera that could automatically zoom and track people’s movements, a mechanism to tilt the screen and integration with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. Meta subsequently released a Portal set-top box designed to plug into TVs and the aforementioned Portal Go, which is battery powered and portable.

After poor sales and a privacy controversy that didn’t do Portal any favors, Meta began shifting strategy, launching Portal for Business in February 2021. The software package allows any Portal device to act as conference room orchestrator, support various third-party calling platforms as well as tie into business applications such as calendars.

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FullStory secures $25M to help companies spot issues in their apps and websites

FullStory, which sells analytics tools for apps and websites, secured $25 million in new equity financing, paperwork filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week shows. TechCrunch couldn’t independently confirm the investors and the company hadn’t responded to a request for comment as of press time. But according to Crunchbase, the infusion is FullStory’s first since August 2021, and brings the company’s total raised to around $200 million.

Atlanta-based FullStory was founded in 2014 by Bruce Johnson, Joel Webber and Scott Voigt, who sought to build a product that helps brands create better customer experiences across the web and mobile. Prior to launching FullStory, the co-founders — all Georgia Institute of Technology graduates — teamed in the early 2000s to start a DevOps company called Innuvo, which was acquired by Google in 2005 for an undisclosed sum.

Originally conceived as a marketing tool, FullStory pivoted to analytics, customer success and engineering after the co-founders realized that the tooling they created to figure out why their initial idea wasn’t working had commercial potential.

Today, FullStory collects and structures digital experience data and uses AI to glean insights from behaviors. The platform tracks signals like highlights, scroll depths, pinch-to-zoom frequency and copy-and-paste, showing metrics and reconstructing a user’s journey with vector-based graphics. FullStory can also search through a range of possible “friction events” to see how often they correlate with a failure to convert (i.e., complete a desired goal, like making purchases). Saved reports and automated alerts, meanwhile, track progress and spotlight anomalies like when a click leads nowhere because of a blip in a JavaScript snippet.

FullStory claims its approach provides an easy way to understand if a customer is, for example, comparison shopping or simply performing a search. In a previous interview, Voigt said a home improvement vendor used FullStory to identify a spike in the sale of garage mats during the pandemic and update its marketing materials accordingly.

FullStory

A glimpse at FullStory’s digital customer experience monitoring dashboard.

The digital transformation efforts spurred by the pandemic have been a boon for FullStory, which currently has over 3,200 customers including Groupon, Automattic, Peloton, Fidelity and JetBlue. In 2021, the company — who’s gotten backing from VCs including Permira, Kleiner Perkins, GV, Stripes, Dell Technologies Capital and Salesforce Ventures — claims to have increased annual recurring revenue by over 70% year over year.

FullStory claims it analyzed more than 15 billion user sessions in 2021, including nearly 1 trillion clicks, text highlights and scrolls.

“As people manage more of their work and personal lives online, companies across industries have embraced FullStory for the insights they need to deliver premium digital products and experiences,” Voigt said in a recent press release. “FullStory’s comprehensive DXI platform provides a unique view of real user behavior and surfaces the ‘unknown unknowns’ to drive product analytics, UX research, conversion optimization, and more.”

Building differentiated digital experiences is plainly challenging. Fifty-eight percent of customers believe most brands’ experiences have little to no impact on what they end up buying and nearly half can’t tell the difference between experiences, according to a Gartner poll. Part of the problem lies with the C-suite, which continues to push for digital experiences without thorough bug testing and fully understanding what would motivate their customers to try them.

Dead links, glitches and unsubmittable forms can litter companies’ apps and websites. Not only do these present barriers to work and leisure, they can lead to overwhelmed customer service teams, staff shortages and hours-long wait times. Customers rarely forgive — 64% admit to having jumped to a competitor following a poor customer experience.

The demand for more thoughtful deployments has benefited not only FullStory but its rivals in the digital customer experience analytics space, like Clootrack. Glassbox and Decibel are perhaps the most formidable, having raised tens of millions in venture capital between them.

Keen to set the pace (or at the least maintain it), FullStory expanded its leadership team in 2021, hiring Edelita Tichepco as CFO and Google veteran Jim Miller as VP of recruitment. Will Schnabel also joined the company as SVP of alliances and partnerships, bringing experience in forging partnerships and integrations from his time at Accenture and IBM Watson.

FullStory also more than doubled its headcount in 2021 to over 500 employees, with teams around the globe including San Francisco, London, Sydney, and Singapore beyond Atlanta. 

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Businesses including Stitch Fix are already experimenting with DALL-E 2

It’s been just a few weeks since OpenAI began allowing customers to commercially use images created by DALL-E 2, its remarkably powerful AI text-to-image system. But in spite of the current technical limitations and lack of volume licensing, not to mention API, some pioneers say they’re already testing the system for various business use cases — awaiting the day when DALL-E 2 becomes stable enough to deploy into production.

Stitch Fix, the online service that uses recommendation algorithms to personalize apparel, says it has experimented with DALL-E 2 to visualize its products based on specific characteristics like color, fabric and style. For example, if a Stitch Fix customer asked for a “high-rise, red, stretchy, skinny jean” during the pilot, DALL-E 2 was tapped to generate images of that item, which a stylist could use to match with a similar product in Stitch Fix’s inventory.

“DALL-E 2 helps us surface the most informative characteristics of a product in a visual way, ultimately helping stylists find the perfect item that matches what a client has requested in their written feedback,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch via email.

Stitch Fix DALL-E 2

A DALL-E 2 generation from Stitch Fix’s pilot. The prompt was: “soft, olive green, great color, pockets, patterned, cute texture, long, cardigan.” Image Credits: OpenAI

Of course, DALL-E 2 has quirks — some of which are giving early corporate users pause. Eric Silberstein, the VP of data science at e-commerce startup Klaviyo, outlines in a blog post his mixed impressions of the system as a potential marketing tool.

He notes that facial expressions on human models generated by DALL-E 2 tend to be inappropriate and muscles and joints disproportionate, and that the system doesn’t always perfectly understand instructions. When Silberstein asked DALL-E 2 to create an image of a candle on a wooden table against a gray background, DALL-E 2 sometimes erased the candle’s lid and blended it into the desk or added an incongruous rim around the candle.

DALL-E 2 Eric Silberstein

Silberstein’s experiments with DALL-E 2 for product visualization. Image Credits: OpenAI

“For photos with humans and photos of humans modeling products, it could not be used as is,” Silberstein wrote. Still, he said he’d consider using DALL-E 2 for tasks like giving starting points for edits and conveying ideas to graphic artists. “For stock photos without humans and illustrations without specific branding guidelines, DALL·E 2, to my non-expert eye, could reasonably replace the ‘old way’ right now,” Silberstein continued.

Editors at Cosmopolitan came to a similar conclusion when they teamed up with digital artist Karen X. Cheng to create a cover for the magazine using DALL-E 2. Arriving at the final cover took very specific prompting from Cheng, which the editors said is illustrative of DALL-E 2’s limitation as an art generator.

But the AI weirdness works sometimes — as a feature, rather than a bug. For its Draw Ketchup campaign, Heinz had DALL-E 2 generate a series of images of ketchup bottles using natural language terms like “ketchup,” “ketchup art,” “fuzzy ketchup,” “ketchup in space” and “ketchup renaissance.” The company invited fans to send their own prompts, which Heinz curated and shared across its social channels.

Heinz DALL-E 2

Heinz bottles as “imagined” by DALL-E 2, a part of Heinz’ recent ad campaign. Image Credits: OpenAI

“With AI imagery dominating news and social feeds, we saw a natural opportunity to extend our ‘Draw Ketchup’ campaign; rooted in the insight that Heinz is synonymous with the word ketchup — to test this theory in the AI space,” Jacqueline Chao, senior brand manager for Heinz, said in a press release.

Clearly, DALL-E 2-driven campaigns can work when AI is the subject. But several DALL-E 2 business users say they’ve wielded the system to generate assets that don’t bear the telltale signs of AI constraints.

Jacob Martin, a software engineer, used DALL-E 2 to create a logo for OctoSQL, an open source project he’s developing. For around $30 — roughly the cost of logo design services on Fiverr — Martin ended up with a cartoon image of an octopus that looks human-illustrated to the naked eye.

“The end result isn’t ideal, but I’m very happy with it,” Martin wrote in a blog post. “As far as DALL-E 2 goes, I think right now it’s still very much in a “’first iteration’ phase for most bits and purposes — the main exception being pencil sketches; those are mind-blowingly good … I think the real breakthrough will come when DALL-E 2 gets 10x-100x cheaper and faster.”

DALL-E 2 OctoSQL

The OctoSQL logo, generated after several attempts with DALL-E 2. Image Credits: OpenAI

One DALL-E 2 user — Don McKenzie, the head of design at dev startup Deephaven — took the idea a step further. He tested applying the system to generate thumbnails on the company’s blog, motivated by the idea that posts with images get much more engagement than those without.

“As a small team of mostly engineers, we don’t have the time or budget to commission custom artwork for every one of our blog posts,” McKenzie wrote in a blog post. “Our approach so far has been to spend 10 minutes scrolling through tangentially related but ultimately ill-fitting images from stock photo sites, download something not terrible, slap it in the front matter and hit publish.”

After spending a weekend and $45 in credits, McKenzie says he was able to replace 100 or so blog posts with DALL-E 2-generated images. It took finagling with the prompts to get the best results, but McKenzie says it was well worth the effort.

“On average, I would say it took a couple of minutes and about four to five prompts per blog post to get something I was happy with,” he wrote. “We were spending more on money and time on stock images a month, with a worse result.”

For companies without the time to spend on brainstorming prompts, there’s already a startup trying to commercialize DALL-E 2’s asset-generating capabilities. Unstock.ai, built on top of DALL-E 2, promises “high-quality images and illustrations on demand” — for no charge, at the moment. Customers enter a prompt (e.g., “Top view of three goldfish in a bowl”) and then choose a preferred style (vector art, photorealistic, penciled) to create images, which can be cropped and resized.

Unstock.ai essentially automates prompt engineering, a concept in AI that looks to embed a task description in text. The idea is to provide an AI system detailed instructions so that it reliably accomplishes the thing being asked of it; in general, the results for a prompt like “Film still of a woman drinking coffee, walking to work, telephoto” will be much more consistent than “A woman walking.”

It’s likely a harbinger of applications to come. When contacted for comment, OpenAI declined to share numbers around DALL-E 2’s business users. But anecdotally, the demand appears to be there. Unofficial workarounds to DALL-E 2’s lack of API have sprung up across the web, strung together by devs eager to build the system into apps, services, websites and even video games.

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Walmart is reportedly looking at deals with streaming services

Walmart’s membership program Walmart+ may bundle with a streaming service. The report comes from the New York Times and sparks conversation about the strange idea of the retail giant entering the streaming world. Sources told the outlet that Walmart was in talks with major media companies such as Paramount (Paramount+), Disney (Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu) and Comcast (Peacock).

Given the rivalry with Amazon and its Prime membership program, Walmart exploring a streaming deal could give it an opportunity to attempt its own service that is similar to Amazon Prime. The company declined to comment to TechCrunch.

While it remains unconfirmed that Paramount+, Disney+ or Peacock could strike an agreement with the company, it would be an interesting development in the streaming landscape. The idea isn’t far-fetched either, as a Walmart+ membership, which is $12.95 per month, provides members a free six-month subscription to Spotify Premium, on top of free delivery and discounted gas prices.

Wireless providers such as Verizon and T-Mobile have also struck deals with streaming services, offering similar bundles to customers. Verizon offers The Disney Bundle (Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu) to users with select Verizon Unlimited plans. T-Mobile gives customers access to Netflix and a year of Apple TV+ and Paramount+. AT&T recently re-extended its agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery, giving customers the ability to watch HBO Max with their plans.

This also wouldn’t be Walmart’s first time trying to get into the streaming market. The company bought on-demand video service Vudu in 2010 but it could not keep up with its competitors and sold Vudu to Comcast-owned Fandango in 2020. Walmart has also invested in Eko, an interactive video company.

Roku partnered with Walmart in June, a deal that brought shoppable ads to the streaming platform and united Roku’s 61.3 million subscribers with a retailer that reported a total revenue of $141.6 billion in Q1 2022.

Walmart is selling its on-demand video service Vudu to Fandango

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Snapchat officially introduces parental controls through a new ‘Family Center’ feature

Snapchat today is rolling out its first set of parental controls, after announcing last October it was developing tools that would allow parents to gain better visibility into how their teens used the social networking app. The update follows the launches of similar parental control features across other apps favored by teens, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

To use the new feature, known as Family Center, parents or guardians will need to install the Snapchat app on their own device in order to link their account to their teens through an opt-in invite process.

Once configured, parents will be able to see which accounts the teen is having conversations with on the app over the past seven days, without being able to view the content of those messages. They’ll also be able to view the teen’s friend list and report potential abuse to Snap’s Trust & Safety team for review. These are essentially the same features TechCrunch reported earlier this year were in development.

Snapchat’s parental control features spotted in development

Parents can access the new controls either from the app’s Profile Settings or by searching for “family center” or related terms from the app’s Search feature.

Snap notes the feature is only available to parents and teens aged 13 through 18 as the app is not meant to be used by younger users. The launch comes on the heels of increased pressure on social networks to better protect their minor users from harm both in the U.S. and abroad. This has led big tech companies to introduce parental controls and other safety features to comply with E.U. laws and expected U.S. regulations.

Other social networks have introduced more expansive parental controls compared with what’s available at launch from Snapchat’s Family Center. For example, TikTok allows parents to set screen time controls, enable a more “restricted mode” for younger users, turn off search, set accounts to private, restrict messaging as well as who can view the teen’s likes and who can comment on their posts, among other things. Instagram also includes support for time limits set by parents alongside its parental controls.

Snap, however, points out that it doesn’t require as many parental controls because of how its app was designed in the first place.

Image Credits: Snap

By default, teens have to be mutual friends to begin communicating — so there’s a reduced risk of them receiving unwanted messages from potential predators. Friend lists are private and teens aren’t allowed to have public profiles. In addition, teenage users only show up as “Suggested Friends” or in search results when they have mutual friends in common with the user on the app, which also limits their exposure.

That said, parents’ concern over Snapchat isn’t limited to fears of unwanted contact between teens and potentially dangerous adults.

At its core, Snapchat’s disappearing messages feature makes it easier for teens to engage in bullying, abuse and other inappropriate behavior, like sexting. As a result, Snap has been the subject of multiple lawsuits from grieving parents whose teens committed suicide. They claim that Snap’s platform helped facilitate online bullying, which has since led the company to revamp its policies and limit access to its developer tools. It also cut off friend-finding apps which had encouraged users to share their personal information with strangers — a common avenue for child predators to reach younger, vulnerable Snapchat users.

Sexting has also been an issue of multiple lawsuits. Most recently, a teenage girl initiated a class-action lawsuit against Snapchat which alleges its designers have done nothing to protect against the sexual exploitation of girls using its service.

Image Credits: Snap

With Snapchat’s new Family Center, the company is giving parents some insight into teens’ use of the app — but not enough to fully prevent abuse or exploitation, as it favors maintaining the teen’s privacy.

For parents, the ability to view a teen’s friends’ list doesn’t necessarily help them understand if those contacts are safe. And parents don’t always know the names of all their teens’ classmates and acquaintances, only those of their closer friends. Snap also doesn’t allow parents to block their teens from sending photos to friends privately, nor has it implemented a feature similar to Apple’s iMessage technology which automatically intervenes to warn parents when sexually explicit images are being sent in chats. (Though it does now tap into CSAI Matching technology to remove known abuse material.)

The Family Center also offers no controls over if and how their teen can engage with the app’s Spotlight feature, a TikTok clone of short videos. Nor can parents control whether or not their teen’s live location can be shared on the in-app Snap Map. And parents can’t control who their teens can add as friends.

The company’s Discover section is ignored by the parental controls, as well.

In a Congressional hearing last year, Snap had been asked to defend why some content in its Discover section was clearly aimed at adults — like invites to sexualized video games, articles about going to bars or those about porn, and other items that seemed out of sync with the app’s age rating of 13+. The new Family Center offers no control over this part of the app, which includes a sizable amount of clickbait content.

YouTube and Snapchat were asked to defend their apps’ age ratings in Senate hearing

We’ve found this section consistently features intentionally shocking photos and medical images  — similar to the low-value clickbait articles and ads you’ll see smattered across the web.

At the time of writing, a quick scroll through Discover uncovered various articles designed to frighten or alarm — at least three articles featured photos of giant spiders. Another was about a parent who murdered her children. One story focused on Japan’s suicide forest and another was about people who died at theme parks. There was also a story of a teacher caught “cheating with” (its words) a 12-year-old student — a truly disgusting way to title a story about child sexual abuse. And there were multiple photos of rare medical conditions that should probably be left to a doctor’s viewing, not shown to younger teens.

Snap says a future update will introduce “content controls” for parents and the ability for teens to notify their parents when they report an account or a piece of content to Snap’s safety team.

“While we closely moderate and curate both our content and entertainment platforms, and don’t allow unvetted content to reach a large audience on Snapchat, we know each family has different views on what content is appropriate for their teens and want to give them the option to make those personal decisions,” a Snap spokesperson said of the upcoming parental control features.

The company added it would continue to add other controls after gaining more feedback from parents and teens.

Snapchat says it’s getting better at finding illicit drug dealers before users do

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HBO Max attempts to fix its notoriously buggy app with oft-requested features

For years, HBO Max has been under fire for its buggy app. Today, the streaming service’s re-platformed app completed its global rollout on desktop, iOS, Android and Amazon Fire tablets. New features include a shuffle button on mobile, SharePlay support for iPhone and iPad users in the U.S., a dedicated home for downloaded content and more.

With the shuffle button now on mobile devices in addition to desktop and connected TV apps, users can randomize which episode to play for select series on the streaming service. U.S. subscribers with an ad-free subscription can use SharePlay on their iPhone or iPad to watch HBO Max content in sync with friends or family while on FaceTime.

Other updates include:

  • A dedicated home for downloaded content
  • Tablet support for both landscape and portrait orientations
  • Chromecast stability improvements
  • An updated screen reader experience with better navigation elements and functionality
  • The ability to split screens with other apps on devices that allow that

The company also said that it upgraded the navigation and is giving users a “refined design and visual styling to let content shine.”

“The changes give our users more of the features they care most about, along with improved navigation and a more immersive canvas for storytelling, helping them click play on their favorite content faster and with less friction,” Kamyar Keshmiri, SVP, Product Design, Warner Bros. Discovery Streaming, said in an official statement.

The revamped mobile and desktop apps mean that the company has finished updating apps across all platforms.

The changes began last fall when the company replaced connected TV apps with a new, “more performant tech stack.” In April, HBO Max launched an updated app for Apple TV users that aimed to bring stability and improved performance to the app. Roku, PlayStation, Android, Samsung, LG, Vizio and more smart TV apps also use the new tech stack.

With a loss of 300,000 domestic subscribers in Q2, the company has a lot of work to do. Especially since its new streaming service is coming next year, merging Discovery+ and HBO Max content. So, while the new HBO Max app will be gone in 2023, this could help the company create a better successor app and improved experience for its combined subscribers.

Also, the new app comes just in time for the “Game of Thrones” prequel “The House of the Dragon,” premiering on August 21.

Get ready for an HBO Max – Discovery+ mashup app in 2023

 

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Less than 1% of Netflix’s subscribers want to play its mobile games

As Netflix struggles to keep consumers subscribed to its streaming service, its mobile games venture is looking like a flop. CNBC reported that according to Apptopia, Netflix games have been downloaded 23.3 million times in total, and on average, there are 1.7 million daily users. This means that less than 1% of the streaming giant’s subscriber base—around 221 million subscribers—are interested in Netflix’s games.

Netflix told TechCrunch it doesn’t disclose the number of players. However, the app analytics company Apptopia’s report can shed light on just how unpopular its gaming offering is.

In comparison, leading mobile games like Subway Surfers, Roblox, and Among Us each have over 100 million downloads, per Apptopia. Netflix has a long way to go before it can reach this level of popularity.

Netflix recently lost nearly one million subscribers, so it’s not hard to see why the company wants to invest in more games. Netflix Games launched in 2021, and currently offers over 25 games through the Netflix mobile app. The company intends to double its catalog by the end of 2022 and release over 50 games.

While Netflix hasn’t disclosed how much it’s spending to develop its mobile game division, the company has acquired three game studios, Boss Fight Entertainment, Night School Studio, and Next Games. As TechCrunch has previously reported, the Next Games acquisition cost the streamer approximately $72 million.

In July, Netflix announced three new games, including award-winning titles Into the Breach and Before Your Eyes. Its catalog also includes a variety of games connected to popular Netflix shows, like “Stranger Things,” “Queens Gambit,” “Shadow and Bone,” and “Too Hot to Handle.” If Netflix continues exploring leveraging its own IP for new games, that approach could draw in more subscribers.

However, shows that have been out for a while and don’t have a solid fan base probably won’t do as well as games based on “hot” series like “Stranger Things” for example. When season four of “Stranger Things” premiered, the two Netflix games based on the show– Stranger Things: 1984 and Stranger Things 3: The Game–saw a bump in downloads, Apptopia told TechCrunch.

To play a Netflix mobile game, subscribers can find them free in the streaming app in the dedicated games row. Players are redirected to download a separate app for each game. Once downloaded, only Netflix subscribers can play the games, which are available on Android and iOS devices.

Netflix emulates life flashing before your eyes with its new Before Your Eyes mobile game

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HBO, HBO Max and Discovery+ report a combined total of 92.1M subscribers, plans for major restructuring

Warner Bros. Discovery revealed its second-quarter results — its first quarterly earnings since the $43 billion merger.

The total number of direct-to-consumer subscribers across HBO, HBO Max and Discovery+ was 92.1 million in the second quarter of 2022, up 1.7 million from the end of Q1 with 90.4 million subscribers. The company did not break down the over-the-top streaming services’ numbers individually, so it’s unclear what the exact number is in terms of HBO Max and Discovery+ subscriptions.

The company also reported a loss of 300,000 domestic subscribers, a decrease from 53.3 million to 53 million.

In the prior quarter, WarnerMedia had reported a combined 76.8 million HBO and HBO Max subscribers and Discovery+ had 24 million. The total topped 100 million subscribers. The discrepancy with today’s numbers is due to how the previous owner, AT&T, had counted wireless customers on plans that bundled HBO Max.

When announcing Q2 results, Warner Bros. Discovery wrote in its letter, “The new definition resulted in the exclusion of 10 million legacy Discovery non-core subscribers and unactivated AT&T mobility subscribers from the Q1 subscriber count.”

During its earnings call, the company disclosed that the upcoming combined streaming service will launch in the U.S. in the summer of 2023, with Latin America to follow that same year. It will rollout in European markets and Asia Pacific territories in 2024. Warner Bros. Discovery also said it was exploring a free ad-supported tier.

“Once our SVOD service is firmly established in the market, we see real potential and are exploring the opportunity for a fast or free ad-supported streaming offering that will give consumers who do not want to pay a subscription fee access to great library content, while at the same time serving as an entry point to our premium service,” the company stated.

In June, AT&T also dropped its plan for new customers that gave users HBO Max as a bundled perk. However, announced in the Q2 results, Warner Bros. Discovery said it re-extended its agreement with AT&T.

“AT&T continues to be an important partner, and we are thrilled that HBO Max will continue to be part of AT&T internet and mobility plans,” said Scott Miller, executive vice president, Distribution, Warner Bros. Discovery, in a statement.

Although Wall Street expected $11.91 billion in revenue, the company missed the mark this quarter with a reported $9.8 million in revenue. Warner Bros. Discovery experienced a net loss of $3.4 million, which includes $1 million of restructuring “and other charges,” according to the report.

Discovery and WarnerMedia reported separate and very different results last quarter. While WarnerMedia’s operating income declined 32.7% year over year, Discovery saw an increase of 13%, with its total revenue at $3.16 million.

The company has a debt load of around $53 billion and is cutting costs to reach a target of $3 billion in savings. This could explain the alterations to its content lineup as well as rumored staff changes.

For instance, The Wrap heard from sources that layoffs were expected in the coming months due to the restructuring of streaming platforms HBO Max and Discovery+. One source reported that 70% of the development staff may be laid off. While layoffs are standard when it comes to company mergers, some sources speculate that the move will result in HBO Max losing executives, and a line will be drawn to separate scripted and unscripted content operations.

TechCrunch reached out to the company for comment and is awaiting a response.

During its earnings call, Andrew Slaven, executive vice president, Global Investor Strategy, said, “We’ve been able to dig deeper into the financials and have gained a much better, more complete picture of where we are and the path forward, including identifying some additional and unexpected challenges that have and will continue to acquire our focus and attention. The upside is that there is even more room for improvement and cost savings.”

The new Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has gone on a canceling spree lately, as subscribers were met with disappointment and outrage yesterday with the news that “Batgirl” had been shelved because of poor reception from test audiences. There goes an estimated $70 to $90 million down the drain — which we’d like to add is still less than the short-lived $300 million streaming service CNN+ that Zaslav axed in April.

“Scoob!: Holiday Haunt” was also pulled on Wednesday.

Zaslav removed six original films from the service, including the reboot “The Witches,” as well as “Moonshot,” “An American Pickle,” “Superintelligence,” “Charm City Kings” and “Locked Down.” While content gets removed from streaming services all the time — take Netflix for example — what was unusual about this move was that Warner Bros. Discovery did it quietly.

Redditors have previously noticed a handful of other shows missing like “Amsterdam,” “Final Space,” “Czech It Out” and more. Lance St. Laurent pointed out on Twitter that “Vinyl” was also taken down without warning. Laurent said it was “troubling” as Max originals weren’t the only ones getting axed. “Vinyl” was an HBO show that has long since been canceled.

When a subscriber wondered why “Full Bloom” was missing from HBO Max’s lineup, the company tweeted in response,

The company made the decision to cease new original programming in parts of Europe last month, as reported by Variety. Plus, it shut down Cinemax Go, its free streaming service, on July 31.

However, on September 30, HBO Max will gain content from Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Network. Last year, the Gaines struck a partnership with Discovery, launching the Magnolia linear and streaming channel. Discovery+ will still have programming from the Magnolia Network on its platform. HBO Max will get titles such as “Fixer Upper: Welcome Home,” “The Lost Kitchen,” “Restoration Road with Clint Harp” and many others. Discovery+ has a drastically different target audience than HBO Max, so it’s unclear whether this was the right move.

Also, CNN Originals will get its own hub on Discovery+, with original series like “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” and “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” moving to the service. Shortly after CNN+ was shuttered, HBO Max got CNN titles like “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace.”

Zaslav has been adamant that the company will focus on smart spending. However, it’s worrisome that Zaslav may be making content decisions based on making the accounting books look better rather than focusing on appeasing viewers with the content they enjoy.

In today’s letter to shareholders, Zaslav wrote, “We’re confident we’re on the right path to meet our strategic goals and really excel, both creatively and financially, and couldn’t be more excited about the future of our company.”

It’s likely the company will keep the biggest shows on HBO Max. Especially since HBO received 140 Emmy nominations this year, and “Succession” was the most nominated series with 25 noms.

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Paramount+ grows to 43 million subscribers as other streaming services fall short

Paramount Global reported this morning that its streaming service Paramount+ had a net add of 3.7 million subscribers to bring its global total to 43.3 million, up from 39.6 million last quarter. The total would have been 4.9 million subs if it had not been for the removal of 1.2 million Russian subscribers due to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

CEO Bob Bakish has said that the company aims to reach 100 million Paramount+ subscribers by 2024. In the earnings call today, the company said it is “bullish about growth going forward.”

Across Paramount Global’s streaming services— Paramount +, Pluto TV, Showtime, Noggin, and BET+ — the company nearly reached 64 million (63.7 million to be exact), up from more than 62.4 million as of the end of Q1 2022. This reflects a growth of 1.7 million. However, it would have been a growth of 5.2 million global streaming subscribers before the removal of 3.9 million subscribers in Russia.

Revenue grew 120% for Paramount+, as overall subscription revenue rose 74% year-over-year to $830 million.

The company said Pluto TV remains “the #1 free ad-supported streaming TV service in the U.S,” as it increased in global monthly active users to almost 70 million.

Paramount Global shares were down 3% in pre-market trading this morning.

Paramount+ is running up that streaming hill, unlike Netflix, which lost nearly one million subs in the second quarter—fewer than expected—and Peacock laid flat at 13 million. Netflix remains the largest streaming service, with 220.67 million subscribers. HBO Max last reported having 76.8 million subscribers but will report its Q2 results later today.

Last quarter, Disney+ had 137.9 million subscribers. The Walt Disney Company will report its second-quarter earnings next week, on August 10.

“Paramount+ captured the most sign-ups, gross and net subscriber additions of any premium domestic streaming service in the quarter according to Antenna’s June 2022 Report,” the company stated in its earnings report. “Paramount+ subscriber growth was partially driven by successful international market launches, including the U.K., Ireland, and South Korea.”

In June, Paramount+ launched in South Korea, the U.K., and Ireland, including an international slate of seven new titles. The company hopes for 150 international originals by 2025. The company also has plans to expand into Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland in the second half of this year.

Bakish pointed out in the earnings call that by the end of 2022, “We expect to have our subscription video-on-demand services in 60 total markets moving forward.”

Paramount+ announces plan for 150 international originals ahead of UK and Ireland launch

The President & CEO also wrote to shareholders, “Our deep and growing library of valuable IP, coupled with the strength of our best-in-class assets, ensures we are well-positioned to continue to maximize value for our shareholders.”

The company also said the flagship streaming service, Paramount+, saw robust acquisition and engagement, which was thanks to “Halo,” “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” “Jackass Forever,” “1883,” “The Lost City,” and the UEFA Champions League.

Paramount+ touted content coming to the platform as well, including “Tulsa King,” starring Sylvester Stallone, which will premiere on November 13, as well as “Criminal Minds,” the NFL season, and SEC college football.

The company hasn’t officially announced when “Top Gun: Maverick” will appear on the service, but the studio has continued to be committed to its 45-day release window to release titles from movie theaters to streaming.

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‘Lightyear’ streams today, the first Pixar film on Disney+ with scenes in IMAX’s Expanded Aspect Ratio

“Lightyear” was the first Pixar movie in two years to make it to theaters. A month and a half later, it finally hits the streaming platform Disney+. Today, August 3, subscribers can watch the “Toy Story” spin-off at home. Of note, this is the first Disney and Pixar animated film on Disney+ with scenes in IMAX’s Expanded Aspect Ratio.

With IMAX Enhanced, the film comes with IMAX’s exclusive Expanded Aspect Ratio, which gives audiences up to 26% more picture for major sequences of the film, with no special equipment needed. This means more of the action is visible on your screen.

Angus MacLane, who directed the film, said in a statement, “We are thrilled that Disney and Pixar’s ‘Lightyear’ is the first IMAX Enhanced animated film launching on Disney+. Leveraging IMAX’s technology throughout the filmmaking process allowed us to create an elevated viewing experience for ‘Lightyear’ fans in theaters, at home, and beyond.”

“Lightyear” joins 15 Marvel titles that are available in IMAX Enhanced on Disney+. These include “Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings,” “Avengers: Endgame, Eternals,” “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” and more.

Disney+ is launching a special IMAX format for 13 Marvel movies

The animated film stars Chris Evans as space ranger Buzz Lightyear from Andy’s favorite movie that he watched as a child. Unlike the rest of the “Toy Story” franchise, “Lightyear” tells the origin story of human Buzz and explores him trying to find a way back home after being stranded on a hostile planet with his commander and crew. He accidentally time jumps 62 years into the future, where the planet is taken over by the evil Emperor Zurg (James Brolin) and his robot army.

There was a lot of confusion about how “Lightyear” connects to the four other films in the “Toy Story” series. This could explain why the new movie wasn’t the success Pixar was expecting. It essentially became a box office failure, only earning $222.4 million worldwide, about $20 million above its reported budget. In comparison, “Toy Story 3” and “Toy Story 4” earned over $1 billion at the box office.

Hopefully, “Lightyear” will have more success on Disney+ than in theaters, especially since it will have scenes in IMAX’s Expanded Aspect Ratio.