A quirk of the shutdown era, going back to March, has been the resurgence of evening news shows.

The intrigue: With no Olympics, and "60 Minutes" and other shows in summer reruns, ABC's "World News Tonight with David Muir" — for weeks — has been the most watched show on all of television.

President Trump, who said Friday night that he'll ban TikTok, may allow Microsoft to buy the app's U.S. operations if there's "complete separation" from the original Beijing-based company, Republican sources tell Axios.

What's new: Conversations with Republicans over the weekend suggest a possible blueprint for making the proposed Microsoft deal palatable to the White House.

The high-profile Facebook ad boycotts that began in June and ramped up in July, pressuring the social network to act more forcefully against hate speech, have so far not put much of a dent in Facebook's top or bottom lines.

Driving the news: Facebook beat Wall Street revenue expectations for the second quarter, and it said that the growth of its ad business during the first three weeks in July was roughly the same as it was last year during the same timespan.

Former 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch filed a letter of resignation from the board of News Corp. on Friday in light of disagreements over editorial content published by the company-owned news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post.

What he's saying: “My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions," Murdoch's letter reads.

A new draft code of conduct released on Thursday by officials in Australia would require tech giants like Google and Facebook to start paying news companies to distribute their content.

Why it matters: If Australia adopts the plan and it becomes a model for others around the world, such measures could offer a significant boost to the news industry, especially local news, as it faces financial decline.

Facebook's stock was up more than 6% in after-hours trading on Thursday, after the tech giant reported strong revenue growth, despite a global ad slowdown due to the pandemic and a growing advertiser boycott.

Why it matters: Facebook's ability to beat top and bottom line revenue expectations amid the coronavirus crisis and the boycott speaks to the strength of the company's appeal to marketers despite serious challenges.

Snapchat on Wednesday released its first-ever diversity report, showing that the company is still slightly behind its peers in terms of equal representation of people of color and women, especially on its technology teams, but that it's made progress adding more women to its leadership team.

Why it matters: It's taken a while for the 9-year-old Los Angeles-based tech firm to publicly confront its diversity shortcomings on paper. But incidents, like settlement payouts to laid-off women, have pushed the firm to take the issue much more seriously.

Universal and AMC, the largest theater chain in the U.S., struck an unprecedented multi-year deal on Tuesday to allow Universal films to appear on premium video on-demand services after being made available in theaters for 17 days — a significant departure from the traditional 90-day theatrical window.

Why it matters: The move represents a major step toward shifting movie consumption habits from theaters into homes, even after the coronavirus pandemic subsides. It also signals a new era for the struggling movie theater business, which has faced near-collapse during the outbreak.

HBO's dystopian superhero series "Watchmen" has earned a leading 26 Emmy nominations, the Television Academy announced Tuesday.

The big picture: TV shows are under a different spotlight this year, with streaming services reaping the benefit from America staying home in 2020. Netflix broke the record for most nominations of any network with 160, while shows from Disney+ and Apple TV+ received their first-ever nods.

Amid the heightened stress from the pandemic, protests and the election, media companies are leaning into content that will help users cope with anxiety.

Driving the news: The stress relief app "Calm" is getting made into its own TV show.