Long gone are the days and influence of television stars like Raven Simone, Hillary Duff and Miley Cyrus — today YouTube celebrities like Smosh and PewDiePie and social media wizards like Gigi and Bella Hadid or Kendall and Kylie Jenner have captivated younger audiences.
Why it matters: HBO, Disney, Nickelodeon, Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube are all fighting to win over young viewers to their streaming services. In the past, Disney and Nickelodeon captured the youngest audiences and produced the hottest tween celebrities. But with the trends toward streaming and Gen Z watching less TV in general, according to Nielson, the game has changed.
Steve Bannon told The Economist two days after his White House departure as Trump's chief strategist that Breitbart "will never turn on" Trump and instead will try pushing Trump in the direction of populist and nationalist agendas; "we are never going to let him take a decision that hurts him." Interview highlights:
On Mitch McConnell: "I'm going to light him up."
On Silicon Valley and Wall Street: "they're a bunch of globalists who have forgotten their fellow Americans."
On China: "Let's go screw up One Belt One Road."
"In the White House, I had influence…At Breitbart, I had power." Since his departure, Bannon's back steering right-wing Breitbart News.
Roy Price, a high-profile Hollywood figure who leads Amazon's TV and film studio, has been investigated by Amazon for allegedly making unwanted sexual remarks to Isa Hackett, a producer for one of the studio's most popular shows, "The Man in the High Castle," per The Information.
Timing: Hackett, the daughter of Philip K. Dick, whose novel inspired the series, said Price's lewd comments were made in July 2015, after the crew attended Comic-Con in San Diego. Amazon's investigation began shortly afterwards.
As of now, the outcome of the probe is still unknown, but both Hackett and Price remain in their current positions.
Why it matters: News of the allegation comes as businesses across the U.S. — including Uber, Fox News, and several Silicon Valley venture capitalists — have increasingly come under attack for their failures to appropriately deal with sexual harassment in the workplace. And as Amazon Studios continues to become more influential in the media and streaming sphere, questions of its company culture will increasingly become more significant.
This marked the end of its "online to offline" strategy, whereby the firm planned to more directly facilitate consumers purchases of physical products, rather than just selling online advertising.
Other failed investments include the firms interest in the Chinese subsidiary of Uber, which ended with Uber China's sale to rival Didi Chuxing.
Baidu's bind: Despite a search market share of 76% in China, Baidu has struggled to impress investors of late, as search behavior in China is much different than in the U.S. and Europe.
Grocery stocks were clobbered Thursday afternoon after Amazon announced that it will be cutting prices at Whole Foods. Shares in both Kroger and Walmart—which generates more than half its revenue from grocery sales—fell on the news, with Kroger down more than 8%.
Data: Money.net; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon / Axios
New data from Spotify reveals how "Total Eclipse of the Heart" followed this week's eclipse:
Like a weather system, plays of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" swept across the nation during the eclipse, roughly following the path of totality.
"Those who listened to any version of the song played it an average of six times over the course of the day."
Self-driving cars are the talk of Silicon Valley and Washington, as companies scramble to perfect the technology, and policy makers worry about the possibility mass unemployment will result. But as Bloomberg reports, container shipping is yet another industry whose workers are under threat from self-driving technology, with Japanese company Nippon Yusen K.K. planning to conduct a cross-Pacific test run with a remote controlled container ship in 2019.
Why it matters: According to the report, this technology could help "cut costs and boost safety," with the latter goal being particularly attractive, given the recent spate of maritime accidents, the latest of which resulted in 10 American Navy sailors going missing.
The effect on jobs won't be so bad: While there are 3.5 million truck drivers in America, there are just fewer than 80,000 water transportation workers in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
