"Today Show" host Megyn Kelly questioned whether white people dressing in blackface was offensive, asking "what is racist" about the costume and claiming, "back when I was a kid that was OK as long as you were dressing up as a character," during a discussion about inappropriate and offensive Halloween costumes.
Why it matters: Blackface is often offensive because it has been used to perpetuate caricatures and offensive stereotypes of black people for centuries. Later in the discussion Tuesday morning, Kelly discussed the Halloween costume of a character on "Real Housewives of New York" who dressed up as Diana Ross. Kelly explains, "she made her skin look darker than it really is and people said it was racist. And I don't know, I thought who doesn't love Diana Ross? She wanted to look like Diana Ross for one day."
125 Android apps have been caught up in an Android ad fraud scheme that possibly stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ad dollars, according to a BuzzFeed News investigation by Craig Silverman. A fraud detection firm, Pixalate, first caught on to the plot in June.
What happened: People sold their legitimate apps to a company called We Purchase Apps, but were quickly transferred to shell companies and the human users on the legitimate apps had their behavior tracked unwittingly. Fraudsters then programmed that information to create a bot network that would be used to generate fake traffic that effectively stole ad dollars from advertisers.
Teens spend nearly three quarters (71%) of their video consumption time with Netflix and YouTube, according to the 36th semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens survey from Piper Jaffray.
The big picture: Teens spend roughly 38% of their video time watching Netflix, more than double the time spent on traditional TV and roughly 33% of their video time with YouTube. According to the survey, Instagram has overtaken Snapchat as the first most-used social platform by teens.
Refinery29 will lay off more than 40 employees as it prepares to fall 5% short of its 2018 revenue goal, according an internal company memo from co-CEOs Justin Stefano and Philippe von Borries.
The details: The layoffs — first reported by the Wall Street Journal's Ben Mullin — will come primarily from the publisher's engineering, product and video teams. In the internal memo, Stefano and Borries say the changes are meant to "drive the business toward long-term success," and get closer to their goal of being "a next-gen media and entertainment company that powerfully connects with women around the world."
King Salman of Saudi Arabia and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), met with Jamal Khashoggi's family Tuesday to "share their deepest condolences and sympathy," the kingdom's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted on Tuesday.
Why it matters: These are striking photos, particularly of Salah Khashoggi, who was banned from leaving Saudi Arabia last year due to his father's criticism, per the AP. The Saudis are still working to save face over what happened to Khashoggi, while the world has remained widely skeptical of the explanation they gave last week — that he died when a fight broke out in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Helios and Matheson announced Tuesday its plan to spin off MoviePass, a subscription service that allows customers to attend up to three movies a month, into a new subsidiary called "MoviePass Entertainment Holdings Inc."
Why it matters: MoviePass has skyrocketed in popularity since its founding in 2011, but found itself in trouble this year when its popularity began to outstrip its profits, forcing Helios and Matheson to seek up to $1.2 billion in equity and debt securities to keep the service afloat. Per CNBC, the New York attorney general opened an investigation last week into whether the company misled investors about its financials.
Two more industrial companies, Caterpillar and 3M, disappointed with their corporate earnings as global trade concerns continue to weigh on results.
The big picture: 3M’s earnings and revenue came in way below what analysts expected, which the company blamed on the strong U.S. dollar for dragging down sales. Caterpillar’s earnings results actually beat estimates, but the construction equipment manufacturer said tariffs were pushing up its material costs.
Verizon says its media arm, Oath, which consists of AOL, HuffPost, Yahoo and other digital brands, is struggling to drive revenue.
Why it matters: When Oath was created in 2017, executives pitched its advertising business as being a serious ad competitor to Google or Facebook, but it has thus far failed to position its growth to take on those tech giants over the long-term.
A number of companies and individuals are backing away from doing business with Saudi Arabia until more answers are provided on the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who Turkish officials believe was murdered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
The big picture: Many of the world's largest prospective financial deals involve Saudi Arabia and are predicated on trust in Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as a reformer. Meanwhile, there is speculation that MBS was personally involved in Khashoggi's disappearance.
