Meta is merging its business integrity unit, the team that moderates ad content, with its central integrity team, which moderates organic posts, according to an internal memo obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: The merger of the two departments will drive efficiencies at a time when Meta is looking to cut costs, two sources told Axios.

• It will also combine Meta's customer support efforts so that everyday users and businesses receive the same treatment.

Details: The new integrity team will be housed as one unit under Guy Rosen, Meta's chief information security officer.

• The newly combined team will include roughly 3,000 people.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed the integration and said the company is unifying the two teams "to leverage their shared learnings to more effectively and efficiently deliver on our commitment to protecting and supporting people and businesses across Meta’s platforms."

Be smart: Bringing together the two teams will mean that, eventually, Meta will use the same tools, practices and systems to moderate all of the content on its platform, whether ads or organic posts from everyday users.

• In his memo to staff, Rosen said the unified teams will have shared organizational goals and outcomes, as well as consistent policies and platforms "so they can comply more easily with regulatory changes."

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Hundreds of people are expected to be laid off on the business side of Warner Bros. Discovery, via a round of layoffs that will begin today, sources tell Axios.

Why it matters: Executives have warned for months that the merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery would yield roughly $3 billion in synergies.

Details: About 30% of the combined ad sales teams across WarnerMedia and Discovery are expected to be cut over the next few weeks, sources told Axios.

• Sources say that the cuts will be coming from both the WarnerMedia and Discovery ad sales teams. Plans for the layoffs were first reported by The Information in June.
• The company announced in June a "Voluntary Separation Program" for certain groups within the company's U.S. ad sales organization, per a memo obtained by Axios.

By the numbers: Warner Bros. Discovery closed its upfront with $6 billion in ad commitments, trailing competitors like Disney and NBCUniversal, which booked $9 billion and $7 billion in upfront ad commitments, respectively.

The most-nominated program of this year's Emmy Awards may not have picked up the most prizes, but HBO's "Succession" ultimately proved its status as the hottest TV show of the year by winning the top award on Monday evening.

• HBO's "White Lotus" took home five trophies — the most awards of the evening — including for best limited series, best supporting actress and best supporting actor.
• Apple TV+'s "Ted Lasso" took home the prize for the best outstanding comedy series for the second year in a row.

Why it matters: The 74th Primetime Emmy Awards on NBC saw a slew of historic firsts, proving that award shows can still create important cultural moments, even though viewership is declining.

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The Verge has redesigned its home page and user experience to include a Twitter-like feed of content that's editorially curated by its top editors and reporters.

💡 Why it matters: "I think that the core realization for us is that our competition is not Wired, our competition is Twitter ... and other aggregators of audience," said Nilay Patel, The Verge's editor-in-chief.

Details: The end-to-end redesign features a new, edgier logo and more colorful, modern fonts and graphics that are meant to be cleaner and easier to read.

• The feed allows select editors and senior reporters to aggregate any media asset, from TikTok videos to Reddit AMA threads, into the feed, alongside The Verge's own reporting, analysis and multimedia assets.
• Eventually, The Verge plans to add comments and other forms of audience engagement into the feed.

From a business perspective, the redesign is meant to capitalize on the engagement from The Verge's most loyal readers, said Helen Havlak, publisher of The Verge.

• The Verge soon plans to launch an infinite scroll feature, which will allow the outlet to serve highly engaged users more ads, in addition to custom ad formats for the new homepage experience.

The big picture: The website is the first Vox Media outlet to run on a new front-end platform called Duet that unifies all of Vox Media's back-end technology in a way that makes publishing more seamless.

• Eventually, Vox Media plans to migrate all of its sites onto Duet so that it can run on a single, optimized front-end platform.

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Viewers of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News got a lot more news in the past week about Queen Elizabeth's death than they did about the potential turning point in the Ukraine war.

• For the week of Sept. 5–11, there were 159.7 minutes of coverage about the Queen, 15.2 minutes on Ukraine and 10.3 minutes on inflation.

Why it matters: Ukraine recaptured 3,400 square miles in one week, which is more than Russia did in the last five months (2,000 square miles), the New York Times reports.

The New York Times on Monday debuted ads on its subscription sports website, The Athletic.

• 🛍️ Chanel was the launch sponsor.

Why it matters: The Times hopes advertising will help The Athletic become profitable in the three-year time frame it gave investors when it acquired the outlet in January.

• In an interview, The Athletic's chief commercial officer Seb Tomich said he's confident they'll meet that goal.

Details: To start, the ads will appear on the most visible spaces within The Athletic, like its homepage, and will mostly be display ads, not sponsored posts. Pre-roll is not being introduced on the site.

• Rates for the ads will be "on the higher end of the market," Tomich said, but as a whole, "we want to be largely in line with The Times."

By the numbers: The Athletic made around $65 million last year in top-line revenue, but it lost around $55 million in expenses.

• It made less than $10 million in advertising last year, and most of its ad revenue came from podcasts.

What to watch: Licensing, ticketing, fantasy and merchandise "will be a big part" of The Athletic's commercial expansion, Tomich noted.

Bloomberg Media is ramping up its D.C. coverage plans ahead of the midterms with a slew of new products, hires and events.

Why it matters: The D.C. media market has proven particularly lucrative for publishers looking to capitalize on a growing pool of political and issue ad dollars.

Details: This fall, Bloomberg will debut “DC Policy Forward,” a new annual summit that will host more than 300 policymakers and Washington opinion leaders.

• It will also launch a ticketed policy debate series called “Bloomberg Counterpoint,” a spokesperson told Axios.
• There are currently 150 Bloomberg journalists and analysts based in Washington, D.C., with 13 that have joined so far in 2022.

Next year, ahead of the 2024 election, Bloomberg will launch a yet-to-be-named weekly politics show as a livelier alternative to the traditional Sunday shows, from a redesigned D.C. studio.

• It also plans to debut a new podcast hosted by Bloomberg senior Washington correspondent Saleha Mohsin, as well as a new Washington-based newsletter focused on economics and politics.

Between the lines: To capitalize on those opportunities, Bloomberg has hired a new director for Washington sales, Cliff McKinney.

• He will work alongside Bloomberg's new Washington editorial leaders, bureau chief Peggy Collins and executive editor for U.S. government news Mike Shepard.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek over the weekend reiterated his company's plan to keep ESPN and said he hopes to grow the business with sports betting.

• And Dan Loeb of activist hedge fund Third Point, which has a roughly $1 billion stake in Disney, tweeted his support, Axios' Kerry Flynn writes.

Details: In a Twitter thread, Loeb said that he looked forward to ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro "execut[ing] on the growth and innovation plans, generating considerable synergies."

• As to what those plans are, Chapek was vague. "When the rest of the world knows what our plans are, they will be as confident about that proposition as we are," he told the FT.
• But there was one glimpse at the future. Chapek told Bloomberg that Disney is "working very hard on" developing an ESPN sports-betting app.

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Twitter is still the place where media publishers collectively have the largest audiences, followed by Facebook and Instagram, according to an Axios analysis of 82 major news, entertainment and sports publishers by Kerry Flynn and me.

Why it matters: While some publishers are finding quick success on TikTok, the platform yields fewer overall followers for publishers than other social platforms.

Details: More than one-quarter of accounts measured do not have official TikTok accounts. Many that do still have relatively small followings.

• Every publisher observed has a Twitter account, and the vast majority have YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts.
• Most of the top LinkedIn publishers by followers are business and finance outlets.
• Sports outlets like ESPN and Bleacher Report tend to have outsized followings on TikTok and Instagram.

Be smart: National Geographic, by far, has the largest social following across its main accounts, with more than 340 million followers over six major platforms (not taking into account duplication).

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