Axios Media Trends

The Arena Group, a digital publishing company formerly called Maven, plans to acquire AMG/Parade, the parent company to the storied American magazine Parade, in a $16 million cash and stock deal.

Why it matters: AMG/Parade will anchor The Arena Group's new push into lifestyle content and will boost its sports vertical, per Ross Levinsohn, CEO of The Arena Group.

Catch up quick: AMG acquired Parade from Advance Publications in 2014.

• Parade is distributed to millions of households weekly via newspapers.
• "[W]e believe our collective relationships with local publishers will drive new opportunities, audience and revenue for the combined properties," Levinsohn said.

Details: Roughly 100 employees from AMG/Parade will join The Arena Group and AMG/Parade CEO Chuck Allen will help manage the integration of the new assets.

• Levinsohn said AMG/Parade is profitable. He referenced work The Arena Group has done to grow and optimize other "iconic brands" including Sports Illustrated, The Street and History.com.

Between the lines: The Arena Group operates over 200 digital brands across three main categories: sports, finance and lifestyle. Most of its traffic comes from its sports properties.

• It expects to report $180 million of revenue for year 2021, representing 41% year-over-year growth and its highest year for revenue ever.

What to watch: The deal comes days after The Arena Group said it planned to uplist its shares to the New York Stock Exchange from the smaller OTCQX exchange.

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Al Jazeera, a media company funded by the government of Qatar, has quietly stopped creating new content for its conservative digital outlet "Rightly," four sources confirmed to Axios.

Why it matters: The outlet was launched in February of 2021 to "provide fresh voices that are too often left out of the mainstream media a space to engage and debate the issues that matter most to them,” per a statement at the time.

Between the lines: Sources close to the show say the effort was also meant to push back on Al Jazeera's reputation as a liberal-leaning outlet.

• In June, a group of Republican Senators pressed the Justice Department on why “Rightly,” among other Al Jazeera subsidiaries, had not yet registered as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
• In 2020, the DOJ sent a letter to Al Jazeera demanding that its digital subsidiary "AJ+" register as a foreign agent.

Details: The company ended its main show for "Rightly" in December. Those who worked on it weren't given much of an explanation or heads up, but a source who worked on the show said "a budgetary decision was the way it was explained to me."

The other side: "As far as Rightly, we're still evaluating the brand itself. We're constantly evaluating everything we put on the air," said Michael Weaver, senior vice president of business development & growth at Al Jazeera Media Network.

• He couldn't say what products would be produced from the brand moving forward.
• Rightly's editor-in-chief Scott Norvell, a Fox News veteran, will remain with the network for a few more months but is expected to depart after that.

China blocked all four of Disney's Marvel movies from being released in its theaters last year, a grim sign for U.S. film giants being squeezed out of the world's fastest-growing box office.

• "The pandemic put China in a better position to control releases," said Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

Why it matters: The Chinese Communist Party is using domestic films as a key conduit for mass messaging aimed at achieving political goals, leaving little room for foreign views, Axios' Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian and I write.

• The highest-grossing film in the Chinese box office in 2021 — and in Chinese cinematic history — was "Battle for Lake Changjin," a propaganda war film glorifying the Chinese army's fight against the U.S. military during the Korean War.

By the numbers: The total share of U.S. films among China's foreign film offerings declined from 46% in 2020 to 39% in 2021, Variety reports.

The big picture: China surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest theatrical market for the first time in 2020 and beat it again in 2021, per Comscore.

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Eriq Gardner is joining Puck, the subscription newsletter startup, from The Hollywood Reporter as a national correspondent covering media and entertainment law and deals beginning January 31st.

The big picture: He joins Puck's Matt Belloni and Dylan Byers in his coverage of Hollywood and media.

• "Eriq allows us to begin to create a much larger presence in Hollywood," said Puck co-founder Jon Kelly. "He’s the perfect fit for what we are building at Puck," Belloni said.
• The company has recently brought on Julia Alexander from Parrot Analytics and Brian Morrissey, formerly the editor-in-chief of Digiday, as contributors.

The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on data-driven tech investigations, had $6.8 million in revenue in 2021 — mostly from philanthropy — up from $4.2 million in 2020, according to its president, Nabiha Syed.

• A huge part of The Markup's revenue increase last year was attributed to a $2.5 million grant from the Ford Foundation.

Why it matters: The outlet aims to distinguish itself from the barrage of modern tech coverage by focusing on consumers rather than the investor business class.

Details: The nonprofit, which now has 30 employees, launched with 19 people in early 2020, just ahead of the pandemic.

What to watch: Over the past year, the company has built three publicly available data tools — CitizenBrowser, Blacklight and Amazon Brand Detector extension. Its goal for 2022 is to continue building data privacy tools that it can rollout to the public.

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After years of griping about Nielsen's outdated measurement practices, media giants are beginning to test ways to assess viewership ahead of the 2022 TV season, Axios' Kerry Flynn and I write.

Driving the news: In a watershed moment for the media industry, NBCUniversal said Thursday it struck a deal with a new measurement company, iSpot.tv, to test an alternative standard during the Olympics and Super Bowl.

How it works: iSpot.tv is one of dozens of vendors across six categories that NBCU is evaluating for potential partners.

• While Nielsen relies on a panel of tens of thousands of homes to measure TV viewership, vendors like iSpot rely on relationships with smart TV providers to deliver viewership data in near-real time from tens of millions of people.

Between the lines: NBCU is not the only company testing new vendors.

• WarnerMedia is in the early stages of looking for its own set of alternative measurement partners. iSpot.tv, along with Comscore and newcomer VideoAmp have been selected as early test partners.
• ViacomCBS announced a new partnership with VideoAmp last year.

What's next: The Media Rating Council (MRC), the de-facto watchdog for the industry, will audit these new vendors once their products and services are fully baked.

Go deeper: Other vendors being considered.

Viewership for the NFL's regular season was up 10% from 2020 — the league's highest-rated season average since 2015.

• The NFL was the second most-read online news topic in November and December, according to data from Taboola.

Why it matters: The season has quieted concerns about COVID-related ratings declines — and justified the NFL's $100+ billion in new media deals, Axios' Kendall Baker, Neal Rothschild and I write.

Between the lines: This season featured a record 34 games that were decided on the final play.

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The number of new, original scripted series hit a record high in 2021, following a growth dip last year due to production delays amid the pandemic, according to the latest data from FX Networks Research.

Why it matters: Several new streaming services also launched during the pandemic, increasing the demand for new content.

• Consolidation among production studios in Hollywood has run rampant amid the streaming content arms race.

Flashback: Pandemic puts Peak TV on pause

RocaNews, an Instagram news brand with 1 million followers, has raised $4.4 million in a seed round led by Ori Allon, the co-founder and executive chairman of Compass Real Estate.

Why it matters: The company acquired "River news," a news app that provides news stories via a scrollable video feed, similar to TikTok, per RocaNews CEO Max Towey.

• River's investors include Founders Fund, 406 Ventures, and Scooter Braun. They are now Roca investors.
• The company, which launched in early 2020, has 8 employees and is budgeted for 15 employees by the end of the year.
• In addition to its social media and app presence, it also has a newsletter with 50,000 free email subscribers, per Towey.

What's next: The team plans to add gaming features to the news app it's acquiring to help boost engagement.

• Towey said he isn't worried about Instagram algorithm changes, because most of its traffic comes from its direct followers, not Instagram's "Explore" page.