The 11th Hour Dispatch — Wednesday, October 24, 2018
BINGE WATCH
Oh, hey! Guess what? Yet another traditional media company is rolling out a streaming service. This time it’s NBC News with NBC News Signal. The product comes from the NBC department behind broadcast hits Meet the Press, Today, The Rachel Maddow Show, as well as Snapchat’s popular Stay Tuned series. The new service will include original content aimed at older millennials and younger Gen-Xers, which, according to NBC News Group’s SVP of Digital Nick Ascheim, “are hungry for news programming as anybody and they want to consume it in a different way.”
While the NBC News Signal platform isn’t expected until mid-2019, it already has content streaming on NBC News digital platforms. One series is a news show hosted by Simone Boyce, which is about to go from streaming once a week to every weeknight. All additional series will be completely original, likely from familiar faces on MSNBC and NBC News, though they won’t be as formal as the traditional broadcast offerings. It’s honestly a surprisingly move for NBC. The new service elbows its way into an increasingly crowded news service market. CBS News has CBSN and ABC News has ABC News Live, and Fox News is expected to drop its service Fox Nation in the next few weeks.
YOUNG MONEY
If you’ve ever wanted AI to track you while you’re driving, you’re in luck. EyeSight, a company that does just that, has raised $15 million in new funding. The round was led by Jebsen Capital with participation from Arie Capital and Mizrahi Tefahot. EyeSight’s hardware features camera/AI combo that tracks a driver’s gaze direction, eye openness, and head position. It can reportedly detect if a driver is drowsy, distracted, or even under the influence of drugs and alcohol based on pupil size. Besides watching your every move as you drive, the tech can also detect other people in the car, which could help reduce the amount of infants accidentally left in cars. The Tel Aviv-based company has now raised $30 million, including a $20 million investment in September from China’s Kuang-Chi as part of the investment firm’s pledge to pour $300 million into Israeli tech startups.
BIG BUSINESS
The singer behind the mood swings of every ’90s teen, Tracy Chapman, has sued Nicki Minaj for allegedly using lyrics and melody from her song “Baby, Can I Hold You” in Minaj’s “Sorry” without permission. Chapman claims she repeatedly denied requests in June from the rapper and her camp, which was after the song had been recorded in the first place. Though the song was not included on her most recent album, Queen, Minaj did give the record to a popular DJ on New York’s HOT 97, who then played it on air and released it on his social media. Minaj has not commented on the folk hero coming for her.
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
Practice your craft so you can be half as stellar as Melissa Villaseñor.
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