If you’re planning on watching Super Bowl LIV using a streaming app, then you might not be able to use Roku hardware. While the platform has had a number of Fox apps available for years, their distribution agreement is set to expire after tomorrow, ahead of the big game. Roku is sending out emails to customers informing them that the standalone Fox apps won’t be available this weekend to watch and suggesting alternatives.
If they can’t work out some kind of extension (the Fox Now and Fox Sports apps have already been delisted from the Roku Channel Store) then the simplest workaround may be using another streaming service on your Roku device. Apps like YouTube TV, Hulu Live TV or Sling TV can all work in a pinch, assuming they have your local Fox affiliate. If you’d like to see the game in (upscaled from 1080p) 4K, then Fubo TV will deliver it that way, and it has a seven day free trial.
If you’d rather swap out for different hardware, then Amazon’s Fire TV 4K stick is ready to stream the 4K and HDR mastered feed of the game on Sunday, and it’s on sale right now for $35.
Usually the carriage disputes I’ve covered involve cable operators, with threats to send antennas out and scrolling ads. Now even that has gone to the next level as streaming platforms are the new landscape, with acquisitions and competition making things stranger every day. Apps can appear and disappear in a blink — but hopefully this gets worked out so no one has to make backup plans at all.
“Arvind has grown IBM’s Cloud and Cognitive Software business and led the largest acquisition in the company’s history. Through his multiple experiences running businesses in IBM, Arvind has built an outstanding track record of bold transformations and proven business results, and is an authentic, values-driven leader. He is well-positioned to lead IBM and its clients into the cloud and cognitive era.”
IBM first revealed its Red Hat acquisition back in 2018, announcing that it’s purchasing the American multinational software firm and largest Linux distributor for $34 billion. Red Hat CEO James Whitehurst joined IBM as part of the acquisition — in fact, the board just voted him as the new IBM President, and he’ll step into the role in April, as well.
Rometty led IBM during trying times, as the company was struggling to transition its business to focus on new technologies. IBM acquired 65 companies and sold off others that weren’t making as much profit under her leadership. IDC chief analyst Frank Gens told The New York Times: “It’s been her eight-year project to reposition the company. And after the positive report last quarter, she’s declared victory and retired.” By appointing Krishna and Whitehurst as the company’s leaders, IBM is saying that it’s putting a lot more focus on cloud and cognitive computing going forward.
The first new Animal Crossing game on consoles in several years is almost here, and Nintendo is rolling out a special edition of its Switch to mark the occasion. This $300 Switch will arrive on March 13th, a week before the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s covered in pastel colors, with two-toned Joy-Cons and a white dock that has some of the game’s characters painted on it. The only thing it doesn’t come with is the game itself — that you’ll have to buy separately.
It’s available for pre-order at Best Buy if you’re already throwing your money at the screen, or you can just buy the game by itself and play it on a normal Switch — your choice. On the other hand, if you can’t get enough but just don’t need another console, Nintendo is releasing themed “Aloha Edition” carrying case and screen protector packages on the 13th for both the Switch and Switch Lite. The real good news, though, is that after a slew of videogame delays — that included Animal Crossingslipping from its planned launch date last fall — it looks like this one is just about ready to go on March 20th.
As leaks indicated, the cyborg assassin’s name is Revenant. Respawn hasn’t explained his abilities just yet, other than to say they’re “unnatural” and that he uses them to “haunt his enemies and defy death.” It won’t be long before more details about Revenant emerge, however: he’ll hit the game when Apex Legends Season 4 kicks off February 4th. He’ll join Octane, Wattson and Crypto as characters who’ve debuted at the beginning of a new season.
The FCC says the man wanted to gain “notoriety” and “publicity” for their website and personal brand. To that end, all their calls had some political angle. In one campaign, for instance, the person made 827 calls to people in the town of Brooklyn, Iowa, “following the murder of a local college student and the arrest of an illegal alien from Mexico for the crime.” While the FCC doesn’t explicitly mention the name of the victim, it’s very likely the calls were related to the death of Mollie Tibbetts. The agency says the robocaller’s racist messages talked about a “brown horde” that the murder victim would have wanted the town to “kill them all.” The robocaller even went so far as to phone the parents of the victim.
Despite new laws like the TRACED Act, it’s unclear if the FCC will be able to get any money from the person. The agency doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to successfully collecting the fines it imposes on robocallers. According to a 2019 Wall Street Journal report, since 2015 the federal agency had ordered violators of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act to pay $208.4 million but had at that point only collected $6,790.
“We’ve made Prime delivery faster — the number of items delivered to U.S. customers with Prime’s free one-day and same-day delivery more than quadrupled this quarter compared to last year,” said CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement. “Members now have free two-hour grocery delivery from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market in more than 2,000 U.S. cities and towns.” On top of that, Bezos said that Prime members have also watched twice as much movies and TV shows on Prime Video than last year.
Prime membership just one of the many positive news to come out of the company’s earnings report. It also recorded $87.4 billion in revenue, which is a whopping 21 percent increase over the same time last year. Company profits also increased by 8 percent to $3.3 billion during the holiday quarter. Amazon’s earnings beat estimates by over 50 percent, causing its price to surge by over 13 percent after closing.
The Wall Street Journalreported that one of the key factors behind this increase is last year’s holiday shopping season, where Amazon outperformed its competition. Amazon apparently said it was one of the best holiday shopping seasons in its history, with over a billion orders shipped. Comparatively, Target, Macy’s, JC Penney and Kohl’s reported lower sales in the past couple of months.
Still, things aren’t perfect. The move to one-day shipping has been costly to Amazon due to an increase in warehouse and delivery spending. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is one of its biggest money-makers, has also slowed thanks to competition from Microsoft and Google. According to reports, AWS has an estimated growth of 32 percent, which is fairly weak in comparison to previous years.
Just as the debut LCS tournament was playing out in June 2011, the streaming site Justin.tv launched Twitch, a live-video platform dedicated to gaming. Today, Amazon owns Twitch and streaming is mainstream, with popular personalities regularly commanding multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals. While Twitch has dominated this space for the past half decade, competitors like Mixer and YouTube have recently stepped up and infused the industry with competition, signing exclusivity deals with big streamers and esports leagues, including Overwatch and Call of Duty.
Tyler “Ninja” Blevins ditched Twitch in mid-2019 to stream exclusively on Mixer, Microsoft’s rival streaming service, in a deal reportedly worth up to $30 million. A few months later, Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek made the same move. Before the end of 2019, Jack “CouRage” Dunlop dropped Twitch for YouTube, while Twitch responded by snagging Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo, Saqib “LIRIK” Zahid and Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar. Each of these deals are reported to be worth millions of dollars per year.
Every streamer in the previous paragraph is signed with Loaded, a management company that sets up marketing and sponsorship deals between streamers and the companies that want to pay them. Davidson joined Loaded this week as Vice President of Talent, leaving her role as senior esports manager at Riot.
“With social interactions these days becoming more of a digital experience, and people being more interested in new forms of content, it isn’t as much of a surprise to me that streaming has taken off like it has,” Davidson said. “Content creators also have more tools and avenues than ever to attract audiences and brands, while the appetite for content is at an all-time high. It is exciting to be able to help creators develop their careers in this space.”
Loaded isn’t the only thing all of those streamers have in common — they’re also all dudes. Though women compose 46 percent of the US video game market, esports are heavily dominated by men. According to Esports Earnings, the woman who’s won the most prize money in professional gaming is StarCraft II player Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn, who’s earned $357,339 over eight years. Meanwhile, the site says Dota 2 player Johan “N0tail” Sundstein has won $6,890,592 over nine years. There are 329 male players and millions of dollars between N0tail and Scarlett.
“The appetite for content is at an all-time high.”
Of course, professional gaming isn’t the same as streaming. These industries have grown up together, though not all esports players are streamers, and not all streamers are pros. By design, streaming is an open market, where essentially anyone can dive in and start a channel. Still, the most popular names in streaming are men, and women routinely face gender-based discrimination and harassment on live platforms.
Based on hours watched, the top 10 streamers in 2019 were all men, StreamElements reports. Of the nine biggest streamers today by follower count, only one is female, according to The Loadout. Rank streamers by their subscriber numbers — meaning, people who actually pay to watch — and there are no women in the top 10, the site says.
“Why don’t you use voice chat?” “Why can’t I find a girlfriend who plays video games?” “Why do you mute people who ask you if you’re a girl?”
Loaded represents 36 gaming content creators. Just five are women: Hannah “Bnans” Kennedy, Eefje “Sjokz” Depoortere, Jessica “Jghosty” Blevins, Jodi “QuarterJade,” and AnneMunition (who prefers not to share her legal name).
“Here at Loaded we’re actively seeking to diversify our portfolio of talent, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s also what’s best for the business and industry,” Davidson said. “Those who are in a position to should be thinking about this and doing what they can to more accurately represent diversity within their ranks and content. In order to accelerate this, leaders in our industry need to support women and other minority groups to create a more inviting and supportive landscape for everyone. It’s something Loaded will be intentional about, and I look forward to playing a big role in our strategy there.”
“We live in a diverse world and that should be celebrated.”
Loaded is one management company that deals with one sliver of the gaming industry, but it holds a lot of sway in 2020. It has the biggest and most lucrative names in streaming, it’s signing deals worth tens of millions of dollars, and it has the power to put new, fresh faces in front of a hungry audience. With Davidson in charge of lining up new talent, expect to see more diversity in Loaded’s roster — and on Twitch, Mixer, YouTube and even Facebook Gaming.
“One of my goals at Loaded is to evolve the kind of support we offer to our talent, which includes deepening our understanding of the services that will really help our talent thrive and become successful long-term,” she said. “We know there are different challenges, needs and opportunities for different talent, so we should have a variety of solutions and offerings to support that diversity.”
Davidson reports directly to Loaded co-founder Brandon Freytag, and she said he’s also committed to broadening the company’s — and the industry’s — streaming portfolio.
“We live in a diverse world, and that should be celebrated and reflected back to audiences,” Davidson said.
Sega Europe says that this transition comes at a price to the company, but that the lighter packaging means cheaper distribution, helping to offset the higher manufacturing costs. “We’d like…entertainment industries to investigate similar packaging solutions, across movies, games and music so we can collectively observe a drastic reduction in the production of plastic packaging and its associated waste and pollution,” says Gary Dale, President and COO of Sega Europe.
While collecting is typically associated with console gaming, there are plenty of PC game collectors out there. Many specifically seek out “big box” games that came in outrageously large packages with elaborate details like front panels that flip open to reveal screenshots and character illustrations.
Most PC gamers shifted to downloading their games over a decade ago. So while this is an admirable move on the part of Sega Europe — and something that more media publishers should consider — it may not shift the meter much when it comes to fighting climate change.
Street price: $150;deal price: $125 w/ on-page coupon
The NVIDIA Shield TV (2019) is down to a new low price of $125 from $150 when you clip the on-page coupon to get an extra $5 off. Since its recent release, this is the first notable drop we’ve seen on the 2019 version of this media streamer. If you want to own both the best and latest Android TV streaming device, this is your chance to pick one up at a discount.
In our guide to the best media streaming devices, the NVIDIA Shield TV (2019) is our Android TV box pick. Wirecutter Senior Staff Writer Chris Heinonen wrote, “If you want an Android TV box, the updated Nvidia Shield TV is far ahead of the rest of the Android TV competition. It’s more responsive and gets Android TV updates faster, it supports Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision in more streaming services than the competition, and it offers an impressive upscaling solution to improve the quality of lower-resolution video. If you want to hook up USB drives for local media playback or play more-demanding Android TV games, the Shield TV Pro has more RAM and external USB ports, but otherwise it performs the same as the cheaper version.”
The Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 are down to $350 in the soapstone color. Only the second deal we’ve ever posted and the first discount from a reliable retailer we’ve seen this year, this is a good chance to pick up a set of premium headphones in a tasteful and unique finish. This price matches the previous low we’ve seen and, at a $50 discount, it’s worth a look if you’re in the market for noise-cancelling headphones.
The Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 are the best over-ear noise-cancelling headphones we tested, earning them the top spot in our guide to the best noise-cancelling headphones. Wirecutter Senior Staff Writers Brent Butterworth and Lauren Dragan wrote, “The Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 over-ear set has the most versatile active noise cancellation we’ve ever tested. With 10 levels of noise reduction to choose from, everyone should be able to find a setting that meets their needs. Although these noise-cancelling headphones don’t sound as good as the best over-ear headphones we’ve tried, in our tests they had a fairly neutral sound with no major flaws. Plus, they’re lightweight and comfortable, and the controls are easy to use. The 20-hour battery life, while not the best we’ve seen, is more than sufficient to get you to most destinations.”
Available again for $250 in all three colors, this is within $20 of the best price we’ve seen for the Apple iPad (7th generation, 32 GB, Wi-Fi). It’s powerful, easy to use, has a large high-quality screen, a ton of apps in its library and Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil compatibility. It’s hard to go wrong with this pick if you’re in the market for an affordable, quality tablet for everyday needs. If you don’t need a lot of storage, this is a rare chance to snag a deal in any of the available finishes.
The 7th Generation iPad is the top pick in our guide to the best tablet. Wirecutter Senior Staff Writer Nick Guy wrote, “The 7th-generation Apple iPad—the standard, 10.2-inch model that Apple officially calls the “iPad (7th generation)”—is the best all-around tablet for most people. Its combination of performance, features, hardware quality, app selection, and accessories makes it superior to any other company’s tablets, and at its price it offers a better value than almost anything Apple sells. The iPad Air sports a slightly larger and nicer screen, the iPad mini is smaller and easier to hold, and all of Apple’s other iPads run a bit faster, but the regular iPad is good enough for most people.”
Street price: $15;deal price: $11 w/ on-page coupon
Matching previous deals we’ve seen, this tiny and powerful charger is down to $11 when you remember to clip the on-page coupon. Ideal for usage exclusively with your phone, buying the Aukey 18W Power Delivery USB-C Wall Charger is a small price to pay for twice the charging speed. This is only the second deal on this pick that we’ve seen, so it’s a good chance to buy if you’re interested.
A pending budget pick in our guide to the best USB Phone Charger, the Aukey 18W is the ideal combination of performance and form factor. In our piece on the accessories we wish Apple included, Alex Roth wrote, “As for the plug, the Aukey 18W Power Delivery Wall Charger (PA-Y18) is only a little bigger than Apple’s rectangular charger (it even comes in white) but charges twice as fast and costs the same. It’s the best option in our guide to the best wired fast chargers for charging a single phone at maximum speed. It’s also capable of charging any non-Pro iPad at the maximum rate.”
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In the first phase, beginning later this year, the FCC will make up to $16 billion available to areas that are “wholly unserved.” It will demand broadband speeds of at least 25 Mbps, and the funding will be made available through reverse-auction, a practice meant to drive competition. An estimated six million rural homes and businesses could be eligible for bidding. Phase two will make the remaining $4.4 billion available to partially served areas, as well as unserved areas that weren’t awarded in the first phase.
The investment will be made through the new Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, and it will leverage the more precise broadband maps developed as part of the FCC’s Digital Opportunity Data Collection, an effort that was meant to address concerns about misleading coverage maps.
This investment follows on the heels of a $9 billion fund for rural 5G connectivity that the FCC announced last month. Last year, it also approved another $137 million to expand rural broadband access to 36,579 homes and businesses over the next decade. Improving access to high-speed internet in rural areas has been an ongoing effort, and despite the cash infusions, some still criticize the FCC for doing too little.
