Entertainment and Streaming

Phishing scams, new focuses and fury dominate the subscription headlines this week: phishing hackers are targeting PayPal accounts, Politico has a new FDA-focused subscription that will cost as much as $75,000 a year, and angry HP customers take to Twitter to rant about HP demanding people sign up for monthly ink subscriptions. Also, Apple is looking at acquiring MGM, BBC will be making cuts as it shifts its focus to digital news, and Penguin Random House pulls certain titles from their unlimited-reading subscription service.

If your teams are already out of the NCAA tournament, we've got you covered with some riveting subscription headlines: Crunchyroll raises its monthly subscription price for the first time since its 2006 launch, and Pinterest files for an IPO.The New York Times and Washington Post pass on becoming part of Apple News. Also this week, Zuora adds five new patents for subscription services, Google starts a subscription lab for local publishers to develop paid content, and the new LA Times owner sets a goal of 5 million digital subscribers

Last week, it became official. The Disney-Fox deal is now a done deal with The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) completing its acquisition of Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox for a cool $71 billion. In a news release, Disney called this the "unprecedented collection of high-quality creative content, stellar talent and cutting-edge technologies" that will allow the company to expedite its direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming strategy and expand its presence to new audiences. It's DTC offerings include ESPN+, ownership in Hulu and Disney +, its yet-to-be-launched streaming video-on-demand service coming later this year.

Apple's annual spring "reveal" is always a highlight of the year for technology enthusiasts. This year was no different as Apple unveiled an array of subscriptions that will shift Apple's focus from product-based to service-based. Among the highlights were details of Apple's new subscription services including Apple TV+, Apple News+ and Apple Arcade. Apple News+ is available now; the other two subscriptions are expected to launch this fall. Let's take a look at what each of these services has to offer subscribers:

Happy March! It is hard to believe that March is already here. We hope that means spring is just around the corner. While we wait to see if the groundhog was right, Variety explains why they believe subscriptions are the future of gaming, Broadcast Now tells us why Netflix is the SVOD to beat, The Spoon explores the future of third-party food delivery (hint: subscriptions), digital advertising is bigger than TV and print advertising, and Recode breaks down Apples rationale in asking news publishers for half their Apple News revenue - it wants to save journalism.

Winc wines grows under the power of influencers, CBS All Access adds more kids' programming and Franklin Covey's model survies the pandemic.

Tidal's revenue grows but still has losses, NYT Cooking kicks off ad campaign to leverage growth, and members-only services help restaurants and luxury travel survive.

For a long time, long-form letters have been a tried and true conversion tactic for postal direct mail -- especially for financial newsletters. And many subscription sites have simply transferred those long-form letters online. But in this week's Case Study on Subscription Site Insider, Eagle Publishing had some interesting test results regarding video landing pages. Specifically, Eagle's financial division found that video landing pages converted a lot better online than those standard long-form letters. This just shows,…

Roku could lose YouTube TV app, Stripe acquires TaxJar, and NPR will offer paid podcast subscriptions.

As you head into the holiday weekend, check out these subscription news headlines: NBC is considering an online TV service for 2019, a Chaska (Minnesota) call center duped 13,000 people into paying $10 million for magazine subscriptions, and CenturyLink forced Utah subscribers to watch ads before allowing them internet access. Also this week, we have headlines about former CBS executive Les Moonves, Fiction Riot's new platform and Tribune Publishing's deal (or lack thereof) with McClatchy.