Media

Credit ratings agency Moody’s said Monday it will buy Dutch business intelligence company Bureau van Dijk for for about $3.3 billion to extend its risk data and analytical businesses.

Bureau van Dijk is currently owned by investment firm EQT and it distributes financial information and private company datasets of 220 million companies. "Bureau van Dijk is a high growth information aggregator and distributor that positions Moody’s at the center of a unique network of global risk data," said Moody’s CEO Raymond McDaniel. "This acquisition provides significant opportunities for Moody’s Analytics to offer complementary products, create new risk solutions and extend its reach to new and evolving market segments."

Reporters Without Borders (RWB) released its annual 2017 World Press Freedom Index which revealed Switzerland is still one of the world’s top ten countries.

The annual Index is produced by Reporters without Borders (RWB), a French-based, international non-profit organization. The Index underlined the Swiss government’s current debate over the mandate of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG-SSR) and the future of Billag, the licence paid by the public. A potential 2018 referendum could see the end of Billag and therefore the end of SRG-SSR, it said.

Twitter is considering whether to build a premium version of its popular Tweetdeck interface aimed at professionals, the company said on Thursday, raising the possibility that it could collect subscription fees from some users for the first time.
The way that this subscription format would manifest would be in the form of a premium version of its popular Tweetdeck service, which is a popular app and website that the firm bought six years ago. It allows users to run multiple accounts out of the one interface, schedule tweets and generally have greater control over their Twitter experiences.

After many months of rumors, YouTube has officially announced its entry into streaming live TV. YouTube TV will let you access live and recorded content from major networks, both the big broadcast players as well as some options typically found on cable.
"Half the cost of cable with zero commitments" said the announcement. For $35 a month, YouTube TV will include live streaming of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and about 30 of the biggest cable TV channels.

Google and Jigsaw have launched a new tool that uses artificial intelligence to filter ‘toxic’ comments online. The tool, known as Perspective, has been designed to crack down on online harassment by letting creators and readers identify abusive comments or comments that are likely to make ‘someone leave a conversation’.

Google’s freely available software is being tested by a range of news organisations, including The New York Times, The Guardian and The Economist, as a way to help simplify the jobs of humans reviewing comments on their stories.”News organizations want to encourage engagement and discussion around their content but find that sorting through millions of comments to find those that are trolling or abusive takes a lot of money, labor, and time. As a result, many sites have shut down comments altogether. But they tell us that isn’t the solution they want. We think technology can help.” said Jared Cohen, president of Jigsaw, the Google social incubator that built the tool.

The European Union agreed Tuesday on new rules allowing subscribers of online services, as Netflix or Amazon Prime, in one E.U. country access to them while traveling in another.

The new “portability” ruling is the first step of regulation under a drive by the European Commission to introduce a single digital market in Europe. Announced in May 2015 on the cusp of the Cannes Film Festival, the proposed Digital Single Market was met with full-throated opposition from Europe’s movie and TV industry, which viewed it as a threat to its territory-by-territory licensing of movies and TV shows.

Twenty-First Century Fox has formally reached an agreement with Sky for a total takeover to the tune of $14.8 billion.

Under the terms of the acquisition, Sky shareholders will be entitled to receive £10.75 in cash per share, which represents a pretty healthy premium of 40 percent above December 6, 2016’s closing price. Twenty-First Century Fox already owns just over 39% of Sky.

The price reflects a valuation of £10.75 per share, according to Reuters, who, along with the BBC, claimed that some investors were unhappy with the valuation but did not go into specifics.
Reuters reported that the offer represented a 40% premium on the share price from the day before Fox’s initial proposal was received.

AT&T has reached an agreement to buy Time Warner Inc. for $85.4 billion, $107.50 a share, evenly split between cash and stock. AT&T, the nation’s second largest cell phone carrier, will gain control of TV networks like HBO, TNT and CNN in the biggest deal of its kind since Comcast acquired NBC Universal five years ago. The companies said they expect the deal to close by the end of 2017.

“Premium content always wins,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and chief executive. “It has been true on the big screen, the TV screen, and now it’s proving true on the mobile screen.”