Local TV conglomerate Sinclair Broadcast Group said its ABC-affiliate stations will start airing Jimmy Kimmy Live! again on Friday night, ending its preempting of the show.Sinclair, along with fellow station owner Nexstar Media Group, continued to preempt Kimmel’s late-night talkshow even after ABC had put Kimmel back on air.Together, Sinclair and Nexstar’s preemption of the show left about 25% of TV viewers in the US unable to watch it, with the two companies owning 70 ABC-affiliate stations combined.The t ...

Facebook and Instagram users in the UK are to be offered advert-free versions of the social networks for up to £3.99 a month.Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has responded to regulatory warnings over personalised adverts, in which users’ data is crunched to produce targeted ads, by launching an ad-free subscription service.Web users will be charged £2.99 a month and mobile phone users £3.99 a month to scroll through Facebook and Instagram without targeted ads. If the accounts are linked, users only need to pay one mo ...

The Abu Dhabi royal family is to take a stake in TikTok’s US business after Donald Trump signed an executive order brokering a deal valuing the social media company at $14bn (£10.5bn).MGX, a fund chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, will take a 15% stake and gain a board seat when TikTok US is spun out.The US president signed an executive order on Thursday night approving the deal and providing a 120-day window to finalise the details.Larry Ellison’s Oracle, the private equity group Silver Lake an ...

A group of Disney investors is asking the company to turn over documents related to the company’s decision to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, amid charges the media company may have been “complicit in succumbing” to media censorship.The investors, composed of lawyers for the American Federation of Teachers and Reporters Without Borders, noted that Disney’s stock “suffered significant declines in response to the company’s abrupt decision to suspend Mr. Kimmel and his show”, it said in a l ...

Amazon has agreed to pay $2.5bn in fines and redress to Prime subscribers to settle a lawsuit by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which accused the retail giant of signing users up for the service without their consent and making it difficult to cancel.In a statement, the FTC said $1.5bn of the total will go into a fund to repay eligible subscribers.Amazon has been contacted for comment.The FTC – the US agency charged with consumer protection - sued Amazon in 2023, accusing the company of enrolling te ...

Starbucks will lay off around 900 staff and pull down the shutters on some 100 cafes across North America as part of a $1bn restructuring plan to revive the world’s largest coffee chain.The business, which eliminated 1,100 corporate positions earlier this year, will also close “many” open or vacant positions as it notifies affected employees affected by cuts on Friday.The 900 Starbucks staff hit by the restructuring work in “non-retail” roles, the company said. It will also close 1% of the coffee houses it ...

Apple has called for the European Commission to repeal a swathe of technology legislation, warning that unless it is amended the company could stop shipping some products and services to the 27-country bloc.In the latest of a series of clashes with Brussels, the iPhone maker said the Digital Markets Act was leading to a worse experience for Apple users, exposing them to security risks, and disrupting the seamless way Apple products work together.The Silicon Valley company hit out in a submission to the comm ...

The Walt Disney Company, which has been recently making headlines since its 17 September decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show on ABC, said Tuesday that it would be raising the price of its streaming services – including Disney+ and bundles that include Hulu and ESPN.On 21 October, the cost of a Disney+ and Hulu package will increase from $10.99 to $12.99 while an ad-free plan with both will still cost $19.99. Plans with Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, with ads, were previously $16.99 and are soon to be $ ...

The US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, pushed back hard against claims the central bank allows politics to drive decisions, in the midst of an extraordinary battle over its independence.Donald Trump, who is seeking to increase his administration’s control over the Fed, has branded Powell “a very political guy” after he declined to bow to the president’s public demands for drastically lower interest rates.The White House has launched an unprecedented campaign to overhaul the Fed’s rate-setting board of ...

Amazon is preparing to shut down all of its Amazon Fresh stores in the UK, just four years after the US tech company launched its first grocery shop in London.The company plans to close all 19 Fresh stores, with plans to convert five of these into Whole Foods Market shops, the US organic grocery chain that it bought in 2017.Amazon launched its first Fresh store in 2021 in Ealing, west London, that allowed customers to walk out with their shopping without having to use a till.Instead, shoppers use an app to ...