Lack Of Content Dooms Fall TV; EBay Sells Classified Ads Biz For $9.2B

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Falling Out Of Favor

Cord cutting was already rising before the pandemic, and a lack of new programming and live sports this fall will only accelerate that trend. This week, Netflix said it doesn’t believe production will resume in the United States before 2021, driving skepticism that other content producers will be able to fill their fall slates. Networks have already begun canceling hit shows and filling prime-time slots with licensed programming as production delays drag on, Axios reports. Pay TV’s fate really comes down to the return of live sports, but it’s still not clear if college football or the NFL will return in the fall (or in what form) as players voice concern about returning to the field.

Held At ’bay

This has already been a busy week for eBay. Its five-year contract with PayPal expired on Monday, and eBay switched to Adyen as its primary payment service. And on Tuesday, eBay sold its classified ads business to Adevinta, a relatively small Norwegian online marketplace company, in a $9.2 billion stock-and-cash deal. Adevinta was considered a long shot for the classified business, with huge funds bidding, but its size was an advantage because eBay prized the 44% stake it gets in Adevinta, Bloomberg reports.

SMS SOS

The M3AAWG, a trade group for mobile cell carriers, quietly released new political texting guidelines in April. The problem for carriers such as T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon is that they’re flooded with customer complaints about politicians badgering them by text. And that was an issue before the coronavirus pandemic forced campaigns to switch door-to-door canvassers to text-banking. Political campaigns can send texts individually, not by an automated system or in a bulk blast unless they have direct consent – a holdover from the law on political robocalls. But from the carrier’s perspective, that’s indistinguishable from spam, especially when there are prompts to donate or download something, which is why the Trump campaign had its texting program shut down for five days over the July Fourth holiday, Politico reports.

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