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    Amazon Is Phasing Out Its Freevee Streaming Service

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    Its shows have moved to Amazon Prime, where they will remain free.Amazon is folding Freevee, its ad-supported streaming service, into Prime Video, where its shows will remain free to viewers who don’t subscribe to Prime.The move had been expected, after Amazon started including advertisements this year on Prime Video, which already hosts free original programs and movies. All Freevee programming will be available on Prime Video for free, the company said.Freevee began in 2019 as IMDb TV, an offshoot of Amazon’s IMDb film site. Some of its original shows were hits, including the social media sensation “Jury Duty,” “Bosch: Legacy” and “Judy Justice.” The service will be phased out within weeks.Amazon already has a streaming behemoth in Prime Video, and the company decided to put all of its entertainment content on one platform “to deliver a simpler viewing experience for customers,” an Amazon spokesperson said Wednesday.An ad-supported version of Prime Video is included with Amazon’s delivery service, which costs $14.99 per month, or $139 per year. An ad-free version of Prime Video is also available for an additional $2.99 per month. A stand-alone streaming subscription costs $8.99 per month.Like most streamers, Amazon mostly declines to give viewing numbers, but Freevee had built up its audience to about 65 million monthly active users in the United States in the first half of 2022. Amazon Prime has at least 180 million users, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.“Judy Justice,” starring Judge Judith Sheindlin, known as Judge Judy, quickly became Freevee’s No. 1 original show when it debuted in 2021. Viewers watched more than 150 million hours of it over its first two years, according to Amazon data. Judge Sheindlin’s success in her first streaming show allowed her to spin off additional shows on Freevee.Freevee’s most unexpected hit, however, was “Jury Duty,” a hybrid documentary-sitcom in which an ordinary man unwittingly participates in a staged trial among actors. It became Freevee’s most-watched show after it premiered in 2023 and earned four Emmy nominations, including one for outstanding comedy series.“Bosch: Legacy,” which premiered in 2022, was based on the popular police detective book series by Michael Connelly. It became a New York Times Critic’s Pick, with the reviewer Mike Hale writing that the series came with “cleverly interlocking story lines and the general lack of pretense and contrivance.”Other free, ad-supported streaming platforms, like Pluto TV, Tubi, and Roku Channel, have enjoyed significant growth. Viewers have flocked to them as many other subscription-based streaming services raised their prices. While the free services are built on a stable of older TV programs and movies, many consumers are seeking cost savings, nostalgia and even terrible movies.There are at least 170 million ad-supported subscriptions in the United States, up from at least 93 million at the end of last year, according to Antenna, a subscription research firm. More

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      Chris Wallace to Quit CNN After 3 Years

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      The 77-year-old veteran anchor told The Daily Beast that he planned to venture into streaming or podcasting.Chris Wallace, a veteran TV anchor who left Fox News for CNN three years ago, announced on Monday that he was leaving his post to venture into the streaming or podcasting worlds.Mr. Wallace, 77, told The Daily Beast that he was leaving the network to pursue independent content creation, where, he told the outlet, “the action seems to be.” He mentioned he was still unsure what form of content he would make, but said his career in broadcasting was over.He said his decision to leave CNN at the end of his three-year contract did not come from discontent. “I have nothing but positive things to say. CNN was very good to me,” he said.One of the network’s most recognizable faces, Mr. Wallace started in 2022 as an on-screen commentator and hosted a weekly talk show called “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” He also anchored CNN’s coverage of the U.S. presidential election last week.Before joining CNN, Mr. Wallace worked at Fox News for 18 years and hosted “Fox News Sunday.” He turned heads at the conservative news outlet when he spoke out against President Trump’s “direct, sustained assault on freedom of the press” in 2020. He moderated an unruly presidential debate in 2020 between President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Wallace had initially joined the network to be part of its new CNN+ service, which imploded just weeks after its much-promoted release.CNN’s chief executive, Mark Thompson, confirmed Mr. Wallace’s departure in a statement posted by the network.A representative for Mr. Wallace did not respond immediately to a request for comment. More

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      Tim Walz and AOC Play Madden and Crazy Taxi and Talk Politics

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      Wearing a camouflage Vikings hat, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota joined Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, on Sunday to play Madden NFL 25 and talk about the election.“Are we going to play some ball? Are we ready to do it?” Mr. Walz said to the audience watching via the streaming platform Twitch, cautioning that he was prepared to lose. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, played as the Buffalo Bills, while Mr. Walz, a former high school football coach, went with the Vikings.He and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez talked about the politics of Congress, where Mr. Walz served before he became governor and the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee. They compared the House to “public school,” with the Senate being more like “private school.” The House, they agreed, is where policy for the nation is shaped, and Mr. Walz said he would have been proud to have voted for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a signature achievement of President Biden’s administration.As the talk turned to the Senate and its procedures, Mr. Walz said knowingly to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez: “I don’t know where you stand, but I’m going to guess you and I are probably the same on the filibuster.”“Oh yeah, we have got to get rid of that thing,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez responded.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was an early proponent of removing the filibuster several years ago. Vice President Kamala Harris said in September that she would support ending the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade. After the stream ended, a Walz campaign official said that Mr. Walz “shares the vice president’s position.”In their Bills-Vikings Madden matchup on Sunday, which Mr. Walz and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez played for just a scoreless first half, they discussed housing policy and she asked him about voters who might be frustrated by the huge sums of money in politics or by the Biden administration’s positions about the war in Gaza. Twitch showed that about 12,500 people were watching on Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s channel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Sunday Read: ‘How Everyone Got Lost in Netflix’s Endless Library’

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      Emma Kehlbeck and Catherine Anderson and Listen and follow ‘The Daily’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadioIf you take a journey deep within Netflix’s furthest recesses — burrow past Binge-worthy TV Dramas and 1980s Action Thrillers, take a left at Because You Watched the Lego Batman Movie, keep going past Fright Night — you will eventually find your way to the platform’s core, the forgotten layers of content fossilized by the pressure from the accreted layers above.Netflix’s vast library changed the business of television — in part by making a better product and showing the rest of the industry that it had to follow suit — but it also changed the very nature of television.There are a lot of ways to listen to “The Daily.” Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with “The Daily,” write to us at thedaily-ads@nytimes.com.Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Frannie Carr Toth and Krish Seenivasan. More

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      Video of Ballots Being Destroyed Was Faked by Russia, Federal Officials Say

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      The video, which purported to show mailed-in ballots in Pennsylvania being ripped up, was part of Moscow’s efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election, the officials said.Federal officials said on Friday that a video showing mailed-in ballots in Pennsylvania being destroyed was a fake, created by Russia as part of Moscow’s efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has issued repeated warnings about Russia’s attempts to sow chaos and undermine faith in the integrity of the presidential vote. The video falsely showing destroyed ballots was part of that campaign, the office said in a joint statement with the F.B.I. and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.In the statement, intelligence officials said they expected both in the approach to the election and in the weeks after that Russia would “create and release additional media content that seeks to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and divide Americans.”The video, which purported to show ballots in Bucks County, Pa., being ripped up, was quickly called out as fake by local Republican and Democratic election officials.“This type of behavior is meant to sow division and distrust in our election systems, and makes a mockery of the people working incredibly hard to ensure a free and fair election is carried out,” county officials said in a statement.U.S. intelligence officials have previously said that Moscow favors the election of Donald J. Trump. In recent weeks, Russians have been spreading fake videos to undermine the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. One such video, which made false abuse accusations against her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, was identified by intelligence officials this week as being a Russian government operation.In the same briefing, intelligence officials said Russia was planning to work to increase Americans’ doubts about the November election and potentially foment violence, stoking concerns about the integrity of the vote.The fake video showing ballots being destroyed appears to be a first step in those efforts to raise voter concerns.The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which helps local officials safeguard voting systems, has been holding regular briefings with officials about foreign efforts to influence the election, urging them to aggressively respond to attempts to spread disinformation about the integrity of the vote.Russia has pushed a variety of videos during the election, some trying to undercut American support for Ukraine and others making more direct attacks on Democrats. Moscow’s attempts to spread disinformation initially appeared to have been knocked off-balance when President Biden dropped out of the race and threw his support to Ms. Harris. But more recently, those efforts have focused on attacking Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz, and the pace of Russian activity began increasing in October, according to government and industry officials. More

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      Long Island Therapist Charged With Distributing Child Sex Abuse Imagery

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      Renee Hoberman, a licensed social worker on Long Island, used messaging platforms to share graphic videos of infants being abused, prosecutors said.A child therapist on Long Island has been charged with distributing sexual abuse imagery of children as young as infants on social media, according to a federal complaint.The therapist, identified as Renee Hoberman, 36, of Plainview, N.Y., appeared in court in Central Islip on Wednesday before Magistrate Judge Arlene R. Lindsay, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. The judge ordered that Ms. Hoberman be held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the U.S. attorney’s office said.Federal prosecutors said that over several months this year, Ms. Hoberman, a licensed social worker who also goes by Rina, used messaging apps to upload sexually abusive images of minors, including videos of a man raping infants a year old or younger.As recently as Oct. 16, the complaint said, she uploaded the images to several “chats” on the messaging app Kik, claiming to be a man with several young children. She described punishing the children with sexual assaults, the complaint said, and shared two videos depicting the abuse of children whom she said belonged to the man she claimed to be. She also invited another person in the chat to visit and “spank the children,” the complaint said.Ms. Hoberman has not been charged with producing child sexual abuse imagery, and the complaint does not indicate that she was involved in the abuse.Ms. Hoberman’s public defender, Evan Sugar, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Her brother and father, reached by phone on Wednesday evening, both declined to comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      He Dreamed of Escaping Gaza. The World Watched Him Burned Alive.

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      He was the son his mother boasted about: He memorized the entire Quran as a boy, and rose to the top of his university class. He wanted to become a doctor. But most of all, Shaaban al-Dalou dreamed of escape.Since Israel launched its devastating retaliation for the Hamas-led attack just over a year ago, Mr. al-Dalou wrote impassioned pleas on social media, posted videos from his family’s small plastic tent and even launched a GoFundMe page calling out to the world for help getting out of the Gaza Strip.Instead, the world watched him burn to death.Mr. al-Dalou, 19, was identified by his family as the young man helplessly waving his arms, engulfed in flames, in a video that has become a symbol of the horrors of war for Gazans, trapped inside their blockaded enclave as the international community looks on.A still image from a video of Mr. al-Dalou amid burning debris.Hani Abu Rezeq, via ReutersOn Oct. 14, Israel said it conducted a “precision strike” on a Hamas command center operating near Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, a coastal city in central Gaza. Dozens of families like the Dalous, forced to flee their homes, had set up tents in a parking lot inside the hospital compound. They had hoped that international laws forbidding most attacks on medical facilities would ensure their safety.The Israeli military said that the fire that erupted afterward was probably caused by “secondary explosions,” without specifying what that meant. It added that “the incident is under review.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tim Walz Rally Is Livestreamed on Twitch in Pitch to Young Voters

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      Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign bridged the real world with World of Warcraft on Wednesday, livestreaming Gov. Tim Walz’s rally in Arizona via Twitch, while a Twitch streamer played the role-playing game and provided commentary about his rally.The Republican Party has made inroads with young men, and this stream was an attempt by the Harris campaign to court voters to the Democratic ticket. This was the first time the Harris campaign has livestreamed gameplay from its Twitch account, which was created in August, and roughly 5,000 viewers were tuned in. Wired first reported news of the livestream.Both Ms. Harris’s campaign and that of former President Donald J. Trump have sought out nontraditional media platforms to reach voters who may not engage with mainstream outlets.Preheat, a Twitch streamer and World of Warcraft player with about 50,000 followers, hosted the stream from the Harris campaign’s account and encouraged the viewers to vote for her.The screen was split, with Mr. Walz’s rally in Tucson on the left and gameplay on the right.The stream mimicked a tactic used to gin up visual interest in short-form video content, such as putting gameplay from Subway Surfers, a mobile game, side by side with something else. The Harris campaign has used this trick, posting a TikTok in which Subway Surfers gameplay was placed next to a clip of Mr. Trump discussing the overturn of Roe v. Wade.Preheat occasionally butted in with commentary on the game or the election.“Project 2025? Not good, very weird,” Preheat said about the conservative playbook Democrats often criticize as he attacked a boss in World of Warcraft. Later, he spoke over Mr. Walz’s speech, wondering about his character: “Wait, am I dying?”Mr. Trump, for his part, held a livestreamed interview with Adin Ross, an online streamer popular with conservative young men, at Mar-a-Lago in August. The interview attracted more than 500,000 viewers. During the event on Kick, a streaming platform, Mr. Ross — who had been banned from Twitch for “hateful conduct” — gave Mr. Trump a Rolex watch and a Tesla Cybertruck emblazoned with a decal of Mr. Trump raising his fist after the attempt on his life in July.Politicians on livestreaming platforms are a relatively new phenomenon. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a Democrat, has her own Twitch account, and in 2020 she streamed gameplay of “Among Us” to an audience of hundreds of thousands of people while encouraging viewers to vote.During the 2020 presidential campaign, both Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mr. Trump used Twitch accounts to livestream campaign events. Twitch banned Mr. Trump’s account after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but reinstated it this year. More

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      Daniel Penny’s Lawyers Will Ask to Throw Out Chokehold Charge in N.Y.C. Subway Death Case

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      Mr. Penny’s subway-car struggle with a homeless man, Jordan Neely, ended in death. On Thursday, his lawyers will also ask a judge to exclude video of Mr. Penny discussing the encounter.Minutes after a subway rider named Daniel Penny choked Jordan Neely in a train car in May 2023, Mr. Penny stood inside the Broadway-Lafayette Street station in Manhattan telling officers, “I just put him out.”Mr. Penny was recorded on body-worn camera explaining to officers that Mr. Neely, a homeless man, had entered an F train and thrown his possessions on the ground, and that he was “was very aggressive, going crazy.”“He’s like: ‘I’m ready to go to prison for life. I’m ready to die, I’m ready to die,’” Mr. Penny told an officer, according to court filings from prosecutors. “And I was standing behind him. I think I might have just put him in a choke, put him down. We just went to the ground. He was trying to roll up. I had him pretty good. I was in the Marine Corps.”Last year, Mr. Penny, who is from Long Island, was charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and jury selection for his trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 21. In a hearing on Thursday, lawyers for Mr. Penny asked a judge to suppress the comments he made to officers at the subway station and later at a precinct house, and to dismiss the indictment against him.When the video of the encounter spread online last year, it reverberated through the nation. The chokehold was captured in a four-minute video that showed Mr. Penny with his arms around Mr. Neely’s neck and his legs wrapped around his body. Mr. Neely struggled against Mr. Penny’s restraint as two other men stepped in to hold him down.Mr. Penny cooperated with officers who came to the scene and arrested him after Mr. Neely died, even going back to the Fifth Precinct to speak with them, his lawyers said in court filings. However, his statements followed what they argued was an illegal arrest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More