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    Michelle Obama Is Hosting Video Podcast ‘IMO’ With Her Brother, Craig Robinson

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    Through her production company, Higher Ground, Mrs. Obama, along with her brother, Craig Robinson, will interview celebrities and offer advice on various topics.Ask any prominent podcast host for a list of dream interview guests, and it is quite likely that Michelle Obama’s name would be on it.That is why the former first lady shouldn’t have much trouble booking whomever she likes on her new show, “IMO,” short for “in my opinion,” which she will host with her older brother, the basketball executive Craig Robinson.The podcast was announced on Monday by Higher Ground, the media company founded in 2018 by former President Barack Obama and Mrs. Obama.Higher Ground’s podcasts lean toward prestige cultural programming. Previous releases include a limited series about Stevie Wonder, hosted by the New York Times arts critic Wesley Morris; a celebrity interview show about meaningful family recipes, hosted by the journalist Michele Norris; and a series of conversations about American life by Mr. Obama and Bruce Springsteen.“IMO” falls more in line with current industrywide trends in podcasting: It is a chat show being released as a video, a first for Higher Ground. (One third of podcast consumers now prefer shows with video components, according to a report in December from Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights.)The Times was provided with the first two episodes of “IMO,” which were both about an hour long. The hosts mainly offered advice based on their life experiences, and refrained from addressing current events or politics.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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      Oscars Draw 18 Million Viewers, an 8% Drop

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      The show was broadcast on ABC, as it has been for decades, but also streamed live on Hulu, where there were glitches.The Academy Awards drew 18 million viewers on Sunday, ABC said, citing Nielsen data. That is an 8 percent drop from the 19.5 million who watched last year.The audience decline ends a three-year streak when Oscar ratings had been on the rise.The decline follows a trend among other award shows, which have seen their ratings growth come to a halt this year. The Grammy Awards attracted 15.4 million viewers last month, a 9 percent decline from the year before. The Golden Globes in January also saw a modest decline from last year.ABC said the Oscars had grown 3 percent among adults under the age of 50.ABC broadcast the Oscars on Sunday, as it has for decades, but the show also streamed live on Hulu, which helped boost viewership.The livestreaming experience, however, was far from perfect. There were glitches at the beginning of the show, and some subscribers did not see the finish, when their feed was abruptly cut off shortly before the best actress and best picture awards were given out.“Thank you for watching!” read the on-screen message. “This live event has now ended. You may exit playback and select something else to watch.”Still, even with this year’s decline in audience, the Oscars will be among the highest-rated entertainment shows of the year. And, perhaps more significant, the Oscars will go another year as the most-watched live awards show, continuing to best the Grammys.The show, which was hosted by Conan O’Brien, received mostly good reviews. Vanity Fair said it was “the best ceremony in years,” although Variety argued that “the telecast felt too small for Hollywood’s biggest night.”The ceremony was also long: It clocked in at nearly four hours.Sunday’s Oscars came nowhere close to the box office firepower of last year’s telecast, which was fueled by “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie.” “Anora” took home best picture on Sunday night, one of its five Oscar wins. But with that win, “Anora” secured a record for having the lowest domestic ticket sales in best picture history, outside of the pandemic. More

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      PlayStation Network Is Working After 24-Hour Outage, Sony Says

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      Users on social media had complained that they could not access their games after the unexplained outage began on Friday night.The PlayStation Network, which users of the Sony PlayStation platform rely on to play games, download content and access apps, started working again on Saturday night after a 24-hour outage that left customers frustrated.“All services are up and running,” PlayStation announced on its website around 7 p.m. on Saturday. The problems, which prevented many customers from “launching games, apps or network features,” were first reported at 7 p.m. on Friday, the company said.“PSN has been restored,” the company’s support team posted on X at 6:58 p.m. on Saturday. “You should be able to access online features without any problems now.”The company did not explain the cause of the outage and did not immediately respond to an email seeking more information.The issues affected users of PlayStation’s most popular offerings, including its console and web products. Account management, gaming and social, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store and PlayStation Direct were among the impacted services.PlayStation creates software and hardware, including hugely popular gaming consoles. Users play video games and run apps like Netflix, Spotify and YouTube through the PlayStation Network.On social media, some users reported that they were able to use their PlayStation on Saturday afternoon but many were still experiencing issues into the evening.During the outage, some users reported that they were not able to play offline games, a testament to how severe the server problems were, as offline games usually do not face the same issues that online games will sometimes experience.As users complained on social media, other brands fired off trolling messages.“Calling all gamers: this play station still works,” Krispy Kreme posted on X. Krispy Kreme offered free glazed doughnuts for two hours on Saturday “because sweet rewards don’t need a server.”“bet y’all want physical copies now,” GameStop, the struggling video game retail chain, said on X. More

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      Test Yourself on These Young Adult Novels Adapted Into Films

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on tween and teen novels that made the leap from the page to the screen — and some of them more than once.Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their movie versions.3 of 5This 1972 middle-grade novel by Mary Rodgers has been adapted for the screen in 1976, 1995, 2003 and 2018, and its various productions over the years have starred Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Heidi Blickenstaff and Jodie Foster, among others. What is the title of the book? More

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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