Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll for $1.175 billion

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Sony will be buying anime streaming service Crunchyroll from AT&T for $1.175 billion. Crunchyroll will become part of Sony’s Funimation, which already licenses many popular shows. Now that Sony owns both Crunchyroll and Funimation, the company has tremendous power over anime in the US at a time when many other media companies are trying to figure out their anime content. Netflix has also invested heavily in both licensing and producing its own anime content. AT&T has been shopping around Crunchyroll for some time, and AT&T and Sony have apparently been in talks for months about the deal. AT&T purchased Crunchyroll as part of Otter Media in 2018 from the Chernin Group for a reported sum of more than $1 billion, according to the New York Times. The sale gave AT&T ownership over a number of digital properties. John Stankey, current CEO of AT&T but then head of WarnerMedia, said the company would use the Otter Media acquisition to “harness Otter’s expertise” while strengthening its own digital assets. Under Stankey’s leadership, AT&T and WarnerMedia are now focused on building up HBO Max, the crown jewel of the company’s streaming offerings.


Adobe has released the final update of its Flash Player

Adobe has released the final scheduled update to its Flash Player plugin, weeks before Flash’s official retirement. As noted on Adobe’s site, it has marked the last update for Flash outside mainland China, which has a separate version of the software. Adobe will block Flash content from running in January 2021. Adobe offered a brief farewell in its release notes. “We want to take a moment to thank all of our customers and developers who have used and created amazing Flash Player content over the last two decades,” the note says. “We are proud that Flash had a crucial role in evolving web content across animation, interactivity, audio, and video. We are excited to help lead the next era of digital experiences.” Flash has been on the chopping block since 2017 when Adobe announced it would finally end support. Flash was already being phased out in major web browsers, and Adobe had urged developers in 2015 to switch to newer standards like HTML5. The Internet Archive is using Ruffle to preserve over 1,000 games and animations on its site. But Adobe is about to say goodbye for good.

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