Can a New Media Company Founded by Olympic Athletes Change How Women's Sports Are Covered?
Mar 02 2021
There's finally a media company that will make women's sports a top priority.
Olympic medalists Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim, Simone Manuel and Sue Bird are launching TOGETHXR, created specifically for Gen Z and millennial women. The four hope to elevate the stories and voices of women in sports, as well as intersecting areas like activism, culture, wellness and beauty.
<p>Although women make up almost half of all participants in sports, they receive less than 5% of sports coverage, according to a report by the <a href="https://en.unesco.org/themes/gender-equality-sports-media" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization</a>.</p><p>"We have our individual legacies as athletes through championships and medals, but what's most important to us is championing for the next generation of women — because that will be the legacy that lasts," said the co-founders in a release announcing the launch.</p><p>The company will debut its premiere video series on YouTube, the first being "Fenom," a docuseries that follows 17-year-old boxing champion Chantel "Chicanita" Navarro, as she trains for the Olympics. "Kaikaina," which means "little sister" in Hawaiian, will be the company's second series. It launches next month and features a group of young Hawaiian surfers.</p><p>The company is also planning content that features female athletes and sports journalists like Maya Brady, Ibtihaj Muhammad and Taylor Rooks.</p><p>TOGETHXR is backed <strong></strong>by <a href="https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/magnet-companies-brett-bouttier-betsy-morgan-jeff-berman-1202893221/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">Magnet Companies</a> with a "mid-seven figure investment," <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/sports/womens-sports-coverage.html" target="_blank">according to the New York Times</a>. It comes as women's sports has drawn a growing audience and with it a greater appeal for advertisers. </p><p>Morgan was captain of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team last year and has won two World Cups and an Olympic gold medal. Bird has won four gold medals as well as four WNBA titles. Manuel won four gold medals at the 2016 Olympics and was the first Black woman to win an Olympic swimming individual event. Kim was the youngest gold medalist in the 2018 Olympic Games snowboarding half pipe competition.</p><p>The new company joins a growing number of media and entertainment companies founded by athletes, including Kevin Durant's Thirty Five Media and LeBron James's Springhill Company, but TOGETHXR stands apart in being entirely female founded.</p>
Related Articles Around the Web
Read more
Show less
Anyone wishing to relive the drive-by shooting of Notorious B.I.G., aka Christopher Wallace, can do so later this month through the true crime augmented reality app, CrimeDoor.
The upcoming release will coincide with the 24th anniversary of the Brooklyn native's murder outside the Peterson Automotive Museum, where he was attending a Vibe Awards after-party. CrimeDoor will also be releasing a door into the murder scene of rapper Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G.'s West Coast rival.
<p><span></span>The app has a number of new additions slated and has seen users surge since it paid $1,000 to Olivia Snake, a true crime TikToker with 1.1 million followers, to <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@livvontheedge/video/6916192750291455237?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v2" target="_blank"><u>promote it in mid-January</u></a>, founder Neil Mandt said. Before that point, about 11,000 people had <a href="https://dot.la/crime-door-true-crime-app-2648557521.html" target="_blank">downloaded CrimeDoor since its October launch;</a> in the subsequent 72 hours, 60,000 more piled in. </p><p>Over the last six weeks, Mandt said CrimeDoor has been downloaded 220,000 times. Even as it faces criticism from victims' rights advocates, it climbed as high as number four among news apps on the iOS App Store, which uses an algorithm to rank apps based on factors including downloads and user engagement.<br/></p><p>Those data were confirmed by third-party analytics firms Apptopia and Sensor Tower. </p><p>"We hit the market [with the TikTok influencer], we got a lot of publicity, we saw immediate growth," said Mandt.</p><p>CrimeDoor allows users to explore unsolved crime scenes recreated with augmented reality (AR). The app opens onto a map that shows users nearby historic crime scenes. Each crime comes with a case file that includes a list of articles, documents, photos, audio clips and videos curated by crime journalists and researchers. For an additional fee, users can explore select crime scenes via AR environments the company creates with Unity, a gaming engine.</p><p>Mandt, a Hollywood veteran and true crime enthusiast, said CrimeDoor now has around 700 case files, comprising about 60,000 total hours worth of content, and that at least three new cases appear on the app every day. There are currently 20 "doors" — <a href="https://vimeo.com/491924577/63c90ff111" target="_blank">augmented reality portals</a> through which users can enter various crime scenes — which will increase by about one per month, Mandt said.</p><h2>CrimeDoor Pushback</h2><p>A local NBC station in Arizona <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlcFccHczOE" target="_blank"><u>ran a segment in December</u></a> highlighting concerns that the app exploits victims. Mandt responded that they are only sharing facts, and not glorifying violence.</p><p>The company maintains it can actually help victims' family members who want to bring new light to the unsolved crimes that stole their loved ones.</p><p>But not everyone may want that. Ferroll Robin, executive director of L.A.-based Loved Ones Victims Services, lost her brother to homicide.</p><p>"This is a very sensitive issue," she said. "[CrimeDoor] could trigger all kinds of emotions that families and loved ones have kind of moved past, so this could actually re-victimize them in a sense." Some families might see CrimeDoor as helpful, she said, "because they want their crime solved so bad." On the other hand, Robin reiterated, "I've had clients say 'I don't even want them found at this point,' because they've already dealt with it and moved on with their life."<br/></p><p>Mandt pointed to families of two unsolved murder victims who have helped build out their respective crime door scenes on the app.</p><p>Kelsi German, sister of Libby German, one of two victims slain in Delphi, Indiana, in 2017, has given CrimeDoor details on what her 15-year-old sister looked like at the time of her murder, and the murder scene itself, Mandt said. Family members of Rebecca Zahau, murdered in Coronado, California in 2011, have also helped build out an AR re-creation.<br/></p><p>"The awareness on those cases has significantly jumped, as a result of our efforts," Mandt said.</p><p>As CrimeDoor continues to release new material, Mandt and company partner Paul Holes, a former crime investigator, think the app can help crowdsource valuable information for cracking unsolved cases. Holes formerly worked on the Golden State Killer case, which was ultimately solved after decades of empty leads thanks in part to true crime enthusiasts who conducted their own investigations. </p><p>Mandt said he is expecting soon to partner with media companies interested in giving viewers an opportunity to dig deeper into crimes they feature on their programs, pointing to a hypothetical example of Dateline NBC. He previously told dot.LA that such an arrangement would involve a revenue share; he did not cite specific partners but noted that announcements should be forthcoming. </p><p>CrimeDoor is free to use, but accessing a door costs $1.99. Users can also purchase unlimited door access for $4.99 per month. Mandt would not say how much money the company has earned but noted that 7% of users make a purchase, suggesting about 15,400 of the 220,000 downloads over the past six weeks brought in some cash. </p><p>Influencer marketing has been key to the app's rise, Mandt said, noting that the $5,000 or so the company has spent on that channel represents the vast majority of its advertising expenses. </p><p>After Snake shared the hype clip on her TikTok, other influencers chimed in, for free. A YouTuber who goes by cjades, with 287,000 subscribers, narrated a side-by-side walkthrough of a crime door, saying, "I thought this was absolutely insane and I thought I have to make a video about this." <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikaq-GJ_QsQ" target="_blank"><u>That video</u></a>, Mandt said, captured about 40,000 views over the next several days.</p>
From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
Read more
Show less
Streaming is sidelining TV pilots. That's one of the findings in a pair of new reports released Wednesday by the nonprofit that manages most of L.A. County's film-permitting process.
The reports document the pandemic and how the rise in streaming services is changing the film-production world and challenging California's place in it.
<p>The percentage of scripted TV projects that have foregone a traditional pilot episode and instead gone "straight-to-series" (STS) has skyrocketed, from 6% in 2012 to 66% in 2020. That's a trend largely driven by streamers, who distributed nearly 90% of their 2020 projects using that model, compared to 76.3% for cable and 15.3% for broadcast. </p><p>"We've been told (streamers' projects) get vetted a lot more heavily upfront," said the nonprofit FilmLA's president, Paul Audley. That, alongside streaming's rise, has ushered in the shift away from shooting a pilot and then shopping it to buyers.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU0MzM2Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTg0NTgyNn0.Om2wOcdBlbz3m-gnlSrDk19wxoxMotKgjLf2J0Yx22Y/img.png?width=980" id="99039" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d4adb9bd13cd96c2eb24aea8b23b177f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1104" data-height="628" />
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Data and graphic from FilmLA</small></p><p>And for the second straight year, streaming made up the largest portion of scripted-TV projects. Of the 215 total such projects in FilmLA's 2020 cycle, streaming led the way with 97 projects, up 27.6% from 2019. Scripted cable projects rose 11.3% to 59, while broadcast fell 11.9% from 67 to 59. 2019 was the first year streaming projects eclipsed broadcast, and that margin has now widened.</p><p>California retains its spot as the top location for new scripted-TV projects. But there is increasing competition from other suitors trying to lure Hollywood productions. In 2018, the Golden State hosted 52.4% of scripted-TV projects. That fell to 43.1% in 2019 and further to 41.1% in 2020.<br/></p><p>The state is still king when it comes to streaming, but its overall share is steadily falling. California hosted 29 new scripted projects last year, compared to Canada's 24 and New York's 17. Georgia, which has made a play for Hollywood's films, only hosted six scripted productions. </p><p>Last year was the bleakest year on record for production in the nonprofit FilmLA's 25-year history. After a nearly three-month pandemic-induced shutdown, film and TV production in L.A. returned slowly in 2020 under new restrictions. Those rules extended shooting timelines but limited what could be produced, cutting on-location shooting days in L.A. County 48% year-over-year, according to a new year-in-review report from the nonprofit.</p><p>Still, there were some bright spots, including the re-emergence of reality television. In the last quarter of 2020, overall television production days rose 6% year-over-year, with reality TV leading the way with a 93% increase from 2019. That's a reflection of reality's simpler production requirements compared to scripted shows, which make it easier to adhere to public health and industry guidelines.</p><p>Scripted television, on the other hand, plummeted. Drama shoot-days in 2020 fell 45.8% year-over-year, and comedy dropped 75.9%. Those figures likely underestimate the damage, because of FilmLA's methodology. The organization measures production volume by shoot-days; but due to the new health and safety protocols, Audley said productions are now requiring more time, meaning it takes more shoot-days to create the same amount of output. </p><p>"It's a double-edged sword," Audley said. "One edge is real gratitude that the industry and public health have found a way for the film industry to work at least at some level, because there are thousands of small businesses dependent on this industry and whatever work we can get out is really helpful. The other side is this pandemic has really decimated this industry that has a huge impact on Los Angeles." </p>
From Your Site Articles
- Film and TV Production Could Drop 80% in Los Angeles - dot.LA ›
- Shahid VIP Streaming Service Set to Launch in North America - dot.LA ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Read more
Show less