Waymo’s Robotaxi Service Expands Into Los Angeles

Robotaxis will begin cruising the streets of Los Angeles on Thursday when Google spinoff Waymo starts offering free rides to some of the roughly 50,000 people who have signed up for its driverless ride-hailing service. Waymo is expanding into Los Angeles seven months after California regulators authorized its robotaxis to begin charging for around-the-clock rides throughout San Francisco. That came despite objections from local officials who asserted the driverless vehicles posed unacceptable risks to public safety. Although Waymo isn’t charging for rides in its robotaxis in Los Angeles to start, the company said in a blog post announcing the expansion that it will eventually collect fares from passengers there too. Waymo also hopes to begin commercial operations in Austin, Texas, later this year, a goal that makes its robotaxi service available in four major U.S. cities 15 years after it began as a secret project within Google. Waymo’s robotaxis have been charging for rides in Phoenix since 2020. Joining us to discuss is Rachel Uranga who covers transportation and mobility for the Los Angeles Times and Phil Koopman, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University; he has been working on self-driving car safety for more than 25 years.

With files from the Associated Press.

It’s Easy To Burn Out. But It Can Be Hard To Recognize The Signs. This Burnout Coach’s New Book Can Help.

When you wake up dreading the day ahead, or when you see getting the stomach flu as a welcome break from your responsibilities, it might be time to take stock of your life. That’s what happened to Emily Ballesteros, who realized that her detachment, resentment, and exhaustion were symptoms of a severe case of burnout. This realization led to her career as a burnout management coach, and her book, The Cure for Burnout: How To Find Balance and Reclaim Your Life. In it she lays out five areas for the chronically burned-out to focus on: mindset, personal care, time management, boundaries, and stress management, offering tools to the reader to begin to own their time again. Today on AirTalk, Larry speaks with Ballesteros, who has a background in organizational psychology, about how we can combat the burnout epidemic that affects so many of us.

As Streaming Services Embrace Ads, Who’s Winning The Revenue Game?

As advertising becomes the key-growth lever for the companies competing in streaming, The Ankler’s Sean McNulty takes a deep dive into the 2023 earnings reports of Disney, Paramount and Comcast, among others, to reveal who’s outperforming who in the streaming advertising business and which streamer is poised to see the most revenue growth in 2024. As the traditional cable players continue to experience declines in their ad businesses, how quickly they can recoup those losses on streaming is vital to their financial health. And for consumers, the move to advertising affects everything from their viewing experience to their monthly subscription fees. Paramount, thanks to its 2019 acquisition of the free ad-supported streaming network Pluto, has had a healthy head start on the current vogue for ad-based streaming. The company reported a 17% increase in streaming advertising last year, to $1.8 billion. Peacock, which has the fewest total subscribers compared with Disney, Max, and Paramount, does benefit from having the biggest sports programming lineup (with, not to mention, a little something called the Olympics on the way). This helped it grow 40% last year, to $1.45 billion in ad revenue.

Today on AirTalk, we’ll chat with Sean McNulty, writer of the daily entertainment industry newsletter The Wakeup at The Ankler who wrote the piece.

For more, read the full story on The Ankler.

This story is published in partnership with The Ankler, a paid subscription publication about the entertainment industry.

How Ozempic Is Changing Hollywood And Awards Season

Semaglutide—the class of drugs marketed under the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro — are the latest weight-loss sensation in Tinseltown, but it’s more than just celebrities who are feeling the burn. Oprah Winfrey, Tracey Morgan and Elon Musk are just some of the Hollywood heavyweights who have acknowledged the use of Ozempic, and now, the rising popularity of GLP-1s, as these diabetes turned weight-loss drugs are also known, is having a seismic impact on the celebrity-industrial complex which consists of personal trainers, caterers, makeup artists, stylists and more.

Today on AirTalk, we’ll talk with Allan Salkin, freelance journalist who contributes to The Ankler and has been following this story.

For more, read the full story on The Ankler.

This story is published in partnership with The Ankler, a paid subscription publication about the entertainment industry.

The Slow Death Of Cable Network Television

If you’ve gone channel surfing lately (if you still have cable) you’ll see a majority of reruns and reality TV on once major, “can’t miss TV” networks. Since streaming platforms began, they have slowly replaced cable and broadcast networks, with more Americans watching streaming television than cable for the first time in 2022. Cable still has its mainstays like sports and broadcast news. According to a report by Variety, MSNBC, Newsmax, and Newsnation were some of the few channels to see audience viewership increase in 2023. But most channels have been seeing sharp declines in audiences year after year, and new television programming has gone by the wayside with most networks adding new shows exclusive to streaming to bolster their catalogs.

So, the question becomes “the chicken or the egg?” Are cable ratings declining because of lack of new programming or is the lack of new programming exasperating the decline? And what do these diminishing numbers mean for the future of cable and television as a whole? Joining us on AirTalk to talk about the fall of cable network television is Eric Deggans, TV critic and media analyst at NPR and Doug Herzog, former executive at Viacom who oversaw MTV, Comedy Central and other channels.

TV-Talk: ‘Girls5Eva,’ ‘The Girls On The Bus,’ ‘Quiet On Set’ And More

Have you felt completely overwhelmed when deciding what new show to watch these days? Us too. There’s just so much content out there between network TV and numerous streaming platforms. Each week, we will try to break through the noise with TV watchers who can point us to the must-sees and steer us clear of the shows that maybe don’t live up to the hype. This week, listeners will get the latest scoop on what’s worth watching with Jen Chaney, television critic for Vulture, and Dominic Patten, senior editor for Deadline.