News

The Professional Fighters League (Pfl) has forged a major media rights agreement with Starzplay, a leading streaming service in the Middle East and North Africa.

The multi-year deal will bring Pfl’s full range of mixed martial arts franchises to fight fans in the Mena region, including the Pfl World Tournament, Champions Series, Pfl Europe, Pfl Mena, Pfl Africa, and the newly announced Pfl Pacific event that will debut in December.

Starzplay, which has more than three million subscribers, is available in 20 Mena countries, including Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Egypt and Pakistan.

Mixed Martial Arts has a global audience of 550 million fans, which it says makes it the third largest sports audience, behind only soccer and basketball. Its fans are also younger and more digitally engaged than the audiences for other sports, making them a coveted demographic. The Pfl is the first and only league to present Mma...

Priyanka Chopra-Produced Doc Debuting On Prime Video India

Women of My Billion (Womb), a documentary about the forms of violence faced by women in India, will premiere exclusively on Prime Video India on May 3. Produced by Apoorva Bakshi and Monisha Thyagarajan’s Awedacious Originals in association with Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ Purple Pebble Pictures, the documentary follows protagonist Srishti Bakshi on a walking pilgrimage across India – spanning 3,800 km over 240 days – to talk to women from various backgrounds about their struggles and dreams. “Women have borne the brunt of gender bias for far too long, enduring a silent struggle against entrenched social injustices that seek to suppress their voices. With Womb, the aim is to transcend these struggles – to be a beacon of hope,” said Chopra Jonas, Producer at Purple Pebble Pictures. “Womb is not merely a depiction of pain and suffering, but a rallying cry and call for solidarity and action.

TikTok, like pretty much every other platform, has been touting its election integrity policies for months ahead of the U.S. midterms. But a new study from nonprofit organizing group Accelerate Change alleges TikTok is suppressing videos about voting.

The study posted 10 pairs of voting-related videos featuring TikTok influencers. Each pair of videos contained identical content, except one version of the video had the influencer say words like “elections,” “voting,” “midterms,” and “get out and vote,” aloud. In the other version, the influencer didn’t say these words out loud; instead, they held up handwritten signs with the same words.

The videos collectively generated around 370,000 views. Notably, though, the videos in which influencers said the words out loud received 65 fewer views than those with the handwritten signs, Accelerate Change says.

“Often with an algorithm performance experiment like this, you struggle to see a pattern in the data, but in this...

Fox will air Fire Fight Australia, a benefit concert featuring Queen, Adam Lambert, Michael Bublé, k.d. lang, 5 Seconds of Summer and other musical acts, on Saturday, February 29.

The U.S. network’s special coverage of the event, which is set to take place this Sunday at Sydney’s Anz Stadium, will air from 11 p.m. to midnight Et/Pt on the 29th. Olivia Newton-John will host the Fox telecast.

In Australia, the concert will air live on Sunday on Channel 7 and 7plus, and Fox8 and Foxtel Go.

Alice Cooper and Ronan Keating are also in the show lineup, along with a number of Australian music notables. The roster of those performing live includes Amy Shark, Baker Boy, Conrad Sewell, Daryl Braithwaite, Delta Goodrem, Grinspoon, Guy Sebastian, Hilltop Hoods, Icehouse, Illy, Jessica Mauboy, John Farnham, Lee Kernaghan, Peking Duk, Pete Murray, Tina Arena and William Barton.

The event, slated to last 10 hours,...

Queen, Adam Lambert and Alice Cooper are among the musicians who will perform at Fire Fight Australia, a concert to aid brushfire relief in Australia. The event, which will take place at Sydney’s Anz Stadium on February 16th, will also feature performances by k.d. lang, Olivier Newton-John and Pete Murray, and will be hosted by comedian Celeste Barber.

lang is set to perform two songs, including her rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” while Queen + Adam Lambert will appear between dates of their Australian The Rhapsody Tour, which hits Sydney on February 15th.

Mma startup Professional Fighters League has received a $28 million equity investment from a group that includes MGM Television chief Mark Burnett, actor-entrepreneur Kevin Hart, and self-help guru Tony Robbins.

The Washington, D.C.-based Professional Fighters League (Pfl) is in its first year of operations. It aims to be a competitor against Ufc amid the growing public interest in Mma bouts. The Pfl aims to bring a March Madness-style competition structure to the Mma world. Other investors in this round of financing include tech titan Ted Leonsis and Riot Games co-founder Brandon Beck.

The Pfl at present has a one-year deal with NBC Sports Network for carriage of its fights. Burnett, the renowned reality TV producers, aims to develop a range of programming around Pfl, starting with a “Challengers Series” that would be an elimination-style competition among aspiring Mma pugilists for the chance to join the league. MGM is also an investor in Pfl.

In this interview, we speak with Pete Murray of Firaxis Games on the upcoming Slingshot Dlc for Xcom: Enemy Unknown.

Murray, Associate Producer and Level Designer on Enemy Unknown, discusses Council missions, the alien battleship, enemy adjustments and new localized content based on China, as well as fan reception to multiplayer.

Editor’S Pick: Xcom is a soldier’s tale, where dying is a good thing

The new Slingshot Dlc will be available on Dec. 4th.

The BBC has announced a series of programmes to mark the 60th anniversary of the UK singles chart. Shows across BBC radio and TV will be broadcast in November to celebrate the chart's birthday, after it was launched by NME in 1952 as a top 12. Pop Charts Britannia: 60 Years of the Top 10 will look back at the history and evolution of the chart, its place in British popular culture and its most groundbreaking moments. The documentary will feature contributions from BBC broadcasters such as David Jacobs, Pete Murray, Bob Harris, Paul Gambaccini and Reggie Yates, while stars including Sir Cliff Richard and experts Jon Webster and Rob Dickins will also appear. The programme will air on Friday, November 16 on BBC Four. The Joy of the Single will look at the changes of music formats from vinyl to downloads, and how the chart has been altered over the years (more)...

Release date: 26th March

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

You’d be forgiven for thinking that side projects were just something Jack White invented to trick people into thinking he was producing new music every couple of years, when in reality he’s just been singing the same song over and over again. However, it turns out other bands can create splinter groups too! The latest being Fleet Foxes, already a side project of My Morning Jacket (Ok, they’re not, but they sound like they are).

Poor Moon are Christian Wargo and Casey Wescott from the Foxes, plus Ian and Pete Murray from The Christmas Cards, and their Illusion Ep is released on 26th March in advance of a full length record later in the year. It’s…it’s fine.

I should have mentioned actually that there’s another member of this band, and it is he who seems...

Pete Murray has fulfilled the dying wishes of two young cancer victims with the release of his latest song. When the Australian musician met terminally ill Caroline Clifford and Kate Dawes through music therapist Emma O'Brien, they asked him to record two songs that they wrote. After the women died, he invited their families to a Melbourne studio and recorded both 'Red' and 'Kate's Song'. Murray told The Daily Telegraph: "Caroline was quite cheeky and put it on me one day [in 2005], 'These songs we have written with Emma, can you record them for us?' "Caroline's song was about how she was angry and scared. 'How do I stop this? It's killing me and I don't want to die'. You are (more)...

Pete Murray has revealed why he took a break from music last year. The Australian musician, who is back in the charts with his new album Blue Sky Blue, said that he wanted to "stop" performing after he split from wife of three years Amanda back in 2009. Murray told New Idea magazine: "I just wanted to stop. I wasn't interested. I wanted time to myself and my kids [7-year-old Charlie and 4-year-old Pedro]. And I needed a break to come out with something fresh too. "[The album is] intense in parts. There is break-up stuff there, but it's not negative. It's really positive. It's about just living your life and looking ahead." Murray admitted that his ex-wife has not heard the album, but said that his children always listen to his music. "The kids sit in the car and request (more)...