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Roku plans to produce original shows and feature films

The streaming device maker is hiring to build its own slate of original content.

Roku plans to produce original shows and feature films
Roku's emerging as one of the streaming war's biggest winners.
Photo: Luke Sharrett/Getty Images

Not content anymore with just streaming Hollywood's old shows and movies, Roku is looking to produce originals: The company published a job listing for a lead production attorney, which spells out plans to build out an "expanding slate of original content." This renewed push into originals comes just weeks after Roku acquired Quibi's content library, for which the company reportedly shelled out less than $100 million.

The job listing was first spotted by Revealera, a data provider for job openings. A Roku spokesperson declined to comment.

Roku's job listing is the clearest evidence yet that the Quibi deal doesn't represent a one-off. The listing tells potential applicants that they would "serve as lead production attorney for Roku's original episodic and feature length productions."

The listing also makes it clear that Roku may be looking beyond simply acquiring existing shows and films on an exclusive basis. The attorney would be interacting with guilds and unions, and part of the job would entail working on "option purchase agreements, script acquisition agreements, life rights agreements, agreements to hire writers, actors, directors and individual producers, production services agreements, below-the-line agreements including for department heads, location agreements, clearances, prop rental agreements, likeness releases and credit memos," according to the listing.

Future Roku originals are likely going to be shown on the Roku Channel, the company's free, ad-supported streaming service. The Roku Channel has been at the center of the company's booming advertising business; Roku revealed in November that its services business, which primarily is made up of advertising revenue, had brought in more than $1 billion on a 12-month trailing basis by the end of September.

The company is scheduled to report Q4 and full-year earnings this Thursday.

 Janko Roettgers

Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.

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Protocol | Workplace

Productivity apps can’t stop making money

ClickUp had one of the biggest Series C funding rounds ever. Here's how it matches up to the other productivity unicorns.

ClickUp made $400 million in its series C funding round.

Photo: ClickUp

Productivity platform ClickUp announced a milestone today. The company raised $400 million, which is one of the biggest series C funding rounds in the workplace productivity market ever. The round, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global, put the private company at a $4 billion valuation post-money.

In case it's not clear: This is a massive amount of money. It shows how hot the productivity space is right now, with some predicting the market size could reach almost $120 billion by 2028. In a world of hybrid workers, all-in-one tool platforms are all the rage among both startups and productivity stalwarts. Companies everywhere want to escape tool overwhelm, where work is spread across dozens of apps.

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Lizzy Lawrence ( @LizzyLaw_) is a reporter at Protocol, covering tools and productivity in the workplace. She's a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she studied sociology and international studies. She served as editor in chief of The Michigan Daily, her school's independent newspaper. She's based in D.C., and can be reached at llawrence@protocol.com.

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If a company resolved a data breach in the past, does it need to disclose the potential negative fallout of that breach as a risk to investors later on? In a new petition asking the Supreme Court to take up the question, Alphabet is arguing emphatically: no. And it's using the ol' "the past is history, tomorrow's a mystery" defense.

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Facebook’s hiring crisis: Engineers are turning down offers

"All of you are now starting to experience that major imbalance between supply and demand — and it doesn't feel good," a recruiting leader wrote in an internal memo.

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Facebook cannot find enough candidates to meet engineering demand, especially in the Bay Area, and has struggled and failed to meet early 2021 recruiting goals, according to a detailed internal memo outlining recruitment strategy and hiring pains.

The company also failed to meet hiring goals in 2019, which frustrated CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and it built an ad-hoc team of leaders to create an emergency plan to address the painful shortage, according to disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by Frances Haugen's legal counsel. A consortium of news organizations, including Protocol, has reviewed the redacted versions received by Congress.

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Lisa Peterson, a wealth manager for the DeVos family, testified in Elizabeth Holmes's criminal fraud trial Tuesday, as prosecutors continued to highlight allegations about how the Theranos CEO courted investors in the once-high-flying blood-testing startup.

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