Major Media Wants In: CNN and Fox Are Entering NFTs

In the past year, we’ve seen top-tier brands, major league sports teams, celebrities and the like embrace the NFT landscape. Now, major traditional media companies are seeing the light. This week, CNN and Fox are starting their own respective NFT projects.

The CNN NFT: Showcasing Newsworthy Moments

CNN has announced their first NFT project, “Vault By CNN: Moments That Changed Us”. The company will tokenize major moments in contemporary history. While CNN has been quiet about what specifically those moments will entail, a majority of speculation has led to topics such as world records and presidential history.

CNN will leverage the FLOW blockchain, an increasingly popular chain for NFT projects such as NBA Top Shot. The project will launch towards the end of June and be released within six weekly iterations.

Related Reading | Porsche Launches NFT Trading Platform Fanzone

Fox’s $100M NFT Fund

Fox this week announced a $100M NFT fund, managed by NFT and now Fox subsidiary Blockchain Creative Labs. The fund will be aimed towards empowering creators to “build, launch, manage, and sell” NFTs. Fox Broadcasting is also teaming up with Bento Box Entertainment (BBE) for the project; Bento Box is the producer of Fox-televised shows such as “Bob’s Burgers”. Accordingly, speculation is abound regarding what sort of NFT projects could emerge from the media giant – such as implementation of Fox IP like “The Simpsons” and other animated series. BBE was acquired by Fox in 2019. “Rick and Morty” creator Dan Harmon will also be leading a blockchain-related show titled “Krapopolis”. Fox and partners will likely be leveraging the ethereum blockchain.

Charlie Collier, Fox Entertainment’s CEO, has suggested that the new project could bring a whole new vertical to BBE’s line of business; Collier said that blockchain technology has bolstered a “new marketplace that is a natural extension of Bento Box’s talents, one that allows the team to support, elevate and reward innovators and artists in new and creatively exciting ways”.

FLOW will be the blockchain of choice for CNN's first NFT project; the FLOW token has seen a substantial pullback since hitting all-time highs in recent months. | Source: FLOW-USD on TradingView.com

What It Means For Major Media

What major media companies actually think about NFTs is difficult to put a finger on; CNN has previously said that the NFT bubble might be “bursting already”, despite popular projects and artists, such as Beeple or CryptoPunks (among others) still yielding astronomical sales numbers.

Fox and CNN are essentially the first major media firms to take a leap into NFTs, with the lone exception being Time Magazine; Time launched ten tokenized magazine covers earlier in the year that have generated over $300,000 in sales.

Related Reading | Sotheby’s To Auction Off World Wide Web Source Code As NFT

Featured image from Pixabay, Charts from TradingView.com