Spending worldwide on video content will hit $255 billion this year, up 2% over 2025, Ampere Analysis said Monday. Spending by global streaming platforms is continuing to drive the growth, it said. Streamers overtook commercial broadcasters in 2025 in share of content spending, and 2026 will see streamers building on that lead, Ampere predicted.

Fox's motion to dismiss Newsmax Broadcasting's antitrust complaint (see 2511260028) doesn't meaningfully grapple with the facts but rather "attacks a caricature of Newsmax’s complaint and ... relies on cherry-picked statements and documents," Newsmax told the U.S. District Court for Western Wisconsin this week. In an opposition to Fox's motion to dismiss (docket 3:25-cv-00770), Newsmax said its complaint offers ample details to show how Fox has monopoly power. Fox has used exclusivity agreements to prevent and delay competition, Newsmax said, adding that it doesn't have access to any such secret agreements. "For obvious reasons, the issues of antitrust injury, harm to competition, and damages typically involve full discovery and extensive expert testimony," and thus the motion to dismiss should be denied.

Paramount Skydance is insisting its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery is a better deal for WBD shareholders than Netflix's. "Our offer clearly provides WBD investors greater value and a more certain, expedited path to completion," Paramount CEO David Ellison said Thursday, a day after WBD's board again rejected Paramount's bid in favor of Netflix's (see 2601070048).

Congress, federal agencies and the courts should act to rein in “Big Tech” before broadcast media and other industries and institutions are “damaged beyond recognition or repair,” wrote former FCC aide Adonis Hoffman in an op-ed Thursday for The Hill, which is owned by broadcaster Nexstar. While lawmakers and regulators “dither,” the large tech companies “that control access to customers, paychecks and audiences continue to expand their reach without meaningful restraint.”

Warner Bros. Discovery has again urged its shareholders to choose the purchase offer from Netflix and to ignore the hostile takeover bid from Paramount Skydance. Paramount's amended offer (see 2512220028) remains "inadequate," WBD's board said Wednesday in a letter to shareholders. It comes with "significant costs, risks and uncertainties as compared to the Netflix merger." The WBD board also urged shareholders last month to reject Paramount's offer (see 2512170049).

Petitioner-appellees Nexstar, Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting are asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for rehearing en banc of its finding that DirecTV has antitrust standing to sue the three companies for an alleged price-fixing conspiracy (see 2512160032). As the dissent by 2nd Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan pointed out, the finding in DirecTV's favor is "the first of its kind and conflicts with this Court's precedents," the broadcasters petitioned last week (docket 24-981). En banc review "is thus necessary to secure and maintain uniformity of the Court's decisions internally and among the Courts of Appeals." The broadcasters said the two-judge majority in the 2nd Circuit panel has extended the antitrust standing doctrine "beyond the limits imposed by every authority to date," incentivizing abuse.

Warner Bros. Discovery opting for Netflix's bid over Paramount Skydance's, which would maximize shareholder value, could be a Revlon violation, Flaster Greenberg transactions lawyer Daniel Markind wrote last week. A 1985 Delaware Supreme Court ruling about the takeover of Revlon said the company's board was obliged to seek maximum shareholder value over subjective values like "culture," Markind said. Currently, Paramount’s initial offer exceeds Netflix’s per-share price and is structured as an entire company offer, while Netflix wants to buy WBD's studio and streaming-service assets only, he noted.

The public narrative around the deal for Warner Bros. Discovery could affect the FCC’s consideration of Nexstar/Tegna, said New Street analyst Blair Levin in an email to subscribers Wednesday. The FCC “will likely make its decision on the broadcast deal after months in which the media is discussing the reasons for, and potential dangers of, media consolidation in the context of the battle over [Warner Bros. Discovery]," Levin wrote. If the White House signals that it would approve of Skydance Paramount or Netflix buying WBD, it would make the administration acting to block the much smaller Nexstar/Tegna deal appear hypocritical, he said. That issue is amplified if the Trump administration favors Paramount because “it is hard to see why you think an owner of [a] broadcast network should be allowed to consolidate assets in the streaming, studio, and cable network markets but broadcasters cannot bulk up within the broadcast market,” Levin wrote. He said that recent comments by Trump against relaxing the national TV ownership cap and slamming Nexstar’s NewsNation programming don’t make it less likely that the FCC will act on the cap “though we acknowledge that the President might cause us to reconsider our views if [Nexstar], for example, runs a news segment he does not like.”

There aren't material differences in the regulatory risks between the offers from Paramount Skydance and Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, WBD's board said Wednesday as it urged shareholders to go with the Netflix offer. The board said either transaction "is capable of obtaining the necessary U.S. and foreign regulatory approvals." Netflix has agreed to a $5.8 billion regulatory termination cash fee, the board noted, while Paramount is offering a $5 billion fee. The Paramount offer "reflects inadequate value" and puts numerous risks and costs on WBD.

Netflix data shows that even after acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, its share of U.S. TV viewing would increase from about 8% to 9%, which "reframes the antitrust argument" against the deal, former AVTN NewsNet24/7 CEO Phillip Covell wrote Monday. YouTube accounts for about 13% of viewing time, and Paramount/WBD would approach 14%, meaning "claims of Netflix dominance no longer align with consumer behavior," he said. "This is not a streaming war; it is an attention economy." He added that European regulatory objection to Netflix/WBD runs into the same problem.