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.
DirecTV has antitrust standing to sue Nexstar, Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting for an alleged price-fixing conspiracy, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday. In the docket 24-981 opinion, Judges Denny Chin and Steven Menashi reversed a lower court ruling that DirecTV lacked antitrust standing and remanded the case. They said the lower court erred in limiting the cognizable antitrust injury to the payment of jacked-up retransmission consent prices and didn't consider the antitrust injury stemming from blackouts of the broadcasters' content.
Texas sued five TV companies for spying on consumers and recording what they watch, the state attorney general's office said Monday. Two of the companies are headquartered in China, which raises additional data-harvesting concerns, Texas AG Ken Paxton (R) said.
The move toward smaller, targeted and cheaper live channel bundles probably won't slow cord-cutting, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon wrote Sunday. Pointing to YouTube TV's planned rollout of targeted channel bundles (see 2512100064), Dixon said both subscribers and operators have long wanted programmers to agree to such packages, and it's only recently that operators have made headway in those negotiations. However, he said, it's unclear that approach will slow subscriber defections. He noted that YouTube TV will still have to include channels that have nothing to do with a bundle’s focus due to terms in programmer licenses, jacking up the price. Streaming services let consumers build their own bundles that ultimately are cheaper, he argued. The strategy of bundling programmers' streaming services with cable is similarly more expensive than streaming alone, he added.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau's 2025 equal employment opportunity audit letters sent to 27 randomly selected MVPDs contain the same new diversity questions that were added to letters sent to broadcasters earlier this year. Attorneys have described the new questions as “landmines” because the precise nature of the response expected by the agency is unclear (see 2508220035). While previous EEO audit letters asked stations for information on any complaints about “unlawful discrimination” involving the station brought before government entities, the new questions seek information on both internal and external complaints. The questions also go beyond unlawful discrimination related to race, sex, religion and national origin and ask about complaints related to “any bias, sensitivity or any other matters” related to those categories. The letters also tell targeted MVPDs to submit copies of “any formal or informal agreement, contract, policy, practice, or other document that impose requirements or goals (aspirational or otherwise) regarding race, color, religion, national origin or sex on the Unit, contractors, employees or any third parties providing services on behalf of the Unit.” The audit targets include Comcast, Charter, Cox, Cincincatti Bell and Mediacom. Responses to the letters are due Jan. 26.
The FCC Media Bureau has rejected altafiber’s June retransmission consent complaint against Nexstar, said an order Friday. The MVPD had argued that Nexstar violated the FCC’s good faith retransmission consent negotiation rules by demanding high rates and that altafiber carry Nexstar's NewsNation cable network in the Cincinnatiarea, where Nexstar has no broadcast TV stations (see 2506160037). Nexstar didn’t violate the good faith rules because it offered multiple proposals with different terms during negotiations, the order said. “We do not find that these proposals are so 'sufficiently outrageous' that they constitute a violation of the good faith negotiation requirements under the totality of the circumstances test,” the bureau said.
Laura Loomer, a podcaster widely seen as having the ear of President Donald Trump, endorsed the Nexstar/Tegna deal in a post on X late Tuesday, calling on FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to approve the transaction. Loomer denounced Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, who has been a vocal opponent of the deal (see 2508050051). Ruddy is a “selfish leftist” who “opposes both the Nexstar-Tegna merger and the proposed FCC ownership rule change,” Loomer wrote. His network is widely seen as one of the most conservative TV news channels. Many FCC watchers suspect that Trump’s connection with Ruddy led to the president’s recent post objecting to proposals to do away with the national TV-ownership cap (see 2511240055). Ruddy’s opposition to the deal “only empowers the left and their mainstream media allies, who can still control programming in America through ownership no matter who is in the White House or running the FCC,” Loomer said.
YouTube TV will roll out a series of genre-specific programming packages in early 2026, wrote Christian Oestlien, its head of subscriptions, in a blog post Wednesday. The packages will include a sports plan that includes major broadcasters plus sports networks such as the ESPN networks, FS1 and NBC Sports Network, Oestlien said. YouTube didn't give details on the other plans.
The White House has created a webpage that it said tracks media bias, with a leaderboard and a “Hall of Shame” that includes CBS News, CNN and MSNBC, although the latter network rebranded as MS Now in October. The page “catalogs the avalanche of lies, deliberate distortions, and manufactured hoaxes churned out by activist ‘journalists’ and their failing outlets,” the White House said in a release Monday.
The FCC’s audio description rules will apply to MVPDs and TV broadcasters in 10 additional markets starting Jan. 1, said the Media Bureau in a public notice Monday in docket 11-43. The change stems from a 2023 order (see 2310160038) that expands the rules to 10 additional designated market areas every year until all DMAs are included, which is expected to happen by 2035. The new markets affected include Youngstown, Pennsylvania; Fargo, North Dakota; and Lansing, Michigan.