Actress Jane Fonda and more than 700 entertainment industry figures have resurrected a First Amendment group originally established to battle McCarthyism, in part as an apparent reaction to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s recent pressure on broadcasters and networks. “The McCarthy Era ended when Americans from across the political spectrum finally came together and stood up for the principles in the Constitution against the forces of repression,” said the relaunched Committee for the First Amendment on its new website Wednesday. “Those forces have returned. And it is our turn to stand together in defense of our constitutional rights.” The original Committee for the First Amendment was formed in 1947 by Hollywood figures -- including Henry Fonda -- to protest House Un-American Activities Committee hearings against screenwriters and directors. “We are moved by their courage to speak truth to power and alarmed by how relevant their words are today, 78 years later,” the website said.
Fubo said Tuesday that its shareholders voted to approve the Disney deal that will combine the streaming platform with Hulu + Live TV. The transaction was announced in January (see 2501060003). Disney will own 70% of Fubo, and the latter's management team will operate the Fubo and Hulu + Live TV businesses, Fubo said. The two services will continue to be available to consumers as separate offerings. The deal still needs regulatory approval, the company noted.
Programmers and NAB criticized YouTube TV and Hulu on Wednesday after multiple networks went dark on the virtual MVPDs due to failed carriage talks.
The elimination of the broadcast TV national ownership cap would lead to higher prices for MVPD consumers and lower broadcasting viewership, said DirecTV in an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 17-318. NAB's arguments that eliminating the cap won’t raise retransmission consent fees “is a curious position from an organization whose two biggest members seek to merge with the explicit goal of achieving ‘contractual revenue synergies,’” said DirecTV, referencing Nexstar’s proposed $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna.
MVPDs looking to replace their in-house pay-TV business with a virtual MVPD partnership need to be concerned about integration, flexibility and availability of local partners, Analysys Mason's Martin Scott wrote Wednesday. Multiple U.S. MVPDs have gone this route, including Frontier, WideOpenWest and Google Fiber, as operators are putting a greater priority on broadband access in their business models, he said. Partnerships can cut the costs and complexity of running a pay-TV service while letting operators keep the value of a bundled offer, Scott noted. But, he added, drawbacks include a dependence on third‑party partners for pricing and channel lineup, as well as the complexity of integrating billing and support.
As the House Judiciary Committee looks at the antitrust exemptions in professional sports, including how leagues negotiate rights with broadcasters, Congress should also examine parity with other technologies like streaming and cable, wrote Jeffrey Westling, the American Action Forum's director of technology and innovation policy. The exemption that professional sports franchises have from antitrust liability for joint agreements to sell TV rights covers only broadcasting rights, he said Tuesday. "It may be time for Congress to eliminate the statutory exemptions" so courts can review individual transactions. That would still let leagues jointly negotiate with broadcasters, but anticompetitive agreements would be subject to court review, Westling added.
Paramount Skydance likely won't face rival proposals from other major programmers in its reported bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery (see 2509110067), LightShed's Rich Greenfield wrote Monday. Comcast would be hard-pressed to compete with "the financial firepower" of a Paramount bid backed by CEO David Ellison, he said, and a Comcast bid would face an uphill climb with the Trump administration, given the president's hatred of NBC News. Greenfield said a Disney bid would face antitrust scrutiny, and Disney's merger and acquisition interests likely don't line up with WBD's assets. Fox also likely isn't interested, and tech companies like Netflix, Amazon and Apple probably don't want linear TV assets, he added. Instead, WBD might try to separate itself into two companies to generate such a bidding war, said Greenfield, noting that potential tech bidders uninterested in linear networks might be enticed by a Warner Bros. that consists of only Warner Bros. and HBO Max.
Newsmax has dropped its antitrust complaint against Fox Corp. In a notice of voluntary dismissal last week with the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida (docket 25-cv-81091), Newsmax said it was dismissing its claims without prejudice, meaning it's leaving the door open for refiling. Newsmax had a Thursday deadline to refile its suit -- alleging monopolization of the right-leaning pay-TV news space -- after it had been dismissed for procedural errors (see 2509050007).
Paramount Skydance will reportedly make a bid to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a Wall Street Journal article Thursday. The deal would include all the company’s cable networks, including CNN and HBO, the article said. Because Warner Bros. doesn’t own broadcast stations, the deal likely wouldn’t require FCC approval, communications attorneys told us. However, if it's consummated, it could make it easier for FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to apply pressure to a wider swath of media through the agency's open news distortion proceeding. Paramount recently hired a news ombudsman to appease the FCC (see 2509090065). Carr has said the agency will be monitoring Skydance Paramount’s commitments against diversity initiatives and its news policies, and he has targeted large media companies over their smaller broadcast divisions in the past (see 2412270039). It’s not yet clear how such a combination would fare at the DOJ, attorneys told us.
Rival subscription video-on-demand services are taking a wait-and-see approach as to how Netflix's games strategy plays out before following suit, but giving Netflix such a head start is risky, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon wrote Monday. He said Looper Insights consumer survey data indicates that a pairing of video with gaming could have value in reducing churn and retaining subscribers. Without games, the long-term viability of video service providers "is in question," as the next generation of potential subscribers "may opt for an Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Plus membership over Netflix or Disney+."