Sports streaming services Fubo TV and Dazn will reciprocally distribute their owned-and-operated linear channels on each other's U.S. platforms, the companies said Tuesday. Dazn's exclusive boxing and mixed martial arts content will be available on Fubo's Dazn1 channel, while Dazn will carry Fubo's free, ad-supported Fubo Sports channel, they said. The two platforms will have future collaborations as well, they added.

FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington is right that broadcast ownership restrictions need modernization, but his call for streaming platforms to be subject to MVPD-like regulation (see 2505270054) is economically flawed, International Center for Law & Economics senior scholar Eric Fruits wrote Friday. That would extend an outdated regulatory framework over more technologies, he said. Streaming began and grew because streamers weren't subject to the heavy-handed rules that traditional linear providers were, and expanding legacy rules to streaming platforms could discourage technological experimentation, he said. Instead, the commission should revisit the broadcast industry's national cap and "offer the MVPDs the same light-touch rules that streamers currently enjoy."

U.S. TV revenue rose $11 billion in 2024, to $225.6 billion, with subscription video-on-demand gains and price increases providing most of the growth, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon wrote Monday. The biggest revenue drop -- 38% -- was in physical media rentals and purchases. Traditional MVPDs collectively lost 6.4 million subscribers, ending 2024 with 50.9 million. Virtual MVPDs added 2 million subscribers to reach 20.5 million.

The FCC should take “a second look” at reclassifying streaming platforms -- sometimes called virtual MVPDs -- as MVPDs and allow broadcasters more flexibility to consolidate, Commissioner Nathan Simington said Tuesday in a Daily Caller column co-authored with Gavin Wax, his chief of staff. “The Communications Act’s definition of a ‘channel’ must be expanded from covering spectrum to encompass digital distribution,” they wrote. “If it walks and talks like a broadcaster, it should be regulated like one.”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez will speak at a Free Press event Wednesday as part of her “First Amendment Tour.” The event will be held at California State University in Los Angeles at noon, with a livestream starting at 12:30 PT. In addition to Gomez, it will feature Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., Free Press co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez and officials from public broadcasting and the press. In a release, Gomez said the tour is “an effort to defend the First Amendment from those who use it as a weapon against the very freedoms it protects.”

Any FCC approval of Skydance Media's proposed purchase of Paramount Global should include conditions safeguarding Paramount's entertainment industry employment, Project Rise Partners (PRP) co-Chair Daphna Ziman told FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington, according to a filing posted Thursday (docket 24-275). PRP has also made an offer to buy Paramount (see 2504030049). Other concerns that PRP raised include reports about Skydance's alleged involvement in Paramount operations before the deal is approved and how the transaction could affect CBS' relationship with its affiliates. Asked Thursday during the FCC's monthly meeting about the timing of its decisions on Skydance/Paramount, Chairman Brendan Carr said the agency continues to run “a normal review process” of the deal's merits. He said the agency is or has been working through numerous transactions of late, such as Verizon/Frontier Communications.

Thirty-eight percent of YouTube's monthly active users worldwide watch traditional TV and film content on the service, Ampere Analysis said Wednesday. Music and music videos are the most popular content type on YouTube, with 56% of monthly active users worldwide consuming music-related content, it said. The growing number of full-length shows and movies being uploaded to YouTube by studios, producers and broadcasters runs the risk of cannibalizing some audiences, it said. But the reach and scale of YouTube opens up new revenue streams via ad-share agreements with the platform, it said.

S&P said Tuesday it was lowering its credit outlook for Warner Bros. Discovery due to challenges with its linear TV networks. Accelerating revenue declines at the networks, plus higher costs from newly acquired sports rights content, will offset growth at WBD's studio and streaming segments, S&P said. It expects WBD linear advertising to drop 11% from pressure on audience ratings and a comparatively smaller amount of sports coverage. Linear distribution is also expected to decline 8% due to slower rates of price increases and more subscription fees being allocated to streaming. S&P said WBD's advertising and distribution performance has lagged behind peers in part because of its weaker portfolio of domestic sports rights, with the loss of NBA broadcast rights after the 2024-25 season exacerbating that.

Video streaming today is "in a very different place" from where it was two years ago, when half of premium subscription video-on-demand (VOD) services didn't offer an advertising-supported plan and only about a third of subscribers had an ad-based plan, Antenna said Tuesday. Advertising has reached "a remarkable place of maturity" in streaming, it said, with close to 100 million ad plan subscribers in the U.S., not counting Amazon Prime Video. It said ad plans drove 71% of net additions for premium VOD subscriptions in the past nine quarters, and they make up almost half of subscriptions for the streaming providers offering them. That shows streaming brands can transition successfully to advertising, Antenna said, while consumers can afford more services by accepting ads.

ESPN's streaming service -- also to be named ESPN -- isn't likely to cannibalize legacy MVPD subscribers, given that the streaming service will cost $30 a month, LightShed Management blogged Wednesday. It's also likely to attract a relatively small number of subscribers, LightShed said, predicting that it will finish 2025 with 2 million subscribers. ESPN and Fox Corp.'s forthcoming Fox One seem to be following a similar streaming strategy of a high monthly price to avoid luring away MVPD and virtual MVPD subscribers while still offering an option for cord-cutters and cord-nevers, LightShed said. It added that the ESPN network's goal might be to get the tens of millions of MVPD subscribers who have access to ESPN to watch via the ESPN app instead of via their MVPD, which could open the door to more targeted advertising and engaging with viewers beyond just live games.