Starz and Lionsgate are now stand-alone, publicly traded companies. The separation of Lionsgate's studios business from its pay-TV unit was approved by Lionsgate shareholders at a special meeting April 23, Lionsgate said Wednesday. Starz said it started trading Wednesday on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol STRZ. Lionsgate's New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol is LION.

Voice of America will start carrying One America News Network content, wrote Kari Lake, a U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior adviser, on X Tuesday night. Lake said a One America feed will provide free content for VOA and other USAGM networks, including the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and its Radio Marti. The idea came from the Cuban broadcaster, she said. Her role doesn't give her editorial control over programming, she said, but she "can ensure our outlets have reliable and credible options as they work to craft their reporting and news programs." The One America feed accomplishes that while also saving taxpayers' money, she said.

Arguments that employment and labor concerns aren't germane to Skydance Media's pending acquisition of Paramount Global and shouldn't be considered by the FCC aren't correct, according to Fuse Media and Teamsters Local 399. In a docket 24-275 filing posted Tuesday to recap a meeting with FCC Media Bureau and Office of General Counsel staffers, Fuse and the union said the transaction directly ties to likely job cuts at New Paramount, including at stations owned and operated by CBS. Station staffing can affect a licensee's ability to uphold the localism part of the public interest standard, they said. Fuse and the union suggested a station-level staffing requirement that would keep full-time employment stable for eight years. It also would bar New Paramount from consolidating operations across stations or outsourcing work previously done by full-time staffers.

Paramount Global has eliminated its diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the face of America First Legal lawsuits against the company and its CBS subsidiary, the conservative administrative law nonprofit said last week. AFL said it has also secured a settlement with Paramount and CBS regarding an AFL client -- a script supervisor for the show SEAL Team -- who alleged discrimination by dint of not being an underrepresented minority. Paramount has committed to no longer setting numerical goals related to race, ethnicity, sex or gender and no longer collecting demographic data of applicants, AFL said. Paramount didn't comment Friday. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has also targeted DEI initiatives at companies the agency regulates (see 2503280038).

Look for U.S. consumer spending on video to slide through 2027, though advertising revenues could help keep video-related revenues "flattish" over the next few years, MoffettNathanson wrote investors Monday. Given the decline in pay TV, theatrical and home video spending, "the days of growth are now behind us." It said ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) and user-generated content will claim an increasing share of video advertising spending in coming years, as money that has flowed into traditional TV is increasingly going toward AVOD.

Comcast news outlets' coverage of the controversial deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia could be news distortion that violates FCC rules, Chairman Brendan Carr wrote Wednesday night on X. "Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest," he said in his post, which was in response to a post by White House Communications Director Steven Cheung criticizing CNN and MSNBC coverage. "News distortion doesn’t cut it," Carr said. Comcast is "ignor[ing] ... facts of obvious public interest" regarding Abrego Garcia and his deportation. Comcast didn't comment Thursday. The FCC under Carr has a pending news distortion investigation against CBS about 60 Minutes' coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign (see 2502050063).

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said on X late Thursday that he met at DOJ headquarters with Gail Slater, the new DOJ Antitrust Division chief, and FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson. “The three of us got together to talk about the work that we are taking across government right now to smash the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights to everyday Americans,” Carr said. “Across government, we’re taking action.”

A Project Rise Partners purchase of Paramount Global would mean fair and balanced news coverage, representatives told FCC acting Media Bureau Chief Erin Boone and other staffers, according to a docket 24-275 filing posted Thursday. It recapped a meeting at which PRP -- chaired by Daphna Edwards Ziman, head of independent network Cinemoi, and Moses Gross, managing trustee of Malka Investment Trust -- reiterated its arguments that Tencent's investment in Skydance Media raises national security concerns and that Skydance Media buying Paramount could mean higher consumer prices (see 2503060035). PRP told the FCC it "will seek a return to the vision and practice of CBS’s -- the Tiffany Network’s -- formative titans, Bill Paley and Walter Cronkite, free from bias, dedicated to excellence and presenting the news in the way that it is." It said it would return "to the principles underlying the dormant Fairness Doctrine [and] provide an organizational structure that allows and considers public input to capture all viewpoints and prevent news coverage distortion."

With Comcast and Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network having reached a carriage agreement Monday, YES is withdrawing its program carriage complaint against Comcast and its motion for a temporary injunction to head off a blackout (see 2503310020), the network said Tuesday (docket 12-1). Writing on X late Monday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr applauded the carriage deal: "Going dark wouldn’t have been in anyone’s interest."

Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien met with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to urge that the agency memorialize Skydance Media's pro-worker commitments in any approval of Skydance buying Paramount Global, said a filing Tuesday in docket 24-275. Barring that, the FCC should encourage the parties to agree on protecting workers post-transaction, the Teamsters said. The union said it hasn't heard from Skydance about union proposals such as "applying Paramount's current collective bargaining agreement to all New Paramount employees." Multiple unions have pressed the FCC to codify labor-related promises Skydance has made (see 2411010034).