Combined global revenue from subscription VOD, ad-supported VOD and free, ad-supported TV (FAST) is expected to hit $312 billion annually by 2028, up from less than $200 billion today, Rethink Technology Research said Wednesday. SVOD and AVOD will dominate as FAST "remain[s] an $11.4 billion minnow" in 2028, although lines between each service becoming increasingly blurry, Rethink said. YouTube "will become ever more dominant in the lives of web users outside of China, and increasingly recognized as a source of legitimately ‘premium’ video."

Releasing new motion pictures to streaming didn’t reduce streaming churn or attract new streaming subscribers, and Warner Bros. Discovery has backed out of that approach, CEO David Zaslav said Thursday at a MoffettNathanson conference. He said a big focus of the past year, since the companies combined, was dealing with two unsuccessful areas -- HBO Max and motion pictures, both of which were operating in the red. HBO Max has turned profitable overall and will be profitable in the U.S. this year, ahead of schedule, as the company has stopped overspending on streaming content, he said. Its motion pictures “are making that turn now,” he said. Time Warner and Warner Bros. had been run as independent businesses, and work combining them is still underway, he said: “We are not there yet.” He said overall streaming service pricing “is irrational,” with people paying far less than they used to for cable subscriptions when they had access to less content. “That will all work out,” he said. He said consolidation of streaming services is likely, with now-rival services jointly marketing their products. "If we don't do it to ourselves," services like Amazon, Apple and Roku "will do it to us," he said.

Media and content consultancy Horowitz Research was bought by consulting firm M/A/R/C Research, Horowitz said Tuesday.

Warner Bros. Discovery's (WBD) U.S. direct-to-consumer (DTC) business "is no longer a bleeder" and should turn a profit this year, CEO David Zaslav said Friday as the company announced Q1 results. He said its Max streaming service combining HBO Max and Discovery+ offerings will launch May 23 in the U.S., with Latin America to follow later in the year and Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Africa in 2024. He said WBD plans to expand Max's offerings with news and sports. WBD said it added 1.6 million DTC subscribers worldwide in the quarter. Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said the company's DTC business should generate at least $1 billion in profitability in 2025. He said a lot of the roughly 4 million overlapping HBO Max/Discovery+ subscribers will likely drop Discovery+ in the first few months of the Max launch, though the company will keep Discovery+ going as a stand-alone product. WBD said revenue for the quarter was $10.7 billion, down 6% year over year on a pro forma basis. Zaslav said a soft advertising market hurt revenue. Paramount Global similarly told investors last week a soft ad market was hurting revenue (see 2305040072).

Paramount Global stock closed down sharply Thursday after the company's Q1 earnings announcement pointed to a weak advertising market. Paramount shares ended the day at $16.40, down 28.4%. Revenue was $7.27 billion for the quarter, down from $7.33 billion the same quarter a year earlier. Streaming revenue was up 39%, but the overall decline was driven by an 8% decline in TV Media revenue. Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra said "weakness" in the global ad market caused a 7% year-over-year decline in ad revenue, with TV media advertising down 11% and direct-to-consumer advertising down 15%. "However, we are seeing signs of market stabilization," with some rebound in spending by categories including travel, food and beverage, and pharmaceuticals, he said in a call with analysts. He said the Q2 year-over-year ad trend should be somewhat better than it was in Q1. Citing macroeconomic conditions, Chopra said the company was reducing its quarterly dividend from 24 cents per share to 5 cents. "The macro environment has not gotten less complex," and the dividend cut will save it $500 million annually, he said. He said the company is restarting its efforts to sell Simon & Schuster, with a deal potentially completed this year. Its attempt to sell it to Penguin Random House was blocked in 2022 on antitrust grounds. CEO Bob Bakish said the publisher's operating performance "is substantially superior to what it was when we brought it to the market before," which is driving "a lot of interest." Paramount said its Paramount+ streaming service added 4.1 million subscribers in the quarter and subscribership hit 60 million. It said Paramount+ revenue was up 65% year over year. It said its ad-support Pluto TV hit 80 million monthly active users.

Nexstar signed a multiyear distribution agreement with Hulu covering 122 of the company’s local television stations, plus the launch of affiliates and independent stations, the broadcast chain said Monday. The deal includes continued carriage of Nexstar's cable news network, NewsNation, on Hulu+Live TV, it said.

FCC proposals for improving emergency alert system reliability “are not tailored to the size, resources, or capabilities of EAS Participants,” said NCTA, ACA Connects, National Public Radio and NAB in meetings this week with aides to Commissioners Brendan Carr, Geoffrey Starks and Nathan Simington, said an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 15-94. The FCC “relies on fairly scant evidence of cybersecurity incidents or EAS equipment failures to justify the far-reaching proposals,” the filing said. The agency also underestimated the resources required for entities to comply with the proposals, the filing said. “Most EAS Participants have no in-house cybersecurity expertise, and therefore would likely require extensive -- and expensive -- assistance from outside consultants to translate the FCC’s broad and vague requirements into an actionable plan,” the filing said. The recently enacted Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 designated the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) as the lead federal agency on cybersecurity incident reporting, the filing said. “It would be premature, and potentially duplicative and counter-productive for the Commission to create a cyber-related incident reporting scheme before CISA completes its proceeding,” the groups said.

Fox Corp.'s $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is "significant," but Fox will still have more than $3 billion in cash on its balance sheet, S&P Global said Thursday. Pointing to a related defamation suit from Smartmatic and potential shareholder suits, S&P said lawsuit-related costs could increase the company's debt but not enough to lower its credit rating.

Nexstar's NewsNation cable news network will expand to 24 hours, Monday through Friday, beginning Monday, the broadcaster said Tuesday.

Netflix will end its DVD service Sept. 29, co-CEO Ted Sarandos blogged Tuesday. "Our goal has always been to provide the best service for our members but as the business continues to shrink that’s going to become increasingly difficult," he said.