FuboTV's merger with Disney's Hulu+ Live TV will mean two major players in the virtual multichannel video programming distribution landscape -- New YouTube TV and the New Fubo entity -- with an array of much smaller services following in their wake, Ampere Analysis' Andrew Dougert wrote Tuesday. Announced Monday (see 2501060003), the merger could take up to 18 months to close, he said. By then, YouTube TV will likely have around 10.5 million subscribers, while Fubo and Hulu+ Live TV are expected to collectively have nearly 6.4 million, he said. Behind them, EchoStar's Sling TV currently has a little more than 2 million subscribers. The Fubo/Hulu deal has Fubo dropping its litigation seeking to block the Disney/Fox/Warner Bros. Discovery sports streaming joint venture Venu. The parties on Monday filed a stipulation of voluntary dismissal (docket 1:24-cv-01363) with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, asking that the preliminary injunction against Venu (see 2408160040) be lifted.

The planned Department of Government Efficiency should apply “bulldozer treatment” to MVPD regulations, which will ease burdens on providers that are bleeding subscribers, said former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly in a post for the Free State Foundation Monday. “The video marketplace is still stuck with many mandates and obligations created 30 years ago or more,” O’Rielly wrote. “DOGE could provide a great service by giving this sector a good shakeout and squaring any remaining obligations with how American families actually consume video content.” Comparing the modern video market to its past iterations “is like comparing space travel to a donkey ride,” O’Rielly added. “There can be no justification for keeping current burdens when providers can and should escape to new business models in response.” It would be “ridiculous” to try to apply the same rules cable providers operate under to new video businesses, he wrote. “Can anyone imagine policymakers arguing that the space-wasteful and unwatched public access programming must be included on YouTube or Meta’s Reels?” O’Rielly didn’t specify which video regulations DOGE should target, but said it should avoid retransmission consent because it would draw too much pushback. “Thumping old agency requirements that are no longer needed in the modern world is a worthy and sensible task.”

Fubo will combine with Disney's Hulu+ Live TV, with the resulting company continuing to operate Fubo and Hulu + Live TV as separate streaming offerings, Fubo and Disney said Monday. They said Disney will own 70% of the resulting company, which Fubo management will run. As part of the deal, Fubo is dropping its lawsuit challenging the Disney/Fox/Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) sports streaming partnership Venu (see 2402210007), the companies said. They said the agreement includes a Disney/Fubo carriage agreement that will see Fubo creating a sports and broadcast service that features Disney sports and broadcast networks and ESPN+. The transaction has Disney, Fox and WBD paying Fubo $220 million and Disney committing to a $145 million term loan to Fubo in 2026. "Kudos to the Disney lawyers who said, 'You know, we could just buy them. That would be cheaper than fighting this lawsuit and all the bad publicity around it,' TVREV analyst Alan Wolk wrote Monday. He predicted Friday that Venu wouldn't launch, owing to WBD losing NBA rights to Amazon, as well as growing legal costs. "At $42/month, there are unlikely to be many takers for the stripped-down service which doesn’t really work as the only sports app a fan needs," Wolk said. Combining Hulu+ with Fubo helps consolidate the distribution business, which could mean more opportunities in carriage negotiations and in developing programmatic advertising, Macquarie analyst Tim Nollen wrote Monday. "It's a neat resolution to the key issues that have weighed on [Fubo] for some time now -- combining with Disney provides it much more scale, and resolves the Venu dispute," he said. He said New Fubo will be able to fulfill its long-sought aim of being a sports-focused streaming service.

Univision channels have gone dark on fuboTV. On Monday, the virtual multichannel video programming distributor blamed Univision for seeking "an unreasonable rate increase." Univision didn't comment Tuesday.

The line between professional/premium video content and user-generated content is eroding, especially thanks to generative AI video creation tools like Google's Veo 2, LightShed Partners' Rich Greenfield blogged Friday. He said the next 12-24 months will see a deluge of GenAI-created video on mobile vertical video platforms such as TikTok, Reels, Shorts and Spotlight, adding to the competition for eyeball time on premium content. GenAI video will also enable higher quality and more personalized advertising on short-form video sites, said Greenfield, and those ads that seem more like content should also lead to increased time spent on platforms, eating away at the entertainment time spent elsewhere.

Legacy media companies "continue to snipe" at one another instead of collaborating against their real streaming competition -- deep-pocket companies where TV is a side business at most, such as Google, Meta, Amazon, TikTok and Nintendo, TVREV's Alan Wolk wrote Friday. It's "sheer stupidity" to shift the focus from the traditional model of carriage and retransmission consent fees in favor of over-the-top, Wolk added. Legacy programmers should focus foremost on a universally agreed upon method for measuring views for advertising purposes and stick to that agreement, he said.

The idea of subjecting streaming services to regulation intended for traditional media services lacks a legal, policy or technological basis, Warner Bros. Discovery executives told FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, according to a docket 24-119 filing posted Friday. In addition, WBD said fracturing of audiences and programming outlets makes it difficult for viewers to find their favorite content, which leads them to purchase additional services. That fracturing also reduces providers' ability to generate subscription and advertising revenue to support high-quality content, it added.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr on Wednesday said the agency must address “concerns” about Skydance’s proposed purchase of Paramount’s CBS licenses. In a post on X, Carr, the agency's incoming chair, shared a petition challenging the deal from the Center for American Rights, which has also filed a petition at the FCC calling for action against CBS over a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. “This filing from CAR raises what it describes as significant concerns, including ones that go to CBS's adherence to the public interest standard,” Carr said. This isn’t the first time Carr has suggested that the Paramount deal could face scrutiny from his FCC. “I'm pretty confident that news distortion complaint over the CBS 60 Minutes transcript is something that's likely to rise in the context of the FCC review of that transaction,” Carr said in a November Fox News interview (see 2411190051). This also isn’t the first time Carr has boosted a filing from CAR: In November he posted the group’s complaint accusing NBC of violating the agency’s equal opportunity rules. Along with the petitions against CBS and NBC, CAR also filed an FCC complaint against ABC over its moderation of a 2024 presidential debate.

Opponents of Skydance Media's proposed purchase of Paramount Global raised red flags over the buyer's alleged Chinese government ties and over possible sexual harassment issues. Petitions were filed in a new round of pleadings surrounding the $8 billion deal (see 2411150058). Center for American Rights petitioned the FCC that M&A approval includes conditions that New Paramount commits to addressing issues concerning Tencent Holdings, a Chinese company with alleged close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Tencent is a major Skydance shareholder and CAR wants assurances Skydance will protect New Paramount from foreign influence. CAR also said the agency should condition approval on New Paramount addressing news bias and lack of viewpoint diversity in CBS' news operation and amending hiring and promotion policies that CAR alleges discriminate against white people. LiveVideo.AI petitioned that the agency should deny the transaction based on Jeff Shell's becoming New Paramount's president. Shell was fired from Comcast for inappropriate conduct with a female employee (see 2304240009). "There is a high likelihood that more female employees will be put in harm's way if this merger goes through without proper precautions and safeguards in place," it said.

Paramount Global’s self-preferencing behavior on the Pluto TV streaming platform shows how the proposed Skydance Media/Paramount deal would hurt independent programmers, Fuse Media told the FCC in comments posted Monday in docket 24-275. Fuse said its Shades of Black streaming channel launch saw viewership on Pluto start dropping notably, beginning in late 2022, suggesting Pluto was trying to undermine the channel while promoting proprietary programming aimed at the same African American audience through Pluto's Black Cinema and Black Visionaries channels. Fuse said Skydance CEO David Ellison's plan to use Oracle AI capabilities -- his father, Larry Ellison, is a co-founder of Oracle -- would allow Paramount to further control content acquisition and distribution via Pluto. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, the agency's incoming chair, has said a political news distortion complaint against Paramount's CBS could affect the Skydance/Paramount agreement (see 2411190051).