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.

Many smart TVs are promoting streaming channels ahead of over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts, subtlety suppressing those broadcast channels, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon wrote Sunday. OTA TV can be difficult to find among the streaming TV options on a smart TV home screen, he said: OTA channels and content aren't included in searches, "which is a critical decision point in the viewing session."

Fox Corp.'s Fox One streaming service will launch by early September, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said Monday. In a call with analysts as Fox announced its quarterly financial results, Murdoch avoided specifics on price but said Fox One wouldn't be discounted, and the cost would be in line with what Fox charges for its content wholesale. He said the aim is to avoid cannibalizing its cable audience for Fox One. Asked about the cap on fees that broadcast affiliates pay networks proposed by FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington (see 2505020066), Murdoch said the affiliate/network relationship was "healthy" and negotiations should be left to the marketplace.

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.