Media companies cut 17,000+ jobs in 2025, flattening orgs to boost margins. But eliminating managers didn’t eliminate decisions, it just delayed them, increased rework, and pushed routine calls to execs already overloaded.
YouTube Revenue for Full-Year 2025 Topped $60 Billion
Read More
Registration Is Now Open: OTT.X Breakfast at NAB 2026
Read More
News Viewers Engage with Fox One Longer, More Often
Read More
News Industry Faces Twin Pressure from AI and Influencers in 2026
Read More
Registration Is Now Open: OTT.X EPG, SCTE & Metadata Roundtables
Read More
The Operating Model That Keeps Breaking Media Companies
Media companies cut 17,000+ jobs in 2025, flattening orgs to boost margins. But eliminating managers didn’t eliminate decisions, it just delayed them, increased rework, and pushed routine calls to execs already overloaded.
The Take
This model prioritizes cost control over coordination. Measurement systems and AI can’t replace judgment. Companies are saving on payroll, then overspending to fix problems they no longer catch early. Here's what actually works instead
Read the Full Analysis: The Streaming Wars
YouTube Revenue for Full-Year 2025 Topped $60 Billion
YouTube generated more than $60 billion in revenue for 2025, including both advertising and subscriptions, the first time parent company Alphabet has broken out total revenue for the platform.
That makes YouTube much larger than subscription-streaming leader Netflix, which reported $45.18 billion in revenue for full-year 2025. Indeed, the top-line number for YouTube was more than any other entertainment company except Disney ($95.7 billion in revenue for calendar year 2025).
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, said in prepared remarks that the company now has over 325 million paid subscriptions across consumer services, including YouTube Premium, YouTube TV and Google One.
Meanwhile, YouTube also notched its biggest-ever ad sales number to date for the fourth quarter of 2025. However, that ad haul came in below Wall Street forecasts.
In the last three months of the year, YouTube’s global ad revenue totaled $11.38 billion, a year-over-year increase of 8.7%, parent company Alphabet reported. Wall Street analysts on average forecast YouTube ad revenue coming in at $11.84 billion, per StreetAccount. On the brand advertising front, YouTube saw lower political ad spending in the most recent quarter compared with Q4 2024.
Read the Story: Variety
Registration Is Now Open: OTT.X Breakfast at NAB 2026
The annual OTT.X Breakfast at NAB returns to Las Vegas on April 19th bringing together senior leaders from broadcast, streaming, CTV, and the broader media ecosystem to explore where broadcast meets its next evolution.
Kick off your NAB week with an executive-level gathering featuring forward-looking conversations, practical insights, and a full, hearty breakfast. From live production and distribution to monetization and measurement, this is where industry leaders align on what’s next—and what matters most.
New for 2026: Attendees will get an exclusive preview of the NAB Show Streaming Summit, highlighting the key themes and conversations set to shape the week ahead.
News Viewers Engage with Fox One Longer, More Often
As Fox Corp. reported quarterly earnings Wednesday, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said the Fox One streamer continues to exceed the company’s expectations and believes that it can be a leading platform not only for live sports, but news as well.
For the company's fiscal year 2026 second quarter, Fox reported a 2% year-over-year increase in revenue to $5.18 billion, on the back of 4% distribution growth attributed to cable networks and an uptick in ad revenue. Quarterly adjusted EBITDA of $692 million declined compared to $781 million in the same period a year ago, as higher expenses more than offset revenue growth.
Total ad revenue rose 1% yoy to $2.46 billion, attributed to higher prices for sports and news, digital growth at the Tubi AVOD and additional postseason MLB games, partially offset by lower political advertising and ratings compared to the prior year period.
Fox’s television segment Q2 revenue declined slightly to $2.94 billion compared to $2.96 billion a year ago. The cable networks business, which includes Fox News, Fox Sports and Fox Business, recorded revenue of $2.28 billion, up 5% yoy.
Within the cable network segment, distribution revenue increased $54 million, with contractual price increases partially offset by subscriber declines.
Despite continued consumer exits from the pay TV ecosystem, Murdoch on the earnings call said subscriber declines notably improved sequentially (around 6.3% decline) even when excluding contributions from the Fox One streamer, and where recent introductions of skinny bundles by various distributors could be helping to stem declines.
Read the Full Story: StreamTV Insider
News Industry Faces Twin Pressure from AI and Influencers in 2026
Politicians, business leaders and celebrities are increasingly bypassing traditional outlets altogether, opting instead to speak directly to sympathetic podcasters, YouTubers or social media personalities, a Reuters survey says.
The global news industry is heading into 2026 under mounting pressure from two powerful and converging forces: the rapid advance of generative artificial intelligence and the growing influence of personality-driven creators who are reshaping how audiences consume information, a Reuters survey says.
The survey, drawn from a strategic sample of 280 digital leaders from 51 countries and territories, says the pace of technological change is accelerating just as public trust in traditional journalism remains fragile.
Generative AI tools are increasingly able to summarise, repackage and distribute news at scale, threatening publishers’ control over how audiences access information. At the same time, individual influencers and creators are drawing audiences away from institutional media, particularly among younger users who favour convenience, familiarity and perceived authenticity.
Industry leaders warn that these trends are squeezing publishers from both sides. Search engines are evolving into AI-powered “answer engines,” where users receive responses directly within chat interfaces rather than clicking through to news websites. That shift has raised fears of a sharp fall in referral traffic, undermining advertising and subscription-based business models that depend on direct audience relationships, according to the survey.
Meanwhile, politicians, business leaders and celebrities are increasingly bypassing traditional outlets altogether, opting instead to speak directly to sympathetic podcasters, YouTubers or social media personalities. Media analysts say this approach, popularised during Donald Trump’s return to political prominence, has been replicated globally and is often accompanied by legal pressure on publishers and efforts to discredit independent journalism as untrustworthy.
Read the Full Story: Communicate
Registration Is Now Open: OTT.X EPG, SCTE & Metadata Roundtables
OTT.X is convening senior leaders and practitioners from across the CTV ecosystem for a focused EPG, SCTE & Metadata Roundtable—a working-session designed to tackle one of streaming’s most foundational and complex challenges: how metadata and signaling power discovery, monetization, and the viewer experience at scale.
Unlike broad, surface-level discussions, this roundtable is a deep-dive, off-the-record working session focused squarely on EPG, metadata, and SCTE-driven standards. The conversation will center on real-world use cases, implementation challenges, and the work actively underway across the DSCA and adjacent stakeholder groups.
Participants will engage directly on how standards are being applied in practice today—and where alignment is still needed to move the ecosystem forward.
Share of Audience who Watched a Title Available on Platform X & then Watched a Title on HBO Max
Presented By:
Understand the streaming landscape in this weekly data snapshot series from Parrot Analytics. Having a clear picture of the audience viewing journey between platforms is key to assessing platform bundling compatibility.
Key Findings
-
- Parrot Analytics Audience Journey data shows Netflix viewers have the lowest downstream viewing into HBO Max: 11.6% vs Hulu (11.7%), Paramount+ (11.9%), Apple TV+ (12.3%), and Peacock (12.4%) in the US
- If a Netflix deal for Warner Bros. Discovery moves forward, that smaller overlap could actually be a strategic advantage: bundling two more distinct audiences can create larger incremental reach (more households exposed to both catalogs) than bundles where the same viewers already co-watch heavily.
- The upside isn’t automatic: low overlap also means the combined service must work harder to convert access into viewing, making discovery, recommendations, and franchise “on-ramps” critical, yet at scale it could reinforce Netflix as the “always-on” anchor and potentially outmuscle the Disney+/Hulu bundle in total on-platform demand.
In Case You Missed It
- How The Gatekeepers Lost Control of Premium. The Streaming Wars
- Josh D’Amaro’s Promotion Reflects How Disney Thinks About Its Future. The Streaming Wars
- Disney Beat Earnings. Then It Picked the Guy Who Runs the Money. The Streaming Wars
- Generative AI Gets Headlines. Generative Questions Change Companies. The Streaming Wars
- Peacock Was Supposed to Be Profitable by 2024. Instead, It’s Still Bleeding Cash. The Streaming Wars
- Amazon Overtakes DAZN at the Top of Global Sports Rights Spending. Why it Matters. The Streaming Wars
- Spotify’s Group Chats Lock the Listening Loop Inside the App. The Streaming Wars
- Basics of Streaming: Why Streaming Revenue Is A Portfolio, Not A Product. The Streaming Wars
- Disney’s NFL Stake Changes the Game but Raises Questions. The Streaming Wars
Powered by
FOR B2B BRANDS DONE BLENDING IN.
43Twenty builds narrative clarity and content systems for media, SaaS, and streaming companies that need to matter to buyers.
We define your story, turn it into a repeatable content engine, and build authority where decisions are made.
-
No buzzwords.
-
No content spam.
-
No shortcuts.
If everyone else sounds the same, that’s your opening.
We help you take it.