Netflix and Disney+ are seeing a steady increase in foreign-language content, with the strongest markets for programming in Japanese, French, Korean and Turkish, according to a new report from Ampere Analysis.

According to the researcher, non-English-language content accounts for a growing share of platform acquisitions. As of September, more than half of the content acquired by Netflix and Disney+ originated from non-English-speaking countries. Netflix leads in this regard, with 65% of its acquired content non-English, followed by Disney+ at 50%. Japan and South Korea were the leading source countries for Netflix’s non-English acquisitions, while Germany and Japan topped the list for Disney+.

Japanese, French, South Korean and Turkish content present key acquisition opportunities. These markets are identified by comparing the number of titles exported internationally with their overall popularity, with high popularity and relatively low export volumes indicating the greatest licensing potential. South Korean and Turkish content in particular offer promising opportunities for international licensing and distribution, as global demand remains strong while international availability is comparatively limited.

Japanese content has substantial scope for wider distribution, Ampere adds. Only 40% of Japanese VOD content is available internationally. Science fiction and fantasy lead its export genres, driven particularly by anime, which accounts for two-thirds of Japan’s 100 most internationally portable titles in 2026. While the U.S. and South Korea are established destinations, France and Germany combine relatively high popularity with limited imports.

South Korean content remains under-distributed despite its global appeal. Some 45% of titles are available only on domestic VOD services. Romance leads among the country’s most internationally portable titles, followed by science fiction and fantasy. The Middle East and Southeast Asia offer further licensing opportunities, particularly for romance.

Turkish content combines relatively high popularity with limited international availability. Just 30% is distributed internationally, with fewer than 1,000 titles exported. Romance accounts for 43% of Turkey’s 100 most internationally portable titles in 2026. The Middle East is its main export destination, but availability remains limited to around 600 Turkish films and TV seasons. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are priority markets for further distribution.

French films offer opportunities in neighbouring European markets. France has a more-established international distribution footprint, with 76% of its on-demand content available overseas. Films perform particularly strongly on popularity. Germany and the US are key existing destinations, while Italy, Austria and Switzerland offer further potential.

Non-English content remains underexploited despite growing global demand, Tinging Li, research manager for Ampere, said.

“In recent years, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max and Disney+ have increasingly expanded non-English-language title licensing in multiple markets. Japanese, South Korean, French and Turkish content present the top opportunities for international licensing, with strong audience appeal but still gaps in cross-border availability,Li said. “For content owners and platforms, buying this content can bridge the gap between audience demand and international distribution.”

PLANO, Texas—New Parks Associates research finds that high dynamic range (HDR) is a foundational component of premium video entertainment and gives television manufacturers, streaming services and content creators a way to differentiate themselves through picture quality.

The research is presented in “High Dynamic Range and the Future of Video,” a new Parks white paper developed in partnership with chief Advanced HDR by Technicolor supporter InterDigital.

“HDR gives the entertainment industry a powerful way to make improvements in picture quality,” Parks Director of Entertainment Research Michael Goodman said. “For manufacturers, it helps demonstrate the value of advanced displays. For streaming services and content owners, it provides an opportunity to deliver a more compelling experience and preserve the creative intent of their programming.”

According to the research, several developments are shaping the next phase of HDR, including:

Smart-TV penetration is rising, as 62% of U.S. internet households now have a connected TV device.

• Live sports and gaming is making HDR, with its ability to reproduce bright highlights, detailed shadows and realistic imagery, more relevant.
• Mobile viewing is extending HDR beyond the television, as 24% of weekly video consumption is done on mobile phones and 11% on tablets.
• Tech advances are improving delivery economics, as AI assists in image processing and next-gen codecs like Versatile Video Coding (VVC) simplify workflows. 

The research also identified challenges, including differences in HDR formats, device capabilities and service implementations.

“Consumers may not always know HDR by name, but they recognize the experience it enables: richer color, deeper contrast and a more lifelike picture,” Lionel Oisel, head of video labs at InterDigital, said. “As HDR expands across streaming, live sports, gaming and mobile, the opportunity is to make that premium experience consistent and efficient on every screen. Innovation in HDR, video compression and delivery will be fundamental to making that possible.”

Parks Associates and InterDigital will discuss the research at the Future of Video: Business of Streaming conference, Nov. 17-18, in Marina del Rey, Calif. Registration is available here.

PLANO, Texas—An increasing number of U.S. internet households are watching live events or sports through an on-demand streaming service, according to a new report from Parks Associates.

In its new report, The New Live TV Model: Skinny Bundles, Sports, News, the research firm says that 39% are doing so, illustrating the growing role of streaming services in delivering live programming. The expanding mix of options to watch video is changing how consumers find and watch sports, news, and events, as live video viewing is no longer synonymous with pay TV, Parks adds.

The report also found that 25% surveyed watch live video through free ad-supported television (FAST) services and 21% report they don't watch live video at all.

"Consumers value live content but struggle to find and access it," said Michael Goodman, Director, Entertainment Research, Parks Associates. "The challenge for providers is making live content accessible. Sports is a good example, with programming now distributed across multiple services and platforms."

Consumer interest in live sports is growing alongside broad-appeal entertainment. According to Parks Associates consumer research, comedy (60%), drama (56%), and news (50%) are the most popular content categories, while 48% report watching live sports. Subscription VOD (SVOD) services continue to add sports, news, and live events while FAST services build engagement through curated linear channels.

"Competition for viewers is increasingly about more than the content itself," Goodman said. "Providers need to deliver an experience that makes it easy for consumers to find, access, and move between live and on-demand programming."

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.—According to a new report from Bango, a third of American viewers surveyed say they would rather watch highlights from a show than every full episode, rising to 43% among Gen Z.

The survey of 2,500 US adults raises a question about how viewers watch TV, according to Bango: Are audience attention spans shrinking, or are they simply looking for different ways to watch? Four in ten Americans (40%) say they would use streaming services more often if they offered short clips from their shows, rising to more than half (53%) of Gen Z, the researcher said.

That appetite is already reflected in reported viewing habits: 37% of Americans say they use their streaming service more often now that it includes vertical video clips, rising to 47% among Millennials.

But a taste for shorter viewing doesn’t necessarily mean less appetite for a good story. More than half (51%) say clips help them discover shows worth paying to watch. For some, the highlights are the attraction, but for others, those few minutes are what persuade them to settle in for the whole series.

Bundles Matter
How people access that entertainment matters too. Alongside the appetite for shorter viewing, 61% of Americans say they would be more likely to keep a subscription if they could get it for less through a bundle, giving streaming services and mobile providers two opportunities to explore: more ways to watch and more affordable ways to subscribe.

For families, the appeal of bite-sized entertainment comes with another question: can children enjoy short videos while spending less time on social media?

More than four in ten Americans (44%) see value in short videos from a brand they trust, while 37% say curated clips would help keep their kids off social media. That figure rises to 47% among Millennials.

The findings come as international restrictions on children’s social media access put alternatives to social platforms under scrutiny. Australia has banned under-16s from social media since December 2025, and the UK government has announced plans to follow suit in 2027, Bango said.

The U.S. findings from Bango suggest an audience for an alternative: curated clips from familiar streaming platforms, giving families another way to enjoy short videos.

That appeal could also contribute to what people feel they get for their money. Four in ten Americans (40%) say original or exclusive short videos could help justify the price of a streaming subscription.

The Story is Still the Thing
An appetite for highlights does not mean audiences have stopped caring about full-length stories, however. In the same survey, 65% of Americans say new episodes of shows they follow are important in their decision to keep paying for a streaming service.

The findings suggest there is room for both: something entertaining to watch in a spare moment and a series worth settling in for, according to Bango CEO Paul Larbey.

“It’s tempting to read these findings as evidence that nobody has the patience for a full episode any more," he said. "But people still value the shows they follow. The opportunity is to give them different ways to enjoy that entertainment, depending on the time and attention they want to give it as well as new ways to discover new shows without having to fully commit.

“For families, there’s another question: can children enjoy short videos without being drawn into a social media feed? Curated, age-appropriate clips from familiar shows could offer another option, particularly as restrictions on children’s social media access take effect.

“Streaming services have stories and characters people already love. Shorter formats could help audiences enjoy more of those catalogues, while getting a subscription through a phone, broadband or banking bundle could make it more affordable to keep. Together, streaming services with bundlers like telcos and banks can give people more ways to enjoy their favorite entertainment at a price that works for them.”

For telcos, short-form entertainment could strengthen the appeal of the streaming services offered through their bundles, giving customers more ways to enjoy the subscriptions they already pay for.

Younger consumers are already using bundles to manage costs: 21% of Gen Z say they have moved from paying for a service separately to getting it through a bundle to save money in the past year.

Consumers also see value in bundling streaming with other services: 23% say a music subscription would make a streaming service more valuable to them, followed by food delivery benefits (20%) and shopping memberships offering free shipping or discounts (19%).

The survey is available here.

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World.

In my February Radio World article “Thoughts on AI and the Law,” I suggested that every station using artificial intelligence should adopt a policy addressing AI use disclosure, consent and compensation, and should obtain certifications from programmers and advertisers concerning their use of AI.

California’s recent legislation — and the rapid spread of similar laws around the country — makes that recommendation more urgent.

That the industry is moving forward with AI is inescapable. However, broadcasters must be careful and open about its use and cannot simply treat it as just another cost-saving production tool. It must be recognized as an issue that can impact your reputation for honesty, and compliance with political broadcast regulations.

California has addressed these issues perhaps more comprehensively than any other state and serves as a good model for broadcasters nationwide, although many other states appear to be following the same path.

California’s Framework
In 2026, the state created a multi-level legal structure that affects many aspects of AI use by broadcasters.

Its regulations address a variety of issues, including synthetic-content origin and changes in its use, known as “provenance,” training, frontier-model safety, mitigating advanced AI risks, privacy and employment discrimination.

Effective in August, the California AI Transparency Act, or CAITA, requires producers of publicly accessible generative-AI with more than 1 million monthly users or visitors to provide a free public detection tool and to embed disclosures in AI-generated images and video and audio content that permanently includes the content’s origin and history.

The law reaches beyond AI platforms. Beginning in 2028, manufacturers of equipment used by broadcasters, such as cameras, mobile phones and microphones, among other things, must automatically embed origin and creation information (called “latent disclosures”) into the recorded content.

In addition to CAITA, California has enacted several statutes and regulations that touch on AI and are now in effect. These address a myriad of issues, including training requirements, safety risk assessments, critical-incident reporting, whistleblower protection and AI-assisted employment decisions.

While most individual stations will not be regulated as frontier-model developers or covered GenAI providers, they need to be aware that these laws affect the tools they buy and that the provenance information (where an object, data or document comes from and how it has changed over time) attached to the AI tools they may use.

Many observers believe that California’s AI laws may influence laws in other states and even, potentially, federal or industry standards.

California Political
With campaign season upon us, it is important to note that California has already adopted disclosure requirements for political ads with AI.

The rule applies to California political committees that create, originally publish or originally distribute qualifying political advertisements. Any advertisements that contain an image, audio, video or other media that was entirely created by AI, and would falsely appear authentic to a reasonable person or was materially altered by AI in a way that would give a reasonable person a fundamentally different understanding of the material, must include, in a clear and conspicuous manner, the following statement: “Ad generated or substantially altered using artificial intelligence.”

This disclosure applies to radio and television broadcast ads that contain AI.

For radio, a political spot containing a cloned candidate voice, a fabricated exchange or other qualifying synthetic audio must carry a spoken disclosure. A separate requirement applies to television and online video content governing how the required AI disclosure must be placed and appear.

These disclosure requirements are imposed primarily on the political committee rather than a station that runs it, but stations should be knowledgeable and be certain to inquire of the producer or distributor whether AI was used, so that the broadcaster does not find itself inadvertently airing unlawful content or damaging its credibility.

Idea Gone National
While California is an important example to study, it is far from alone in regulating AI use in political communications.

Thirty-one states have enacted laws regulating the use of deepfakes in political and election communications, according to tracking from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Most state laws include disclosure requirements similar to California. Minnesota and Texas prohibit the publication of political deepfakes a certain number of days prior to an election. Maryland has no time limit and instead prohibits deceptive deepfakes related to the election year-round.

The other 28 states require disclosures on the media, similar to the existing requirement to disclose who paid for a political ad, the AI disclosure requires the ad to state if it contains a deepfake.

Colorado and Utah require additional disclosures in the metadata — descriptive information about a file’s creator, when the file was created and when the file was edited. Some provide civil remedies, while others carry criminal penalties.

This developing regulatory patchwork presents a practical problem for station groups and political buyers. A spot prepared for national or regional distribution may comply with one state’s laws, but not another. The required words, placement and duration may differ. So may the definitions of “AI-generated,” “synthetic media,” “deepfake” and “material alteration.”

Broadcasters therefore should no longer accept a general representation that a political advertisement is “legally compliant.” The representation should address the states and platforms in which the spot will run and should specifically identify whether AI was used to create or materially alter any voice, image or video.

The Section 315 Problem
Political broadcasting law makes compliance with new AI regulations even more complicated for broadcasters.

They retain discretion and can censor noncandidate issue, independent-expenditure and ballot-measure advertisements and can demand corrections. However, a legally qualified candidate’s “use” presents a different problem since the Communications Act prohibits a station from censoring a candidate use.

The Communications Act states clearly at § 312(a)(7) that all legally qualified and bona fide write-in candidates for federal elective office are to have “reasonable access” to broadcast facilities. Those federal requirements do not fit neatly with state laws requiring specified words or visual elements in AI-generated political advertising as the broadcaster is prohibited from censoring the ad and must run them for a candidate for federal elective office provided they contain a “use” by the candidate.

A “use” is defined as any positive use of a candidate’s voice or picture in a context not otherwise exempt under Section 315 of the Communications Act. Thus, any program or commercial that identifies the candidate by voice or picture in a positive way and is not a bona fide newscast, bona fide news interview, bona fide news documentary or on-the-spot coverage of a bona fide news event, cannot be censored by the broadcaster. As a result, the broadcaster is provided immunity from liability for the content of the ad.

However, it cannot be assumed that Section 315 automatically disposes of every question involving state law or station liability. Therefore, to the extent possible, the safest course is prevention. Ask the whether AI was used when the order is placed, explain the applicable disclosure requirements to the buyer and ask that the candidate or committee deliver a compliant spot.

The FCC considered a federal solution in 2024. In MB Docket No. 24-211, the commission released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that asked whether the FCC should increase transparency in political ads by having political advertisers indicate if AI is being used in the advertisement and make on-air disclosures of AI use. It does not propose the prohibition of such content, only disclosing the use of AI within political ads. It further proposed to require broadcasters and certain other video and audio distributors to inquire whether political advertising contained AI-generated content, make an on-air disclosures and place a corresponding notice in their online political file.

The FCC explained it was attempting to address consumers’ concerns that AI-generated content was leading to a rising tide of disinformation, while also bringing uniformity to the patchwork of state laws and greater transparency in our elections.

The docket is still active with a list of filed comments 49 pages long, but the FCC has not yet acted. So, for now, broadcasters must continue to comply with state-by-state requirements as well as the established FCC sponsorship identification and political broadcasting rules.

A Broader Risk
While the focus is on political advertising in election years, there is a longer-term regulatory risk.

AI-generated voices can duplicate the authentic voices of real people, including a station personality, public official, celebrity or ordinary caller. It can “hallucinate” an apparently authentic interview, eyewitness account, endorsement or news clips. This can lead to increased liability for stations that are using AI to help generate content.

Existing law already reaches much of this conduct. Defamation, false light, the right of publicity, copyright, fraud, deceptive-advertising law and contract rights do not disappear merely because an AI model produced the content. A disclosure that the production of a segment used AI will not cure a defamatory statement, an unauthorized voice clone or a fabricated emergency announcement.

Stations should mandate human editorial review for news, elections, weather emergencies, health information, public safety and any content purporting to quote from or depict a real person. An “AI-assisted” label cannot become a substitute for human verification of factual statements.

The same caution towards AI use applies to entertainment and promotional programming. A synthetic host may be efficient, but the station must determine whether it has the right to reproduce the voice or persona on which the host is based.

Talent agreements should expressly address training, cloning, reuse, derivative voices, post-employment use and compensation. The SAG-AFTRA principles of consent, disclosure and appropriate compensation remain a sound guide, even when a particular employee or contractor is not covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

Stations should also examine syndicated programs, barter programming, paid interviews, commercials and network feeds for AI use. A station often will not know whether outside material was produced using AI unless it asks. Programmer and advertiser agreements should require disclosure of material AI use and representations that all necessary rights and consents were obtained.

Digital Distribution Changes the Analysis
Broadcasters should resist the temptation to treat their website, app, podcast, streaming channel, connected-TV product and social-media accounts merely as extensions of the over-the-air station. They may be governed differently under relevant law.

As noted above, since Aug. 2, 2026, CAITA has required certain very large providers of publicly accessible generative-AI systems to provide detection tools and content-provenance disclosures. Most local stations that use third-party AI services will not be covered by these requirements, but the analysis could change if a media company develops, substantially modifies or publicly offers its own generative-AI service.

Even where CAITA does not regulate the station directly, it offers broadcasters a new resource to verify compliance. Newsrooms can use provider detection tools and examine provenance information when evaluating suspicious audio, photographs or video. Stations also should preserve — rather than strip — standards-compliant metadata and digital signatures as material moves through editing, traffic, web-publishing and social-media systems.

The 2027 CAITA very large-platform requirements will make that preservation practice even more important for a station group whose digital operation could satisfy the statutory platform thresholds.

California’s Training Data Transparency Act only applies to developers that make generative-AI systems publicly available. A broadcaster that merely uses a commercial AI service ordinarily is a customer, not the developer. A broadcaster that trains and releases a public model using its news archive, announcer voices, photographs or programming may be in a very different position. It also must determine whether it has the rights necessary to use that material for training.

Digital operations raise privacy questions as well. Station apps and websites may collect personal identifiers, location information, listening histories, contest data and advertising profiles. California’s privacy rules now address certain automated decision-making and risk assessments. AI used for targeted advertising, audience profiling, hiring or other consequential decisions can therefore create obligations that ordinary over-the-air broadcasting does not.

A Policy for 2026
Given the expanding state-law patchwork, it is essential that each station have a written AI policy in place. At a minimum, each station should:

• Require political buyers and outside programmers to identify AI-generated or materially AI-altered content in writing;
• Require each buyer to certify compliance with every applicable state disclosure law;
• Route candidate uses that do not comply with AI disclosure requirements to counsel rather than editing material at the station to attempt to comply;
• Require human review of news, emergency, election, health and public-safety content;
• Prohibit unauthorized cloning of employee, candidate, celebrity or other persons voices or likenesses;
• Preserve content credentials, watermarks and provenance metadata rather than stripping them;
• Limit the entry of confidential station, employee, advertiser and source information into public AI systems;
• Address ownership, consent, compensation and post-employment use in talent and vendor agreements, and
• Include separate policy provisions that apply to broadcast, streaming, websites, apps, podcasts and social media.

California’s most important message is not the wording of one disclaimer. It is that broadcasters are entering an era in which they will be expected to know — or at least to ask — whether the voices and information they distribute are real.

AI can help broadcasters remain efficient, competitive and creative. But broadcast’s most valuable asset has never been its ability to generate more content at lower cost. It is the audience’s belief that the station knows and serves its community and can be trusted. Any AI policy should begin there.

This column is provided for general information purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal advice pertaining to any specific factual situation. Legal decisions should be made only after proper consultation with a legal professional of your choosing.

Read more broadcast law columns from Gregg Skall.

Zixi, Grass Valley, Uplynk and Broadview Software have jointly published a white paper setting out a model for moving broadcast distribution from satellite to IP and the cloud.

Based on a real-world deployment for a broadcaster with a global footprint, The IP convergence framework for distribution sets out a practical, repeatable model for the transition, demonstrating how cloud master control, IP transport, orchestration and streaming work together. The release comes ahead of the US FCC’s upper C-band auction to reclaim 100-180 MHz of spectrum used by broadcasters to deliver content across the United States.

The framework combines four core layers, with each delivered by one of the partners in a unified operating model. Grass Valley provides broadcast operations and playout, with master control and playout running in the cloud. Broadcast-grade delivery of live video over IP is enabled by Zixi, with redundancy built into every path. BroadView Software ensures orchestration and delivery with control of the full workflow via BroadView Nexus, while Uplynk distributes to streaming, FAST and affiliate endpoints from the same chain.

Each of the layers can be independently swapped or scaled, allowing users to adopt in stages rather than a single rebuild. TAG and Zixi Zen Master ensure the same visibility across the chain provided by a traditional master control room.

The model follows the entire workflow, from ingest to cloud master control and distribution, said the partners. Moving master control to the cloud enables teams to retain precision and control while gaining IP flexibility.

Three outcomes are identified: flexibility from swappable layers and the ability to change without infrastructure redesign; reliability from continuous monitoring and redundant workflows; and efficiency through lower storage and transport costs with reduced dependency on fixed hardware.

Eric Black, CEO/CTO, Uplynk, commented, “The C-band transition is forcing a real question for broadcasters – what replaces satellite without sacrificing the reliability they’re used to. We built this framework to answer that question, and we proved it first by moving a broadcaster’s entire satellite operation onto IP and the cloud in production. That combination of broadcast-grade reliability and cloud flexibility is what the industry needs right now, and we’re excited to share how we got there.”

Not too long ago, pro AV and broadcast equipment occupied two separate worlds, defined by very different production goals and budgets. Today, those separate worlds are merging into one.

This convergence is dramatically reshaping the expectations surrounding wireless microphone deployments. Whether outfitting a corporate boardroom, university lecture hall, or major league sports stadium, end users now demand broadcast-tier reliability from all of their wireless mics.

Mark Donovan, director of commercial applications at Audio-Technica U.S., noted that wireless microphones have transitioned from event-driven tools to core infrastructure in installed AV systems. “Corporate, education, and government environments now expect wireless audio to perform with the same consistency as networked systems,” he said.

Unfortunately, delivering pristine, uninterrupted audio via wireless is becoming exponentially more difficult. As the demand for wireless connectivity in pro AV spaces skyrockets, the spectrum it uses is becoming more crowded. Navigating this increasingly congested RF environment requires a deep understanding of new transmission technologies, rigorous security protocols, spectrum policy and strict deployment best practices.

The most pressing trend affecting the state of wireless microphones today is the severe congestion within licensed frequency bands. The available real estate for wireless audio is disappearing, putting immense pressure on systems integrators to deliver reliable results.

Jens Pilz, Sennheiser’s spectrum policy and standards manager, points to a frustrating disparity between Pro AV and other technology sectors. “Other wireless industries ask for new spectrum with each generation of their technology,” he said. “The Pro AV industry is forced to stick to the same spectrum resources—or lose spectrum while other industries gain it, like Digital Dividend 1 and 2 in Europe [when broadcast TV moved from analog to digital, freeing up spectrum] or 600 MHz in the U.S. [the same].”

Consequently, as governments globally reallocate valuable RF spectrum, often to support mobile data, wireless microphone operators are being squeezed into smaller frequency bands. This reallocation makes finding clear frequencies incredibly difficult, said René Moerch, group director of wireless for DPA Microphones and Wisycom. “The ability to find usable spectrum, what I often describe as ‘parking spots,’ is becoming one of the most critical challenges in Pro AV today,” he explained.

Integrators are facing the same spectrum squeeze. “We [have to] find more channels in less space, both physically and in bandwidth loading,” said Jason Jacquemain, design engineer for American Sound’s Venue and Entertainment Division. “Refining the quality and agility of systems to cope with more crowded RF environments is a frequent challenge that we must overcome.”

According to Donovan, this reduction in available spectrum has forced a shift from convenience to intentional design. “Wireless systems can no longer be deployed casually in professional environments; they require planning, awareness, and a clear understanding of RF tradeoffs,” he said. Donovan noted the industry has been driven to greater adoption of alternative frequency bands, recognizing there is no longer a single “best” solution.

Pushing Limits and Technological Shifts
Is there a hard limit to the number of wireless microphones that can be operated in the same space? No one knows for sure.

"There’s no universal number," admitted Ben Escobedo, Shure’s account executive for professional audio. “The limit is determined by available spectrum, system efficiency, regulatory rules, and RF conditions in the specific location. Ten channels might be easy in one room and impossible in another due to outside RF interference.”

Lacking access to such a number, the best choice for Pro AV operators is to employ a mix of prudent signal coordination, system choices and disciplined deployments that don’t use more wireless microphones than necessary. “That’s why planning and testing matter more than channel count on a spec sheet,” Escobedo told SCN. “Performing an RF site survey is essential to ensuring one can deliver the channel count and performance that the user expects."

To maximize channel counts within these tight constraints, manufacturers are focusing heavily on RF efficiency and RF agility. RF efficiency refers to how many channels can be packed into a single channel (typically 6 MHz in the U.S.). RF agility refers to wideband tuning, which allows wireless systems to scan a massive range of frequencies to avoid interference and congested areas.

Thanks to digital’s better spectral efficiency and advanced security features, the wireless microphone industry’s move from analog to digital has made room for more channels. Plus, manufacturers are introducing novel transmission standards to bypass UHF congestion entirely.

For example, Sennheiser is championing both WMAS and DECT NR+. Short for wireless multichannel audio systems, WMAS is a wideband, bidirectional approach that allows wireless microphones and in-ear monitors (IEMs) to operate within the same section of RF spectrum. DECT NR+ uses the 1.9 GHz range—a band largely exclusive to DECT technologies—to support bidirectional communication adapted for higher audio fidelity.

Pilz views WMAS and DECT NR+ as complementary rather than competitive technologies. "In the core Pro AV world, these are more like tools in a toolbox, and for the right application, you need to select the right tool," he explained. "You shouldn't buy a product based on technology—you should buy the product based on your use case."

Added Donovan: “Manufacturers are addressing RF complexity by both adding capability and reducing user burden. On one hand, systems are becoming more sophisticated, with improved tuning control and coordination tools. On the other, they are becoming more automated, with features that simplify setup and ongoing operation.”

Securing the Signal
Because pro AV and broadcast applications are converging into unified, IP-centric environments, AV systems now routinely reside on corporate IT networks. This shift has raised security demands for wireless audio applications.

“Unencrypted wireless audio is no longer acceptable in many cases for both security and privacy reasons,” Escobedo said. “Whether it's a major financial institution hosting a town hall in NYC or a pop star about to perform at a halftime show, digital wireless systems often provide AES-256 encryption to ensure secure transmission.”

In this heightened security realm, users must understand the distinction between fully digital systems and digital hybrid systems. While fully digital platforms support AES-256 encryption, digital hybrid platforms prioritize absolute RF robustness and long-range resilience over encryption.

As a result, “digital hybrid technology does not support encryption,” Moerch explained. “For that reason, Wisycom solutions are typically deployed in applications where RF performance and audio quality are the top priorities, while environments requiring encrypted transmission, such as corporate or government use, are better suited to fully digital systems with built-in encryption, like the DPA N-Series.”

"Manufacturers are addressing RF complexity by both adding capability and reducing user burden," Donovan observed. "On one hand, systems are becoming more sophisticated, with improved tuning control and coordination tools. On the other, they are becoming more automated, with features that simplify setup and ongoing operation."

Even the most advanced, heavily encrypted wireless technology will fail if deployed without paying attention to today’s congested RF spectrum. "It seems most designers are having to truly relearn the best practices as a result of said overcrowding, limits, and security concerns," said Jacquemain.

To ensure consistent and reliable service, end users and integrators need to adhere to strict deployment strategies.

Assess your real needs first. "A great starting point is a quick reality check on true channel count needs," Jacquemain advised.

Check the spectrum. Never rely on guesswork when deploying wireless microphones. "Knowing what spectrum is available where you’re working is critical, including avoiding DTV stations," Escobedo said. Using software tools like Shure’s Wireless Workbench or built-in system scanners can help find the most useful frequencies.

Place antennas properly. Maintaining strict line-of-sight between the transmitter and the receiver antennas is crucial, because human bodies and structural obstacles absorb RF energy. "Proper antenna spacing is also important for true diversity performance, which is typically around half a wavelength [approximately 20 inches in UHF ranges]," Moerch added.

Be smart about transmission power. Higher transmit power does not automatically equal better performance—it often just raises the noise floor. "In many cases we are finding it is preferred to use lower output power but have a more robust antenna receiving system,” Escobedo said. “Keeping the output power low may allow one to multiplex [reuse] the same frequency elsewhere in the deployment."

Know when not to use wireless. In those situations where microphone mobility is not necessary, it makes sense to use wires rather than going wireless. "A mentor of mine often pointed out that setting up a wireless microphone involves deploying four cables: power, two antenna cables, and an audio cable," said Escobedo. "Sometimes a simple XLR cable to a wired mic can suffice for the intended application."

Despite all this, it's still possible to use wireless microphones successfully through the use of planning, spectrum checking before going live, and leveraging innovative technologies like WMAS and DECT NR+. Just plugging in a wireless microphone system and hoping it works—especially if it's part of a system that's old and outdated—is a risky choice in today’s congested RF spectrum.

Ultimately, as Donovan said, "The most reliable systems are those designed with realism in mind, anticipating challenges rather than reacting to failures."

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand SCN.

Anyone who has worked in the broadcast industry long enough has at least one story of taking something off the air—and when it happens, the pressure immediately kicks in to restore service as quickly as possible. In practice, that may involve hardware swaps, signal redirection and even repatching inputs and outputs.

Those time-sensitive situations don’t often allow for someone standing by to capture all the changes being made in the moment. And even when it is not an on-air emergency, sometimes changes need to be made rapidly, established processes fall by the wayside and documentation suffers from neglect.

Maintaining good documentation is central to any mission-critical system and this doesn’t change in the world of AI. Decades ago, systems design, maintenance and troubleshooting primarily involved working with purpose-built hardware and centered around signal flow. Systems were often planned on a chalkboard and designed on a drafting table.

Now, the scale and complexity of the systems have grown significantly. The introduction of computers to media brought with it powerful tools for creativity and efficiency, but also the complexity of software-based systems. Now, with the transition to IP, the documentation complexity compounds further.

And, as we step into the AI-infused future, both the complexity and potential for bad data increase yet again. We face a world where we must document virtualized systems and complex, nondeterministic software such as AI agents as they spread through our organizations. Modern approaches to media systems documentation are needed.

Our challenge lies now in the rapid expansion of documentation scope. The format we are familiar with is the AutoCAD detailed design drawing. This format has proven useful to illustrate signal flow and the physical layer. However, it can rarely capture all the important, logical details such as network configuration data.

The traditional broadcast drawing is insufficient. Just like during the transition to computer-assisted design many decades ago, those who embrace new methods and tools early on will benefit the most in the new documentation paradigm.

Shifting From Drawings to Data
Images, drawings and diagrams have always been one of the most effective ways for humans to interact with complex datasets. Computers, by contrast, are better suited to process huge amounts of numeric data. AI is now able to help us bridge these two worlds. Soon, many design engineers will be using AI to produce system designs. There are guaranteed to be differing opinions, but one principle is clear: data and visualizations both remain essential.

Drawings can be created from the data, and data can be updated instantly with changes made to drawings and even the real-world telemetry of system changes. A single source of truth becomes obtainable. Models can be trained on device configurations, network connectivity patterns, and efficient infrastructure design.

This means the right tools will be able to suggest requirements, develop high-level designs and, with human oversight, output the broadcast design artifacts for complete systems.

For teams that are not bound by legacy industry norms, it creates an opportunity to evolve into a completely new world of design processes. Consider Netbox, an open-source tool for network documentation upon which Deloitte has built a broadcast toolset called Ndox.

Database-backed approaches aren’t new. AutoCAD has a database under the hood. But unlike AutoCAD, Netbox and Ndox are aligned with the underlying data model. Instead of just lines and rectangles, it’s a relational database of cables, devices and IP addresses. This approach allows users to keep drawings or new visualizations in lockstep with design information because they are generated directly on demand from the live database.

The IP Documentation Challenge
Data is intrinsic to modern broadcast documentation. What once was a stack of printed drawings now requires a folder of spreadsheets. The maintenance of that data is frequently where broadcasters encounter long-term challenges. And it is getting harder.

Just 10 years ago, IP addresses might have been stored in a basic Excel spreadsheet. However, with the introduction of ST 2110, this has quickly snowballed into a collection of spreadsheets to manage all the multicast signal data.

We now need more than just accurate records. We need a proactive means of validating, managing and identifying conflicts in the current system. To meet the constantly evolving needs of a modern broadcast facility, closing the loop between design, commissioning and ongoing monitoring becomes necessary.

The key is to go beyond system design and create a design system. This is the premise of tools like Ndox—a nexus of information for hardware, virtualization and all the connections between. This is also the point where AI has the potential to greatly enhance data quality, or if inadequate controls are in place, to corrupt it.

Where AI Fits, and Where it Creates Risk
AI significantly decreases barriers to entry for building tools that can manipulate critical systems. This offers many advantages but also introduces the risk that users less familiar with system intricacies may inadvertently compromise them. Even if users find AI assistance helpful, at the macro level, ungoverned AI usage may increase data silos and documentation sprawl. It can also lead to new operational risks.

AI can improve documentation, but to do so it must be folded into structured data processes and governance. We do not need hundreds of spreadsheets to be replaced by hundreds of custom-built, vibe-coded apps that do not talk to each other.

AI is starting to become a powerful tool to replace the tedious, manual efforts of engineers. However, AI has limitations. For example, the need to compress context can easily lead to loss of relevant data. To leverage AI properly, the best approach is to limit a given use to a narrowly defined scope.

AI works best at solving problems in small pieces. AI can’t yet grasp the decision-making factors of the technicians who have built today’s broadcasting facilities. Technology on its own will not replace human creativity and judgment.

As always, the theme here is change. Technical evolution is always underway. The challenge for you is to find that right moment to jump into the next wave. For documentation, that time is now.

John Footen is a managing director who leads Deloitte Consulting LLP’s media technology and operations practice. Lukas Odhner is senior engineering management leader at Deloitte, leading the development and adoption of Ndox, a database-driven design tool used by the Deloitte Media Solutions practice to accelerate the design and deployment of multiple greenfield broadcast facility builds. Julie Fleischman is a consultant in Deloitte’s Technology, Media, and Telecommunications practice.

NEW YORK—Ads aired during Spanish-language television broadcasts were 50% more impactful than English-language TV ads over the past year, according to research released today from EDO.

The research, presented in the analytics firm’s third annual “Spanish Language TV Outcomes Report,” is based on 1.3 million ad airings and 332 billion impressions across 631 brands. EDO said it applies the same measurement standard to each advertiser, network and language, giving the industry a single, comparable view of what's actually driving outcomes across an increasingly fragmented TV landscape.

The report comes following 2026 FIFA World Cup coverage and Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny performing a solo headline Super Bowl halftime show—two contributors to a landmark year in Latino culture, EDO said.

The average Spanish-language ad was 24% more effective than the average English-language ad on a per-person, per-second basis—even after controlling for audience size. That edge held across genres, with Spanish-language content outperforming English-language programming by 44% in scripted entertainment, 48% in news and 9% in reality programming.

“Spanish-language TV (SLTV) is no longer just the most overlooked opportunity in advertising—it’s also one of the fastest-growing,” said Laura Grover, senior vice president and head of client solutions at EDO. “For years, the average SLTV ad has delivered more bang for the marketer’s buck by driving stronger engagement than the average English-language TV ad. But over the past year, this delta has grown even wider, delivering stronger outcomes across brand categories and measurable business impact for advertisers.”

The report also highlights standout brand performance during the World Cup. Telemundo's on-screen hydration-break sponsorships, a first for the tournament, drove 39 times as much impact as a typical ad on English- or Spanish-language TV.

McDonald’s ads during the hydration break were 438% more effective than the average SLTV World Cup advertiser, while creative from Airbnb and Ford both outperformed the World Cup field by triple digits.

The value didn't end when the final whistle blew. Only 19% of creatives that debuted during the World Cup ran elsewhere on SLTV afterward, EDO reported, but those that did kept performing, driving 43% greater effectiveness than the SLTV average when airing during soccer coverage post-tournament and 15% more during nonsoccer programming.

The “Spanish Language TV Outcomes Report” is available for download.

NEW YORK—Multiscreen TV ad campaigns deliver a 2x incremental return on ad spending and drive 2.4 times more web visits compared to using only one or the other, according to new research from Comcast Advertising.

The ad division of Comcast today released its latest “Multiscreen Performance Report,” which reflects the evolution of its flagship multiscreen TV advertising report.

The report demonstrates how advertising impacts outcomes throughout the buyer journey by combining Comcast Advertising campaign data with insights from independent measurement sources to examine performance across attention, reach consideration, and website activity for advertisers of all sizes.

It also found that sports streaming campaigns, fueled by events like the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, March Madness, and the FIFA World Cup 2026, had a 52% unique reach, capturing hard-to-reach households 10x more effectively than TV alone.

“Advertisers are under more pressure than ever to prove their media dollars are performing, which is often measured only during conversion. In reality, it starts earlier: when quality access meets the right data to capture true attention,” said Dawn Lee Williamson, chief revenue officer for Media Solutions at Comcast Advertising. “When TV and streaming are paired together, it helps brands capture attention and stay top-of-mind to help drive the measurable results they need. We hope this research helps advertisers make more informed decisions about where and how to invest their media dollars.”

Other report findings:

• Attention to ads drives memory of brands. Compared to social media, TV exposure leads to 36% more time viewing an ad and 2.2 times higher brand recall, and;
• Traditional TV delivers 71% of unique multiscreen; streaming delivers 21%. There is 8% overlap between the two, demonstrating advertisers need to leverage both to maximize reach, and;
• Multiscreen TV campaigns generate 2.4x more website visits than single-tactic campaigns and are 105% more efficient at delivering those visits, and;
• The impact of addressable advertising delivered a 38% incremental sales lift because it was 2x more likely to reach the target audience and increase delivery among priority households.

More information is available on the company’s website.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Utopai Studios, an AI-native global entertainment studio today introduced the all-new PAI, its production intelligence platform for professional film and television, and Utopai X, its video generation model. Together, PAI and Utopai X combine advanced video generation, production context and filmmaker-led workflows in a unified production system designed for feature films and television series, the company said.

Developed inside an operating film and television studio, PAI is built around the requirements of professional production. The platform helps filmmakers plan shots, develop assets, generate footage, review takes and manage revisions while keeping the production’s screenplay, characters, locations, assets and creative decisions connected throughout the process.

Utopai X provides the video generation layer within PAI and ranks No. 2 globally on Artificial Analysis’ Text-to-Video Leaderboard With Audio, with an Elo score of 1,150, nine points behind the No. 1-ranked model, according to the company, which adds that Utopai X is also the highest-ranked model from a U.S.-based company on the leaderboard.

Artificial Analysis evaluates video generation models through blind human-preference testing, in which participants compare outputs without knowing which model generated them. Those preferences are used to calculate the Elo scores that determine the rankings.

Utopai X is designed for professional production, with strengths in complex visual behaviors including reflections and caustics, as well as world understanding and high-level spatial consistency. These capabilities help maintain visual continuity and environmental coherence as shots become more complex.

Within PAI, a screenplay can be analyzed and organized into scenes and shots while characters, locations, objects, visual references and production decisions remain connected to the project. Production Assistants, Utopai Studios’ AI agents within PAI, use that context to help filmmakers plan shots, develop ideas and create new iterations, while filmmakers determine what to create, keep and revise.

Filmmakers can develop a shot within PAI, use Utopai X to generate footage and compare multiple takes in the same production environment. Previous versions remain available as the work develops, and selected footage can move into the editing process and established post-production workflows including Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve.

Utopai Studios is already applying PAI and Utopai X to its own film and television productions, including “The Most Serious Fart,” the upcoming animated feature written and directed by Mike Bender.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—A majority of state residents polled wants Alabama Public Television (APT) to continue its relationship with PBS, but among those who expressed an opinion slightly more than half perceived a political leaning in its coverage.

The findings, part of a poll conducted by the firm Cygnal, were released Sept. 29 coinciding with a public meeting of the Alabama Educational Television Foundation Authority (AETFA).

An article by Ben Sessoms on the website Alabama Reflector website reported that at an October 2025 meeting of AETFA, an authority commissioner said he opposed PBS programming due to perceived political bias.

According to the Cygnal poll, of the 363 respondents that offered an opinion, 32% said APT programming leans politically liberal, 20% perceived a conservative bent and 47% said the programming is generally balanced. A total of 237 of the poll’s 600 respondents were unsure.

The poll also asked respondents about whether or not APT stays within the bounds of state law prohibiting the broadcasters from carrying propaganda, attempting to influence legislation or engage in political campaigns. Of the 341 respondents answering the question, 218 said the broadcaster stays within the requirement. A total of 123 said it does not, and 259 were unsure.

When it comes to news fairness, respondents gave APT high marks. Among those who watch APT coverage of the state legislature, “PBS NewsHour” and “Capitol Journal,” 158 found coverage to be fair and even-handed, while 73 thought it was unfair or one-sided. A total of 202 said they do not watch APT news programming, and 167 were unsure.

Despite the mixed bag when it comes to political leaning and news fairness, most respondents (54%) said they favored maintaining support for PBS programming, while 18% were against it, and 28% were unsure.

The poll of 600 Alabama citizens was conducted Sept. 20-23. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%. Known registered voters were interviewed via live phones and SMS, and the survey was weighted to a general population universe, Cygnal said.

ESPN delivered its most-watched WNBA regular season ever in 2026, marking the third straight year that regular season viewing set records.

Across 29 games, the WNBA on ESPN networks averaged 1.37 million viewers, up 17% year-over-year.

ESPN presented 17 games this season, averaging 1.24 million viewers, up 32% year-over-year, while 12 games on ABC averaged 1.56 million viewers, up 9% year-over-year.

The historic season also delivered significant growth among younger audiences. Viewership among persons 2-17 increased 29% year-over-year, while persons 18-24 grew 27%.

Non-Indiana games averaged 984,000 viewers, up 24% year-over-year and its WNBA Countdown show averaged 595,000 viewers, up 27% year-over-year.

The record-setting season was highlighted by five games averaging more than 2 million viewers. Those games were:

• Indiana Fever at Atlanta Dream – Aug. 16, ESPN: 2.58M viewers
• Indiana Fever at Chicago Sky – Aug. 8, ABC: 2.56M viewers
• Indiana Fever at Minnesota Lynx – Aug. 2, ABC: 2.52M viewers
• Dallas Wings at Indiana Fever – May 9, ABC: 2.49M viewers
• New York Liberty at Indiana Fever – Aug. 11, ESPN: 2.01M viewers

Indiana Fever-Atlanta Dream on Aug. 16 led all WNBA games across ESPN networks this season and became the most-watched WNBA regular-season or postseason game ever on cable.

SAN FRANCISCO—Local television news faces a stark generational divide, according to new consumer research released by #FutureOfTV.Live, a quarterly research initiative from Ring Digital.

Just 10% of 18–24-year-olds watched local TV news during the previous week, compared with 64% of adults 65 and older—a 54-point gap.

Daily television viewing shows a similarly large divide: 31% among 18–24-year-olds versus 81% among adults 65 and older.

The findings are part of the Fall 2026 #FutureOfTV.Live Report, based on a September survey of 1,376 U.S. adults, weighted by age and gender to U.S. Census population data.

"The challenge for local broadcasters isn't simply that pay TV is declining. It's that the next generation of viewers is developing an entirely different relationship with news and television," said Brian Ring, founder of Ring Digital and #FutureOfTV.Live. "The question is increasingly how broadcasters bring their programming into those new viewing behaviors—and then turn discovery back into tune-in."

The Fall 2026 research is sponsored by Big Blue Marble, a cloud and streaming solutions provider serving sports, news and broadcast clients globally.

The report covers a range of topics—vertical video, interactivity, and mobile video news—as part of a larger exploration of news audience behavior.

Among respondents who watched a local newscast, 35% said they last watched through a pay-TV service, compared with 18% through social media or YouTube, 13% through a free streaming app, and just 7% through the station's own app.

The report also found mobile news consumption is substantial. Based on the data, #FutureOfTV.Live estimates 108 million U.S. adults watch news video on their phones daily. Among surveyed mobile news-video viewers, Facebook and YouTube Shorts each reached 46%, followed by TikTok at 37% and Instagram Reels at 33%.

The research also tested possible solutions to the challenges this shift presents. It reports a positive audience reaction to low cost, high ROI interactivity used in CNN's late-night programming. It also tests a "TikTok meets TV Guide" concept designed to use short-form, vertical video discovery to drive viewers into live and linear programming.

The full report is available here. Read the full research and analysis at #FutureOfTV.Live.

New data from Parks Associates shows that the number of standalone streaming services continues to decline in the U.S. market, with the research company’s Streaming Video Tracker reporting ten US streaming service profiles were phased out in Q2 2026 as many services rebrand and reorganize their content and brands.

Notably, Paramount Skydance ended BET+ as a separate service and consolidated that content within its flagship Paramount+ streaming service.

The Streaming Video Tracker also started tracking two new services last quarter, OG Network and TrueTVplus.

Overall, there were 336 standalone streaming services in the U.S. down from 366 in 2022.

Recent market changes highlight an active streaming market where services are closing, consolidating, or moving content to different distribution models, the researchers noted.

In particular, the market has been active regarding sports content, as providers experiment with the best strategies to capture sports fans and viewers:

For example, FIFA+ moved to DAZN, RidePass now operates solely as a FAST channel and FanDuel Sports Network shut down its television channels and streaming operations.

“Streaming services continue to experiment with the best ways to reach and monetize audiences,” said Michael Goodman, director, Entertainment Research, Parks Associates. “The movement of content from standalone apps to larger platforms and FAST channels shows how quickly distribution strategies are changing.”

In its monthly updates, the Streaming Video Tracker analyzes the strategies and emerging market trends when providers move content into larger offerings or launch new services:

• BET+ has been phased out by Paramount Skydance, and its content library has migrated to Paramount+ under a dedicated BET Hub.
• CTV Throwback and Movies moved to Crave.
• OHL Live transitioned its digital streaming content to FloHockey.
• Barça One was replaced by Barça Play, which is integrated into FC Barcelona’s app and website.
• OG Network and TrueTVplus were added to the tracker in Q2 2026. OG Network operates as an AVOD and FAST service, while TrueTVplus launched as a FAST platform with programming across sports, independent films, documentaries, and lifestyle content.

Parks Associates will host the industry webinar “Streaming Video: Churn, Loyalty, and Competition” on September 24, where the firm’s analysts will share research and comment on market trends and the implications for service providers and content owners.

While the introduction of AI-enabled smart glasses has prompted widespread privacy concerns, a new report and survey from S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan finds that AI-enabled smart glasses are beginning to move beyond an emerging technology category and into everyday use.

The research, which highlights reported impacts on productivity, accessibility, and broader consumer experiences among US adults, found that more than 4 in 10 U.S. online adults’ expressed interest in or already own smart glasses. In addition, one in six owners use smart glasses to help manage a disability, with features supporting vision, hearing, and cognitive needs.

"Smart glasses are often discussed as a future technology, but many owners are already reporting practical benefits,” explained Neil Barbour, industry analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “Our findings suggest the category is beginning to evolve from another wearable device into a platform for contextual AI assistance, with applications spanning productivity, creativity, accessibility and everyday life.”

Other key findings include:

• The report shows that families adopt at nearly twice the general-population rate.
• 44% of smart glasses owners report greater productivity at work and at home, with hands-free access to information and communication cited as core benefits.
• More than a third of owners say smart glasses help them stay present in the moment, and nearly one in five reports spending less time looking at their phone.

As major streaming services work to control programming costs, a new study finds that streaming series are struggling with cancellation rates that are higher than broadcast TV.

“The Show Must Go Off," a new report from Luminate that takes a closer look at renewals and cancellations in a post-peak TV landscape, finds only 44% of streaming series were being renewed by the major SVODs.

In contrast broadcast networks’ renewal rates are now significantly higher than those of streaming services and cable channels, a reversal of the once-conventional wisdom that series would have an easier time surviving on streaming than on broadcast TV.

The networks renewed 65% of their output in 2025, Luminate reports.

New streaming hits are also in serious decline, with freshman series falling from half of U.S. scripted output on the major SVODs in 2022 to 42% in 2025. HBO Max was the only major service where freshman series increased as a share of total premieres in 2025, while only Apple TV and Prime Video increased their number of new shows.

That figure, however, excludes limited series.

The study also found that despite its reputation for aggressive cancellations, Netflix actually renewed the most shows among the major SVODs from 2022 to 2025, renewing about 50% of its U.S. slate on average.

Audience retention across a full season is the single strongest predictor of renewal or cancellation when it comes to streaming series. Shows have a much stronger chance of renewal if more than half of the viewers who start a season end up finishing it, with cancelled series in our dataset averaging 44% retention.

The Luminate streaming viewership data also indicated that SVOD shows with more than 50% audience retention between their season premiere and finale are usually renewed, but each service has a different benchmark for what they’ll accept; Apple TV appears to accept the lowest retention, particularly for prestige series like The Studio (28% over 120 days).

WASHINGTON—America's broadband providers invested $92.6 billion in U.S. communications infrastructure in 2025, a 3.4% increase over 2024 and the third-highest annual total since 2003, according to the 2025 Broadband Capex Report released by USTelecom – The Broadband Association.

Cumulative industry investment now approaches $2.3 trillion since 1996, extending the strongest sustained era of network investment on record.

The report ties this investment to a fundamental shift in how networks are used.

Average monthly broadband usage reached 767.4 gigabytes per subscriber in 2025, up 9.9% year-over-year, and Cisco projects AI and agentic AI adoption could drive a 6.6-fold increase in consumer network traffic by 2035.

More strikingly, upstream usage—prompts, photos, video and sensor data flowing back into the network—rose 21.7% in 2025, more than double the growth rate of overall traffic, as networks built for one-way streaming adapt to an increasingly two-way, AI-driven internet. Fiber's ability to deliver matching capacity in both directions, the report notes, makes it central to that shift, along with the 5G, fixed wireless and satellite networks that depend on fiber backhaul.

“Fiber isn't just wiring for today's internet – it's the load-bearing infrastructure for whatever comes next,” said Jonathan Spalter, president and CEO of USTelecom.

“In 2025, providers extended an era of historically high broadband industry investment—expanding rural reach, modernizing wireless networks, adding capacity, and pushing fiber deeper into communities,” the report states. “At its core, this investment reflects broadband providers' sustained commitment to ensuring that the opportunities created by American innovation reach every community.”

The full report is available here.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H.—New research indicates that in the streaming subscription businesses, not all subscribers are equally valuable. According to Hub Entertainment Research’s “Decoding the Default” 2026 study, the more engaged users are, the more likely they are to stay and the less likely they are to churn and drop subscriptions.

This has important implications for the problem of subscribers churning in and out of subscriptions, which increases marketing and retention costs.

The HUB researchers found that the clearest signal of that engagement is whether a viewer considers a service their default, which is to say it is the service they turn on first when they want to watch something.

Being the default service not only drives usage. The new Hub data indicates that across paid streaming, free ad-supported services, and live TV, a viewers' default services are far less likely to be canceled, often remain in households for years, and are the ones consumers are most likely to personalize and make their own.

More specifically the survey found that viewers’ default source is the last one to get cut. When viewers are forced to imagine keeping only one service, being someone’s default source is worth two to six times as much loyalty as simply being used.

Among all Netflix users, 28% say they’d keep it if they could only keep one service. Among users who call Netflix their default, that jumps to 62%. The gap is even wider for Disney+: 10% of all users would keep it alone, versus 61% of users for whom it’s the default — more than six times as loyal.

“This data illustrates why streaming’s metric of success is shifting from subscriber numbers to engagement,” said Jon Giegengack, principal at Hub Entertainment Research and one of the study authors. “It also suggests the benefits that might come from combining Fox and Roku, and partnerships like Peacock and YouTube Premium, or Netflix and TF1 in Europe. These all create combined services that have more than one ‘starting point’ than either platform does by itself. And if you give viewers a compelling reason to start with your service, they will use your service more and stick around longer.”

Default services are also long-lived: nearly 70% have kept the same one for more than two years, Hub reported.

The no-contract streaming era has made viewers notoriously fickle when it comes to subscription-hopping. But once a service becomes “home base” for TV, that relationship is much more stable. More than two thirds (69%) say they have subscribed to their current default source for more than two years.

The survey also found that viewers invest time to make their default “their own," which in turn makes them more sticky.

Most viewers say they’ve spent time making their default service “their own,” by creating profiles, building watchlists, and customizing the app settings. This is especially prevalent among younger viewers (a segment particularly hard to retain).

More specifically, two-thirds (68%) of viewers overall agree they’ve made their default source “their own” through a profile, watchlist, or saved preferences. Among viewers under age 35, that rises to 79%, compared with 62% of viewers 35 and older.

These findings come from Hub Entertainment Research’s “Decoding the Default” 2026 study, based on a survey of 1,600 U.S. TV viewers ages 16-74 with broadband access, U.S. census balanced, conducted in August 2026. It is part of Hub’s ongoing series of syndicated Hub Reports.

As live sports proliferates on streaming platforms and more viewers are watching live sports, new research from Premion and Advertiser Perceptions finds that demand for live sports streaming/CTV ad inventory is also growing.

The survey found that nearly three-quarters (73%) of advertisers plan to allocate budget to live sports streaming/CTV advertising over the next 6–12 months, driven by engaged fans and major live events. Agency demand is even stronger, with 79% planning to invest, compared with 65% of marketers, the study found.

At the same time, the study also indicated that advertisers also want better measurement, stronger proof of ROI and simpler ways to navigate an increasingly fragmented sports marketplace as they ramp up those investments.

“Live sports continues to deliver something incredibly valuable for advertisers: passionate audiences showing up in real time,” said Blake Hebert, head of publisher operations, Premion. “As more sports viewing moves to streaming, advertisers want to capture that engagement with greater precision, accountability and local relevance. The opportunity now is to make live sports easier to access, measure and prove across an increasingly fragmented landscape.”

Six in 10 advertisers (61%) say reaching highly engaged sports fans during live events is a top reason for investing in live sports streaming, making it the leading investment driver. More than half (52%) also point to capitalizing on live sporting events that draw large audiences.

The appeal goes beyond engagement and scale. 41% cite aligning their brands with premium live sports content, while 40% are looking to extend the reach and impact of linear TV campaigns and 37% want to connect with streaming-first or cord-cutting sports fans. The findings reinforce streaming’s growing role in extending linear reach and connecting advertisers with shifting sports audiences.

57% of advertisers rank audience delivery and geographic reporting down to the local market among their most important measurement capabilities, higher than any other capability tested. That local focus signals that advertisers want to know not only that they reached sports fans, but that they reached the right audiences in the markets that matter, the researchers reported.

Accountability also ranks high. 52% prioritize attribution following exposure to live sports advertising, while 49% prioritize transparent reporting across publishers and inventory sources. Another 49% prioritize measuring incremental reach beyond linear TV. The expectation is clear: prove audience delivery, quantify streaming’s incremental reach and connect exposure to outcomes.

The survey also found that four in 10 advertisers (40%) are investing in live sports streaming to extend the reach and impact of linear TV campaigns, while nearly half (49%) prioritize measuring incremental reach beyond linear TV.

The findings underscore how streaming and linear are increasingly working hand in hand. As sports audiences spread across screens, streaming helps advertisers extend linear reach while adding greater targeting and measurement, the researchers said.

In terms of barriers to investment, the survey indicated that cost is the top obstacle to greater live sports streaming investment. That factor was cited by 44% of advertisers, with difficulty measuring campaign performance and ROI close behind at 41%.

Other hurdles reflect the complexity of today’s sports marketplace. 35% cite a lack of transparency into campaign delivery and reporting, while 34% point to the complexity of buying across multiple publishers and platforms. Another 34% cite limited access to premium live sports inventory.

Notably, just 23% cite difficulty reaching sports audiences at sufficient scale, the lowest-ranked challenge. The gap is telling: reaching sports fans isn’t the primary obstacle. Cost, proving performance and navigating a fragmented marketplace are the bigger hurdles to greater investment.

“Our research shows advertisers already recognize the value of live sports streaming. The next step is removing the friction that can hold back greater investment, from buying complexity to transparency and ROI. Solving those challenges will help advertisers get more from live sports,” added Hebert.

Premion commissioned Advertiser Perceptions to survey 302 U.S. advertising decision-makers from August 3–11, 2026. Respondents were involved in media brand selection decisions and represented companies or clients with at least $1 million in planned advertising spend over the next 12 months. The sample included both agency and marketer respondents from the Advertiser Perceptions AdPROs Community and trusted third-party partners.

The full report is available here.

ESPN is reporting strong viewing numbers for its U.S. Open coverage, with Sunday’s US Open Men’s Championship match between Ben Shelton and eventual champion Alexander Zverev attracting an average audience of 3.2 million viewers on ABC, the largest viewership on record since ESPN began televising the tournament in 2009.

Viewership peaked at 4.0 million from 5:30-5:45 p.m. ET.

Earlier, Saturday’s Women’s Championship, won by Elena Rybakina over Aryna Sabalenka, averaged 2.7 million viewers, peaking at 3.2 million from 6:30-6:45 p.m. The audience was up 13% year-over-year (YOY) and was ESPN’s largest since 3.4 million watched Sabalenka and Coco Gauff in 2023.

The Men’s and Women’s championships combined to average 3.0 million viewers, up 9% YOY.

The All-American Friday night Men’s semifinal match between Shelton and Frances Tiafoe averaged 3.1 million viewers, peaking at 3.7 million between 10:45-11 p.m., the largest Men’s semifinal audience on record for ESPN. The earlier semifinal match with Zverev defeating Karen Khachanov averaged 1.2 million, with the two semifinals combining to average 2.2 million viewers, up 19% YOY.

Overall, the event ranks as ESPN’s most-viewed US Open since 2022. The two-week long tournament across ESPN networks (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2) averaged 1.2 million viewers, a 4% increase YOY.

Other key viewing figures include:

• ESPN delivered its largest US Open opening day audience ever on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, 914K avg. viewers, up 13% YOY. Action on ABC averaged 1.25M avg. viewers, up 7% vs. 2025.
• The second round drew 834K avg. viewers on ESPN/ESPN2
• Third round across ESPN and ESPN2 averaged 1.1 million, up +27% from last year and also standing as the most-viewed since 2022. ESPN2’s Saturday daytime telecast averaged 1.0 million viewers, up +31% from the comparable telecast last year, while ESPN2’s prime window (1.1 million viewers) was up +43%.
• Through the completion of the third round on Saturday, Sept. 5, ESPN had recorded its most-viewed since 2022 (avg. 846K)
• Third round viewership was boosted by Serena and Venus Williams competing in doubles during primetime, attracting an average audience of 1.2 million (peak 2.2 million from 10-10:15 p.m.) as they lost a three-set match to Hao-Ching Chan and Maya Joint.
• Tournament average (through Women’s Semifinals): 1.0 million viewers, up 2% YoY, ESPN’s most-viewed US Open since 2022
• Quarterfinals average: 1.3 million viewers
• Tuesday primetime Quarterfinals window (7:30 p.m. – 3:40 a.m.): 1.6 million viewers, featured latest-finishing match in US Open history
• Women’s Semifinals: 2.2 million viewers, up 24% YoY, most-watched US Open Women’s Semis in ESPN history
• Women’s Semifinals peak (9:45-10 p.m. ET, Gauff vs. Rybakina): 2.6 million viewers

CHANTILLY, Va.—BIA Advisory Services has updated its 2026 U.S. Local Advertising Forecast and is now projecting that total local ad revenue will reach $186.1 billion, up $1.6 billion (+0.9%) from the firm's April 2026 estimate of $184.5 billion and approximately 9% year over year from 2025.

The increase is driven primarily by higher political ad spending heading into the midterms, along with continued strength in mobile.

The stronger than expected political ad spend is particularly good news for local TV stations as most of the growth has been flowing into TV station broadcasts and TV station digital platforms, the researchers said.

Overall, BIA is now projecting the TV over-the-air and TV digital/OTT ad revenue will hit $19.8 billion in 2026.

The firm also released a preliminary outlook for 2027 that sees growth in mobile and underlying local ad growth, particularly in Legal Services vertical, that will offset the end of the election cycle in 2027 and keep next year’s local ad spend essentially flat compared to 2026.

Excluding political advertising, the 2026 forecast is now $176.4 billion, up $0.3 billion (+0.2%) from the prior estimate of $176.1 billion and 3.9% over 2025, reflecting steady, broad-based growth across the underlying local ad market.

“Political spending came in higher than we anticipated in April, with most of the incremental spending flowing into TV OTA and TV OTT,” said Senan Mele, vice president of forecasting and data analysis, BIA Advisory Services. “Legal Services was also notable in this update, reaching $9.3 billion, up 4.6% from the prior forecast. Despite higher media costs and a more fragmented media environment, law firms continue to invest heavily in television, both linear and streaming, where the ability to reach large audiences and generate qualified leads continues to drive demand.”

BIA now projects $9.7 billion in 2026 for local political spending, up from $8.4 billion in the April forecast, which is an increase of $1.3 billion concentrated almost entirely in video. TV OTA and TV OTT together captured $1.2 billion of that increase, reinforcing broadcast and streaming video's role as a preferred vehicle for political campaigns.

The new data shows that mobile keeps compounding, and AI reshapes search.

Mobile remains the largest local media category tracked by BIA, projected to grow to $45.3 billion in 2026 (excluding political), an 8.9% year-over-year increase. This growth comes as competition intensifies in A.I.-fueled search advertising, a category that local advertisers have traditionally relied on to reach consumers across mobile devices.

“Google, OpenAI, Amazon, and Apple are all positioning themselves to capture a larger share of advertising tied to AI-powered search,” said Mike Boland, executive in residence, BIA Advisory Services. “Google’s Gemini is increasingly becoming an extension of its advertising business, while OpenAI, Amazon, and Apple are developing their own approaches to monetize search and discovery. For local advertisers, the bigger question is where consumer intent will emerge and which platforms will capture it. Mobile will be a critical battleground as that shift unfolds.”

BIA also highlighted some of the growth categories heading into 2027.

BIA's first look at 2027 projects total local ad revenue of $186.5 billion, essentially flat versus 2026. About $9 billion in underlying, nonpolitical growth is expected to nearly offset an $8.6 billion decline in political spending as the election cycle ends. Political spending is projected to fall to approximately $1.1 billion in the 2027 off-cycle year.

BIA’s Mele explained that “political spending will decline sharply after the midterms, but the underlying nonpolitical market has continued to grow and should offset much of that decline. We expect the overall local advertising market to remain essentially flat in 2027, with continued growth across core categories helping to support the market in an off-cycle year.”

Beneath that stable topline, several categories are projected to grow well above the market average. Real estate leads at +9.8%, followed by leisure and recreation (+5.9%), automotive (+5.1%), restaurants and food (+4.4%), and financial services (+3.7%).

“2027 makes clear that the underlying growth in local advertising is broader and more durable than the political cycle alone would suggest,” said Rick Ducey, managing director, BIA Advisory Services. “Political spending has accelerated the market and delivered a strong two-year period for broadcast and streaming video, but the more important story is what happens beneath that surge. Core categories continue to expand their investments across an increasingly diverse media ecosystem. That sustained, multi-platform demand, and the media channels that capture it, will shape the next phase of local media.”

For more information on the data, which comes from BIA ADVantage and to access the updated forecast, contact advantage@bia.com to request a demonstration.

VIENNA—In the runup to IBC2026, the 10th annual Video Developer Report from video streaming solution provider Bitmovin highlights some of the major issues facing streaming media that will be top of mind at the show, with live latency and costs ranking as the industry’s top two problems.

The report finds that low latency for live streaming has overtaken controlling costs and is now the number one concern for 36% of respondents, making it the top challenge facing video teams today. This is followed by controlling costs at 35% and maintaining consistent monitoring and analytics at 28%. Finding the root cause of streaming issues and ad insertion are also major challenges for video providers today (both at 27%).

The latest edition of the report also indicates that AI has stopped being an add-on feature and is now deployed across the entire stack, often with agents operating the workflow.

Of the 486 respondents, 98% report using AI or ML for video with nearly half (46%) using AI tools every day. Only 2% report no plans for AI at all, with 4% of respondents not AI tools at all.

Audio transcription, translation and foreign dubbing are the most common applications cited by respondents (48%), followed by content recommendations (34%), visual quality and optimization (30%), and then tagging and categorization, personalization, and scene, shot boundary and ad placement opportunity detection, all come in joint fourth place (28%).

The report also highlights how expectations around low latency have shifted over time as the cost and complexity of delivering low latency has become clear.

In 2020, 60% of respondents expected low latency of less than five seconds, but that's now down to 16%, while 28% expect latency under 10 seconds. That said, sub-second latency still matters in certain use cases such as live sports, betting, auctions and interactive formats. It is this commercial need for more efficient video delivery that is driving the interest of MOQ. The report highlights that 28% of respondents plan to use MOQ in the next 12 months.

“It’s hard to believe that we’ve been producing this report for 10 years, and what a rollercoaster ride the last decade has been for the video industry,” Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder, Bitmovin, commented. “As we proudly present the 2026/27 report, it’s clear that AI is running the video stack, advertising is the primary revenue engine, QoE and observability have become foundational layers, and the business case for MOQ has never been stronger. But what really stands out this year, is just how fast the technology is developing - the last 3 months alone have reshaped what is possible for video developers to build and achieve. I can’t wait to see what another 10 years of the Video Developer Report will bring.”

This year's edition draws on insights from professionals across broadcast, OTT, and beyond, and for the first time includes analysis and contributions from industry analysts Jan Ozer and Dan Rayburn, alongside input from Bitmovin's partners and customers.

The Bitmovin Video Developer Report 2026/27 Edition is now available for download.

Bitmovin will be exhibiting at IBC from September 11-14 (hall 5, stand 5.F72). For more information, and to book a meeting, visit: https://bitmovin.com/ibc/.

New data from Parks Associations finds the Ruku player and operating system remains the most popular streaming media system in the U.S. with 43% of Americans reporting that a Roku device is their most-used streaming media player.

The Parks Associates’ Tech Ecosystem Dashboard, which includes data and analysis from surveys of 8,000+ US internet households, also found that 17% say their primary smart TV runs on Roku OS.

The Parks researchers noted that Fox Corporation’s planned acquisition of Roku for $22 billion highlights the strategic value of owning the platform that connects consumers to content, advertising, and streaming services.

“Roku’s strength is its reach across the connected TV experience,” said Michael Goodman, research director, Parks Associates. “Its position across smart TVs and streaming media players gives the platform influence that extends beyond any single hardware brand.”

More specifically, the Fox-Roku acquisition would bring strategic value to both companies. Fox brings premium live content, including sports and news, as well as Tubi, while Roku brings its operating system, The Roku Channel, Frndly TV, Howdy, advertising capabilities, and first-party data. Fox reports that Roku reaches more than 100 million streaming households globally.

The combination also strengthens Fox’s position in the growing free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) market. Tubi and The Roku Channel give the combined company two major ad-supported streaming properties, while Roku’s platform provides additional opportunities to connect content discovery, audience data, and advertising across the TV experience.

In the Parks top ten list of U.S. FAST streaming services, Tubi ranked as #1, followed by The Roku Channel, Pluto TV, Samsung TV+, Xumo Play and LG Channels.

“Competition in video is now about who owns the relationship with the viewer,” Goodman said. “Content remains critical, especially live sports and news, but the platform determines how consumers discover that content and how providers engage and monetize audiences. The Fox and Roku combination brings greater control over how consumers access and discover content while expanding opportunities for viewer data, advertising, and distribution.”

With the NFL season starting on Weds. Sept. 9, a new study from Guideline is projecting another year of hefty ad sales growth, with 8% growth in ad revenue for the 2026-2027 season compared to last year.

Guideline is projecting that total ad revenue will hit $6.3 billion, with the inaugural Thanksgiving Eve game expected to generate $48 million in revenue.

That comes after 7% YoY growth in ad revenue in the 2025-2026 season, which hit a record $5.9 billion. Regular season ad revenue was up 6% YoY last year while playoff ad revenue was up 13% YoY.

"Overall ad demand looks healthy headed into the 26/27 season,” explained Sean Wright, chief insights and analytics officer at Guideline. “Upfront commits are pacing up double digits ahead of where they were last year, partly driven by increases in pricing, partly in a surge of new ad budgets. We'll see how much ultimately gets booked but right now, the regular season is shaping up to be another potentially record setting year."

Guideline also reported that in 2025-2026, streaming-exclusive games accounted for 13% of full-season revenue, nearly double the 8% share from two seasons ago. Overall, streaming-exclusive network ad growth was up 6% YoY in last year’s 2025-2026 season.

LONDON—While a new study from Ampere Analysis documents the ongoing decline in new orders for TV series, the research also shows that orders for new linear TV series has been more resilient than streaming VOD and that the new orders for scripted programming on linear TV actually grew in recent years.

The new report from Ampere Analysis found that between 2022 and 2025, US-produced linear orders fell 26%, a smaller decline than streaming counterparts, which fell 41%.

Very notably, the research also found that linear scripted series orders actually rose 11% in a slightly different time frame between 2023 and 2025, with a particular focus on renewing reliable franchise comedies such as “The Simpsons” and “American Dad.”

"In the post-Peak TV era, the traditional seasonal development cycle from linear broadcasters in the U.S. is evolving,” explained George Evans, senior researcher at Ampere Analysis. “With streaming players now accounting for a greater share of content spend globally, free-to-air linear commissioners in the US have adopted a more flexible approach to ordering, putting fewer titles through the development and pilot process and instead working more responsively year-round. By responding more dynamically to audience appetite and leaning on scripted franchises with established fanbases, broadcast TV can continue to prove its worth in the seemingly streamer-dominated US market."

More specifically the report found that between 2022 and 2025, U.S.-produced linear orders fell 26%, from 1,773 to 1,304, compared with a 41% decline in streaming orders, from 1,144 to 678. Linear Scripted series orders subsequently increased 11%, from 236 in 2023 to 262 in 2025.

Overall, free-to-air (FTA) channels have fared better than Pay TV.

Pay TV subscriber numbers have declined by 56% since 2016, as consumers switch to streaming. This drove a 33% decline in series orders between 2022 and 2025, down from 1295 to 877. In contrast, free-to-air broadcasters such as NBC, ABC, and CBS saw series orders drop 13% over the same period, from 408 to 352. Thematic Pay TV channels, particularly those focused on specific niches, such as Food Network and HGTV, have struggled to maintain ordering levels.

The report also highlighted changes in traditional TV development cycles. US Commercial free-to-air broadcasters are shifting away from the traditional seasonal development cycle of Q4 script orders and Q1 pilot orders, towards year-round development and 'straight-to-series' orders, committing to an entire season without first testing a pilot, the study found.

In addition, U.S. broadcast networks have shifted towards more disciplined primetime commissioning strategies. Since 2024, 52% of new scripted series orders have been franchise-based, reflecting a more disciplined approach to primetime commissioning.

The strength of broadcast programming can also found on streaming platforms. Around 50% of both linear and non-linear TV viewers enjoy genres such as comedy, action & adventure, crime & thriller, and drama. This alignment supports complementary commissioning strategies across broadcast and streaming. Primetime series from ABC, CBS and NBC generate strong engagement on Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock, respectively, extending their value beyond linear TV.

“Despite the continued growth of streaming, broadcast television remains an important part of the US media landscape,” explained Eric Kurtsel, research manager, SME Media at Ampere Analysis. “Post-Peak TV, broadcast networks are taking a disciplined approach to primetime commissioning, focusing on proven genres and franchises that can connect with audiences across platforms. Viewers continue to engage with broadcast series on streaming platforms, suggesting their value extends beyond linear television and reinforcing broadcast TV’s foundational role in today’s content ecosystem."

LONDON—New data from Ampere Analysis shows Asia has become the world’s biggest region for first-run streaming scripted series orders for the first time, leaping two places from third to secure the top spot in the first half of 2026. More than one-third (36%) of first-run scripted TV orders from the leading global streamers now originate in APAC, the highest six-month share on record.

The new Ampere study also found that the APAC region surged ahead of North America and Western Europe in H1 2026 for the volume of new scripted TV commissions from the six leading global streamers - Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Netflix and Paramount+. The region secured 70 first-run scripted commissions during the period, versus 46 for North America, 44 for Western Europe, and 34 for all other regions combined.

Cyrine Amor, senior research manager at Ampere Analysis, explained that “APAC has become increasingly important to global streamers for two reasons: it offers attractive opportunities for subscriber growth, while Asian content is increasingly finding audiences far beyond its home markets. India, South Korea and Japan remain at the heart of commissioning activity, but growth in markets such as Taiwan and the Philippines shows how widely streamers are now looking for locally produced content with regional and global potential.”

Of all streamers’ first-run scripted TV orders, 36% now originate from the APAC region, the highest six-month-period share to date. The rise is primarily driven by Amazon’s and Netflix’s commissioning activity in the region. In the same period, their combined first-run orders in Western Europe and North America remained almost flat compared to H1 2025.

India led the region with 25 orders, the highest increase among APAC markets, fueled by Prime Video’s commissioning push across multiple Indian languages. South Korea remained the region’s second-largest market by volume, where Netflix continues to lead commissioning activity among global streamers.

In terms of genre, one-third of these commissions were Crime & Thriller. Drama hit a new record of one quarter of commissions. Meanwhile, the Sci-Fi & Fantasy genre, which led by volume share in H1 2025, fell sharply.

Newer entrants to the streamers' regional subscriber acquisition race also stood out in this commissioning shift, the Ampere study stressed.

Taiwan and the Philippines experienced unusually high volumes of streamer orders, with nine and seven new scripted series commissioned respectively during the first half of 2026. In Taiwan, Netflix quadrupled its new scripted series orders compared to last year, including the medical drama “How to Survive Med School” and the influencer-led crime investigation “Million-follower Detective.” In the Philippines, Amazon led the charge with five new series announcements over the past six months, including the romance drama “The Loyalty Game.”

Recent successes such as Netflix’s Thai original “My Dearest Assassin” and Korean original “The Great Flood” demonstrate the potential for locally produced APAC content to travel beyond its home market. Streamers are also using licensing to capitalise on this demand, with Prime Video further expanding an existing multi-year worldwide distribution deal with CJ ENM in 2026, Ampere reported.

The commissioning surge reflects different stages of streaming growth across APAC. In more established markets, including India, South Korea and Japan, new productions are being used to both attract and retain subscribers while also targeting increasingly receptive regional and global audiences. In emerging streaming markets such as Taiwan and the Philippines, first-run commissioning is being used to support subscriber acquisition.

PLANO, Texas—Having a live TV bundle option is still important to half of all consumers surveyed in a recent Parks Associates report.

In the research firm’s latest consumer research The New Live TV Model: Skinny Bundles, Sports, News, 27% of US internet households prefer a live-TV bundle combined with their favorite streaming on-demand services, while 24% prefer a skinny bundle combined with their favorite streaming services. In total, 51% prefer a package that combines live TV with their favorite streaming services.

"Consumers are not necessarily choosing between live TV and streaming. Many want access to both in one package," said Michael Goodman, Director, Entertainment Research, Parks Associates. "Providers have the opportunity to offer greater flexibility to their consumers while making it easier to access the content they value."

Parks Associates also noted that 68% of streaming pay-TV subscribers (vMVPD subscribers), including consumers using services such as YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Fubo, and DirecTV Stream, like the idea of a skinny bundle—a pay-TV or streaming channel package that includes a limited number of core channels, typically focused on specific content types (e.g., entertainment, sports, or news). It is priced below traditional all-inclusive TV packages.

The findings show consumers continue to value live television, but their expectations for how it is packaged are changing, according to Parks. Smaller channel packages combined with streaming services can provide a middle ground between traditional pay TV and streaming-only options.

"Skinny bundles offer providers an opportunity to address consumers who want to maintain access to live television but are increasingly sensitive to the cost and size of traditional channel packages," Goodman said. "The strongest opportunity is retention. These packages can give existing subscribers another option before they decide to cancel service entirely."

New fixed wireless speed tests for Q2 2026 from Ookla show that T-Mobile continues to dominate the category, with a median download speed of 222.7 Mbps, (outpacing AT&T Internet Air by 38.8% and Verizon 5G Home by 76%).

T-Mobile’s Q2 2026 median upload speed (18.1 Mbps) also beat AT&T by 79.2% and Verizon by 48.5%.

The data also highlighted some encouraging trends and some emerging problems. All three providers experienced a performance drop in download and upload speeds between Q1 2026 to Q2 2026. This, however, is likely a seasonal impact, Ooklas reported as dense leaves on trees can weaken FWA signals.

In more positive news, AT&T’s median download speed surged nearly 60%—from 104.61 Mbps in Q3 2025 to 167.34 Mbps in Q1 2026. This is likely the result of deploying the additional 50 MHz of spectrum purchased from EchoStar, Ookla reported.

The report also highlighted an important shift in urban deployments that could have larger implications for the broadband industry.

Traditional cable and telco operators have long dominated urban markets and fixed wireless access providers have long been seen as an attractive technological solutions for rural areas, where the cost of wiring isolated homes can be high.

The new Ookla Q2 data shows, however, that fixed wireless providers can deliver faster speeds in urban areas, potentially making them more competitive with faster wired options from cable and telcos.

Rural FWA users across all three providers nationwide have lower median download speeds and higher multi-server latency. Urban users benefit from a multi-server latency that is 7 to 13 milliseconds lower than their rural counterparts, the Ookla data shows.

Even so, the Ookla data showed that only two states (Hawaii and New York) and the District of Columbia produced fixed wireless access samples where 40% or more of the samples met the FCC’s minimum standard for broadband speed (100 Mbps download/20 Mbps upload).

A new survey of American’s media habits find that 90% access YouTube on a typical weekday versus 79% for streaming services and 73% for Live TV.

Even so, they typically spend more time with streaming services (one hour and 49 minutes) versus YouTube (one hour and 46 minutes) and Live TV (one hour and 31 minutes), according to Attest.

Very notably, Attest’s 2026 Attention Economy Report, based on surveys of 1,000 UK and 1,000 US adults alongside five years of tracking data, found that creator content is now more popular than streaming or TV.

Americans spend an average of 3 hours and 54 minutes a day with YouTube, TikTok and social video, outstripping the time, three hours and 20 minutes, that people spend with live TV and streaming services like Netflix. “YouTube hasn’t just become an alternative to TV, it’s already ahead of it,” Attest reported. “Tellingly, 23% of Americans primarily watch YouTube on their televisions.”

These numbers are higher for younger age groups. “Gen Z watches by far the most YouTube, 2h 25m a day on average, well ahead of Millennials (1h 55m), Gen X (1h 18m) and Boomers (53m),” the researchers noted. “Men also watch significantly more than women overall (2h 09m vs 1h 23m).”

This does not spell the end of longform content, however, the researchers explained.

“The assumption behind most `short attention span' commentary is that video has been chopped into ever-smaller pieces because that’s all people want,” the study noted. “The data tells a more specific story: as creator platforms introduce longer content, it’s gaining eyeballs. Two-thirds of people regularly watch YouTube videos longer than 15 minutes, while 53% watch long-form on Facebook or Instagram and 39% on TikTok. All four of these platforms launched their short-form video products with strict length caps. They have since expanded them repeatedly, visibly chasing consumer demand for longer content, not just short clips.”

As the attention of consumers shifts from TV to social media platforms, the study also found that people are paying less attention to the TV programming they are watching. “Only 12% of people give TV their full attention, with no other activity happening alongside it. The other 88% are doing something else, and for 68% of the total, that specifically involves second screening: scrolling social media, shopping, searching, messaging, or gaming.”

The study also highlighted data regarding consumer’s willingness to tolerate high ad loads. High ad loads contributed to the shift of viewing from pay TV channels to streaming services and social media platforms, which in recent years have also begun showing more ads.

“Ad frequency tolerance is one of the only genuinely flat patterns in this entire report,” the researchers noted. “People say ads become excessive once they’re shown every 14 minutes on streamed TV and every 12 minutes on social video, a threshold that barely moves regardless of generation. What isn’t flat is what people do about it: 82% of Gen Z always or usually skip ads on social video, compared with 46% of Boomers; on streamed TV it’s 68% versus 36%. Everyone hits roughly the same wall, younger audiences just act on it faster and more completely…When people can’t skip an ad, only 44% say they continue watching as intended, 34% redirect their attention elsewhere, 17% mute it, and 3% stop watching altogether.’

The full report is available here.

NEW YORK—Nielsen’s Q2 2026 edition of the Ad Supported Gauge shows that ad-supported TV captured a 71.5% share of total viewing, which represents a 1.3 share point decline from the first quarter of the year, and that live sports programming boosted broadcast’s share of ad-supported TV viewing.

Broadcast viewing followed its typical seasonal decline from Q1 to Q2, though the drop was softer than the same period last year. Sports programming, notably the NBA playoffs and early World Cup coverage, helped broadcast gain 0.6 share points year-over-year, rising to 26.6% from 26.0% in Q2 2025.

Meanwhile streaming continued its upward trajectory, expanding its lead within ad-supported TV by 1.6 share points to reach a 48.2% share. Cable held steady, retaining the 25.2% share it established in the first quarter.

The report also noted that when the focus is shifted from total viewing (Persons 2+) to adults 18 and older (Persons 18+), traditional TV gains notable ground.

The Persons 18+ segment reallocates 3.8 share points away from streaming down to 44.4%, while boosting broadcast to 28.6% (+2.0 points) and cable to 27.0% (+1.8 points).

Nielsen stressed that the published version of The Ad Supported Gauge has not migrated to the ARF DASH-based media related universe estimates which is planned for the fall. This is significant because this approach, while consistent with previous months of the Gauge, will have different results.

Average price increases across Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon have fallen from 24% of the previous subscription price in 2023/24 to 14% in 2025/26, according to a new survey from Ampere Analysis.

In dollar terms, average increases have declined from $1.67 to $1.54 over the same period, with increases averaging $1.62/17% in 2024/25. Across the full three-year period, the average individual price increase was $1.60, equivalent to 17% of the previous price. As streaming markets mature and become increasingly competitive and saturated, Ampere says the trend could indicate that streamers are moving closer to the limits of consumers’ willingness to pay, leaving less headroom for larger price increases in the future.

Ad-free tiers have seen larger price increases over the past three years, averaging $1.62 versus $1.21 for ad-supported tiers. With ad-free plans already premium-priced, the gap between the two has widened. In markets offering ad-supported tiers, the average price difference between the ad-free and advertising tiers has grown from $4.53 in August 2023 to July 2024 to $5.35 in August 2025 to July 2026 globally across the three streamers.

For Netflix in the U.S., for example, the price gap between the Standard with Ads and the Standard tiers for new subscribers grew from $8.50 in August 2023 to $11 in July 2026. As advertising becomes an increasingly important source of streaming revenue, platforms have an incentive to keep ad-supported tiers attractively priced.

Average price increases over the past three years vary across the three services, ranging from $1.73/16% for Netflix to $1.53/17% for Disney+ and $1.47/30% for Amazon. The frequency of price increases also differs.

Netflix’s price increases have remained broadly stable, according to Ampere.

Disney+ has seen the clearest shift towards more modest increases, down from an average increase of $1.86/31% in 2023/24 to $1.45/13% in 2025/26.

Amazon has made the fewest over the three-year period, likely reflecting the broader role of the Prime subscription within Amazon’s retail business.

Western Europe has seen the largest average price increases over the past three years at $1.86/16%, ahead of North America at $1.70/15% and Central and Eastern Europe at $1.68/18%. Most regional markets are moving in the same direction, with average price increases shrinking over time.

“The decline in price increases comes as streamers diversify how they monetise their audiences. says Jaanika Juntson, Senior Research Manager at Ampere Analysis. “Advertising is an increasingly important revenue stream, reducing reliance on subscription pricing alone, while password-sharing crackdowns allow streamers to generate more value from existing audiences through extra member slots. As streaming businesses mature, revenue growth is becoming less reliant on price increases, while intense competition is also making streamers increasingly mindful of how they are positioned against rivals.”

A new survey from the VAB shows that consumers across all age levels are more likely to purchase products that appear in local TV news programming and that those ads also boost their opinion of the brand being advertised.

The study comes at a time when advertisers have expressed reluctance about appearing in news content given the levels of political polarization of the country and a growing push-back by publishers working to demonstrate the effectiveness of advertising in news.

The VAB worked with Dynata on the survey, which attempts to better understand the relationship between news environments and advertiser impact on adults 18 and older, those aged 18 to 34 and those between the ages of 35 to 54.

It found that ads in local TV news positively impact brand perception across audiences, with 37% of adults 18 and older saying that they had a better opinion of brands that advertise in local news (2.2 times those who disagreed the idea) and an even bigger impact among younger viewers.

Nearly half (47%) of those 18 to 34 agreed that they had a better opinion of brands that advertise in local news, 2.8 times those who disagreed.

The study also said that 31% of those younger 18 to 34 viewers were more likely to purchase a product they saw on local news, about 23% more than the 25% who said the ads in local TV news made them less likely to buy a product.

Overall 24% of all adults over 18 said they were more likely to purchase a product advertised in a breaking news story on local TV news, versus 18% who said they were less likely. Among those between the ages of 35 to 54, 25% were more likely to purchase the product versus 15% who were less likely, a 65% differential.

Brands advertising in national TV news also saw an uplift in the number of people being more likely to buy a product.

Among the hard to reach younger 18 to 34 demo, 28% said they were more likely to purchase a product advertised in national TV news, versus 22% who were less likely. Overall 22% of those 18 and older were more likely to purchase versus 16%, and 24% of those between the ages of 35 and 54 were more likely to purchase, versus only 14% being less likely.

ESPN delivered the most-watched WNBA game ever on cable as the Atlanta Dream-Indiana Fever matchup averaged 2.6 million viewers on Sunday, August 16.

The telecast ranks as the most-watched WNBA regular-season or postseason game ever on cable. The audience was up 178% compared to last year’s ESPN regular season average. The game peaked at 4 million viewers from 7:15-7:29 p.m. ET.

Leading into the game, WNBA Countdown presented by Google Pixel averaged 452,000 viewers on ESPN, up 33% compared to last year’s ESPN regular season average.

The second game of ESPN’s Sunday doubleheader also delivered a record audience, as the Phoenix Mercury celebrated Diana Taurasi’s jersey retirement. Portland Fire-Phoenix Mercury averaged 1.4 million viewers, the most-watched non-Indiana regular-season WNBA game ever on ESPN and up 46% from last year’s ESPN regular-season average.

Through 25 games, the WNBA on ESPN networks is averaging 1.4 million viewers, up 16% compared to the comparable point last season.

NEW YORK—Gracenote’s Q3 2026 Data Hub analysis shows rapid growth for sports-related ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels and programming over the last year.

Overall the number of FAST channels classified as sports rose 13.8% year over year to 264. Over the same period, unique sports program titles increased 31.2%, while individual games and events distributed across FAST climbed 37.5%.

Each measure captures a different dimension of the FAST sports market, the researchers noted.

Channel count tracks FAST channels classified as sports, while program title count reflects the breadth of distinct offerings. Because a single sports program title can encompass many games or competitions, tracking them individually provides a fuller picture of the volume of sports distributed across FAST.

The analysis also found that in July, sports programming appeared on 20 FAST channels outside the sports category. The pattern resembles traditional television, where sports serves as both destination programming on dedicated channels and as part of lineups centered on other genres.

In general, sports programming also grew faster than the overall FAST category. Globally, FAST channel count increased 17.5% year over year to 2,172, compared with 18.6% gains in total video distribution and 19.4% in TV program titles.

The resulting larger sports inventory gives FAST programmers greater flexibility to create varied schedules and reduce reliance on frequently repeated content, the researchers explained. More broadly, the findings suggest that competitive differentiation across FAST will increasingly be shaped by the range and volume of programming within the ecosystem—not channel count alone.

The Gracenote Data Hub is a set of data visualizations tracking the volume and composition of programming available across leading global subscription video-on-demand services (SVOD) and FAST channels. Derived from Gracenote Global Video Data and updated quarterly, the Data Hub covers Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+, HBO Max, Netflix and Paramount+, as well as more than 2,170 FAST channels.

Q3 Data Hub reporting pairs program title counts with data on individual episodes, games and events, offering a more granular view of programming distribution and revealing changes beneath topline catalog and channel counts.

HENDERSON, Nev.—While the FIFA World Cup 2026 broke viewing records in the U.S. on linear TV and on streaming platforms, new data from Gaming Compliance International (GCI) suggests that an enormous amount of illegal streaming also occurred around the world. Its first complete global measurement of illegal streaming across the 2026 FIFA World Cup, estimates that there were 174.3 billion qualifying illegal stream views of 90 seconds plus globally across the tournament.

The analysis also found that:

• 174.3 billion qualifying illegal stream views of 90 seconds or more globally across the tournament
• 1.68 billion average qualifying illegal stream views of 90 seconds plus per match, globally
• 6.2 billion qualifying illegal stream views of 90 seconds plus globally for the Spain vs Argentina Final
• 95% of qualifying illegal stream views of 90 seconds plus globally carried advertising for unregulated gambling

The estimate is derived from GCI's global monitoring and marketplace intelligence, using multiple proprietary and third-party licensed data sources.

A qualifying illegal stream view requires at least 90 seconds of streaming, denoting a "committed view". This is a stream-view measure, not a unique viewer count. The methodology accounts for stream interruptions, forced refreshes, reloads, mirror switches and channel resets throughout each match.

GCI's analysis also highlighted a dark nexus between illegal streaming and unregulated online gambling with heavy ad loads for unregulated gambling in the illegal streams.

GCI monitoring shows that illegal streamers can receive payment for advertising and referring audiences to unregulated gambling, with affiliate deals offering between 25% and 50% of net gaming revenue produced by unregulated gambling operators from referred customers.

The result is a powerful illegal economy: premium sports content attracts mainstream audiences; illegal streaming monetizes that attention; and unregulated gambling pays to acquire those audiences.

This relationship was previously identified by GCI in Great Britain. Analysis released in January 2026 found 3.1 billion illegal stream views of 90 seconds plus across the Top 10 sports in Great Britain during 2024 and another 1.6 billion during the first half of 2025, with unregulated gambling advertising present upon 89% of illegal sports streams.

The GCI study found that the World Cup demonstrated the same relationship at global scale.

Overall, GCI estimated the 2026 FIFA World Cup would generate $593 billion in global online betting handle — the value of money wagered on World Cup betting online. Of that total, $409 billion — 69% — was unregulated, compared with $184 billion — 31% — regulated.

While regulated operators saw record activity, the majority of wagering value flowed through offshore, unregulated and unlicensed channels, the study found.

Illegal streaming connects these two parts of the marketplace by delivering sports audiences to unregulated gambling operators while those consumers are watching live events and each game presents fresh betting prospects.

The commercial relationship with unregulated gambling is not the only risk associated with illegal streaming.

GCI's analysis found that video players, pop-ups and fake "click to watch in HD/4K" buttons can hide malware, spyware and keystroke loggers, exposing audiences to data harvesting and other forms of cybercrime.

"174 billion qualifying illegal stream views should remove any remaining illusion that illegal streaming is a marginal problem for sport, said Matt Holt, CEO of Gaming Compliance International (GCI). “Consumers experience one marketplace, and illegal streaming is an industrial-scale part of it — competing for the same audiences and extracting value that should support rights holders, broadcasters and the wider sports ecosystem.”

"When 95% of qualifying illegal stream views carry advertising for unregulated gambling, illegal streaming is not simply stealing content,” he added. “It is providing one of the world's largest sporting audiences as an acquisition channel for the unregulated gambling economy."

The full GCI Illegal Streaming – Global: World Cup 2026 report is available from Gaming Compliance International (GCI).

NEW YORK—Nielsen has announced a number of improvements to its Big Data + Panel currency measurement that the company says will improve its currency methodology before the new broadcast TV season and provide more accurate ratings.

The improvements include better co-viewing data in the runup to the popular fall football season, improved measurement of Hispanic audiences, updates to automatic content recognition (ACR) technology, improved demographic estimates and changes in the way it uses ARF DASH universe estimates.

“We are relentless in our pursuit of delivering the most accurate measurement possible for our media and advertising clients,” said Karthik Rao, CEO, Nielsen. “We’ve spent months working hand in hand with them and industry experts to make Big Data + Panel even more accurate.”

Nielsen said it has been working closely with its stakeholders to prepare the market for these enhancements, sharing preview data with clients to help them understand the potential impacts, while also negotiating the timing and contents of the updates with the oversight of the Media Ratings Council (MRC).

Nielsen described the new enhancements that it plans to incorporate by August 31 as follows:

• Co-Viewing: The co-viewing enhancement better incorporates the use of Nielsen’s proprietary wearable measurement devices. These are worn on the wrists of Nielsen panelists and resemble a smart watch. The wearables capture audio from TV events, shows and movies, allowing for more passive measurement that does not require a formal log in process. Because of the more passive nature of this measurement, including these devices in our measurement process will result in a more accurate picture of how many people are watching a given program.
• Latency Adjusted DASH UE (Universe Estimate): While Nielsen adopted the ARF’s DASH Universe Estimates into its currency earlier in 2026, this enhancement improves accuracy by fixing timing delays in survey data. Universe estimates are, as the name implies, an approximation of the total number of households or persons in a particular category – in this case, media consumption capabilities of U.S. homes. While previous DASH UEs were based on survey data from 2024, Nielsen is now adjusting these UEs to reflect more recent trends in consumer behavior.
• Household Demographic Assignment Model (HDAM) Enhancement: HDAM is a machine-learning tool used to determine the demographic makeup of households from Big Data providers. This update improves the process to ensure the data is more representative and does not artificially skew toward older residents.
• Integrated Weighting: Nielsen improved its weighting process to combine panel and Big Data more effectively, leading to more consistent, accurate, and reliable viewing numbers.
• Hispanic Methodology Enhancement: Nielsen now combines data from two surveys—the American Community Survey, which is conducted by the U.S. Census, and the National Hispanic Enumeration Survey—to better estimate Spanish-language universe estimates. This helps the company create a more accurate and representative picture of Spanish-speaking households.
• ACR Monitored Tuning Adjustment: This update improves the method that Nielsen uses to account for differences in the sources that Nielsen’s ACR (Automated Content Recognition) providers measure versus the sources that Nielsen measures in its panel. This improves the accuracy of the sources measured from Nielsen’s ACR providers.
• Provider B Householding: Improves the model Nielsen uses to group together big data devices into individual households for one of its ACR Big Data Providers. This results in more accurate household information from that provider.

Devoncroft’s 2026 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS) of global media tech buyers has once again ranked `IP Networking & Content Delivery’ as the top media tech trend.

Reflecting the ongoing transition to IP technologies, the result marked the sixth consecutive year (and for the seventh time in eight years) that `IP Networking & Content Delivery’ was the top trend.

Devoncroft researchers noted, however, that the margin between the top trend and the second ranked trend of ‘AI / ML / GenAI’ technologies narrowed versus 2025 BBS Global Trend Index.

‘AI / ML / GenAI’ has received a ranking of second since the 2023 BBS Global Trend Index, according to Josh Stinehour in a blog post announcing the results.

“One of the key outputs from the BBS is the annual BBS Global Trend Index,” he noted. “This is a ranking of the media industry trends that are considered by technology end-user respondents the most commercially important to their businesses in the next 2-3 years. In the 2026 survey efforts, we presented BBS respondents with a list of 23 industry trends and asked them to select the one trend that is `most important’ to their business, one trend that is `second most important’ to their business, and the other trends (plural) they consider `also very important.’

The BBS is the largest annual global study of media technology industry trends, technology purchasing plans, and benchmarking of technology vendor brands.

REMI came in number three, followed by multiplatform content delivery and automated operations, rounding out the top five.

The study reported the following ranking:

More data and information from the study is available here.

Check out TV Tech's extensive IP and Networking coverage here.

As the NBA gears up for the start of the 2026-2027 season on October 20, a new study from Guideline shows that NBA ad revenue hit a record $2.1 billion in the 2025-2026 season.

This growth was helped out by a 39% year-over-year spike in ad revenue during the NBA Finals, with ad spend rising from $183 million to $256 million for five games.

Overall, the regular season generated $870 million in revenue, while the playoffs brought in $1 billion.

Guideline also reported that streaming was up 8,481% YoY, rising to a 41% share in spending, the highest of any league ever recorded.

In addition, streaming-simulcast estimated revenue was also up 3,303% YoY, rising from $10 million in 24/25 compared to $347 million in 25/26.

However the linear ad spend declined 19% YoY, as spending from Warner Bros. Discovery shifted to Peacock and Amazon.

In contrast, playoff spending grew across every round, led by the play-in round, which was up 54% YoY.

NEW YORK—Nielsen’s June 2026 reports of The Gauge and Media Distributor Gauge reveal that the highly anticipated FIFA World Cup 2026 drove remarkable audience engagement with over 84 billion minutes viewed across Fox and NBCUniversal properties.

That viewing also pushed both distributors to June's only viewing increases in the Media Distributor Gauge.

Meanwhile, the combination of World Cup matches and NBA Finals games helped drive a 118% increase in broadcast sports viewing, and led the broadcast category to 19.8% of TV and its first increase during a June interval (+0.6 share pts.) since the inception of The Gauge in 2021.

According to the June Media Distributor Gauge, Fox exhibited the largest gain in share of TV (+0.9 pts.) compared to May, and the largest overall viewing increase among all distributors this month (+18%). The World Cup surge boosted viewing on Fox affiliates by 73%, and Fox Sports 1 was up 232%. FOX concluded the month with 7.4% of total TV watch-time and moved up to No. 5 in the Media Distributor Gauge rankings.

NBCU-Versant represented 9.1% of total TV viewing in June (+0.7 share pts.). That success, the researchers reported, was a result of two drivers: NBCU’s Telemundo served as the exclusive home to all Spanish-language World Cup coverage, which drove a 143% monthly viewing increase to its broadcast affiliates in June. Peacock also benefited from Telemundo’s World Cup coverage, as days with games exhibited a 60% audience increase on the platform over those that did not, and viewing from Hispanic audiences increased nearly 200% compared to the prior month.

Peacock’s 34% total monthly viewing increase was also due to owning June’s most-streamed title, “Love Island USA.” The six-night-per-week appointment viewing for the reality dating series generated 6.8 billion minutes across the month. Overall, Peacock gained half a share point to represent 2.3% of total TV viewing in June, its second-best share of TV to date behind February 2026.

Overall streaming usage was up about 3% compared to May, but due to it being just below the 3.1% increase for total TV usage, the category dropped back 0.1 share point to 48.5% of TV watch-time.

In addition to Peacock, several other streamers also saw monthly viewing increases, including YouTube, Netflix, The Roku Channel and Paramount Streaming (Paramount+ and Pluto TV combined), but similar to the overall streaming category, their shares were flat or down slightly. However, YouTube remained in the lead among media distributors with 13.8% of time spent.

Disney held on to the No. 2 spot among media companies with 9.6% of TV. ABC’s coverage of the five-game NBA Finals showdown between the San Antonio Spurs and eventual champion New York Knicks helped drive a 15% viewing bump for ABC affiliates in June. Each game of the series was the most-viewed broadcast telecast on days played, and Games 3, 4 and 5 were the most watched telecasts over the June interval with more than 20 million viewers a piece.

Cable represented 19.5% of television in June (-0.9 pts.) as viewing was down 2% compared to May. This was largely due to the absence of the NBA and NHL playoffs, which led to a 10% monthly decline in cable sports viewership.

Due to the fact that advertising sales for Versant are still retained by NBCUniversal, and to preserve data trends and insights in these reports, NBCU and Versant are reported together in the Media Distributor Gauge with each company’s respective share included in the Media Distributor Gauge chart.

The June 2026 interval spanned four weeks, from 06/01/2026 through 06/28/2026. Nielsen reporting follows the broadcast calendar, with weekly intervals beginning on Monday.

WASHINGTON—A new Federal Communications Commission report shows that high-speed residential broadband is now more ubiquitous than ever before.

The study found that from June 2024 to June 2025, the number of Americans lacking access to 100/20 Mbps fixed terrestrial broadband service decreased by about 23%.

Over a two-year period, this reduction was approximately 43%. Today, 96.9% of Americans have access to a fixed terrestrial broadband service at 100/20 Mbps, the FCC reported.

The report also cited data showing increased competition. Twenty-three states now have more than 50% of locations served with fixed wireless at 100/20 Mbps, the FCC said.

“President Trump’s policies are delivering great results for Americans in communities all across the country,” Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement. “The data show that speeds are up, prices are down, competition is stronger than before, and the digital divide has narrowed substantially. The FCC is putting policies in place that will further accelerate high-speed builds and extend U.S. leadership.”

The FCC voted Aug. 14 to adopt the agency’s annual Section 706 Report. Section 706 requires the FCC to report on “whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.” This year’s report is the first spanning the current Trump Administration.

Other key findings include:

• Over a two-year period, the percentage of rural Americans lacking access to 100/20 Mbps fixed terrestrial broadband service decreased by over 44%. Further, with the inclusion of satellite, 100/20 Mbps rural broadband deployment is nearly universally available in rural areas.
• The number of Americans lacking access to mobile 5G with a minimum speed of 35/3 Mbps declined by over 30% over a two-year period. Today, almost 95% of American homes and businesses are covered by 5G at 35/3 Mbps speeds.
• The number of competitive options available to Americans also continues to grow. As of June 2025, 77% of Americans have access to three or more fixed services at 100/20 Mbps, and 43.4% of Americans have access to three of more fixed terrestrial services at 100/20 Mbps.

The FCC also cited data from other sources showing that speeds are up, prices are down, and competition is stronger than before:

• Speeds are Up – Wireless download speeds increased by 51% in 2025. Average upload and download speeds for fixed wireless are up 36.9% and 25.1% respectively between late 2024 and early 2026, according to Ookla data. In rural areas, those numbers show upload and download speeds rose 39.8% and 28.7% respectively.
• Actual prices for wireless service have now fallen four times more during President Donald Trump’s first 18 months in office compared to the same time under President Joe Biden. Prices are declining across the board, with postpaid unlimited plans down 10% over the last year. Fixed prices for the most popular services are down 6% over the last year.
• The percentage of homes and businesses nationwide that have three or more service options with at least 100/20 speed increased 4.85% from December 2024 to December 2025.

More data and information is available here.

NEW YORK—Gracenote has announced a deal with Fox’s Tubi Media Group that will see Gracenote supply advanced content discovery and advertising capabilities on Tubi Media Group properties, including Tubi and Fox One.

Gracenote's solutions provide unique identifiers, human-verified program metadata, rich imagery and standardized taxonomy that will provide improved content search and discovery capabilities for natural language queries.

As a part of the partnership, Tubi Media Group will also test Gracenote IDs in programmatic bid streams to improve contextually relevant advertising.

"Gracenote has been a valued partner, and this renewal underscores our commitment to innovation for both consumers and for advertisers across our streaming portfolio," said Paul Cheesbrough, CEO of Tubi Media Group. "As Tubi and FOX One continue to scale, we are excited about the future we're building."

"Tubi Media Group's market-leading streaming portfolio, combined with Gracenote's gold-standard content intelligence, make a powerful pairing," said Jared Grusd, CEO of Gracenote. "As the market embraces data and technology to maximize value for viewers and partners alike, Gracenote's curated and human-verified data provides an essential foundation—a definitive source of truth for entertainment experiences that keep consumers engaged."

Tubi recently announced it has reached 110 million monthly active users, with engagement growing 17% YoY and a record quarter of revenue, up 35% year over year.

In addition to record streaming levels during FIFA World Cup 2026, which saw more than 20 million viewers visit Tubi's World Cup Fox Hub, Tubi also announced that it reached an all-time high of 2.3% share of total U.S. TV viewing, according to Nielsen, and that more than 60% of its audience comprised of Gen Z and Millennials, who spend more time on Tubi than watching traditional broadcast or cable television.

Tubi's simulcast of the opening World Cup matches also delivered the most streamed English language opening match in World Cup history.

NEW YORK—Nielsen Holdings has announced a definitive agreement to acquire DoubleVerify in an all-cash transaction valued at about $2.15 billion.

DoubleVerify is a leading software platform that offers solutions for verifying media quality, optimizing ad performance, and proving campaign outcomes.

The deal comes at a time when Nielsen faces increasing competition from a number of other companies and many industry players continue to express frustration with the state of audience measurement in the streaming era.

The combination, Nielsen said, would to provide clients clear, verified, and independent data and would help advertisers improve their campaigns and outcomes.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027.

“Over the last few years, Nielsen has undergone a fundamental transformation — accelerating product innovation; expanding our platform across the full media lifecycle, from discovery and planning through measurement and outcomes; and strengthening our financial foundation,” Karthik Rao, CEO of Nielsen, said in announcing the deal.

“This combination will unite two organizations focused on strengthening independence and trust in advertising, Rao continued. “Joining forces with DoubleVerify will extend our capabilities deeper into the digital media industry, ensuring that the spend flowing between buyers and sellers is reaching real people in brand-suitable environments, through verified channels. As advertising workflows become increasingly automated, together we can offer publishers, advertisers, agencies, and platforms a truly independent, end-to-end partner that connects trusted audience intelligence with verified media delivery — across every screen, every channel, and every transaction – enabling superior decisions and outcomes.”

“Today’s announcement is an exciting milestone for DoubleVerify,” added Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify. “As a private entity with the support of Nielsen, we will have access to expanded resources to deliver new, market-leading solutions that drive exceptional value for our customers and partners. DoubleVerify’s MRC-accredited quality signals, in combination with Nielsen’s deduplicated cross-screen audience measurement, will fuel genuine market innovation – a single currency that scores media on both audience delivery and media environment quality. I’m proud of the strong momentum we’ve built for DoubleVerify as the leading media effectiveness platform, the strength of our AI-powered measurement and optimization platform, and the exceptional work of our team.

Nielsen described the key benefits of the transaction as follows:

• Extends Nielsen’s Platform Across the Full Media Intelligence Stack: Nielsen’s platform already spans the entire media lifecycle — from content discovery and audience planning through cross-platform measurement and outcome attribution. DoubleVerify adds the layer of independent verification that the impressions underpinning every campaign are real, viewable, brand-suitable, and free from invalid traffic. Today, advertisers must reconcile these signals across separate vendors. The combination unifies them into a single, integrated platform covering audience, context, and delivery quality.
• Expands Nielsen’s Addressable Market into High-Growth Digital Channels: DoubleVerify sits at the operational core of how digital advertising is bought and sold, with integrations embedded into the day-to-day workflows of the platforms, publishers, and agency groups that execute the world’s largest campaigns. Nielsen products already power media decisions across television, streaming, audio, and sports. By coming together, Nielsen will reach across the full breadth of the $240 billion digital advertising segment, giving clients a better partner as budgets continue to shift toward digital channels. The combination delivers global, end-to-end, independent, transparent measurement and optimization across linear TV, CTV, social, mobile and AI platforms.
• Preserves Independent Verification Standards the Industry Depends On: The combined company will continue to support the open, independent standards that are highly valued by global advertisers. This includes preserving DoubleVerify’s industry-leading capabilities in invalid traffic detection, viewability and brand suitability.
• Helps Enable a Reliable, Trusted Shift to AI in Advertising: As AI-driven planning, activation, and optimization shape how campaigns are built and executed, the combined company will help enable the advertising industry to adopt AI with confidence, with the verified data, outcome signals, infrastructure, and platform integrations necessary to execute the spectrum of advertising workflows.

Under the terms of the agreement, Nielsen will acquire DoubleVerify for $13.60 per share in an all-cash transaction, representing a 30% premium to DoubleVerify’s 60-trading day volume weighted average price as of August 5, 2026. The value per share implies an enterprise value of approximately $2.15 billion for DoubleVerify.

The transaction, which has been approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies, is expected to close by the first quarter of 2027, subject to approval by DoubleVerify shareholders, receipt of required regulatory approvals, and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.

The transaction will be financed through a combination of committed debt financing provided by Barclays, BofA Securities and Citi, incremental equity financing and cash on hand at Nielsen.

Upon completion of the transaction, DoubleVerify will become a privately held company as part of Nielsen and DoubleVerify common stock will no longer be listed on any public market. DoubleVerify will continue to operate under the DoubleVerify name and brand.

Funds affiliated with Providence Equity Partners LLC (“Providence”) that own approximately 11.8% of DoubleVerify’s outstanding shares of common stock as of August 5, 2026, have agreed to vote their shares in favor of the transaction. As part of the transaction, Providence will conclude its investment upon close.

A person is scrolling through social media and stops on a video of a real human being making a plausible claim. Nothing about the clip looks obviously fake. The lighting feels normal. The voice sounds right. It may even be genuine footage.

How does that person decide whether to believe it?

That is the real question now: not whether media can be manipulated—we already know it can. Not whether synthetic media will continue to improve; it will. The harder question is how belief gets formed when authentic-looking media is abundant and context is fragile amid constant technological innovation.

Since my column “Content Provenance: Audience Trust Is at Stake” in the December issue of TV Tech was published, confidence in the telecom sector continues to fall. According to a 2025 Gallup poll, a record-low 28% of Americans expressed a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mass media (see chart below). The conversation around the importance of the verifiability of content authenticity, i.e. content provenance, has become pivotal.

This article does not argue that provenance can solve the trust problem; that challenge depends on a multitude of factors, including effective marketing, brand and customer strategy, as well as human emotion, environment and temperament. Rather, we argue that provenance is now a necessary infrastructure for making digital content more transparent and defensible. The need for authenticity is not coming soon; it is already here.

Over the past two years, meaningful progress has been made on provenance technology. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) is an industry standard for attaching provenance metadata to digital content so people can verify where media came from and whether it has been edited. It has become the center of gravity for content credentials.

As synthetic media becomes easier to create, and AI-generated images and videos become more commonplace, regulators are beginning to insist on machine-readable transparency. Article 50 of the European Union AI Act becomes enforceable on Aug. 2, and California’s AI transparency rules are moving in a similar direction. For media companies, provenance is more than a best practice. It is a capability they will need to operationalize.

Why Trust Cannot Be Engineered
People trust institutions. They trust familiar people. They trust sources their communities already recognize. They trust what aligns with their prior experiences more readily than what disrupts them. And while technology may modify some of these patterns, it does not replace them.

This is why propaganda still works in a world where authenticity tools are improving. A message does not need to be fake to be manipulative. It only needs to be framed effectively, repeated often enough and delivered by a messenger the audience is predisposed to trust. Conversely, a piece of information can be authentic in a narrow technical sense and still mislead. A real clip can be selectively edited. A true quote can be stripped of context. A genuine image can imply something false.

This is the core limitation that provenance cannot solve.

C2PA is designed to certify the history of content, not its inherent truthfulness. It can help establish where a file came from and whether its recorded history has been altered. It does not determine whether the message is honest, persuasive, manipulative or fair. It is a transparency layer, not a truth engine.

The news industry has been dealing with versions of this problem for years. User-generated content has long been highly valuable and highly risky. It feels authentic because it is often captured by real people in real moments. But that makes it easy to over-trust. “Shot by a real person” is not the same thing as “reliably framed,” “fully contextualized” or “immune from manipulation.” In some ways, that is precisely why provenance matters. In other ways, it is precisely why provenance is not a silver bullet.

AI Makes the Problem More Visible
AI has not so much created the trust problem as made it harder to ignore. For broadcasters, the more immediate issue is not whether AI can generate convincing content. It is how to preserve confidence in the provenance of content as it moves through increasingly complex production and distribution chains.

The healthiest relationship with provenance is pragmatic: use it to strengthen verification, not to outsource judgment.

That becomes especially important in broadcasting because the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Content may be signed at capture, but downstream platforms and intermediaries can still strip or distort metadata during re-encoding or distribution. In practice, that means provenance can disappear before the audience ever sees it. For broadcasters, that means provenance technologies cannot be treated as a point solution. It must be operationalized across capture, editing, publishing, metadata management and governance.

C2PA is not a trust substitute. It is an enterprise capability that supports trust at scale.

The future is unlikely to produce a universal trust layer that makes belief automatic. That is asking too much of any technology. What it can do is provide better information.

For media executives, this creates a practical agenda.

First, treat provenance as infrastructure. Second, start where the risk is highest, especially around UGC and breaking news workflows. Third, build governance around what you capture, expose and retain. And fourth, prepare for provenance to become part of compliance architecture, not just editorial experimentation.

That is where the real opportunity lies. Not in claiming technology can manufacture trust, but in building systems that make trust easier to earn and easier to defend.

Technology can tell us where information came from. It cannot tell us what to believe. Even if it could tell us what to believe, would we?

LONDON—A new survey highlights just how important media consumption has become—with consumers in the U.K. and U.S. now spending almost 11 hours a day consuming media—and just how diverse and fragmented those habits are.

An Ampere Analysis study finds the average consumer in those markets spends more time consuming media than sleeping or working, and that consumers are increasingly selecting from a rich menu of media depending on their mood, age and needs.

“Today’s consumers have more varied media diets than ever before, selecting from an expanding menu of media depending on what they want in the moment,” Ampere Research Manager Sam Nursall said. “Whether they're looking to relax, discover something new or simply fill spare time, each medium serves a different purpose. That's today's attention economy. For advertisers and broadcasters, understanding those different moments is just as important as understanding the audience itself.”

Key findings include:

• The average U.S. or U.K. adult spends 11 cumulative hours engaged with media products every day. This includes overlapping activities, such as using a phone while watching TV or streaming.
• Streaming services (1:57), social media (1:46) and YouTube (1:35) attract the highest levels of daily media engagement.
• Consumers build their media diets around different moods and needs. Streaming services are most often used for relaxation and immersion, YouTube for discovery and lifting users’ mood, while social media is used to relieve boredom or provide distraction.
• Media diets also differ by age. Gen Alpha (age 11–15) spends the most time on YouTube (1:45) and gaming (1:56), while Gen Z (16–29) spends the most time on social media (1:54) and music services (1:20). Generation X and Baby Boomers spend relatively more time with streaming services, TV channels and live sports.
• Consumers in the U.S and U.K. access an average of 11.5 media platforms every week, including pay TV, streaming services, social media, music streaming, gaming and broadcaster VOD. Streaming services like Netflix or Disney+ account for 4.1 of these services per week. Gen Alpha accesses an average of 13.6 platforms, the highest of any age group.
• Mobile devices have expanded where media is consumed. More than half (55%) of music streaming users regularly listen outside the home, alongside 34% of podcast listeners, 20% of social media users and 11% of gamers.
• Mobile devices have also driven higher daily media engagement by making simultaneous media use easier. In the U.S. and U.K., for example, more than one-quarter (28%) of Netflix users regularly watch the service on a smartphone.
• One-third (33%) of YouTube users said they use the platform when they “want something on in the background.”

The Ampere Analysis “Attention Economy” survey was fielded in the U.S. and U.K. among respondents aged 11 to 64.

NEW YORK—Comcast’s FreeWheel has launched Video Content Report, an insight tool available in FreeWheel Buyer Cloud (formerly Beeswax) that provides TV series-level data on where ad campaigns actually appeared.

Fueled by direct connection to FreeWheel Streaming Hub (FreeWheel’s ad server with natively built SSP), the report gives buyers detailed, series-level insight into post-impression delivery from premium publishers, including A+E Global Media, Spectrum Reach, Fuse Media, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Xumo.

By using publisher-sourced delivery data recorded directly through the ad server, Video Content Report gives buyers a clearer, reliable view of where campaigns ran across premium streaming environments, helping increase transparency and confidence in their CTV investments.

“CTV buyers need series-level transparency they can trust and use at scale,” said Jon Mansell, vice president, U.S. demand for FreeWheel. “What makes Video Content Report unique is the direct connection between Buyer Cloud and Streaming Hub, which enables publisher-permissioned, impression-level delivery insights from multiple premium publishers in one workflow. That gives advertisers a clearer view of where their campaigns ran while giving publishers control over how their content data is shared.”

Powered by Buyer Cloud’s connection to FreeWheel Streaming Hub and impression-level delivery data, Video Content Report provides scalable series-level transparency to confirm content alignment and brand safety, at no extra cost, while helping publishers prove the value of their premium content.

In announcing the new tool, FreeWheel stressed that it is designed to address the needs of advertisers.

Over 50% of CTV advertisers say they would shift spend to publishers that provide show- or series-level transparency, according to new research from Advertiser Perceptions. As demand for this level of visibility grows, FreeWheel said it is helping make series-level reporting even easier to access and apply at scale. By bringing publisher-sourced insights into a more consistent workflow, Video Content Report gives buyers a clearer way to understand delivery across partners and use those insights to guide future planning and investment decisions.

Some advertisers and agencies applauded the launch. “As investment in programmatic CTV continues to grow, we as buyers need transparency that is accurate, scalable and easy to access,” said Mike Treon, head of CTV and video strategy for PMG. “FreeWheel’s Video Content Report addresses a real gap in the market by giving us series-level visibility directly within Buyer Cloud, helping us better understand campaign delivery across premium video without relying on one-off reporting requests or adding unnecessary reporting steps.”

The launch builds on FreeWheel’s broader commitment to giving buyers more transparency, control, and customization through Buyer Cloud, in addition to direct publisher connections. As a customizable demand-side platform built for premium video and connected to FreeWheel Streaming Hub, Buyer Cloud gives agencies and advertisers direct access to FreeWheel’s premium supply, robust decisioning tools and exclusive reporting capabilities designed to support more informed, efficient, and accountable media buying.

Video Content Report is now available in Buyer Cloud for all clients at no additional cost.

With cable operators rebranding themselves as “broadband providers,” the term “cable TV” has fallen out of favor in recent years. The impact of cord cutting, increasing retransmission fees, increased competition from streaming services and changing demographics have all contributed to an industry approach that now considers “video” just another service from the local operator.

While the larger providers can often protect themselves from the changes in consumer interests, smaller, independent cable operators have to continuously evaluate the rising costs and routinely ask themselves, “is it still worth it for me to offer a video service?”

That was the focus of a panel discussion, "Video is Evolving: How to Win in a Changing Video Ecosystem" at The Independent Show held by the NCTC at Disney World this week.

I moderated a panel that included Mark Rankin, CFO, of Summit Broadband in Orlando, Geoff Shook, President & GM, Buckeye Broadband in Toledo, Ohio, and Sandra Tilley, senior vice president of Brand Strategies, EPB, Chattanooga, Tenn.-based provider of broadband services.

‘Hard Conversations’
Providers now see offering video as a service as one of numerous options that will attract and keep customers rather than one that will automatically improve a broadband provider's bottom line, the panelists said.

“In and of itself, I don't believe that video is still a strategic product on its own,” Rankin said. “Having said that, though, I think you need to think about where you deploy it, how you deploy it, how it helps broadband, and certainly as a bulk provider in Florida, serving 55-plus communities, it's a strategic product for us in how we go to market and win business.”

Shook agreed that video is still essential, but with caveats.

“Our philosophy is there'll always be a video product as a part of our catalog, [but] I think that we continue to have the hard conversations over what that product looks like and how we make it affordable,” he said.

Shook acknowledged the importance of his shrinking list of “video-only” customers and said “we don't want to walk away from that,” but he also cited the growing costs that have forced Buckeye to reconsider what channels to carry on a regular basis.

“We've made some really difficult decisions regarding carriage because we just cannot afford to continue to take video rate increases from the programmers,” he said. “Our customers push back and when they get a change in their bill they don't just shop video, they shop everything and so we've walked away from several programmers, but we've also provided resources and options for those customers to find another way to to still get the video and still depend on us to help facilitate it.”

EPB’s customer base is primarily older, according to Tilley, so video still plays an important role. Nevertheless, she continues to look for new ways to partner with third parties to maintain and improve their services.

“We've been able to maintain our market share, and we haven't seen any decline in our broadband because of a loss of video,” she said. “But we do have a customer base which is primarily older that has a high value, and we're looking at how we can continue to offer a quality product. We're working with TiVo now to try to see how much cost we can get out of it by going managed, and we think that that allows us to hold our pricing, keep it at a value for our customers, and still make a short, small margin.

“We don't look at video as a big margin producing product, but I will say we are looking for anything that is the right next thing to bundle to protect our broadband market share,” Tilley added. “So we're going to continue to watch what happens with video and look at maybe broadband TV.”

Simple and Seamless
With increased competition from streaming services, particularly in live sports, panel members agreed on the importance of making it simpler for customers to navigate the increasing variety of sources as well as the complexity and fragmentation of the current scenario.

In response to this, Rankin said he isn’t as concerned about the fact that more big ticket sports are now only available on paid streaming services.

“We don't see that as the bigger problem; it's finding it that’s the challenge and the complexity that customers feel,” he said. “It's middleware that's hard to navigate that is a problem. So the more that our vendors can help us with middleware that makes it easy for customers, I think will make a big difference.”

Tilley cited a campaign by EPB to help their customers better understand the changing video landscape and provide the needed assistance, regardless of who they choose to sign up with—whether it’s their video service or a streaming bundle.

“About five years ago, we rolled out what I call our ‘cord-cutting campaign,’ but really the whole point of it was to say, ‘we want you to have TV the way you want it; we want you to have choice, and we're here to help you,” she said. “Whether it's ours that you want to buy, if you do, we want to sell that to you, and we want it to be a product you like. If it's not ours, we want to help you learn how to stream and find what you're looking for.”

Buckeye Broadband offers a program called “Brain and Stream Assist,” that helps its customers consolidate billing, passwords and navigation, according to Shook.

“We have a pay call center that is there to help those that need the help to figure out how to set up their billing and remember their passwords and connect through to the apps that they choose,” he said. “Our positioning is that we've heard from multiple generations that our video consumers wanted choice and control.”

Understanding how their customers consume TV is essential to a better overall experience, regardless of their age, Rankin added.

“The younger generations probably prefer an app-based search experience, and certainly the older demographic, they love the guide and the big remote,” he said.

Rankin pointed to the TiVo Manager app in helping Summit to “marry” those environments.

“TiVo Manager is doing that well for us,” he said. “We can give the grid guide experience and still create that app experience. And it brings deep search capabilities, such that if you are subscribing to Paramount or Netflix or something else, you know your search will present those options to you. And so, so we think that's the best of both worlds right now.”

Tilley summed up the panel’s philosophy by noting the delicate balance small independent operators need to maintain to continue to offer video while keeping an eye on the bottom line.

“We try to keep the price as affordable as possible while covering costs at a small margin,” she said. “That's our philosophy of how we approach video.”

NEW YORK and BELLEVUE, Wash.—Fox Advertising has extended its partnership with iSpot with new features to improve attribution and outcomes of advertising campaigns.

The agreement builds on a relationship between Fox and iSpot that began in 2015, when Fox first adopted iSpot’s real-time TV ad measurement capabilities across its portfolio. Since then, the collaboration has evolved to include creative measurement, audience verification and business outcomes attribution across both linear and streaming environments.

Most recently, Fox Advertising and iSpot worked together to deliver always-on attribution and outcomes measurement through Fox AdStudio, Fox’s recently launched unified data and technology platform. This enables brands to drive business results across screens, platforms and audiences.

“The Fox AdStudio was built to help advertisers do more than simply reach audiences at scale,” said Kym Frank, senior vice president, research at Fox. “Our partnership with iSpot has allowed us to prove how connecting with Fox’s engaged fandoms drives measurable business outcomes across every screen, giving advertisers greater transparency, accountability and confidence in their investments.”

The expanded capabilities come at a time when advertisers are increasingly demanding performance-driven solutions.

To address that need, Fox and iSpot have worked to offer what they call "actionable insights" that go beyond traditional reach and frequency metrics. Through Fox AdStudio’s integration with iSpot’s attribution capabilities, advertisers have access to near real-time measurement that links ad exposures directly to consumer actions, delivering a more comprehensive view of campaign effectiveness.

The two companies also reported that over the last year, the partnership has demonstrated strong performance across multiple categories and campaigns throughout Fox’s portfolio:

• Ads appearing on Fox Networks (Fox, Fox News, FS1, Fox Deportes and Fox Business Network) delivered 142.26 billion TV ad impressions, accounting for over 10% of the total ad market and two of the top six networks by TV ad reach (Fox News, Fox).
• Among top 50 networks by reach, Fox has three of the top 10 by attention or effectiveness: FS1, Fox News, Fox.
• In April 2026, Fox drove strong lift in location conversion rates for some of the top brands in the world. In one instance, Fox helped a quick serve restaurant drive an average lift of 148% vs. a 54% average lift generated from the rest of their linear buy that same month.

“These results reinforce the value of combining premium video inventory with advanced outcomes measurement that is both proven and trusted,” said Stuart Schwartzapfel, executive vice president of media partnerships at iSpot. “Together with Fox, we’re helping advertisers move beyond assumptions and understand exactly how campaigns are performing in the real world.”

IRVING, Texas—A new analysis from Horowitz Research highlights the importance of multicultural audiences for the record viewing seen during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which concluded with a historic final and record-setting audience engagement of nearly 63 million Americans watching the event.

In addition to the 38.9 million viewers turning into the English-language soccer telecast on Fox, an additional 23.9 million viewers watched the Spanish-language telecast on Telemundo.

At the same time, Telemundo and Peacock reported Spanish-language streaming engagement in the U.S, with group-stage digital average minute audience up 251% versus the tournament in 2022. These results reflect a broader transformation in the media landscape, where multicultural audiences and digital platforms are driving growth, Horowitz reported.

Those results confirmed longstanding research from Horowitz highlighting the importance of multicultural audiences, making clear that multicultural audiences are a central part of the sports audience. The scale of Spanish-language viewing and the outsized role of Hispanic fans highlight how deeply soccer is embedded in cultural identity and community connection in the U.S.

Horowitz Research’s latest study, "State of Media, Entertainment, and Tech: Viewing Behaviors", which was conducted prior to the tournament, found that over half (54%) of Latinx consumers intended to watch the 2026 FIFA World Cup, significantly higher than the total market (42%). Those expectations were borne out in the intensity and consistency of engagement seen throughout the tournament.

“What we saw in 2026 is the full realization of trends we’ve been tracking for years,” said Adriana Waterston, executive vice president, insights and strategy lead for Horowitz Research. “The World Cup is where culture, community, and media converge. It is not just about the game on the screen, it is about identity, connection, and shared experience across platforms and languages. Our research at the intersection of cultural insights and sports is focused on helping media brands and their advertisers and sponsors maximize engagement among Hispanic audiences, multicultural audiences, and the sports audience overall.”

The 2026 tournament also marked a turning point for streaming as a primary platform for live sports and highlighted a number of trends that content providers and advertisers will need to embrace if they want to attract these audiences, the Horowitz analysis found.

For starters, digital viewership surged across matches and rounds, with fans seamlessly moving between traditional television and streaming services depending on context and convenience.

This behavior was anticipated by Horowitz’s pre-event research, which showed that a majority of prospective viewers expected to stream matches live and use multiple devices beyond the TV set. The World Cup demonstrated that live sports can successfully operate in an ecosystem where linear and streaming are complementary.

The result is a new model for major sporting events, one that demands integrated distribution strategies across broadcast, streaming, mobile, and social platforms, the Horowitz analysis stressed.

Beyond platforms and audiences, the 2026 World Cup reinforced the idea that sports fandom is inherently social. Fans gathered at home, in public venues, and online, engaging with content before, during, and after matches. Social media, second screens, and shared viewing experiences were not secondary behaviors but, rather, they were core to how the event was experienced.

In surveys prior to the event, Horowitz Research found that large portions of viewers planned to watch with friends and family, attend viewing events, and engage with World Cup content across social platforms. The tournament brought those behaviors to life, with fans using the World Cup to connect across geographies, cultures, and generations.

The scale and nature of engagement during the 2026 World Cup also reinforced the value of live, multicultural sports environments for advertisers. High levels of attention, emotional investment, and cross-platform engagement create conditions that are uniquely powerful for brand impact.

In addition, the momentum from the 2026 FIFA World Cup is already extending into the next chapter of global soccer. Horowitz’s research suggests meaningful continued interest in global soccer events, including the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027.

“If 2026 showed us anything, it is that the playbook has changed,” added Waterston. “The audiences driving growth are diverse, the platforms are fluid, and the experience is shared. The organizations that understand and embrace that reality will be the ones that win in the next era of global sports.”

For more information, visit www.horowitzresearch.com.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H.—New survey data highlights how smart TVs are becoming the most influential gatekeepers in entertainment, playing an increasingly important role in how viewers discover and watch content.

Data from Hub Entertainment Research’s annual “Evolution of the TV Set” indicates that asking "What good TV shows are you watching?" may be less relevant than asking, "What TV set do you own?" in terms of viewing habits and the ability of smart TV operating systems to influence those choices.

Fox's recent $22 billion acquisition of Roku is the clearest signal yet that control of the TV operating system is becoming one of the industry's most valuable strategic assets, the research suggests.

The “Evolution of the TV Set” study, which reveals the growing influence of the TV set in shaping how viewers discover and engage with content, finds that the operating systems powering today’s smart TVs have become the primary doorway for both programming and advertising.

"The conversation around finding great TV to watch is poised to become like the `Mac vs. PC' or `Android vs. iPhone' battles from prior years — as viewers learn that some TV operating systems do better jobs than others at helping them find good stuff to watch," said Jason Platt Zolov, senior consultant at Hub. "The merger of Fox and Roku will be a watershed proof point that some streamers will have more influence than others, depending on what TV set you own."

Key findings from the report include:

• Smart TVs dominate viewing, and streaming households are embracing Roku and Fire TV more than Android, Tizen (Samsung) or webOS (LG) systems that power those sets.
• Most homes have three TVs, and two of those are now smart TVs, making them more dominant than ever.
• For the TV set they use most, streaming TV viewers are no longer flipping channels: they are living in app-centric environments that are increasingly powered by Roku (37%) and Fire TV (17%), well ahead of Android, Tizen or Apple TV users.

The researchers noted that within different TV operating systems, the viewer's goal is clear: "how can I quickly find a specific program I want to watch?"

When asked to rank what matters most, viewers rank "Easy search" as the most valued discovery feature (60% call it “very important”), well ahead of "personal recommendations" (31%) or seeing "trending content" (25%).

AI-powered TV search features are poised to help viewers solve this search problem. When asked to choose the most valuable AI-powered TV viewing features, more than half of viewers want AI features that either help them find similar things they like (27%) or more effectively exclude stuff they don't like (28%).

While quick search is most important, home screen real estate and recommendations still significantly impact what people watch.

Some TV operating systems sway users more than others: suggested titles on the TV home screen within Apple TV, Fire TV, Android and Roku environments are all more likely to be watched than those titles being suggested by Samsung (Tizen) and LG (webOS), the survey found.

As viewers continue to invest in smart TVs, the vital importance of influencing consumers to install apps when they first turn on their new TV cannot be overstated, the researchers stressed.

Half (51%) say they install suggested apps during setup — but more (56%) this year than in 2024 (47%) say they rarely add apps after that first day home with the TV — a reminder that more needs to be done to capture new TV owners with apps they will love.

These findings are from Hub’s 2026 “Evolution of the TV Set” report, based on a survey conducted among 2,500 US consumers ages 16-74. Interviews were conducted in May 2026. A free excerpt of the findings is available on Hub’s website.