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David tells us how it was Walt Disney himself who invented the fly wheel … only back then, they didn’t call it a fly wheel. We also look at how that once-assumed gobbling up of the broadcast industry by Nexstar and Sinclair is going.

He’s right, the Warner Bros. merger battle is about CNN, but he made a bad case for why he should own the network

You can almost picture a disingenuous shrug from Brendan Carr as he wrote this letter to Brian Roberts a year ago: The FCC doesn’t like to get involved in discussions between networks and station affiliates over news matters, he wrote, but our hands are tied! We simply have no choice but to investigate NBCUniversal.

Try to see the big picture, Bri.

“Americans no longer trust the national news outlets to report fully, accurately and fairly,” Carr wrote, citing 2024 Gallup figures showing that only 31% of Americans expressed a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.

During his 18 months as FCC Chairman, Carr has repeatedly quoted the Gallup numbers, while accusing the three major broadcast networks not named FOX of publishing “hoaxes” and “news distortions.”

The Gallup benchmark fell to 28% for the 2025 survey, which was cited by then-incoming CBS News chief Bari Weiss, as she introduced herself to staff during a January town hall: “Not enough people trust us,” she famously remarked.

As reports circle this week about Weiss spiking yet another 60 Minutes story, this one being a real Trump pleaser focused on the relationships between Jeffrey Epstein and his banks, it would seem hard to make the case that trust in America’s No. 1 news program has improved under The Free Press founder’s watch.

Meanwhile, Weiss’ boss, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, also cited Gallup’s “28%” data in making his own case — for his legally challenged $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery purchase — in a New York Times op-ed Tuesday.

He was probably right to identify control of CNN, and not broader antitrust concerns, as being most central to his legal battle with 12 state attorneys general. Ellison wanted to position himself as loving curator and centrist ombudsmen, understanding he shouldn’t “put his finger on the scale” while making sure CBS and CNN “tell it straight down the middle.”

It was the old “both sides” argument, BS for short.

Our own eyeballs, of course, recently witnessed Weiss dismantle a storied and still very popular weekly news program, 60 Minutes, which had been on a 9% YoY ratings growth bender. Not only is CBS News further down in the rating cellar than ever, former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens is reportedly shopping a new news magazine show elsewhere, featuring the recently fired Scott Pelley and other Weiss-era refugees from the show.

You think loyal legions of 60 Minutes fans won’t tune out of CBS and into Pelley’s show just because it isn’t branded with that little ticking stopwatch?

With public trust plundered to record lows, Ellison challenged us not to view the erosion in confidence as spawned “elsewhere”: say, from a president who built his entire movement on discrediting media opposition, referring to news outlets he doesn’t like, even through official White House channels, as “horrible” and unsmiling people,” “fake news” and the “enemy of our nation.”

“Our obligation is to look inward and say: ‘We can do better,’” Ellison wrote, noting that journalists “haven’t helped themselves” improve trust “by refusing to engage in critiques.”

Well, several hundred reporters sat silently on their hands two weeks ago, enduring the president’s typically bizarre, tasteless and profane critique of themselves, their peers and their craft at the re-run of the White House Correspondents Dinner.

But since Ellison is calling for more introspection, we might suggest he first examine the data underpinning his argument. A deeper dive into Gallup’s data indicates the trust issue is very much a Republican problem. And like he did with CBS News, Ellison is suggesting that CNN will need to be changed to better align itself with that delicate cohort’s low-melting-point.

While only 6% of registered Democrats told Gallup they had lost all mass-media faith, nearly 60% of Republicans did.

We all know where this outlook comes from.

Republicans have largely stayed in lock step with our news-loathing president, evidenced by this Quinnipiac University poll from last week, suggesting that while Trump’s overall job approval has fallen to just 32%, 76% of Republicans still rate his performance as positive.

Also worth noting: Pew Research Center reports 57% of Republicans say they get their news most regularly from Fox News, a hyper-partisan platform broadly discredited — and virulently mistrusted — on the other side of the political spectrum. ABC was the next highest ranker for regular Republican consumption, with only 27% of respondents reporting regular viewing.

One ideological side of this bitterly divided nation, the one that doesn’t trust media at all, mainly watches one news outlet, Fox News … which notoriously paid a $787 million legal settlement with a voting machine maker back in 2023 for parroting the president’s election lies about its products.

How can we really weigh the credibility of CNN based on responses from this cohort? They’ve been told over and over again by the leaders who are most influential to them that the “lamestream media” is lying to them, accusations that sometimes include Fox News.

While his recent actions have remained in line with the president’s political tastes, Ellison is viewed by many as a somewhat apolitical figure, someone who has rhetorically indicated no strong affiliation on either side of the spectrum. He wants us to understand it’s just business. He always liked us and our favorite news networks.

As of now, we only know that David Ellison was raised by a patriarch who remains very obviously on the far right of the political spectrum, with chillingly extremist views on issues including a future surveillance state. Oh, Larry.

Ellison’s disingenuous “news trust” argument comes directly from our politically ingenious president’s funhouse mirror playbook (which was probably taken from Roy Cohn), undermining public confidence in things like “fake news” and “rigged elections,” then distorting data regarding that damaged trust to erode faith even further.

With that objective achieved, you can then seize control of the oppositional components, forcing, say, homebound grandmothers voting in tight Georgia Senate races to first get to the Department of Driver Services 20 miles away to freshen up their Real ID.

It’s also how you take over broadcast and cable networks. Turns out that grooming strategies for fascist oligarchies just aren’t that complicated.

— Daniel Frankel

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When the Streaming Wars kicked off nearly seven years ago, the promise was dirt-cheap distribution, direct consumer relationships and plentiful subscription and/or ad dollars, collectively driving a profit engine to finance television’s next era.

Many billions in losses later, we’re finally seeing what looks like profits as a common achievement for streaming services. Yes, Netflix has reported admirable margins for several years, but smaller competitors are finally doing it, too.

More than that, it might be a really big deal, if Disney’s quarterly earnings Wednesday are illustrative for the rest of the industry as its long-time profit generators in broadcast, cable theatrical and home entertainment fade.

That will be crucial for Disney to move beyond its $60 billion bet on theme parks and cruise ships (though Experiences did report record revenue), wrote MoffettNathanson’s Robert Fishman.

“Looking toward the future, we continue to believe (direct-to-consumer video) will be the primary key for Disney to unlock value and break out of its trading range,” Fishman wrote Wednesday.

Indeed, growing streaming profits is Disney’s best bet to break the stasis in its share prices, which closed Wednesday below $102, down 14% on the year.

Fishman’s a believer given high-quality Disney offerings from both ESPN’s sterling sports portfolio and Disney+ and Hulu’s “unparalleled franchise depth.” (One example Wednesday: the Toy Story franchise has generated $16 billion in lifetime income value).

And hearkening to a theme first heard in Disney’s difficult days eight decades ago, Fishman wrote that even underperformers will be “additive to franchise value” across consumer products and streaming.

Back in the 1940s, those underperformers were Pinocchio and Fantasia, critically lauded groundbreakers whose 1940 box office performances were stunted by WWII. Both worked out fine, eventually, as post-war Disney discovered the value of re-releases every seven years. Now the equivalent of the Vault is streaming, where new generations of young fans can find the classics and watch them endlessly.

For Q2 2026, the underperformers were live-action Moana and The Mandalorian and Grogu. But Disney+ will likely reap millions of views of each for decades to come, while selling goodness knows how many themed pajamas and Lego sets.

More notably, Disney confirmed interest in free, top-of-the-funnel programming to engage new viewers while expanding ad inventory. Both sides of that are big opportunities for all streamers. So too is the deal with TikTok to create Disney-themed vertical content for Disney+.

Now to see how Disney competitors incorporate the new playbook to build their own profitability.

Peacock, as Next TMT noted recently, finally made a profit this past quarter, after six long years of losses. More in doubt is whether Peacock can sustain its newfound profits in a quarter that doesn’t include a Super Bowl, Winter Olympics, World Cup, NBA playoffs, or Love Island. Perhaps the new NFL season will be enough.

Paramount+, meanwhile, must become ever more consequential for $PSKY as the $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is both delayed (likely adding at least $1.3 billion to final cost) and predicated on keeping fading cable and broadcast operations profitable to pay off $80 billion in debt.

In Q2, streaming generated $2.5 billion, about a third of Paramount’s $6.91 billion total revenue. Streaming – which includes Paramount+, BET+ and Pluto – isn’t further broken out, but the bell cow did add 2 million subscribers (and is now up to 81 million). Paramount+ also saw lower churn thanks to sports such as UFC, and shows such as Yellowstone spinoff Dutton Ranch.

Two years ago, Par streaming operations roughly broke even. In January, the company reported $251 million in adjusted 2025 EBITDA from streaming, with continued growth expected all year.

That’s would be just in time. Even as DTC revenue grew 9% year-over-year, legacy cable and broadcast revenue drooped 9%. Paramount has to hope streaming continues growing at least until HBO Max joins the pod and more than doubles $PSKY’s streaming reach.

— By David Bloom

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The return of Donald Trump to power was supposed to consolidate the remaining power of broadcast TV into the hands of market leaders Nexstar and Sinclair. But things aren’t going as planned.

E.W. Scripps just confirmed layoffs of nearly 270 broadcast news division staffers across its 61 stations in 41 markets, the latest and most conspicuous bloodletting for a media company busy flattening management structures, centralizing production and pivoting to an AI-driven, 24/7 streaming model.

Jim Bob Breazeale, let go by Scripps as news director for KRIS-TV in Corpus Christi back in April, called the latest round of cuts “gut-wrenching” in a Facebook post. The moves were telegraphed late last year by Scripps, which reports second-quarter earnings Thursday.

Back in November, rather than allow rival Sinclair Broadcast Group to take control of their company, Scripps family members controlling 93% of voting shares enacted a one-year poison-pill period. They also embarked on a so-called “transformation strategy,” relying on AI and automation to trim costs, raise profitability and boost EBITDA by $125 million to $150 million by 2028.

Sinclair, which owns 8.2% of non-voting Scripps common shares, made a $622 million offer last year to buy out the voting shares, which the sprawling Scripps family unanimously rejected. The deal would have swelled Sinclair’s ownership reach well beyond Congress’ 39% ownership cap, a limit that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is keen to upend.

Of course, replacing news pros like Breazeale with cost-efficient, centralized, automated streaming news bots seems to bely Carr’s populist calls to save local news!

However, with the transformation plan in place, it appears likely that Scripps intends to maintain its standalone course and extend its shareholder-rights plan (aka “poison pill”) when it expires later this year.

— D.F.

Yes, Spider-Man: Brand New Day nearly created a brand new day for debut worldwide box-office success, ending second all time with a brain-melting $927 million global haul, cheering a long-staggering theatrical exhibition business headed to its best year since 2019. But a little perspective is worthwhile.

Sony’s latest is already the year’s highest-grossing film, at $1.155 billion surpassing Disney’s Toy Story 5, Michael, and the Super Mario Galaxy Movie in the 2026 billionaire’s club. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. i.e., the film that launched a thousand hot takes (per minute), is close behind, at $930 million.

Spider-Man’s success is also good news for Disney, which has another Avengers movie coming Dec.18 from the Russo Bros., whose Avengers: End Game set the opening-weekend records Spidey was chasing.

But 2026 box office is lighter than air. The last five years before pandemic-cursed 2020, domestic box office topped $11 billion annually. Since then, North American theaters have never exceeded $9 billion. Even If this year ends above $10 billion, highly likely, that’s still not a Marvel-level snap back to a better box-office environment.

In part, blame inflation. Theater owners group Cinema United last posted average ticket prices in 2019, at $9.16. In 2025, The Numbers estimated, ticket prices averaged $11.31, up a whopping 23.5%. So, a lot fewer tickets were sold, while making a lot less total money.

Also, where people watch has changed. The Odyssey now will stay in IMAX theaters through Sept. 18, two whole months, while sharing premium screens with Spidey, IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond told CNBC.

“Our advance (Odyssey) ticket sales from now are about $60 million,” Gelfond said Tuesday. “It’s really become a luxury brand. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

Add in other premium theatrical screens, such as 4DX and Disney’s new Infinity Vision certifications, and theatrical, like the larger economy, is in a K-shaped recovery. Either create an extraordinary billion-dollar event, or hope your YouTube creator/director can conjure a viral hit out of a Backrooms-sized budget.

— D.B.

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Fox Corp.’s $22 billion purchase of Roku isn’t expected to close until the first half of next year, but already those two are playing rather nicely with each other.

For Spain’s 1-0 FIFA World Cup triumph over Argentina on July 19, Fox and Roku ran an effective two-company merchandising partnership, emphasizing consumer visibility for Fox One’s live-stream of the match and Tubi’s game replays later on.

According to streaming analytics company Looper Insights, the Roku TVOS was the “epicenter” for Fox’s “focus placements” for its various World Cup apps, with the 80 placements on Roku devices for Tubi and Fox One accounting for nearly half of all Cup Final platform positioning, the Spanish-language stream on NBCUniversal’s Peacock included.

You can download Looper Insights’ “2026 FIFA World Cup: The Final Placement” here.

— D.F.