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In our latest pod, David and Daniel check out how our adolescent AI overlords are doing in their big Oakland courtroom kerfuffle. The boys also look in on Disney’s ‘super app,’ judge whiny NBA writers, and help some guy’s mother-in-law out with M&E investment advice.

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Will Disney be the first to unify its experiences and content into a single ‘super app’?

Disney's malingering share prices jumped a hefty 7.6% Wednesday after new guy Josh D’Amaro reported strong revenue and profit across the company, especially in streaming, and confirmed plans for a “super app” tying together consumers of its movies, streaming services, resorts, theme parks, cruise ships, etc, with Disney+ at the heart of it.

“Disney+ becomes the primary relationship between Disney and its fans, the place where everything comes together…[parks are] essentially the physical centerpiece of the company,” D’Amaro told investors Wednesday. “And similarly, we’re building Disney+ to serve as the immersive, interactive digital centerpiece of the company. And in the long term, what you’ll see is those pieces of the company become increasingly connected.”

The so-called “super app” is the latest, tech-fueled expression of a vision that dates to Walt himself, a means of connecting and moving franchises across all the different Disney outlets.

It makes complete sense, of course. Disney’s various bits — parks and resorts, cruise ships, TV and movie studios and libraries, and ESPN’s collection of very expensive sports rights — have hundreds of millions of fans, more than any traditional entertainment giant.

But making it all work has mostly created a string of siloed apps for, say, the parks or the cruise ships. Even the streaming apps for ESPN+, Hulu and DIsney+ had their own, different log-ins for a remarkably long time.

And just ask Sony how hard it is get a bunch of different divisions to work more closely together, despite the alleged synergies between the electronics maker, the movie studio, the music label and the PlayStation king.

Comcast is building its version of One App to Rule Them All. The company is now promoting its Xfinity app as the place to get special access to stars, streaming services, even theme parks such as Universal Epic Universe in Orlando.

Apparently, if the omnipresent ads are to be believed, you too can be nuzzled by Frankenstein (hey, we don’t judge). And unlike Disney, Comcast offers app-based access to your security system, able to remotely block that Jurassic World velociraptor at the front door (just imagine if Darth Vader offered Disney home security?).

Disney’s timing for a strong earnings report was impeccable; the market as a whole skyrocketed, setting records in both the NASDAQ and S&P 500, on reports of a possible Middle East war settlement and crazy runs by most semiconductor and hyperscaler companies before things settled down again on what seems like another Trump-ian false alarm.

But for all the boost the macro and the mega-app gave Disney, it’s worth noting that the company’s share prices still aren’t close to the heights reached during Nelson Peltz’s two proxy fights, when they peaked at nearly $124 apiece days before the vote about two years ago. Even with Wednesday’s mega boost, Disney shares are still at $108, 13% lower.

At least they’re not Netflix, noodling 11% down over the past month, even with a recently announced $25 billion share buyback. Maybe they need a more super-ish app.

— By David Bloom

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Social video usurps CTV’s ‘must-buy’ status among advertisers

Get ready for many more repetitive conversations about how verticals are the future

Social video has surpassed connected TV (CTV) as the most coveted purchasing target among major U.S. advertisers, according to new survey data collected by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Polling 360 U.S. marketers who spent at least $1 million on advertising in 2025, IAB said that the percentage of respondents who consider ads for video on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms a “must buy” rose from 62% from when the survey was taken in 2025 to 69% this year. CTV’s must-buy status declined from 68% to 61% over that same span.

“Social video's growth reflects an increasingly modified stack of AI-powered personalization, creative optimization and measurement tools dovetailing with a maturing creator economy — a combination of factors attractive to advertisers,” reads part 1 of IAB’s 2026 “Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report.”

Based on IAB’s 2026 projections, social video ad spending will grow faster than CTV for a fifth consecutive year, with category ad revenue reaching $31.9 billion this year versus $29.3 billion for CTV.

Total U.S. spending on “digital video” — defined as social video, CTV and online video — is projected to rise another 11% to $81.9 billion this year. Digital video is also projected to control 61% of ad spending share versus just 39% for linear.

While survey respondents are migrating to the use of agentic AI for media planning, inventory discovery and creative optimization — stuff done before ad dollars are committed — they’re still mostly hands-on when it comes to external-facing marketing tasks. This suggests, IAB astutely concluded, that “human judgment remains critical when money is on the line.”

Jon Schultz is the CMO for programmatic DSP provider Viant, which is moving its product line to fully automated agentic tools. His description of recent customer interactions to StreamTV Insider jibes with IAB’s conclusion:

“I don’t know if I’d step into a Waymo self-driving cab,” Schulz said. “I want to have my hands on the steering wheel and my foot on the pedal. I just don’t have that level of trust yet.”

At CES back in January, Viant CEO Tim Vanderhook and his brother Chris, the company COO, talked at length about the technology and merits of such end-to-end agentic automation. Here’s that discussion:

— Daniel Frankel

Is there an uncorrelated investment in Hollywood worthy of your mother-in-law?

At the panel I moderated Monday at the Uncorrelated Beverly Hills conference, an audience member had a piquant question: Is there an entertainment investment that he could put in place for his mother-in-law that would consistently pay dividends for the rest of her life?

Of course, that depends on your relationship with said MIL, and how long you’d like her to stick around in sustained comfort. But jokes aside, the bigger reality: There isn’t a steady-as-she-goes investment in entertainment, as generations of German tax funds, Ontario pension funds, Texas oil men, and other deep pockets hoping to get invited to cool parties have found out the hard way.

Then again, as I pointed out, even amid the industry’s AI-addled, consolidation-crazed disruptions and many underperforming projects, absolute home runs happen. Just this spring, the Super Mario Galaxy Movie racked up $1.8 billion in worldwide box office. J.K. Rowling was a welfare mom riding the Tube in London when she came up with a story about a boy living under a staircase. Harry Potter became a generation-shaping franchise and turned Rowling into a self-made billionaire.

Speaking of arriviste money, tech nepo baby/USC-trained producer David Ellison used Paramount Skydance’s earnings call to reiterate that, yes, his company plans to put out 30 movies a year once it wraps up that $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery somehow before the end of September. After all, both PSKY and WBD are distributing 15 films this year.

Yeah, but. By the time Ellison finishes, a) the deal, b) “rationalizing” the distribution and marketing of the combined companies, and c) paying down a crushing 7x ratio of debt to EBITDA, will it indeed have the carrying capacity to find, create, market and distribute a new movie internationally every 12 days or so? Talk about a cliffhanger.

And finally, some unpromising news from Uncorrelated B.H: East Beach Capital partner E.J. Kavounas specializes in financing the lucrative liminal space between a film lining up local production incentives, and actually receiving that money. The bridge loans are good business, he emphasized to the family offices and private equity types in the crowd.

“You're getting equity returns for a debt risk,” said Kavounas, who had a similar message at last year’s conference. “That becomes a really attractive aspect. What gets lost is the complexity of closing these deals.”

Key example: Despite the more than doubling of California’s production credit program this year, “I would say 95% of the opportunity is outside of California,” Kavounas said. “There are far more robust places to get incentives out there.”

The better news: A lot of banks got out of the film finance business over the past several years, meaning more opportunities to shop both better projects and better tax incentives, even if the complex process can take 18 months or more to come through.

“One bright spot is (reviving theatrical) box office,” Kavounas said. “It’s a pretty good sign for more projects taking place in the future. I'm actually bullish on the sector in terms of growth, or at least being able to continue operating in the future.”

— D.B.

The Five Spot
A little loose change for the hard times…

Sam Altman was two-faced leader who created ‘chaos,’ former OpenAI interim CEO testifies

But Kalshi now predicts Altman will triumph over Elon Musk’s $138 billion lawsuit, for what that’s worth

Testifying Wednesday in Elon Musk’s $150 billion lawsuit trial against Sam Altman and other OpenAI co-founders, former interim CEO Mira Murait described the latter’s management style leading up to his brief ouster by the OpenAI board in November 2023 as one that created chaos and mistrust.

“My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person,” said Murati, who held the interim CEO title during the five tumultuous days before intense investor pressure forced OpenAI to hire Altman back from Microsoft.

This color from week 2 testimony of the Oakland, Calif. trial came from Reuters. And there was plenty more where that came from:

• Two days before the trial started on April 27, Musk texted OpenAI President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman, asking him about a possible settlement, according to discovery documents. After Brockman suggested both sides drop their lawsuits, Musk responded, “By the end of the week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be.”

• Brockman testified Tuesday that Musk supported turning startup OpenAI into a for-profit venture, but he wanted full control to leverage his effort to raise $80 billion for Mars colonization.

• Brockman was also asked Tuesday by Musk’s lead attorney, Steven Volo, why his company stake is worth $30 billion when he didn’t invest any money into OpenAI. Musk’s legal team wants to reveal bad will on the part of Brockman, Altman and the other defendants — that they never had any intention of building a non-profit dedicated to safe AI, the motivation Musk claims behind his $38 million investment into the company back in 2015. Even though part of OpenAI was restructured last year into a for-profit venture, on target for an IPO with a $1 trillion valuation, Brockman insisted it was never about the money. “Solving for the mission has always been my primary motivation,” he said. “It remains so today.”

At least in the eyes of Kalshi traders, Altman and Brockman are winning so far. Musk’s odds of triumphing in the case fell from nearly 60% when the trial started to nearly 35% after he testified last week.

— D.F.

Viant closes $40 million TVision purchase, takes ‘aggressive’ aim at The Trade Desk

Viant is making its move in the open programmatic DSP market, closing its $40 million acquisition of attention-measurement company TVision Insights and setting its sights on the market share of much bigger but embattled demand-side platform rival The Trade Desk.

Irvine, Calif.-based Viant generates nearly half its sales in connected TV and saw 19% revenue growth to $344.2 million last year. With New York-based TVision, Viant will integrate measurement of “second-by-second, eyes-on-screen attention, co-viewership and in-room presence.” These are advantageous attributes when pitching yourself as a transparent DSP alternative to walled gardens operated by Amazon, Alphabet and Meta.

For Viant (market cap: ~$724.5 million), TVision also provides an edge as it tries to take clients away from The Trade Desk (~$11.3 billion), which is still reeling from a transparency crisis initiated back in March when, after a fateful audit, French agency Publicis Groupe stopped recommending TTD to its clients.

Viant, one media buyer told Digiday, has been the most “aggressive” DSP in terms of coming after TTD clients.

TTD was already at odds with Wall Street over how it was going to compete going forward, at a scale befitting its stature, with Amazon and other walled gardens — an issue that led TTD stock to drop nearly 40% last summer. Then came the big Publicis problem. The stock is now trading at just under $24 a share, less than half of what it was a year ago.

The Trade Desk reports first-quarter earnings on Thursday.

— D.F.

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A full 72 hours later, we’re still cringing over GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen’s disastrous ‘Squawkbox’ interview

Shares of the company that single-handedly created the term “meme stock” five years ago have (somehow!) recovered since Tuesday morning, when the company’s CEO, 40-year-old billionaire Chewy founder Ryan Cohen, made the cable-business news rounds to discuss a new unsolicited offer for eBay.

“That was one of the oddest, most uncomfortable to watch interviews on @SquawkCNBC that we’ve ever seen,” tweeted LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield.

Cohen was being given the free air time to pitch what seemed, to CNBC’s Aaron Ross Sorkin — and pretty much anyone else who can tell time and count their toes — like a mathematically challenged idea: GameStop, market capped at ~$11.3 billion, with ~$9 million in cash and equivalents on hand, and with debt financing of $20 billion, was going to acquire eBay with an unsolicited cash-and-stock offer of $55.5 billion.

Never mind the suspension of disbelief required to entertain Ryan’s core thesis: That a combined e-commerce and collectibles upstart with a $60 billion market capitalization at close could seriously compete with a $3 trillion company, Amazon. (Although we certainly could use a few folks who want to try!)

Sorkin posed this very logical question: Where does the other $15.2 billion needed to get to the $55.5 billion purchase price come from?

Cohen, on multiple occasions advised Sorkin’s viewers they’d have to move off-platform to find answers. (Editor’s note: Next 25-pound bag of kibble comes from Amazon.)

— D.F.

Roku accused of bricking its own smart TVs with bad OS updates

OEM partner TCL also named in proposed class-action

Roku and its largest smart-TV OEM partner, TCL, stand accused by a proposed class-action lawsuit of pushing out to customers “repetitively defective” software updates that are “materially impairing the functionality of Roku products.”

Plaintiff Terri Else says in her Central California federal court complaint that she purchased a Roku-powered TCL TV in 2021. It began to frequently crash a few years later. By early 2023, the TV was out of warranty and inoperable, Else claims, adding that TCL refused to address the issue.

(Editor’s note: We wrote about similar experiences with TCL’s Roku OS product line five years ago, inspired by our own experience with a TCL 3-Series TV, also purchased in 2018.)

The class-action specifically lists TCL 3, 4, 5 and 6-Series models with Roku OS, as well as Roku’s own Select and Plus Series sets, purchased on or after December 16, 2024.

Notably, Amazon is facing a similar class action in Los Angeles County accusing it of intentionally bricking Fire TV sets.

— D.F.