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Next TMT Talks:
In their latest chat, Daniel and David looked at how M&E, in just one NAB, learned to stop worrying and love AI.

With Roku set to reveal more about its powerful ‘platforms’ business, the company’s subscription reseller operation gets ready to shine

Roku has gone through about half a dozen iterations of self-definition over its existence as one of streaming’s pioneers, moving from low-end dongle maker to TVOS giant to leading FAST-channel aggregator.

Attention these days is often focused on the latter two identities, which make up the larger side of Roku’s twin business portfolio, “platforms.” With Roku CFO Dan Jedda recently promising to drill down a bit more on just what’s inside platforms besides advertising money, starting with next week’s Q1 earnings report, it seems time to lavish attention on yet another, perhaps under-discussed, part of Roku’s platforms business: as a bundler/seller of other companies’ subscription streaming services.

After a tough five years, the good times are back at Roku’s San Jose, Calif. headquarters, with the company’s shares jumping nearly 37% on Wall Street over the last month. And six years after first dipping its toes into the SVOD reseller business, Roku is finding that there might be a little money in the gambit, which lets the operator recoup up to 50% of revenue from every subscription it sells.

“We're really optimistic about the subscriptions business in general,” Tedd Cittadine, Roku’s SVP of streaming services partnerships, told Next TMT at NAB this week. “We've invested a lot in that space the last few years, and ultimately, we believe it's just giving consumers more choice.”

Without giving away detailed numbers (yet, Tedd, but soon), Cittadine allowed that subscription resale through Roku’s platform has “been a very, very strong growth business for us.”

For years, he claimed, streaming’s champions have said the business would really take off when the NFL, other live sports and similar premium content were routinely available there. Well, he acknowledged, that time is here.

And the arrival of that inflection point marks a good time to be one of the big streaming aggregators, which Roku most certainly is.

Amazon has, of course, for years been profiting hugely from its own “channels” program, which generates something north of $4 billion a year for the e-commerce giant from the portion of subscription fees it collects for itself.

According to data released by Hub Entertainment Research last week, 24% of 2,659 recently surveyed U.S. TV users said they subscribe to at least one subscription video-on-demand service through Roku. That market share still trails Amazon by a lot, but it’s also ahead of powerful Apple.

Mix in advertising revenue through the Roku Channel and other parts of the Roku platform, with those subscriptions, and “that’s a great business,” effectively a recapitulation of what made cable so massively profitable for so long.

Even better, Cittadine points out, a FAST channel featuring some of a service’s content not only generates ad revenue and customer data, but also can become a barker channel pulling viewers into a premium version of the service, their quick signup enabled by a one-click interactive ad.

“We view it as all good for Roku, all good for the user now, all good for our content partners,” Cittadine said.

Roku recently announced that it had crossed the 100 million mark in active households, hitting another level of scale that advertisers love. And this week, the company announced the addition of Peacock’s ad-free Premium Plus version to its reseller business. It’s just the latest tie-up between Roku and NBCU, after high-profile pair-ups such as that splashy Winter Olympics hub on Roku’s front screens in February.

— By David Bloom

Streaming live sports is hard. With over 500 events in the last year, we know 

NFL teaches the FCC a few things about cord cutting, basic precepts of economics and game theory

Late last week, the NFL had — to borrow NBC Sports writer Mike Florio’s analogy — a Marshall Mathers moment, with league media chief Hans Schroeder using a PowerPoint deck instead of a 24-year-old chart-topping rap single to send a message to the FCC:

The media business might feel pretty empty indeed without the NFL.

League officials, including Schroeder, General Counsel Ted Ullyot and EVP Jeff Miller, requested and apparently received a meeting with FCC officials, including Greg Watson, chief of staff to Chairman Brendan Carr. This followed the agency’s formal request for public comment in February, focused on the consumer impact of live sports makers including the NFL leaving the broadcast TV ecosystem for streaming.

Carr and the powerful Murdoch family followed that up by openly pondering whether the NFL should still enjoy, in the streaming era, the limited antitrust exemption granted to it under the 1961 Broadcast Television Act. And earlier this month, the Justice Department launched a formal investigation of the matter.

Whether you’re trying to keep a vital global shipping channel open, redraw federal election maps or simply bend media to your ideological will, it’s never bad to take in a few lessons on game theory — what will outcome “Y” be if you commit impulsive action “X”? Basic concepts of supply and demand are good to know, too.

And the NFL deck, published this week alongside a letter to the FCC summarizing last week’s meeting, includes five powerful lessons for Mr. Carr and his constituents.

First lesson: Usage of pay TV is way down, while viewing of streaming is up — dramatically — over the last five years.

Second lesson: If consumers are so alienated by the league’s migration to paid streaming platforms like Amazon Prime Video, they have a funny way of showing it. NFL watching was up across all platforms last year, including Amazon, which registered an all-time ratings high for its coverage.

Third lesson: There just aren’t that many games that are unavailable for free. Only eight Monday Night Football matchups are exclusive to ESPN, and all 16 of Amazon’s 16 regular season games are delivered free over-the-air in their local markets.

Fourth lesson: As bad low as broadcast TV ratings have fallen over the last 20 years, they’d be much worse without the league.

Final lesson: Taking away the antitrust exemption would beset NFL owners like former oil wildcatter upon the fragmented media ecosystem. Think there are too many viewing choices for fans to sift through now? Watch 32 teams negotiate their deals individually with today’s fragmented media ecosystem.

— Daniel Frankel

At least at NAB 2026, M&E seemed to stop worrying and love AI

As for a change of perspective everywhere else in Hollywood? Meh

While Reese Witherspoon was getting roasted online by the AI-anxious (AI-nxious?), in Las Vegas, the sprawling National Association of Broadcasters conference was all about integrating AI tools into existing workflows, and layering a manager or orchestrator layer on top to make video production and distribution better, faster, smarter and on-brand.

AWS, for instance, partnered with Luma.AI and House of David creator Jon Erwin’s Wonder Project to launch Innovative Dreams, which combines virtual production and AI video-generation to make what it calls ““real-time hybrid filmmaking.” You’ll likely see the results soon enough on Wonder Project’s subscription channel within Amazon Prime Video.

Adobe showed off its browser-based Firefly app’s AI video-generation and editing capabilities. One big appeal to AI-friendly, budget-constrained filmmakers: the Firefly subscription brings access to about 30 large language models from major providers.

Maxon’s new, free motion-graphics and visual-effects program Autograph is both AI super-powered and a sturdy challenger to After Effects from Adobe, where CEO Dave McGavran labored many years on Premiere Pro.

Lightcraft previewed its Spark Story virtual-shot platform, which uses AI and virtual technologies for pre-visualization work that even college students can use to generate persuasive-looking video.

And so on. The newly rejiggered workflows and approaches were on display seemingly everywhere.

Meanwhile, Witherspoon told AI skeptics, “It’s time, it’s time, people,” then had to weather the resulting blowback (as did Sandra Bullock). Eventually, she had to issue a second post asserting that no AI company or other entity had paid her for the post. Despite the skepticism in some corners, that tracks.

Witherspoon doesn’t need the money. She’s both a highly successful producer of numerous TV shows and films and highly insulated from AI’s worst depredations, thanks to the $900 million sale of her Hello Sunshine shingle to Candle Media. But unlike the show floor in Las Vegas, plenty in Hollywood still hope to hold back the flood rather than build a boat to float on it. Given the many “raindrops” on NAB’s show floor, however, the flood is absolutely coming.

— By D.B.

The Five Spot
Some other things you, you, you oughta know…

Nexstar CEO Perry Sook: DirecTV starts 83% of all retrans blackouts, and it’s trying to weaken broadcasters

Why can’t a little $6.4 billion broadcast company shatter a major piece of ownership-cap regulation so it can complete its $6.2 billion acquisition of a rival and get on with the business of competing with the really big guys?

That was the major takeaway from Perry Sook’s sit-down Tuesday with Inside Edition host Debra Norville at NAB (event coverage courtesy of Penske Media newshound Dade Hayes).

In a market in which broadcasters like Nexstar have to compete with tech companies with multi-trillion-dollar market capitalizations, Sook rejects certain terminology and nomenclature.

“The idea that anyone, Nexstar included, would be a ‘broadcast behemoth’ — to me, that term is kind of oxymoron, given who we compete against.” (Editor’s Alanis Morissette tribute note: Isn’t it “oxymoronic”? Don’t you think?)

Sook also took aim with DirecTV — the privately held pay TV company, which is “twice the size of us,” Sook claimed, has a lawsuit aimed at Nexstar’s Tegna takeover that’s apparently solid enough to warrant the preliminary injunction a Sacramento federal judge just gave it.

Sook said that DirecTV, as a matter of business strategy, intentionally tries to “weaken companies it negotiates with.”

That’s debatable, as was Sook’s claim that 83% of all broadcast retransmission fee fights resulting in blackouts involved DirecTV.

— D.F.

HubSpot's ex-Head of Paid shares his 2026 playbook

Rex Gelb spent a decade building HubSpot's paid engine. Now he's showing founders exactly how to do it.

On April 27th, get the framework to structure, launch, and scale paid media that drives pipeline, not just traffic. 20 minutes. Live Q&A. Free.

Join the free session

Trump Media gets a new CEO (who may actually know something about the business he’s getting into) as shares continue to fall

Trump Media and Technology Group, the former SPAC and parent company of Donald Trump’s social-media outlet of choice, is getting a new CEO as shares continue to collapse since their post-inauguration high.

Former California Republican Congressman Devin Nunes is out and former Hulu sales exec Kevin McGurn is in, at least temporarily, the parent company of Truth Social announced.

McGurn, who’s been involved in efforts to launch a Trump-branded phone, brings actual digital media chops that Nunes, a former San Diego congressman and rader-detector mogul, never had.

Whether that’s enough to stop the slide in value of Trump Media is a far more complex question. The company’s main asset has been the president’s many, many contractually mandated posts on Truth Social. Quarterly earnings typically have featured hundreds of millions of dollars in operating expenses and less than $20 million in revenue, an ugly look for any business.

Regardless, the Trump connection and his millions of followers kept share prices and market valuation ridiculously high. No more. With a price-to-equity ratio of -3.6, shares are down 58% in the past year, from a 52-week high of $27.78 to Wednesday’s close of $9.52.

— D.B.

The AI Playbook for Video Teams That Can't Slow Down

Wistia's new AI Video Marketing Trends report shows how marketers are using AI to move faster, improve quality, and extend the life of every video. See how leading teams are driving results without adding more work.

Download the Full Report

Is Elon Musk downranking Sam Altman’s new acquisition, TBPN

Is Elon Musk, champion o’ free speech that he purports to be, downranking new OpenAI acquisition TBPN on X?

According to Semafor, fans of Technology Business Programming Network are “suspicious” that clips from the popular creator-economy show, widely billed as the “SportsCenter of Tech,” are not getting the same level of algorithmic love they were prior to purchase of the platform a month ago by OpenAI, operated by bitter Musk rival Sam Altman.

Is conspiracy real? Some data suggests yes, as this X poster reveals.

Altman, not surprisingly, insists that OpenAI just loves TBPN and simply wants it to continue independently producing great content.

Speaking at a Semafor event last week, OpenAI public affairs chief Chris Lehane said he “looks forward” to his host investigating the X-downranking topic.

— D.F.

As David Zaslav (reluctantly?) gets ready to leave Warner Bros. with a bag of money, one of his early cost-cutting decisions gets re-exposed

Variety Co-Editor-in-Chief and all-around dean of entertainment trade journalism Cynthia Littleton published a fascinating deep dive into David Zaslav’s imminent departure amid Paramount’s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros.

Sure, as one story source puts it, Zaslav is like a “funeral parlor attendant who dressed up a corpse, made it look good enough for the funeral — good enough to sell — and is getting away with half a billion dollars.”

Actually, he'll leave with about $550 million in cash and another $116 million in stock. But who’s counting?

“If you asked him if he’d rather have the job or the money, there’s no doubt about that: He’d rather have the job. I really believe that,” Warner investor David Geffen told Littleton.

Zaslav will leave Burbank riding a hot streak worthy of the mogul clout he so desperately chased — these include Oscar-winning theatrical hits Sinners and One Battle After Another, as well as HBO’s The Pitt, just to name a few.

Then again, there were some downright questionable calls at the beginning of Zaslav’s WBD tenure, including some of those titles he buried as tax write-offs. At least one of these finished projects managed to escape the lot and find some distribution, James Gunn-penned live-action/animation family hybrid comedy Coyote vs. Acme.

Sure, Zaslav was anxious to get rid of a lot of debt fast in those days. And who can argue with how the financial situation ended? (Save for maybe all those folks who will soon lose their jobs.)

Entering the era of AI, this movie would have seemed like prototype for an ostensibly modern media company looking to monetize the far and ancient reaches of its vast library by mixing in a bit of current-day, John Cena-level pop culture the kids can recognize.

And the trailer sure looks funny enough to Next TMT’s sophomoric eyes.

— D.F.

IAB Tech Lab tries to bring a little order to the $200 billion programmatic ad biz

As AdExchanger’s Allison Schiff put it, conversations in the adtech world about programmatic transparency are a bit like political discussions at Thanksgiving: “Everyone agrees it matters, there’s disagreement on the details, and somebody usually storms off in a huff.”

With that in mind, IAB Tech Lab has the Programmatic Governance Council, a working group of buyers, sellers, adtech companies and platforms, aimed and keeping constituents at the table long enough to bring some order to the $200 billion programmatic advertising business.

The group’s ranks at launch include Amazon Ads, Dentsu, Omnicom Media Group, WPP, Disney, Magnite, PubMatic, Hearst, News Corp, Yahoo, The Trade Desk, Raptive, and Mediavine, among others.

"Programmatic advertising moves billions of dollars every day, but too often the people responsible for it are not sitting together to deal with the real operational problems," said Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, in a statement. "Programmatic grew incredibly fast, but the governance around how that market should operate hasn't kept pace with its scale, complexity, and automation. If we don't generate alignment quickly, we risk cementing these inefficiencies into the fabric of every transaction."

— D.F.