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Why is Paramount heading to the locker room now? And did ESPN officially jump the shark last week?

The retail giant was supposed to start dominating our living rooms by now. But more than two years after buying the smart TV maker, it controls just 3% of the domestic gateway OS market

Thirty months ago, just after Walmart paid $2.3 billion to acquire smart TV maker Vizio, Wells Fargo analysts sent Roku shares into a 34% nose dive, telling the market that North America’s No. 1 provider of television operating system tech would have to “reposition itself” for a new competitive landscape.

In early January, Omdia released a global TVOS study suggesting that it was all downhill from here for Roku, with Walmart’s rebranded “SmartCastOS” set to become top dog in the domestic TVOS market.

Walmart is still in the early phases of a broad — and broadly well-received — business strategy built around Vizio, rolling out the finishing UX touches as recently as March — this included repositioning the TVs under the retailer’s Onn electronics brand with the subhead, “Powered by Vizio,” and connecting the Walmart retail media network to its burgeoning CTV ecosystem, among other brand integration tasks.

It’s generally understood that the “streaming wars,” as they exist today, describe an intense competition among more than 12 platforms, each vying to control the coveted consumer relationship — everything from bill and data collection to advanced advertising delivery.

For all of these good reasons, a number of research companies — independent and otherwise — are looking at this important media-tech sector. Outlooks change from source to source, but there doesn’t appear to be a voice other than Omdia describing a “Pax Walmart” reality, either now or in the near future.

The latest example:

Surveying 2,500 adult U.S. consumers in May for its latest “Evolution of the TV Set” report, Hub Entertainment Research asked each respondent what TVOS brand powers the TV they watch the most.