Know What's Happening in Media
Know What's Happening in Media
Indian TV market braces for sales dip amid rising production costs and rupee weakness
Soaring RAM prices, higher plastic and ocean‑freight costs tied to the West Asia crisis, and a weakening rupee have pushed retail TV prices up roughly 20%. An entry‑level 32‑inch set now costs about $133, up from $108 six months earlier, prompting many buyers to down‑trade. Counterpoint Research forecasts shipments to fall 5‑6%.
Also developing:
By the numbers: K‑Love seeks FCC approval for acquisition of WFCC
Salem Media Group reported a 10.5% drop in 2025 revenue to $212.7 million, largely driven by $24 million in asset sales. Despite lower operating costs, the broadcaster posted a $34.6 million net loss, a swing of 313.9% from the prior year’s profit. Impairment charges surged to $25.2 million, while interest expense fell 90% to $1.5 million. The company also recorded a $7.1 million gain from the sale of several stations, partially offsetting the losses.
EditShare will demonstrate its latest AI‑powered media operations and high‑performance NVMe storage at the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas. The company is emphasizing Analytical AI, which automatically extracts speech, faces, text and scene data to enrich video files with...
I’m really confused about ACOTAR 6 being on the USA Today Bestseller list months before pub day. I thought pre-sales counted towards first week sales?
Playboy announced Phillip Picardi as its chief brand officer and editor‑in‑chief, making him the first openly gay leader of the iconic men’s lifestyle brand. The appointment follows a broader editorial overhaul that includes a revived print edition, a Substack newsletter,...
I recognize this is not the most important thing in the world but it is critically necessary that we have national moratorium on pleading "Mr. President" headlines. Something so tiresomely 1957 about "Mr. President, I Beseech You That the Time...
Bell withdrew its April 2025 complaint after reaching a distribution agreement with Telus for five discretionary channels—Oxygen True Crime, USA Network, CTV Nature, CTV Speed and CTV Wild. The dispute originated from Bell’s claim that Telus favored Rogers’ new channels...
Audio Academy has announced its 2026 Mentoring Programme cohort, comprising 22 mid‑career professionals from across the UK radio and audio sector. The six‑month scheme pairs each mentee with a senior industry mentor, offering one‑to‑one guidance, seminars and leadership training. Supported...
The article reviews liquid‑cooling technology as it moves from high‑end transmitters and particle accelerators into broadcast and consumer‑grade equipment. It contrasts anti‑freeze pumps for FM transmitters with deionized‑water loops used in megawatt‑scale systems, and highlights all‑in‑one (AIO) PC coolers as...
I talked to @MattBelloni about Sunday's Oscars, the future of Hollywood, and why he thinks David Ellison wants to build a new Fox News: Excerpts here: https://www.businessinsider.com/oscars-prediction-paramount-ellison-gulf-matt-belloni-peter-kafka-2026-02 Full chat on Channels: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/channels-with-peter-kafka/id1080467174?i=1000754620316
The Kyiv Independent, launched just before Russia’s invasion, has scaled from an 18‑person startup to a leading English‑language outlet with over 27,000 paying members and three million monthly readers. In 2025 the newsroom recorded a 78% increase in membership while...
Grammarly announced it will permanently disable its Expert Review AI feature after criticism that the tool cloned the voices of prominent writers without consent. The company, in partnership with Superhuman, is reimagining the feature to give experts explicit control over...
The University of Illinois partnered with Grass Valley and integration firm Tab M Solutions to complete Phase 1 of a hybrid IP broadcast production hub for Fighting Illini Productions ahead of the 2025 football season. The system employs a hybrid SMPTE ST 2110/SDI architecture, deploying...
Libsyn, a leading podcast hosting platform, reported a 48% year‑over‑year increase in advertising revenue for 2025, driven by 4.8 billion ad impressions and record creator payouts. The company also disclosed that upfront advertiser commitments have doubled heading into 2026. In conjunction...
Spain has been named the Country of Honour for the 2026 Banff World Media Festival, recognizing its rapid ascent as a global hub for premium content. The designation follows a breakout year featuring hits such as *Berlin* and *La mesías*,...
Mediagenix announced an upgrade to its Semantic Intelligence engine, aiming to turn raw title and rights metadata into actionable commercial insight for studios and networks. By embedding advanced semantic modeling—originally built by its 2024 acquisition Spideo—into its Title Management platform,...
YouTube generated $40.4 billion in ad revenue for 2025, overtaking the combined $37.8 billion earned by Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Financial analysts at Moffett Nathanson value the platform at $500‑$560 billion, positioning it as the world’s largest media company by ad sales. The...
Johnny and Iz Harris have launched Newpress, a production company and community platform designed to incubate creator‑journalists. The venture, built on the success of Johnny Harris’s 7.5 million‑subscriber YouTube channel, already backs three flagship shows that blend deep‑dive reporting with high‑production...
Publishers are abandoning reliance on social platforms and rented traffic as Google’s zero‑click search results erode referral visits. The article argues that participation‑driven experiences—embedded comment streams, community tools, and real‑time interaction—create a defensible moat. By shifting engagement to owned properties,...
Eight out of ten Performance Max advertisers are now seeing connected‑TV impressions on YouTube, a shift driven by Google’s expanded CTV capabilities. Since Q2 2025 the platform has auto‑generated TV ads from product‑feed images, and in January 2026 introduced shoppable CTV formats...
The European Commission fined X €120 million for breaching the Digital Services Act, citing a deceptive blue verification badge, inadequate advertising‑transparency tools, and restricted researcher data access. The DSA classifies platforms with over 45 million EU users as very large online platforms...
Premium CTV inventory, while more expensive, offers advertisers higher-quality audience engagement. Vevo, partnering with measurement firm Amplified, has produced rigorous attention data demonstrating that premium placements deliver longer view times and stronger brand recall. The partnership’s findings provide concrete evidence...
Coors Banquet has logged five straight years of volume growth, driven largely by Gen Z and younger drinkers. To capitalize on this momentum, Molson Coors is boosting its media budget with a double‑digit increase and re‑entering live‑sports advertising during the 2026 MLB...
The United States Trade Representative released its 2025 Notorious Markets report, highlighting $40 billion in annual losses from music and sports piracy. The 61‑page document catalogs dozens of high‑profile piracy sites such as DHgate, MegaCloud, Private Layer and The Pirate Bay,...
Netflix’s two flagship English‑language series are falling short of their own records. Stranger Things Season 5 has logged 132.7 million views after 77 days, 8 million fewer than Season 4’s 140.7 million, and cannot close the gap before the 91‑day window ends. Bridgerton Season 4 sits...
NextAud.io has signed an exclusive agreement with AdsWizz to become the sole sales representative for streaming and podcast inventory across Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, while also acting as AdsWizz’s preferred reseller in...
FreeWheel unveiled an AI agent infrastructure built on its Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server and a suite of Intelligence tools, embedding artificial intelligence directly into premium video ad transactions. The platform enables real‑time workflow automation, performance monitoring, and decision‑making for...
Making a strong case for distribution of your company information / news / etc in a GEO world. This part makes me think a lot about the black box of training data and the long horizons of training data...
The National Press Club’s statement on our story in The Washington Post on the Pentagon banning photographers from briefings after they published “unflattering” photos. https://t.co/4EbXGWkVHt https://t.co/yWQniBhU0i
The author of the TRL Substack invites readers to suggest topics for future posts, ranging from query etiquette to industry deep‑dives. The invitation follows a popular piece on residencies that impressed agents, signaling a desire for more community‑driven content. Additionally,...
Nah, this is the NYT laundering evil US crimes as “mistakes” since it got so much public attention. Nobody should buy this shit. They’ve tried this over and over to cover themselves. Zero excuses for targeting schools, which they are...
Aren’t a lot of these media assets just melting ice cubes that can’t cut it outside the (withering) cable bundle?
Don La Greca, co‑host of ESPN Radio's The Michael Kay Show for more than 20 years, never saw his name added to the program title despite his on‑air prominence. In a recent interview on BT Unleashed, he revealed that management...
Had a nice chat with the official @YouTube blog about launching The Town on video. ⬇️⬇️ https://t.co/Zj2sG7EZNv
The one BIG move that will tell us if Ellison and Paramount are playing to win. $PSKY $WBD $AMZN The LightShed Podcast, Ep. 304. With @BrandoLightShed and @WaltLightShed https://t.co/YJZW8CaF1O
CBS Sports partnered with the University of Cincinnati to produce two Big 12 men’s basketball games from the school’s on‑campus control rooms, marking the second university‑based linear broadcast after Kansas State. CBS supplied its front‑bench producers and directors while Cincinnati...
Appreciate the reporting here by Barnes. Worth noting he’s also the plaintiff in the important lawsuit against the Pentagon over its new press policy that creates an opening for the Pentagon to revoke his credentials in retaliation over his...
Barry Diller on hopes to buy CNN: "I would change everything" Interview with Graham Bensinger. https://t.co/mkgyjN8GTY via @YouTube
U.S. streaming services now account for about 75% of online video viewing across Europe, according to Mediavision and the Digital Production Partnership. Local platforms collectively hold only around 25% of the market, with notable variation—Finland’s domestic services capture 43% while...
The latest craze among creator platforms? Inventing their own awards shows to honor the most popular and creative people cranking out content on their apps. https://t.co/SVFliYvp6u via @variety
One of the most important jobs of local journalism, which it historically finds most difficult to do, is saying “There is a quotidian procedural issue which affects this community but will not rate national attention. The government is lying about...
Rebel Audio, a Nashville‑based AI podcasting start‑up, has emerged from stealth mode with a $3.8 million seed round and the addition of TV legend Mark Burnett as its first adviser. The company unveiled an invitation‑only beta of its AI‑driven platform at SXSW,...
Creators Go Pro: Digital Stars Bank Brand Bucks While Talent Agencies and Support Firms Proliferate https://t.co/P1OMksQCSC via @variety
Game of Streams: David Ellison's Plan to Compete with Netflix called Paramount+HBO Paramount wants to be more than a survivor in the streaming wars. It believes it can catapult itself into a daily use streaming platform that can compete head-on...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left independent reporting from the Russian side virtually nonexistent, prompting a surge of pro‑war “voenkory” military bloggers on Telegram. These channels, some with millions of followers, range from state‑embedded correspondents to active soldiers, veterans, volunteers,...
.@thewrap looks at M&A so far this year: media VC deals are falling – 70% year over year – compared to AI which is soaring. Here’s the story in charts, in partnership with @PitchBook : https://t.co/dQDSQqFM6m
AI Podcast Start-Up Rebel Audio Launches App With Invite-Only Access, Taps Mark Burnett as Adviser (EXCLUSIVE) https://t.co/C0nR4IG3VQ
OpenX and TVision have introduced OpenX Attention Targeting, the first supply‑side solution that lets advertisers bid on CTV inventory based on real‑time viewer attention scores. The offering merges TVision’s passive, person‑level panel data with OpenX’s bid‑stream signals, delivering predictive engagement...
And Google generates 4x as much ad revenue as YouTube. And guess what? Google owns YouTube and provides most user data "signal" and discovery that has boosted it. And Google is a 'recidivist monopolist' according to DOJ + 4 federal...
Yup. "Farid said the best way to remain accurately informed is to make a choice to get your news from credible journalistic outlets instead of scrolling through posts from 'random accounts' on social media." https://t.co/BYB495AEqW
Detroit native Amanda Habrowski is returning to Audacy’s ALT 98.7 (WDZH) to host the morning show, "Amanda in the AM." After two decades in markets like Fort Wayne, Portland and Las Vegas, she most recently served as Content Director and afternoon host at...
