Streaming
State of Play
Revised Sep 18, 2026The moment. Bundling came back in one week. Amazon launched a five-service Prime Video bundle of AMC+, BritBox, MGM+, PBS Masterpiece and Starz at $29.99 a month. Roku opened 30 bundle combinations through its Premium Subscriptions storefront at savings of up to 30% against buying each service alone. JustWatch, which spent a decade telling people where to watch things, becomes a service itself in October with JustWatch TV. Netflix, Amazon and YouTube founded the Streaming Access and Choice Alliance, a Washington lobbying group run by TechNet, under bipartisan criticism over the cost and complexity of watching sports. Digiday charted every major price change since 2019: Netflix’s ad-free tier rose from $10.99 to $19.99, Disney+ from $6.99 to $18.99.
The tension. The bundle is being rebuilt by the companies that sold unbundling, and the arithmetic that made unbundling attractive has closed. Cable’s share of US TV viewing fell to 21.2% in January 2026 from 35.6% in January 2021 while streaming climbed to 47% from 28.9% — and on the way, Peacock’s ad tier went from $7.99 to $10.99 and the Disney+/Hulu/HBO Max bundle from $16.99 to $20. Ad minutes per hour on the top nine premium streamers rose 18% between January and August. The customer who cut the cord to pay less is being sold a package again, at a price that has been climbing for seven years.
Who’s moving. Amazon, on the five-service bundle, and outspending Netflix and YouTube combined on sports rights. Roku, on 30 storefront bundles. JustWatch, turning a guide into an AVOD service. Netflix, Amazon and YouTube, jointly, in Washington. Ampere Analysis and Guggenheim Securities, counting the ad loads. Mediobanca, whose Media and Entertainment Report put the top 25 global operators at 362.8 billion euros in 2025 turnover, up 2.8%, with streaming up 13.4% to 22.2% of revenues. Comcast and Paramount Skydance, weighing a wind-down of SkyShowtime. Channel 4, cutting around 340 roles, 28% of its workforce. Sony, pitching PS5 FAST channels on 40 to 50 million engaged users. Byron Allen’s Local Now, adding 111 Gray Media stations.
What the desk is watching. Whether a rebuilt bundle slows churn or just raises the price of leaving, and whether the DC alliance is about sports costs or about getting ahead of the regulation that follows them.
Europe’s broadcasters merge to survive Netflix, YouTube squeeze
Sky-ITV, RTL-Sky Deutschland, and MFE’s cross-border rollup mark a consolidation wave as linear viewing craters and production costs rise. Scale is now the only defense against Netflix, YouTube and Amazon’s global reach and balance sheets.
Disney+ super app plan draws analyst skepticism over ‘mediocrity’ risk
Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro wants Disney+ to add games, merch, and personalization to boost lifetime fan value and cut churn. Analysts warn bundling shopping and gaming into streaming risks clutter without proven revenue upside, citing Netflix’s stalled gaming push.
NFL rights renewals stall, but league still holds the leverage
Fox, CBS and the NFL remain without renewed deals as the season opens, but no streamer emerged to disrupt the market. That absence of a bidding war means legacy broadcasters keep their packages, with renewals likely 18-24 months out.
Home screens emerge as a prime CTV ad slot
eMarketer flags streaming home screens as a high-visibility, underused ad touchpoint before viewers even pick content. For CTV sellers, it’s a new inventory pitch; for buyers, another format to evaluate on attention and measurement.
NBCU-YouTube pact is really a fight for the CTV home screen
Analysts frame the expanded NBCU-YouTube distribution deal as less about content and more about who owns the “starting point” screen viewers open first. That entry-point position, not content libraries, is becoming the real prize in connected TV.
Netflix’s ‘Little House’ remake tops Nielsen streaming charts
Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie remake led Nielsen’s weekly streaming rankings with 1.18 billion minutes viewed. Acquired library titles like The Big Bang Theory and SpongeBob hit six-year highs, showing reruns still drive massive TV-set viewing.
Netflix nearly doubles Upfront ad commitments on sports strength
Netflix closed 2026 Upfront deals with every major agency group, nearly doubling ad commitments year over year. Live sports like NFL, MLB and WWE, plus new measurement tools, are driving the growth four years into its ad business.
‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4 gives Apple TV its biggest launch ever
The Season 4 premiere logged 296.6M U.S. viewing minutes over its launch weekend, Apple’s biggest debut yet. It proves a hit can pull an audience back after a multi-year hiatus and a supposed series finale.
Paramount’s David Ellison threatens to move company out of California
Ellison is dangling a relocation out of California to pressure AG Bonta into settling the antitrust suit blocking Paramount-Warner, with an October 1 deadline. Critics call it an obvious bluff that could embolden regulators rather than scare them off.
Tubi Media Group signs metadata deal with Gracenote
Tubi has struck a deal with Nielsen’s Gracenote for content metadata to power discovery and personalization. Better metadata means better recommendations, which matters for a free ad-supported service competing for watch time and ad dollars.
Disney+ and Hulu strike video podcast deal with iHeartMedia
Disney+ and Hulu will stream six iHeartPodcasts titles, including a new Jonas Brothers show, as video podcasting becomes a bigger part of streamers’ content mix. It’s another sign legacy platforms see podcast video as cheap, fan-driven programming worth licensing.
YouTube-Peacock deal is really about growing Premium, not fighting AI slop
Simon Owens pushes back on the theory that YouTube’s Peacock tie-up is slop insurance, arguing it’s really a Premium subscriber play. Live NFL games lure sign-ups, then YouTube funnels them into its own ecosystem of sports-adjacent creators and podcasts.
eMarketer charts ad-tier revenue growth across North American streaming
New eMarketer data tracks total ad-supported tier revenue for subscription streamers in North America through 2026. It quantifies how far the ad-tier pivot has scaled since 2018, giving operators a benchmark for the category’s growth.
Media War & Peace dissects the decline of traditional French TV
A video autopsy argues French broadcast TV is being killed off by streaming and shifting viewing habits. It’s a warning sign for legacy TV markets across Europe watching cord-cutting accelerate.
Netflix closes upfront, doubling ad commitments as World Cup inventory sells out
Netflix wrapped its 2026 upfront with ad commitments nearly double last year’s, on track for $3B in ad revenue. Women’s World Cup sponsorships are sold out, signaling advertisers now treat Netflix sports as premium, scarce inventory.
Earnings week shows media giants splitting into different strategies
Disney, WBD, Fox, Versant and News Corp are no longer chasing one streaming playbook — they’re betting on ecosystems, consolidation, sports, brands and AI licensing instead. Streaming is finally profitable but no longer the whole strategy.
Disney’s multi-app streaming strategy is finally getting consolidated
Disney is reportedly merging Hulu and Disney+ into one app, but the analyst argues ESPN should also fold in as a tile, not stay separate.
Disney+ retakes top spot in linear TV promo spend, fueled by Hulu’s ‘Furious’
Disney+ led July’s streamer linear TV promo reach at 13.62% per iSpot, retaking the top spot from June leader Paramount+ on the back of Hulu’s ‘Furious’ push.
Peacock’s YouTube partnership signals a truce between streaming and social
Simon Owens flags the Peacock/YouTube tie-up as a bigger deal than it looks, pointing to microdrama’s spammy growth as a parallel trend. Both point to distributors chasing wherever attention already lives instead of building walled gardens.
Streaming churn undercuts the ad plans built around subscriber loyalty
Rising subscriber churn across streaming services is making it harder for marketers to rely on stable, addressable audiences when planning campaigns. As viewers hop between services, buyers face more waste and less certainty that their target audience is even watching.
Streaming outgrows linear in upfront, but CPMs fall everywhere
Upfront ad commitments to streaming jumped 30% to $17.2B, while broadcast and cable fell 5.3% and 7.7%. CPMs dropped across all screens, showing sellers gained volume but lost pricing leverage.
Disney+ and Hulu bring video podcasts in-house via iHeartMedia deal
Disney is licensing six iHeartMedia video podcasts, including Pod Meets World and Jonas Brothers’ Hey Jonas!, for Disney+ and Hulu. It’s a low-cost way to add fan-community content and companion IP tie-ins to streaming libraries as podcast video grows.
Disney’s streaming turn takes center stage in earnings breakdown
A media analyst unpacks Disney’s Q2 earnings on Bloomberg TV, weighing streaming profitability against legacy TV decline. The framing matters as Disney’s playbook becomes the template other legacy media companies are judged against.
Tubi renews Gracenote deal for content data, programmatic ad IDs
Tubi is expanding its Gracenote partnership to power natural-language content search and test content IDs in programmatic bid streams. It’s a bet that better metadata drives both discovery and more targeted ad inventory as Tubi and Fox One scale.
RTL Group’s streaming arm offsets TV and Fremantle declines
RTL’s streaming revenue jumped 27.2% as traditional TV ads and Fremantle production fell. The Sky Deutschland merger makes RTL+ Germany’s third-largest streamer, part of a wider European broadcast consolidation wave.