Advertising continues to gain greater acceptance in the streaming era according to data from Hub. There’s been a gradual decline in the percentage of viewers who can’t tolerate ads from 17% in June ’21 to 12% in December ’25. In addition, 32% of viewers say they’d pay $4-5 more per month to go ad-free vs. 40% four years ago. 63% of 18-34 viewers strongly or somewhat agree that they don’t mind watching TV with ads as much as they used to. 

Elsewhere, Nielsen data shows sports continuing to lead in ad-supported viewing and a report from Tubi shows that for many, creator content is now on a par with premium TV. We discuss all the data.

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YouTube is now the world’s biggest media company, with an estimated $62 billion revenue in 2025, according to analysts MoffettNathanson. That would exceed Disney’s, though be slightly less than the combined Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery. We discuss key components on YouTube’s revenue, its competitive advantages and prospects going forward. 

Then we discuss the challenges viewers have navigating streaming services to find sports they’re looking for. New Hub Entertainment Research found that sports fragmentation caused frustration by 87% of viewers. Addressing this pain point are new features from ESPN, Roku and others helping ease things. 

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Paramount Skydance chairman and CEO David Ellison said this week that its streaming portfolio and Warner Bros. Discovery’s will be combined into one platform in the coming years. While details still need to be revealed, on this week’s episode Colin and I discuss the move’s opportunities and challenges. A critical decision will be the branding of the streaming services, and retaining the marquee HBO brand front and center. We also like the potential for bundling and technology integration.

Less clear would be how the combined services would be priced and how much new streaming audience share and revenue they’d generate. Another question is how fast services can wean the merged companies from reliance on legacy TV revenue. 

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First up this week we discuss Antenna’s new State of Subscriptions report, which shows a maturing SVOD market with single-digit subscriber growth in 2025. Spike days of acquisition continue to be concentrated, with Q4 becoming ever more important. Churn has also stabilized. We also discuss the increasingly important role of bundling.

As we recorded the news broke that Netflix has backed out of the bidding for WBD, so we briefly discuss that, in the context of the latest Nielsen The Gauge numbers and how TV viewing shares will change when the deal eventually closes. 

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