Weekly Roundup – November 4th, 2025
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ESPN, ABC Still Dark on YouTube TV As Cowboys ‘MNF’ Game Looms
"Monday Night Football—which includes one of the NFL’s biggest draws this week—is looming over the ongoing Disney–YouTube TV carriage dispute, which led to the entirety of ABC and ESPN’s weekend college football slate being blacked out for the No. 4 U.S. pay-TV distributor’s estimated 10 million subscribers.
More than 20 Disney channels, including all ESPN networks, have been unavailable on YouTube TV since midnight on Friday, after the two sides failed to reach a new deal."
Our Take: In a deeply ironic turn of events, Disney properties (ESPN, ABC) have gone dark on YouTube TV as result of a carriage dispute. The original impasse between Charter/Spectrum and Disney a few years ago led to a mass exodus of sports fans (MNF and SEC audiences in particular) from cable to streamers like YouTube TV. While there was a noticeable shift towards streaming a few years ago, cord cutting has actually slowed considerably. Perhaps symbolic of a micro backlash to streaming, Cable subscribers have been rewarded for their loyalty, while many who made the switch to streaming are left scratching their heads as to why they made the change in the first place. Or, with my tin-foil hat on, Disney deliberately manufactured the conditions of this dispute with YouTube TV, to drive streaming audiences away from YouTube TV to its all-in-one sports streaming platform (aptly named ‘ESPN’).
How Americans’ trust in information from news organizations and social media sites has changed over time
"Americans’ trust in information from national and local news organizations has declined after a slight increase earlier this year, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The decline has occurred in both major political parties and across all age groups.
Overall, 56% of U.S. adults now say they have a lot of or some trust in the information they get from national news organizations – down 11 percentage points since March 2025 and 20 points since we first asked this question in 2016. The share of Americans who have at least some trust in information from local news organizations remains higher (70%), although it has also dropped – from 80% in March and 82% in 2016."
Our Take: While all news sources have taken a hit with regards to their credibility among surveyed news audiences, local news retains the highest level of trustworthiness in the eyes of the news-minded public. The scattershot nature of 24/7 national news with its conflicting accounts depending on the source has perhaps soured audiences of all political stripes on the credibility of what they are reading/watching. This trend is evident even among Democrats, who have historically placed higher levels of trust in institutional national news sources. Local news binds audiences to a sense of place and community. We, at Crowd React Media, have speculated that a resurgence of local media is on the cards.
The Future of Advertising Is AI Generated Ads That Are Directly Personalized to You
"Do you and your human family have interest in sharing an exciting IRL experience supporting your [team of choice] with other human fans at The Big Game? In that case, don the chosen color of your [team of choice] and head to the local [iconic stadium]; Ticketmaster has exciting ticket deals, and soon you and your human family can look as happy and excited as these virtual avatars:
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Ticketmaster's personalized AI slop ads are a glimpse at the future of social media advertising, a harbinger of system that Mark Zuckerberg described last week in a Meta earnings call. This future is one where AI is used both for ad targeting and for ad generation; eventually ads are going to be hyperpersonalized to individual users, further siloing the social media experience: "Advertisers are increasingly just going to be able to give us a business objective and give us a credit card or bank account, and have the AI system basically figure out everything else that’s necessary, including generating video or different types of creative that might resonate with different people that are personalized in different ways, finding who the right customers are,” Zuckerberg said."
Our Take: The danger here, and we’ve already observed this in social media more generally, is that people will increasingly opt-out of the digital realm. The amount of slop advertising and content clogging up social media feeds is simply leading to people tuning out. There was the idea that internet was mostly user generated and that’s why people hang out there. But now, any cursory glance at a TikTok feed will disown you of that illusion. The bots and the slop are taking over and the higher-ups at companies seem to be all-in on this development. People are realizing they can put down their devices and do something else entirely. And perhaps corporations are relying on datasets too close to pandemic times (where everyone was online, all the time) to make an accurate judgment of future consumption habits. A few years on from the pandemic, and data is increasingly pointing to media consumption stabilizing to pre-pandemic levels. There are murmurs of a bubble with AI for a reason. Making everything mostly AI-generated just seems like a bad idea.
Universal Music Logs Slower Subscriptions and Streaming Growth
"Revenue from subscriptions and streaming grew 6.6%, slightly below analysts’ forecast.
Universal Music Group posted higher revenue for the third quarter as physical sales jumped, while growth in subscriptions and streaming services decelerated.
The record label behind Taylor Swift reported revenue of 3.02 billion euros ($3.50 billion) for the three months through September, up more than 10% on year at constant currency. Analysts had forecast revenue of 2.92 billion euros, according to consensus estimates by Visible Alpha."
Our Take: It used to be trendy and vaguely hip to gravitate towards physical media, but it’s not really a trend anymore and more a generalized reaction to digital media oversaturation. Not everyone is becoming a luddite, but there is an emergent restraint in overall digital media diets.
