Weekly Roundup – April 8th, 2025
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Advertisers pull back from TikTok, boost Meta amid ban uncertainty
"Already facing a sale or ban order, TikTok faced additional pressure in Q1 as major brands scaled back advertising spending and shifted budgets to Meta, according to new data.
The pullback came due to uncertainty about the platform’s future in the U.S.
President Trump once again extended TikTok’s ban by 75 days on Friday."
Our Take: As soon as it's set in stone that TikTok isn't going anywhere, expect ad-spend on the video sharing site to strongly rebound. For the time being, a looming ban doesn't keep the platform from being deeply profitable. The only thing to dethrone TikTok would be if Meta's short-form video offerings can replicate ByteDance's content-suggestion algorithms.
Why Sports Leagues Are Betting Big on Streaming's Reach
"One of the biggest sports media stories coming out of the NFL owners meetings is the league announcing a Christmas Day tripleheader. Just as important is who will be showing the games: Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Only four years after Prime scored the first exclusive NFL game package with Thursday Night Football, the league is turning to two giant streamers, not linear TV networks, to complete its attempted yuletide takeover from the rival NBA. Despite Netflix passing on a chance to bid for the NFL Draft, it’s also likely the Shield will add a giant streamer like Google/YouTube to its coverage starting in 2026.
It wasn’t that long ago that leagues like the NFL and NBA viewed streaming more as a futures bet. Given the disparity in reach versus linear broadcast and cable TV networks, streaming was seen as the future, not the present. So leagues experimented with live games on streaming platforms to see if they could attract elusive younger viewers—and to prepare for the day when streaming overtook traditional TV."
Our Take: It's been official for well over two years now. The majority of sports fans are streaming sports content more than they are watching sports content on cable/satellite. It might be helpful to think of today's streamers like Netflix and Amazon as the CBS, NBC, and ABC of the 1960s, to understand their dominance and reach.
What is Suno? The controversial AI music generator explained
"Suno is an AI-powered music generator that allows you to create full-length songs simply by entering a text prompt. You can switch between Simple mode, which generates a song with or without lyrics depending on your preference, and Custom mode, which allows you to add your own lyrics and audio and exclude any unwanted styles from your track.
Available on web, iOS and the recently launched Android app, Suno also allows you to discover new songs and genres from fellow creators, and easily share your own tracks too. "
Our Take: Some chart-topping artists are pretty formulaic and it is not surprising that AI tools can easily mimic their output, to the point where the AI is indistinguishable from the real thing. No wonder the industry is having an existential crisis. AI has been a go-to tool in the studio with music producers using it extensively in the mixing and mastering process. Also, producers and label executives have been using artificial intelligence to gauge a song's 'hit potential' (the likelihood of it becoming a hit song via AI analysis of melody, harmony, beats-per-minute, etc.). This is essentially to say that AI has been heavily involved in music creation for at least a decade.
BlueSky's Quest To Build Nontoxic Social Media
"Since launching, in early 2023, Bluesky had positioned itself as a refuge from X, the site formerly known as Twitter. For nearly two decades, Twitter had been considered the internet’s town square, chaotic and often rancorous but informative and diversely discursive. Then, after the tech billionaire turned Trump backer Elon Musk acquired the platform, in October of 2022, it devolved into a circus of right-wing conspiracy theories. Liberals began fleeing, and Bluesky in turn accumulated more than ten million users by the fall of 2024, making it one of the fastest-growing social networks. But the post-election influx proved to be of a different order, turning Bluesky into what one tech blogger compared to a Macy’s at the start of Black Friday sales."
Our Take: A feature of our current media environment is that a politically fractured populace inhabits social media platforms that parrot and reinforce one's preexisting attitudes and beliefs. Democrats and left-wing people seem to have set up shop on BlueSky, while X and TruthSocial seem to be the home of right-leaning people.
Most Americans Say They Are Tuned In to News About the Trump Administration
"The second Trump administration has started with a rapid succession of executive orders and policy changes, including tariffs, cuts to government agencies and more. Americans are paying attention, but Democrats and Republicans give different reasons for why they are tuning in, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted in late February and early March.
As the president and his allies move to reshape the federal government and U.S. foreign policy, about seven-in-ten U.S. adults say they have been following news about the actions and initiatives of the Trump administration very (31%) or fairly (40%) closely.
...
Four-in-ten Americans say they’re now paying more attention to political news than they were before Trump took office, while just 10% say they are paying less attention."
Our Take: Remember all the opinion polling that told you that people were tuning out the news after the 2024 election? Well, they are all tuning in again, as Season 2 of 'The Trump Admin' has ramped up. Biden's presidency was like a spinoff series that wasn't as popular with audiences.
