Weekly Roundup – February 10th, 2025

"Disney chief executive Bob Iger said the conglomerate plans to offer ESPN as part of “skinnier bundles” in the wake of the collapse of the Venu Sports joint-venture earlier this year.
Speaking on an earnings call earlier this week, Iger stated that Venu became “redundant” to Disney, with the introduction of more sports-focused offerings from rival distributors. The streaming venture, which was formed with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) and Fox, was shuttered due to legal challenges, with Disney instead merging its Hulu + Live TV business with Fubo.
“Look what essentially happened is, after the decision was made and we started to implement the launch of Venu, the emergence of these skinnier bundles surfaced, and Venu basically looked redundant to us,” Iger said. “And so this was a great opportunity for us to make ESPN available on multiple skinny bundles."

"The music industry’s effort to secure a performance rights fee to over-the-air radio music use has returned to Congress. The American Music Fairness Act was reintroduced Friday (Jan. 31). If passed, it would require broadcast radio broadcasters to pay royalties for music use. Similar to legislation proposed in the prior session, the bill also includes exemptions for some small broadcasters."

"...And in his social media, there’s an emergent class consciousness that suggests that he understands that the people who participate in his videos, and presumably the people at home watching them, are individuals with wants and needs — and that he may be the only person capable of connecting them with resources.
...
Money has been weighing on him. He posted about wanting to partner with a billionaire to put together an offer to buy TikTok, and not long after, posted about wanting to find a philanthropically-inclined wealthy person to help with a charity video: “Dear ultra rich people on X, I’ve been working on a video where we feed people in need globally and if any of you wouldn’t mind donating a million dollars to help us feed more people that’d mean the world to me!”
MrBeast was instead presented with a valuable lesson on the true cost of a dollar, posting later that day, “It is funny that when I say I’m buying TT I get unfathomable amount of messages from the ultra wealthy but when I fund raise it’s crickets.” Turns out the whole world is “Beast Games,” and behind almost every dollar is someone holding it tight."

"Newsrooms have seen steep declines in traffic from Facebook and Twitter as platforms build higher walls to keep users in-app by deprioritizing news and external links. Search has remained “remarkably consistent” even as social has declined and direct traffic has faded, so news organizations are keeping wary eyes on seismic changes in search and the rise of answer-giving tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude."

"Stephen A. Smith, who works with Russo on Wednesday editions of First Take on ESPN, appeared on Mad Dog Unleashed as a guest and was surrounded by other media members capturing content spread across various distribution hubs.
“Well, I think radio’s not going to keep pace,” Smith said. “I think the digital stratosphere is something to be fully cognizant and aware of. I think that the mistake the audio business is making is that there’s not a video component. People don’t care about listening to radio outside of their cars. They want to listen to it while they’re driving, but once they’re stationery and they’re sitting still, they want to watch.”"