Weekly Roundup – March 24th, 2026

"CBS News will end its nearly 100-year-old radio news service and cut more jobs as part of a broader restructuring led by Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, according to internal memos sent to staff on Friday and reviewed by POLITICO.
Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski told staff the network will shutter its radio news service and eliminate all positions tied to it.
The move comes alongside broader layoffs across CBS News, outlined in a separate memo sent Friday, with cuts extending beyond the radio division.
“It’s no secret that the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it,” Weiss and Cibrowski wrote in the separate memo. “That means some parts of our newsroom must get smaller to make room for the things we must build to remain competitive,” pointing to “new audiences … in new places.”"

"On Friday, Jake Tapper ditched the CNN studio for the first hour of “The Lead,” instead anchoring from his poorly-lit office, taking the opportunity to walk viewers through his extensive collection of presidential campaign posters. “So you're probably wondering what's going on,” Tapper said, explaining that the venue change was a network “experiment.”
“We thought we would bring you into the space where me and my team do our actual journalism and plan the show every day,” Tapper continued. “So here we are giving it a shot.”
As cable news networks scramble to adapt to a saturated media ecosystem increasingly dominated by YouTube, podcasts, and independent creators, experimentation with format and digital offerings has become more common. In the process, traditional television networks are beginning to borrow from those platforms in a bid to maintain relevance in a digital-first future. But as those efforts accelerate, they are also exposing the awkwardness of that experimentation, appearing to pander to a younger audience that seemingly has little interest in what they’re offering, and raising questions about whether those strategies actually will yield any benefits."

"A North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to defrauding music streaming platforms and his fellow musicians out of millions in royalties by flooding the services with thousands of AI-generated songs – and using automated “bots” to artificially boost the number of listens into the billions.
As part of a deal with federal prosecutors in New York’s southern district, 52-year-old Michael Smith pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The case against the Cornelius, North Carolina, resident is one of the first successful prosecutions of AI-related fraud in the music business, which is being hammered by fake music that threatens to swamp streaming services and deprive earnings from human musicians and copyright holders.
“Michael Smith generated thousands of fake songs using artificial intelligence and then streamed those fake songs billions of times,” US attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement."

"Sports bar owner Quinn Allen testified before Ohio state senators last month on a challenge his business faces. Not inflation. Or chicken wing shortages.
He was there to talk about Peacock.
At Allen’s Columbus-area establishments, showing Ohio State football games can boost sales by up to $20,000, he told lawmakers. But when Buckeyes games moved to streaming under the Big Ten’s new media rights deals, Allen was caught off-guard.
Sports-rights fragmentation frustrates plenty of fans. Still, in most cases, a Google search (and possibly a new subscription) can get a viewer back to the action. Streaming sports in commercial settings, however, is often far more complicated.
“It’s a very unreliable system, and it’s hard to feel like you’re not getting scammed,” Allen testified.
...
William O’Sullivan, the owner of O’Briens Irish Pub in Santa Monica, Calif., credits his years of experience—and previous time working for a phone company back in Ireland—with helping him navigate the current morass. Ahead of Ireland’s March 26 World Cup Qualifier, O’Sullivan tracked down the intermediary who was able to sell him (for more than $1,000) access to a professional Fubo account that will let him legally stream the game."