Linear TV is grabbing attention once again.
This time as the broadcast and streaming media worlds are being tied together by major M&A deals. There’s the recent news of Fox’s $22 billion acquisition of Roku and Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery (will it be PWBD? Or another rebrand? TV Land waits on tenterhooks), which was approved by the Justice Department’s antitrust group.
Also this week on the Big Story podcast, our Convergent TV Editor Alyssa Boyle reports from the ground in Denver, where she’s attending the StreamTV show.
And while the macro-news is all about the entertainment studio dealmaking, Alyssa says the word from StreamTV is more about what’s new in CTV. Highlights include emerging formats and placements on streaming app homescreens, smart TV sets, FAST channels and more in which to serve ads (Pause Ads, anyone?).
She also notes that a motif from the StreamTV conference has been discussion of TV operating systems. Advertisers and streaming media companies are wising up when it comes to the valuable data available to the TV OS owner. The Trade Desk has reps pushing Ventura, its TV OS that’s looking for a new flagship client (it was going to be Sonos but … womp womp).
Then Associate Editor Victoria McNally gives the lowdown on the major mergers – Fox-Roku and Paramount-WBD – that upended her schedule this week.
Fox had been left behind by major players like Disney, Netflix and Amazon, in terms of the content library. But with recent Fox acquisitions? Tubi and Roku, which brings the Roku Channel as a free, ad-supported video-on-demand platform, Fox now owns the two biggest on-ramps to free TV content.
Whether advertisers approve the deal for de-fragmenting the CTV landscape into fewer platforms and dashboards or decry the deal for messing with Roku’s independent status; that remains to be seen.
