streaming

The company to become the latest streamer to lift fees; Disney weighs launching a new live-sports tier abroad.

Only Murders in the Building has been renewed for a fourth season by Hulu. Now that the WGA strike is over, the writers room is expected to reconvene shortly. The Season 3 premiere of Murders had the most viewers of any scripted Hulu Original in 2023.

Satellite distributor DirecTV has let executives at Warner Bros. Discovery know via letter that its executives believe the similarities between the two products violate the carriage contract between the two companies, according to a person familiar with the matter. The new CNN streaming service, CNN Max, just launched last week and includes many of programs that run on linear CNN, including CNN This Morning, The Lead With Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper 360.

EP Darrell Olsen reveals what it’s really like behind the scenes of Max’s popular all-nude dating show, and how its producers are reacting to the longtime U.K. sensation causing an uproar (both positive and negative) in the States.

A new study suggests that streaming television is starting to look a lot like old-fashioned television, with viewers flipping apps (instead of channels) and watching commercials. The study, The State of Modern TV Viewership, conducted by Vevo and Publicis Media, found that more than 50% of millennial and Gen X viewers watch free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels monthly, with 89% of viewers saying they think FAST delivers great value.

The end of the writers’ strike marks a new era. Studios and streamers are likely to order fewer TV shows. Consolidation could follow.

The executive has been a driving force behind the launch of titles including Wedding Season and Extraordinary.

AMC Networks said it has begun rolling out an ad-supported version of its AMC Plus streaming service with a price tag of $4.99 a month. The original ad-free version of AMC Plus costs $8.99. Consumers can buy the the ad-supported version of AMC Plus for $83.88 annually, saving about 20%. Pictured: The Walking Dead: Dead City, streaming on AMC Plus.

CNN Max, which debuted Wednesday, has been touted as a way to get news giant’s content out to a increasing number of cord-cutters and consumers who no longer view cable as their primary way to get video entertainment and information. And parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, in the belief, perhaps, that a streaming subscription is just as good as one to a cable or satellite service, is making the bulk of its linear lineup available to the broadband crowd.

YouTube will end its Premium Lite subscription tier on Oct. 25. Users paying for the Premium Lite subscription tier will be required to subscribe to the platform’s Premium tier if they want to continue an ad-free video-watching experience on the app.

Massive, internally-produced originals such as Lord of the Rings should sit alongside acquired content and aggregated channels and content to drive usage of the Prime Video platform, says Kelly Day, VP of international at Amazon. That spin on aggregation echoes the “flywheel effect” that Amazon executives regularly refer to, meaning the way that content and e-commerce businesses drive each other.

For the love of Maddie Hayes, look what’s coming to Hulu: For the very first time, all 67 episodes of Moonlighting will be available to stream on the platform beginning Oct. 10. Hulu promises that each episode of the 1980s comedy starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd has been remastered in HD from the original film source. It even will feature the original Grammy-nominated title track recording from Al Jarreau.

The video streaming industry has some new champions in Washington. Former House Energy & Commerce Committee chair Fred Upton, a Republican, and former FCC Chair Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat, will be senior advisers to the newly minted Streaming Innovation Alliance, which will advocate for over-the-top video providers in Washington. Among the new group’s backers are Max, Netflix, Peacock, Paramount Plus, BET Plus, Pluto TV and The Walt Disney Co. The Motion Picture Association played a major role in putting together the alliance.

The streaming news network is now available on more than 500 Gray Television station websites, connected TV apps and mobile apps.

The Parents Television & Media Council calls on the streamer to pull the racy U.K. reality show Naked Attraction import from its lineup. Pictured: Anna Richardson, Naked Attraction host.

One of the U.K.’s most infamous dating shows was quietly added to the Max streaming service last week. The streamer has imported six seasons of Naked Attraction, a game show that promises to “start where a good date often ends — naked.” In each episode, a single “chooser” critiques and eliminates six potential dates standing on a stage by scrutinizing their fully nude bodies, which are gradually revealed one part at a time (faces are revealed last). When only two potential dates remain, the chooser strips out of their own clothes too, giving the remaining two contestants the opportunity to critique them. The final couple then go out on a date, with their clothes on.

Amazon Prime Video, one of the last mainstream streaming services to eschew the injection of regular commercial breaks into its movies and shows, plans to start letting them run early next year. Amazon follows a host of other streaming hubs — including Disney+, Netflix, and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max — that also offer ad-supported tiers, a move that suggests the world of streaming may just eventually mirror the world of traditional television in the not-too-distant future.

Included are 11 NBC local news channels, six regional and national Telemundo channels and NBC entertainment channels American Crimes and NBC LX Home.

Disney’s standoff with Charter shows that the carriage fees for core channels (like ESPN) may keep rising, but the padding of the bundle (like Freeform) is now in the past.

Paramount+ has finally found a home in Japan. Paramount revealed Wednesday that the streaming service and its library will launch in the Japan market on Dec. 1 as a no-additional-cost addition to the on-demand services of local operators J:COM and Wowow. J:COM is one of Japan’s top cable television operators and broadband internet providers, while Wowow is the longstanding leading premium pay channel in the market.

Making good on years of promises by the corporate overseers of Turner Sports, Warner Bros. Discovery is adding a live sports tier to Max. The streaming add-on, which will carry the Bleacher Report brand now that the Turner name has faded away, will launch Oct. 5 at $10 a month. No charge will be assessed to existing Max subscribers until next Feb. 29. Unlike the long-defunct streaming service B/R Live, which was a stand-alone, the new offering will only be available as part of a Max subscription.

Linear TV viewership made somewhat of a comeback in August after dropping to an all-time low in July, Nielsen reported in its latest monthly state of TV report. Combined viewing for broadcast and cable managed to eke back to 50.6% of total TV usage, with broadcast recording its first gain since January. Broadcast accounted for 20.4% of TV usage, which is a 1.4% gain month-over-month. As for cable, it recorded the largest monthly category across all three categories, ballooning 1.7%. Meanwhile streaming saw a bit of a decline to 38.3% but still remained the largest share of television for the month.

Cox Media Group’s NeighborhoodTV project in Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., aims to bring viewers hyperlocal content that harkens back to TV’s earlier, less rigidly structured days.

Picket signs have lined the gates of Hollywood’s studios for nearly five months, as the industry’s writers and actors rally for AI protections, better wages and a cut of streaming profits. The problem is streaming isn’t yet profitable for many studios. While many of Hollywood’s biggest studios are publicly traded and must share quarterly financial reports, there are no rules about providing streaming-viewership data. This lack of transparency has made recent contract negotiations between studios and the industry’s writers and actors especially contentious.

The British broadcasters are collaborating on a landmark free TV service that will deliver live television over broadband. Freely is being organized by Everyone TV, the organization that runs Freeview in the U.K. and is jointly owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.