Streaming is replacing cable by becoming cable — without the profits.

• Why it matters: The cable industry churned out profits like clockwork, until it didn't, but streaming hasn't yet shown the same financial viability, Axios' Tim Baysinger writes.

State of play: The deals that used to be the bedrock of legacy TV keep moving to the streamers.

• Amazon, which is closing in on a major NBA deal, is setting itself up to be the streaming world's version of ESPN. Even Netflix has an NFL deal.
• At the same time, legacy media companies that have launched streaming services are bundling their services together in moves that mimic the cable TV bundles.
• Comcast is giving its customers a discounted bundle that includes Peacock, Netflix and Apple TV+. This summer, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery will offer Disney+, Hulu and Max in one offering.

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Israel today rescued four hostages who were taken by Hamas from the Nova music festival during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, Axios' Barak Ravid reports.

• It was the largest rescue operation since the start of the war, the Israeli military said. The hostages are in good health.

IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the operation took place in daylight, and that Israeli forces exchanged fire with the Hamas militants who were holding the hostages.

Israel rescued Noa Argamani, 25, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40, from a refugee camp in central Gaza.

• Argamani and Jan were attending the festival when they were taken. Kozlov and Ziv were working as security officers, BBC reports.

Argamani became one of the faces of the hostage crisis when footage of her abduction by two men on a motorbike emerged online, Reuters notes.

• In the footage, a distraught Argamani shouts: "Don't kill me!" After the rescue, new footage shows Argamani reuniting with her father.

After eight months of war, 116 of the around 250 hostages abducted by militants are left in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. At least 40 have been declared dead.

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President Biden is dispatching his Cabinet members to help him sell his three signature legislative accomplishments and raise money in swing states, Axios' Hans Nichols reports.

• Why it matters: It's one of the advantages of incumbency as Biden tries to harness the prestige and power of the presidency to make his case for a second term — and fund that effort.

The moonlighting secretaries — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo are particularly active — give donors what many desperately crave: An inside view of how Biden's team plans to prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House.

👀 The intrigue: The fundraisers also are an opportunity for Buttigieg and Raimondo to get better acquainted with donors who have deep pockets, should the secretaries have their eyes on any future bids for president.

• Raimondo sticks to the Acela corridor, headlining events in Washington and New York.
• Buttigieg is crisscrossing the country, with face-to-face donor events in Las Vegas, Seattle, St. Petersburg, Fla., Miami, Kansas City and Dallas.

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High schoolers from New York, New Jersey and New England are picking the South's big state schools over expensive liberal arts colleges in the North.

• Why it matters: Southern schools are hot for their cheaper tuition, warmer weather, Greek life, and football fandoms.

Zoom in: Applications to Southern colleges have jumped 50% since 2019, Bloomberg reports from Common Application data.

• Compare that to a less than 30% rise in New England and Mid-Atlantic schools.

🐅 Case in point: Clemson and Louisiana State have twice as many students from New York and New Jersey as they did a decade ago.

Your next apartment could be inside an old school.

• Shuttered schools are now popular sites for apartments, accounting for 3% of U.S. apartment conversions in 2023, Axios' Sami Sparber and Simran Parwani write.
• Former offices and hotels dominate the national conversion trend, making up 28% and 36% of newly completed projects, according to a RentCafe analysis.

Zoom in: School buildings can offer more of the natural light renters want.

• Younger renters covet the tall ceilings, windows and antique cabinets that come with living in a Gilded Age school, says Nick Vittore, a developer of three such projects in Chicago in recent years.

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Gene editing's next chapter will be focused on tackling cancers and uncovering new details about aging, top scientists in the field said this week.

• The potential of CRISPR gene-editing technology was realized six months ago, when the Food and Drug Administration approved the first therapy that uses the system to treat sickle-cell anemia, Axios managing editor Alison Snyder reports.

👀 What we're watching: Scientists now are setting their sights on more complex molecular targets and trying to develop therapies for cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

• The next unsolved riddle for gene editing is to answer fundamental questions about aging, said Omar Abudayyeh, a Harvard Medical School professor.

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Washington Post publisher and CEO Will Lewis — facing internal scrutiny for reported involvement in coverage about himself, plus his handling of a major restructuring — emailed his staff last night to say it's "time for some humility from me":

• "I need to improve how well I listen and how well I communicate so that we all agree more clearly where urgent improvements are needed and why."

Why it matters: The weeklong saga, which began with the abrupt departure of Post executive editor Sally Buzbee on Sunday night, revealed stark differences in the journalistic cultures of the U.S. and Lewis' native Britain. (He's knighted, so is technically Sir William.)

"Honesty and directness, politely and respectfully done," Lewis wrote. "That is what I aspire to."

"I know trust has been lost because of scars from the past and the back-and-forth from this week. Let's leave those behind and start presuming the best of intent. If we do that, you will see where we are going in a different light. We don't have to agree about everything but we all are dedicated to building the future of The Post."

💨 Catch me up: Lewis faced a newsroom revolt after a Wednesday report by the N.Y. Times that he clashed with Buzbee over the paper's coverage of his involvement in a long-running British phone-hacking lawsuit.

• Then NPR's media correspondent, David Folkenflik, reported that Lewis, after being named to head the Post but before taking over, "repeatedly — and heatedly — offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post's future, as long as I dropped" a story about Lewis' role in the hacking case. (Lewis denies impropriety.)

🥊 Matt Murray, the paper's executive editor through Election Day, sent a "Dear All" email late yesterday that began: "It's been a week. But it's also been a week of stellar journalism at The Washington Post."

• He then linked to 21 of the paper's hits from the week.

🔮 What's next: Lewis will hold 10 small-group "Say It Sessions" with staff next week (eight in-person in the D.C. office and two virtual), beginning Monday at 11 a.m.

William Anders — the Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic "Earthrise" photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968 — was killed yesterday when the plane he was piloting solo plummeted into waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90.

• Anders has said the photo was his most significant contribution to the space program along with making sure the Apollo 8 command module and service module worked, AP reports.

🖼️ The big picture: The photo, the first color image of Earth from space, is one of the most important photos in modern history for the way it changed how humans viewed the planet.

• The photo is credited with sparking the global environmental movement for showing how delicate and isolated Earth appeared from space.

💬 "[H]ere was this orb looking like a Christmas tree ornament," Anders said during a 1997 oral-history interview, "very fragile, not [an infinite] expanse [of] granite … [and seemingly of] a physical insignificance. And yet it was our home."