The E.W. Scripps Company and Gray Media yesterday announced a small but significant deal to swap television stations in five local markets, forming rare duopoly ownership in several places.

🧪 Why it matters: The deal serves as a critical litmus test for understanding the resolve of FCC chair Brendan Carr around relaxing local broadcast ownership rules, Scripps president and CEO Adam Symson told Axios.

Between the lines: Broadcasters have gleefully awaited a major deregulatory blitz from President Trump's FCC that will allow more business-saving mergers, acquisitions and deals.

• But some of those relaxed rules won't be realized until they're tested through deals like the one announced by Scripps and Gray.
• While the first Trump administration relaxed some policies, many of the largest restrictions are still in place, Axios has reported.
• Most notably, no single entity can own more than one of the four largest stations in any single market.

🤝 State of play: Local broadcasters that were forced to sit on the sidelines of M&A chatter during the Biden administration are now actively engaged in deal talks.

• "I think when it became clear that the administration was going to take a different approach to the regulatory environment — particularly chairman Carr — many of us in leadership in the broadcast business started to sit down across from each other in what I can only describe as a very complicated game of 3D chess, identifying ways that we could do deals that would improve both parties," Symson said.
• While Scripps isn't currently in a position to do a large-scale acquisition, other firms with healthy balance sheets, like Tegna, are almost certainly eyeing deals.
• Apollo Global Management, which is looking to sell its majority stake in Cox Media Group, is currently eyeing bids from multiple suitors and could possibly sell off different station groups separately, two sources told Axios.

Flashback: In 2023, FCC regulators stopped hedge fund Standard General's $5.4 billion merger to buy Tegna, citing a violation of broadcast ownership overlap rules.

• Carr and Republican FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington criticized that decision.
• "At this moment, the FCC should be working to encourage more of the investment necessary for these local broadcasters to innovate and thrive. It does the opposite today. After a protracted, nearly yearlong review, the Commission should be providing the parties with a decision on the merits — not an uncertain future," they wrote.

The big picture: While broadcasters are largely optimistic about dealmaking during the Trump era, there are concerns that politics could get in the way.

• Paramount's historic settlement with President Trump last week serves as a reminder of how much political risk comes from airing news programs.
• Carr has also threatened to block media mergers based on corporate DEI policies.

CNN last week quietly relaunched a new and improved version of its free, ad-supported (FAST) streaming channel called CNN Headlines, sources familiar with the effort told Axios.

💸 Why it matters: The service, which is completely separate from CNN's cross-platform streamer launching this fall, gives the company more inventory to sell video advertising to a wider array of marketers.

• It announced today that former Yahoo! Finance anchor Brad Smith will be an anchor specifically for live programming on the channel.

State of play: CNN Headlines has existed as a curated, breaking news video service for years. But the product was rudimentary, mostly running clips that had already aired on its cable network through an automated playlist.

• CNN recently beefed up CNN Headlines with more live and original programming that it can use to capture data about viewership habits and engagement.
• It started producing two hours of a new, live original show called "CNN Headline Express" at 7am and 11am ET, exclusively for the channel.

Zoom out: Over the past few years, NBC, CBS and other networks have experimented with their own FAST channels in the U.S., putting pressure on CNN to improve its offering domestically.

The big picture: The revamped CNN Headlines channel is part of a sweeping overhaul of CNN's streaming and video efforts.

• Besides its upcoming cross-platform streaming service, the company also plans to launch a new app called CNN Weather by the end of the year.

Zoom out: CNN's new product slate is meant to bring CNN into the digital era at a more modest upfront cost.

• CNN launched a subscription streaming app, CNN+, in 2022, only to have new owners Warner Bros. Discovery shutter it weeks after launch.
• WBD believed the network spent too much ($300 million) to launch the service without a quick enough plan for a return on investment.

👀 What to watch: CNN currently runs a curated live programming feed on Max, the streaming service owned by its parent company.

• WBD announced last month plans to split into two publicly traded companies, parting its television networks like CNN from its Max streaming business.

Disclosure: Sara Fischer is a paid contributor for CNN.

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The Atlantic is dramatically expanding its national security beat, editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg told Axios.

💬 Why it matters: The shift, while in the works for many months, is timely given Goldberg's blockbuster #SignalGate story in March.

• It also comes as several historic Middle East conflicts have come to a head during the Trump administration.

State of play: Goldberg announced today that The Atlantic hired Vivian Salama, a White House and national security reporter, from the Wall Street Journal. Salama formerly served as Iraq bureau chief for AP.

• She joins her former Journal colleague Nancy Youssef, who joined The Atlantic to cover national security this month.
• Over the past few months, The Atlantic has hired a slew of national security, tech and defense writers — including Missy Ryan, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Shane Harris — all from the Washington Post.
• "National security has been one of my top hiring focuses of 2025," Goldberg said. "In terms of my own bandwidth, it's taking up a lot of my time and energy, as it should."

Catch up quick: In addition to new talent, Goldberg believes The Atlantic's rich history gives it clout in this increased area of focus.

• "Since its founding in 1857, The Atlantic has excelled in covering matters of war, peace, and national defense," he wrote in a note to readers Tuesday.
• "Nathaniel Hawthorne served as the magazine's Civil War correspondent (Abraham Lincoln himself said that a favorable article in The Atlantic could save him 'half a dozen battles')."

What to watch: Goldberg said he sees an opportunity in owning coverage of the intersection between tech and national security.

• He pointed to the magazine's August issue as an example of that commitment.
• The magazine's cover story next month, "Eighty Years on the Edge," examines the past eight decades of life in the Atomic Age in light of the 80th anniversary of the Trinity test and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• The special edition will feature new pieces from The Atlantic's new writers, in addition to existing writers such as Tom Nichols and Ross Andersen.

The big picture: The Atlantic isn't the only magazine looking to expand its coverage of tech, defense and politics.

• Wired has tenaciously covered DOGE cuts, given its rich history covering technology and Elon Musk.

Google recently added a tool to its ad manager that allows publishers to collect micropayments from readers as its AI overviews erode referral traffic.

Why it matters: Micropayments have historically struggled to gain traction in the U.S., but Google's new solution — now made available within its ad tech suite to thousands of publishers — could provide the scale necessary to make micropayments possible.

💳 Zoom in: Google's Offerwall tool can serve short ads and surveys to readers in exchange for access to publishers' content.

• The tech giant said publishers can display custom options like newsletter sign-ups, single-visit micropayments or subscription enrollment.

📉 Between the lines: Publishers have been scrambling to offset traffic declines amid the rise of AI summaries in search results.

• While some have opted to strike lucrative licensing deals with AI platforms, others have said they will lean more heavily into non-traffic-based sponsorship opportunities, like events.

🔍 By the numbers: Traditional search traffic to publishers has declined more sharply than referrals from AI platforms have increased, Axios previously reported.

• Between February 2024 and February 2025, search referrals to the top 500 news sites declined by 64 million, while AI chatbot referrals increased by roughly 5.5 million, according to Similarweb data.
• As of February, OpenAI's ChatGPT was by far the top AI referrer, with around 27% of referrals, according to the data.
• Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince previously told Axios that the ratio of pages crawled to visitors referred has ballooned as consumers increasingly accept AI summaries and don't click through to the original sources.
• Publishers, particularly ones that have focused on search-optimized content, have been scrambling to address the "traffic apocalypse," per New York Magazine.

🏛️ The big picture: Accelerating adoption of AI has also increased business and regulatory pressures on tech giants.

• Google already faces two antitrust investigations in the U.S. over ads and search. It lost parts of the ad case, though Google plans to appeal. Both cases could yield divestitures that would have a meaningful impact on its business.
• In the U.K., publishers lodged a legal complaint over Google's AI Overviews, claiming the company is "stealing the work of British journalists."
• Google also faces an antitrust complaint from a group of publishers in the EU.

What to watch: Many AI companies, particularly OpenAI, have brokered licensing deals with publishers to avoid regulatory scrutiny, but Google has not.

• While Dotdash Meredith, one of the largest publishers in America, has a deal with OpenAI, CEO Neil Vogel said on a podcast last month that "Google doesn't seem to want to do that."
• Google has struck one major AI licensing deal — but with social media platform Reddit, not a traditional publisher.

G/O Media's sale of Kotaku last week marked the latest in a slew of gaming site divestitures as publishers struggle to monetize those assets.

🕹️ Why it matters: That dearth of ad dollars reflects a broader paradox: Gaming commands massive attention but still doesn't attract its fair share of ad investment.

The big picture: The sector is growing with Emarketer estimating U.S. 2025 gaming ad revenue will grow 5.7% to $8.6 billion.

• IAB's vice president of experience Zoe Soon shared that less than 5% of U.S. ad budgets goes to gaming — based off calculations of Emarketer data and initially released in a 2023 IAB study — at this year's PlayFronts, an annual event to educate marketers on ad opportunities in gaming.
• Per a new report from ad agency Dentsu, gaming commands a global audience of 3.4 billion and a 6% increase in time spent year over year.

Yes, but: A shift may be underway amid generational changes and maturing ad tech. Soon said outdated perceptions on who gamers are have held back spend.

Between the lines: Structural friction has also slowed momentum, with gaming not fitting into existing ad buckets, metrics not aligning and programmatic buying lagging behind other digital mediums.

💰 The intrigue: Gaming still makes a lot of money, and that might be why the industry has not been forced to figure out ads. Unlike traditional mediums, it's diversified across subscriptions, cloud services and hardware sales.

• Advertising is expected to grow its share as global video game revenue surpasses $300 billion in 2028, more than double its 2019 revenue, per PWC.
• But that diversification and expected growth hasn't been the case for gaming journalism, which is still dependent on display ads and vulnerable to changing consumption habits.

Zoom out: Media companies have shifted away from dedicated gaming coverage with Vox Media selling Polygon, the Washington Post shuttering Launcher and Vice Media ending Waypoint.

• At the same time, some publishers have leaned into gaming products, most notably the New York Times, but also BuzzFeed, Vulture and The Atlantic.

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President Trump on Friday suggested reports that he brokered a side deal with Paramount Global's future owners for millions of dollars' worth of public service announcements in support of conservative causes were accurate.

State of play: Paramount denies its settlement included PSAs "or anything related" to them, fueling confusion around who agreed to what exactly.

😬 Why it matters: Any sort of side deal guaranteeing PSAs in addition to the settlement would fuel angst within CBS' newsroom and the free press community, who believe that Paramount capitulated to President Trump in settling for the sake of getting its corporate merger done.

Catch up quick: CBS parent Paramount Global last week said it would pay $16 million to settle a voter interference lawsuit filed by Trump last October.

• The New York Post and Fox News had reported that Paramount's future owners at Skydance Media also agreed to set aside millions of dollars' worth of PSAs in support of conservative causes in the future.

What they're saying: Paramount denied its settlement involved PSAs.

• "Contrary to some news reports or media speculation, Paramount's settlement with President Trump does not include PSAs or anything related to PSAs."
• "Paramount has no knowledge of any promises or commitments made to President Trump other than those set forth in the settlement proposed by the mediator and accepted by the parties," it added. "The material terms of the settlement agreement in principle are those disclosed by us yesterday."

📢 Between the lines: A few days later, Trump told reporters, "We did a deal for about $16 million plus $16 million — or maybe more than that in advertising. So it's a combination of 16 plus 16 ... So it's like $32 to maybe $35 million. I think that's what they did."

• Skydance didn't comment.

The big picture: Paramount's settlement likely clears the way for it to merge with Skydance in a deal that's backed in part by private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners.

• Skydance is run by David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison.
• Speaking of the deal last week, Trump said, "Larry Ellison is a friend of mine. He's a great guy. I think he's the buyer."
• But he denied the assertion that Paramount's settlement was linked to its ability to gain regulatory approval for its merger.
• "No, it has nothing to do with that. This is totally separate," he said.

What to watch: A second 90-day extension of the Paramount/Skydance deal went into effect Monday, giving both parties more time to finalize the merger agreement with the FCC, per Deadline.