With the exception of Comcast's Peacock, most major streamers in the U.S. have starting to turn a steady profit, which means the streaming wars have officially entered a new era of maturity.

Why it matters: To expand margins and compete with Netflix, traditional media companies are looking to streamline their services and bundle them.

🤝 State of play: I asked Paramount CEO David Ellison last Thursday after Skydance Media's deal to merge with Paramount closed whether the company is still planning a joint venture to grow its streaming arm.

• Ellison said the company is still eyeing possible partnerships, but the company's goal now is to grow and scale its three streaming services — Paramount+, Pluto TV and BET+ — on the tech side, "consolidating the platforms into one unified stack."

Zoom out: The comments came the day after Disney told investors that it plans to shutter the stand-alone Hulu app and integrate it into its Disney+ streaming service.

• The new, unified Disney+ and Hulu app, available in 2026, will allow consumers to buy subscriptions to the two services separately, but they will be accessed through the same interface.
• CEO Bob Iger said the streamlined experience — which follows the steady unification of Disney's ad tech stack across all of its streaming services — will help lower subscriber churn.
• Disney already phased out Hotstar, its India streamer, in the U.S. several years ago to streamline and strengthen its core U.S. services. Last year, it introduced a streaming bundle with Warner Bros. Discovery that executives have lauded as a success.

Between the lines: Disney's ESPN is also looking to bundle its streaming service with other streamers.

• 🏈 Last week, ESPN acquired the NFL Network and the rights to other NFL-owned media assets to include as part of its upcoming streaming service launching this month.
• 🦊 Yesterday, Disney said it would bundle that service with Fox One, the sports, news and entertainment streamer coming soon from Fox.
• ❌ That bundle follows the ill-fated joint streaming venture between ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery that was killed due to regulatory concerns earlier this year.

By the numbers: There are at least 46 bundles among 11 of the major streaming services available in the U.S., according to an Axios analysis from February.

• WBD's Max and Starz both have more bundled offerings in the U.S. than any other service — 11 times as many as Paramount+, nearly triple Netflix and twice Peacock.

The big picture: While traditional entertainment giants eye more ways to team up, Netflix — Wall Street's streaming king — has looked to partner with telecom giants like Verizon, Xfinity, T-Mobile and Dish instead.

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The global share of demand for adult animated TV series has been consistently trending upward over the past five years, according to new data from Parrot Analytics.

Why it matters: "South Park's" massive $1.5 billion streaming deal with Paramount shows how the genre can drive eyeballs in a competitive streaming landscape.

🍔 By the numbers: In mid-2020, adult animated series — like "Bob's Burgers," "Futurama," "Big Mouth" and "King of the Hill" — made up less than 2% of global streaming demand, per Parrot.

• Today, that figure is closer to 3%.

Zoom out: Adult animation has a unique staying power that has proven critical for streamers looking to boost margins and reduce subscriber churn.

• 💰 Parrot estimates "King of the Hill" has delivered nearly $100 million in streaming revenue on Hulu since 2020, even though the original series finale aired in 2009.
• 🔄 That revenue is likely to grow now with the "King of the Hill" reboot, debuting its first season last week. The 2023 "Futurama" reboot, Parrot predicts, brought in roughly $120 million for Hulu.

Zoom out: Overall, Parrot estimates that adult animated series drove more than $1.7 billion in revenue across Netflix, Disney+, Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Prime Video last year in North America.

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The White House Wire and President Trump's Truth Social account avoided linking and citing the Wall Street Journal last month after WSJ's blockbuster report on the president's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Why it matters: By comparison, the White House and Trump continue to cite Fox News more than any other outlet, according to an analysis from The Righting and Axios.

📎 State of play: The news headlines outlet run by the White House didn't link once to the Journal in its July newsletters, after referencing it twice in June, according to an analysis by The Righting, a conservative media-tracking outlet authored by Howard Polskin.

• Trump didn't cite any of WSJ's journalism on his Truth Social account last month, despite citing nearly every other mainstream news outlet, including USA Today, Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC, CBS News and many others, per an Axios analysis.
• While he didn't cite the New York Times on his Truth Social account last month, the White House Wire linked out to the outlet twice in its email newsletters.

📰 Zoom in: In June — before the Journal published its now infamous Epstein report on July 17 — Trump cited the outlet once on his Truth Social account, posting a picture of a flattering headline from the paper's print edition.

⚖️ Reality check: The White House and the president aren't typically averse to cite outlets he's in legal battles with or outlets he doesn't like.

• Trump continued to cite CBS News and the Associated Press earlier this year, amid lawsuits with both outlets. He continued to cite flattering polls or headlines from CBS News and ABC News last month.

👀 The bottom line: Trump and the White House both rely heavily on coverage from mainstream outlets to promote their agenda. Typically, fights with those outlets don't preclude them from citing their coverage, when flattering, but the Journal story seems to have hit a nerve.

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Paramount Global's surprise announcement yesterday that it acquired the U.S. rights to UFC for $7.7 billion over seven years is seen by Wall Street as a coup for its new CEO David Ellison.

🏔️ Why it matters: The deal, which starts next year, was announced less than a week after Paramount completed its long-awaited merger with Ellison's Skydance Media.

• It took Skydance and Paramount executives months of controversial wrangling to get regulatory approval for the deal from President Trump's FCC.

Reality check: UFC CEO Dana White, a Trump ally, and TKO were reportedly in discussions with Netflix and Amazon about a large-scale deal for months.

• TKO Group is a publicly traded holding company that includes UFC and WWE. Endeavor, the talent and entertainment company, is the majority shareholder in TKO.

Zoom in: All 43 annual UFC live events were made available exclusively on Paramount+.

📺 Zoom out: The new deal eliminates the pay-per-view model used by ESPN, making all events available on Paramount+ at no additional cost.

The big picture: It marks the latest in a mega-shuffling of U.S. fighting rights in recent years.

• Netflix last year struck a more than $5 billion, 10-year deal with the WWE to air "Monday Night Raw," one of TV's longest-running weekly episodic programs.
• Last week, ESPN announced a new $1.6 billion deal with WWE to distribute its flagship event, Wrestlemania, and other marquee events over the next five years.

What to watch: Paramount said it intends to explore UFC rights outside the U.S. as they become available in the future.

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Sinclair has launched a strategic review of its broadcast business, which includes 178 television stations in 81 markets.

Why it matters: The broadcasting industry appears to be starting a new game of musical chairs, as Sinclair's announcement comes just days after a WSJ report that Nexstar is in talks to acquire Tegna.

🌀 Zoom in: Sinclair also said it will weigh a spinoff or other transaction for its $726 million Ventures unit, which includes private equity investments, real estate and assets like the Tennis Channel.

🏛️ The big picture: Any of these deals could run into FCC ownership cap issues, but there's a sense that FCC chair Brendan Carr would issue temporary waivers on the assumption that they plan to raise the ownership cap threshold.

• Currently, no single broadcast can own stations that would collectively reach more than 39% of U.S. households.
• And no single entity can own more than one of the four largest stations in any single market.

💆What to watch: New deals will test how much Carr is willing to relax those rules.

• The E.W. Scripps Company and Gray Media's recently announced deal to swap television stations in five local markets — forming rare duopoly ownership in several places — is being seen as a strong litmus test.

Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, announced yesterday an extended partnership with Netflix, but the deal is a more modest version of the splashy agreement they previously inked.

Why it matters: The new deal comes as their public profile as media moguls has fluctuated with mixed response to their shows.

Zoom in: The previous deal from 2020 gave Netflix the exclusive rights to content from Archewell Productions, the couple's company.

• The new deal is a multiyear, first-look agreement, meaning Netflix gets early access to Archewell's projects but isn't obligated to fund them. Archewell can then shop them elsewhere.

✍️ Catch up quick: Harry and Meghan launched Archewell Productions and signed the Netflix deal just six months after they left their official roles with the British royal family. A few months later, they signed an exclusive content deal with Spotify.

🛍️ Yes, but: While the Sussexes' media ventures have faced scrutiny, Meghan's commerce play has found traction. Products from her lifestyle brand As Ever, launched in partnership with Netflix, sold out within an hour.

The big picture: The era of celebrity-backed production companies dominating the streaming wars is changing.

• 📉 As streaming companies become more frugal, celebrity storytelling no longer guarantees success. SpringHill, the media company co-founded by LeBron James, has been bleeding money, per Bloomberg. Higher Ground, the Obamas' production company, also transitioned to a first-look deal with Netflix last year.
• 🥊 Streamers are choosing to spend big on sports rights. Besides Paramount's deal for UFC, Netflix and ESPN both struck billion-dollar deals with the WWE.

The killing of six journalists in Gaza by Israeli forces over the weekend sparked an outcry from press freedom experts who argue the deaths were unnecessary and only add to the grim totality of what's become the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history.

Why it matters: Since the conflict began with Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the vast majority of journalists killed globally (67%) have been in Israel, Lebanon and occupied Palestinian territories, per the Committee to Protect Journalists.

• The war has caused a notable spike in journalist deaths, with 284 global journalist deaths tracked between 2023 and 2025 so far, compared to 165 for 2020–2022.
• Journalists are considered civilians under international humanitarian law and should not be directly targeted in attacks.

By the numbers: In total, CPJ estimates that 192 journalists and media workers have been killed since the outbreak of the conflict.

• By comparison, 20 journalists have been killed in Ukraine and Russia combined since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Zoom out: Most of the journalists killed so far in the Israel-Gaza war have been killed on "dangerous assignment," per CPJ.

• Of the 192 killed in the conflict over the past three years, 21 have been labeled by CPJ as murders.
• CPJ has labeled all of the journalists that died in Israel's latest attack over the weekend as "murders" in its journalist deaths tracker.

What to watch: Death toll counts for journalists killed in the conflict vary.

• The United Nations claims at least 242 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since the Oct. 7 attack.

Vice Media raised a $75 million credit facility with Western Alliance Bank to support the growth of Vice Studios, its scripted and unscripted production arm, Vice Media executive chair Michael Lang told Axios.

• Vice co-owner Fortress Investment Group is also contributing an equity investment to help fund the broader production slate.

Why it matters: Lang hopes the investment will supercharge Vice Studio's production output, while giving the company more distribution control over its content projects.

• Before Vice Media emerged from a bankruptcy buyout in 2023, it mostly relied on its third-party distribution partners — such as streamers and TV networks — to fund its content slate, limiting its distribution power.

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