TelevisaUnivision, one of two major Spanish-language broadcasters in the U.S., has unveiled a new consumer ad campaign warning customers that YouTube parent Google plans to remove Univision from YouTube's core offering and move it to a Spanish-language package at an extra cost.

Why it matters: TelevisaUnivision is framing the move as a "Hispanic Tax" that makes Google look "evil."

👀 Zoom in: The spots, which will run across internal and external digital and social platforms, explain that YouTube TV plans to remove Univision from its $83 basic bundle package on Sept. 30 and instead will force Hispanic viewers to pay another $15 a month to access the network through a separate, additional Spanish-language content bundle.

• The ad calls the effort an 18% "Hispanic Tax" and casts doubt on Google's ethics, saying it's charging Hispanics more to access Univision at "a time of economic uncertainty for many."
• "Hispanics paying more, denied access to the content they need, losing their voice, and worse, singled out as a minority. That's just wrong," the ad reads. "Do the right thing, Google. Otherwise, this looks evil," it continues, alluding to Google's former "Don't be evil" motto.

📺 How we got here: Programmers like TelevisaUnivision renegotiate carriage deals with live TV providers, including digital live TV companies like YouTube TV, every few years.

• When those negotiations hit a snag — usually over price — it's not uncommon for networks and distributors to engage in public consumer campaigns to pressure their counterparts.

What's different about this battle is that — according to a source familiar with the negotiations — the debate was not at its core about the renewal cost, but rather where TelevisaUnivision's programming would live within YouTube TV's offering.

• YouTube TV, the source said, insisted that Univision be pulled from its standard TV package where it currently sits, and instead move to a Spanish-language package that consumers would need to pay additional money to access.
• That deal, TelevisaUnivision executives believe, is untenable because it is so far out of step with the other national distribution deals with YouTube TV's competitors, like Hulu with Live TV.
• In every current pay-TV distribution deal TelevisaUnivision has in the U.S. market, Univision sits within the standard package offered.

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Minute Media, the parent company to sports and entertainment sites like The Players' Tribune and Mental Floss, has acquired VideoVerse, a software platform that fuels real-time sports highlights for content companies, Minute Media CEO and founder Asaf Peled told Axios.

💸 Why it matters: The deal marks the largest of the seven acquisitions completed in Minute Media's 14-year history.

• It's also a signal of the company's push to double down on sports tech and video as its primary focus area.

Catch up quick: Minute Media is one of the largest privately owned digital publishing and tech companies in the country.

• The company was valued at over $1 billion last year after raising tens of millions of dollars from several investors, including HSBC and BlackRock.

Between the lines: In recent years, the company has expanded to become a sports technology platform for content owners — including its own sites — as well as sports rights holders, leagues, teams and marketers.

• 🎥 That effort was supercharged by its acquisition of STN Video last year in a deal valued at over $150 million. At the time, that was Minute Media's largest-ever transaction.
• 📈 California-based VideoVerse has a little under 300 employees, all of whom will join Minute Media as part of the transaction. That will bring Minute Media's total workforce to over 800.

What's next: Asked if the company is considering a possible IPO, Peled says Minute Media is "happy being private for now."

• While the company has brought on outside partners to fundraise acquisitions, Peled says the firm has solid access to capital, so it's not in a rush to IPO.

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News Corp and Fox Corp. yesterday announced the Murdoch family resolved its dispute over the succession of both companies by establishing a new family trust that grants corporate control to Rupert Murdoch's conservative son, Lachlan Murdoch, while paying out his three other eldest children for their shares.

Why it matters: The resolution ensures that Lachlan Murdoch will remain in control to preserve his father's conservative legacy at both companies.

• It also ends all messy legal proceedings related to the trust.

💰 How it works: With the new agreement, three of Murdoch's older children — Prudence, Elisabeth and James — will receive more than $1 billion in cash payouts for their shares and will step away from their roles at both companies.

• Each of those siblings will become beneficiaries of new trusts funded in part by the sale of roughly 31 million Class B shares of the companies previously held by the old family trust.
• The agreement also prevents them and their affiliates from acquiring shares of either company moving forward.

🔑 Zoom in: The new trust that hands the keys over to Lachlan Murdoch will expire in 2050. Murdoch's youngest children, Chloe and Grace Murdoch, are included in the new trust, but voting control with respect to Fox Corp. and News Corp will rest solely with Lachlan Murdoch.

• Rupert Murdoch, 94, will continue in his role as chairman emeritus of both companies.

What to watch: The new agreement dilutes the Murdochs' family voting shares by a single-digit percentage in both Fox Corp and News Corp., but Lachlan Murdoch is still set up to have voting control of both companies.

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The incredible volume of both deals and lawsuits between publishers and AI companies over the past two years suggests a fundamental shift from the Web 2.0 era to the Agentic Web.

🤑 Why it matters: Intellectual property owners have a stronger copyright case against AI firms than they ever did against social media giants, which has empowered them to wage lawsuits or demand larger payouts from Big Tech than they ever could before.

How it works: In the U.S., IP owners who have filed individual copyright registrations for their works can be legally qualified to receive up to $150,000 in statutory damages per infringed work.

• 📰 That legal dynamic has provided IP owners like the New York Times, News Corp and others with much stronger financial incentive and confidence to be able to sue AI companies.
• 📚 Already, some lawsuits have proven successful. Anthropic last week agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to a group of authors and publishers in the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history.
• 🤖 Reuters' landmark win against competitor Ross Intelligence earlier this year set a new precedent around whether AI companies can use real-time IP that they don't own to fuel their products, not just to train their large language models.

Between the lines: The Reuters case pushed more AI companies to consider deals that involve provisions around Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), or the process by which LLMs provide answers based on real-time or specific data sets.

• Today, most IP owners understand that striking deals that allow AI firms to use their content to train LLMs has become moot, as most of their content has already been accessed for this purpose.
• Instead, many are choosing to broker RAG deals, or are looking to strike agreements where they are compensated by usage, instead of receiving blanket payments upfront.

🤏 Yes, but: For many publishers, usage deals with AI companies may not be as lucrative in the short term because they lack scale.

The bottom line: While most IP owners are invested in finding long-term solutions for fair compensation, building a two-sided marketplace where that will be possible is extremely challenging because it requires the buy-in of most major AI and search firms.

• Most notably, Google — the biggest search company in the world by far — faces little legal pressure from IP owners that are still heavily reliant on its search engine for traffic.

This story appeared in our latest briefing on AI for Media Trends Executive members.

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Paramount yesterday appointed Kenneth R. Weinstein as its new ombudsman for CBS News, reporting to Paramount president Jeff Shell.

🤔 Why it matters: The appointment drew skepticism from journalists, who were quick to point out that Weinstein has donated to pro-Trump and conservative causes.

• Paramount said Weinstein will serve as "an independent, internal advocate for journalistic integrity and transparency, reviewing concerns raised by employees and viewers, addressing questions about news coverage, and upholding the organization's longstanding commitment to accuracy and accountability."

Zoom out: The appointment of Weinstein, who previously served as president and CEO of Hudson Institute and has chaired the board of VOA parent USAGM, aligns with a broader shift at CBS News under Paramount's new owners.

• Last week, CBS said it would adjust its rules for editing interviews on its Sunday morning show, "Face the Nation," shortly after facing criticism from the Trump administration over how it edited its Aug. 31 interview with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. (CBS News said the change was in response to audience feedback.)
• The network is in talks with Bari Weiss to acquire her news site, The Free Press, and give her a senior editorial role at the company, Axios has confirmed.
• Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a voter interference lawsuit earlier this summer filed by President Trump last October, even as press freedom advocates warned the company was buckling to political pressure.
• It has faced questions around whether its new owners brokered a side deal with the president to air conservative public service announcements.

The New York Times introduced a new family subscription offering yesterday, the company's head of subscription growth Ben Cotton told Axios.

Why it matters: It's part of a larger effort at the Times to lure more subscribers and keep them engaged for longer through bundled packages.

🗞️ Zoom in: Subscribers can get the "All Access Family" plan, which includes all of the Times' core news coverage as well as its lifestyle products, or the "Games Family" plan, which only includes full access to the Times' subscription games, such as "Spelling Bee" and "The Crossword."

• The plans are designed to give any group of four individuals access to the same shared plan that's billed to one account. The Times will not dictate how a particular group wants to define "family," meaning the subscription can be shared among relatives and/or friends.
• Each user who participates in a family plan will still have the ability to log into their own, individual account to customize their experience.

💵 Between the lines: The "All Access Family" plan is available for $30 per month, depending on promotional pricing. The "Games Family" plan is available for $10 per month.

By the numbers: The Times hopes to reach 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027. The vast majority (95%) of its 11.88 million subscribers currently pay to access the digital-only versions of the Times' products.

• Cotton said each Family Plan subscription will be counted as two subscribers, regardless of the number of people actually added to the Family Plan.

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Howard Stern turned his show into a media experiment yesterday, pranking his listeners and some news outlets into thinking he had quit SiriusXM.

Why it matters: Rumors about Stern's retirement swirled this summer, fueled by industry speculation on whether he'll renew his contract.

📻 Zoom in: Stern's show opened with Andy Cohen explaining he was taking over, renaming "Howard 100" as "Andy 100." Several outlets, including The Associated Press, ran stories saying Stern was out before walking them back.

• After the prank was revealed, Stern riffed on his absence and the rumors. He later confirmed he's still in negotiations with SiriusXM.
• "SiriusXM and my team have been talking about how we go forward in the future," Stern said. "They've approached me. They've sat down with me, like they normally do, and they're fantastic."

🎙️ Zoom out: The prank underscored the high stakes of the podcast talent wars. SiriusXM has signed marquee names like "Call Her Daddy" host Alex Cooper and the SmartLess crew in recent years as it competes with Spotify, Amazon and iHeartMedia.

• Stern said that the rumors of his exit sparked outside interest in his show.
• "One of the positive things about all this fake news is that I heard from a lot of companies who want the show," Stern said. "Well, if you're not at Sirius anymore, do you want to come with us? And I thought, well, that's really nice. But, I mean, I'm very happy at Sirius."