Apple’s first Friday Night Baseball streamcast represents a big shift for its subscription streaming service, TV+, but especially for Apple’s relationship with advertising. Where will it go next: an ad-supported tier? More live sports? More targeting?

Jason Kilar departs WarnerMedia days after launching CNN Plus, and days before merging with Discovery. Will CNN Plus survive the merger, given the crushing debt and need for major cuts facing CEO-in-Waiting David Zaslav? Kilar says it’s not broken, don’t fix it. But the clock is ticking.

As the Motion Picture Academy starts to embracing streamed Oscar winners, maybe it’s time to embrace a streamed Oscar ceremony. The possibilities for an online awards show are vast, from prop bets, to behind-the-scenes conversations, to actually showing all those banished awards categories live.

HBO Max’s Dune grabbed 10 Oscar nominations, one of several streaming-first projects in position to win big at Sunday’s awards.

As the Streaming Wars enter a complex new phase, the ways services market to and engage with consumers need to evolve. A new Cheetah Digital/Econsultancy study of 5,400 consumers in six countries suggests some ways forward, with old-school tactics and a deep attention to privacy crucial.

Verizon’s just-announced PlusPlay will aggregate easy a la carte access not just to streaming-video networks but a variety of other subscription service providers, potentially a big deal for a fractured industry and frustrated customers, while dealing another blow to the battered cable bundle.

Just as the first Gulf War effectively birthed CNN as a global 24-hour news network, so could the Russian invasion of Ukraine provide a path to its rebirth. 

ViacomCBS has declared that every corner of the mid-major media company is focusing on maximizing its streaming future. 

Comcast and NBCU clearly grasp the opportunity they have to push Peacock amid the Olympics-Super Bowl confluence, judging from the last month’s fusillade of news releases, announcements, presentations, and other public statements.

The brutal plunge in share prices that hit Netflix after last week’s so-so earnings announcement is sparking broader questions about the economic underpinnings of the entire streaming-video sector.

Sony says it wants to bring customers (and investors) joy. Who could it buy to accomplish that goal?

Disney Plus needs more programming, and more kinds of programming that appeal to a broader audience, says retiring Chairman Bob Iger. But it won’t be easy to preserve the brand while stretching its programming offerings.

The Big Three cable news networks have all seen big names depart in the past two weeks, part of a crucial period of realignment as they prepare to transition to their streaming future. And the questions are just as plentiful for local broadcast news organizations too.

Major streaming services could face a hurricane of cancellations and churn rates past 30 percent, a new report suggests. They better figure out some new tactics less dependent on their legacy operations.

A new metric from Tubular Labs connects viewership of product videos online with Amazon purchases by those audiences in the next 30 days. Electronics purchases had a particularly high correlation, but more broadly, the metric will help publishers better pitch the value of their audiences.

Disney says it will spend $8 billion more on its streaming programming next year. But with deep-pocketed competitors such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple –none of which have to pay for legacy operations – is that gargantuan increase enough? Warner Bros. Discovery faces some of the same questions as it prepares to merge.

Disney shares dropped 8 percent after the company badly missed on expectations for new Disney+ subscribers, but will spend the week celebrating the two-year anniversary of Disney+’s launch with a bunch of deals and debuts. But lots of strategy issues remain, especially with the company legacy broadcast and cable operations.

U.S. home-entertainment revenues set more records in the last quarter, led by a burgeoning streaming-video sector, according to trade group DEG. The overall jump of 9.5 percent came despite increasing access to alternate entertainment options as the pandemic’s strictures continued to ease.

Netflix has a huge international hit with ‘Squid Game,’ but with 45 production and acquisition teams around the globe, its overseas content pipeline is a huge competitive advantage.

ESPN signed yet another big rights deal, for Monday Night NFL playoff games. But as it racks up mega-deals, questions continue to grow about how long the Worldwide Leader can remain on the shrinking Pay TV bundle before it must fully embrace the direct-to-consumer streaming future.