Streamticker: The biggest streaming mergers and acquisitions of 2024

The 2024 edition of Streamticker, recapping the streaming industry's most momentous mergers and acquisitions of 2023, kicked off with Disney's gobbling up the last extant portions of Hulu, as Comcast ceded its re­maining 33% stake. But if the late-2023 deal marked only the quiet conclusion of an already-silent part­nership, the much noisier news of Jan. 6, 2025, found Disney absorbing sports-centric streamer Fubo and merging it with Hulu Live + TV. Here we'll review this and other done (or more nearly done) M&A deals that reshuffled the stream­ing industry in 2024.

The State of the Video Codec Market 2025

HEVC rode the 4K/HDR wave to success, but AV1, VVC, and LCEVC lack an equivalent killer app. With CDNs racing to the bottom on pricing and new royalty pools threatening to increase costs, codec adoption is no longer just about technical merit—it's about survival. These are the issues I'll explore in this article.

Buyers' Guide: Hardware Transcoders

Although software transcoding is accept­able for transcoding most VOD streams and even low-volume live programming, most high-volume live applications need hardware for efficient transcoding, both to save you money and to save the planet. This buyers' guide will cover: What hardware transcoders are, what you need to bring to the table to identify the best hardware transcoder, factors to consider when choosing one, choosing a hardware transcoder for cloud workflows, and choosing a hardware transcoder for on-prem workflows.

Streaming Year in Review 2025: Online Video Is Now an Advertising-Led Business

Old Hollywood got Wall Street's memo: "Do whatever it takes to do what Netflix is do­ing." And finally, the studios have begun making money from streaming. With the exception of NBCUniversal, the biggest leg­acy media companies all reported a profit from their direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses in Q3 2024. They got there by variously writing down or shedding ca­ble assets, slashing jobs, hiking prices, policing pass­word-sharing, improving bundled offerings, and put­ting the full focus of their business strategy into online.

The State of Media & Entertainment Streaming 2025

Not unexpectedly, 2024 saw a slowing down in the rapid user acquisition that entertain­ment streaming platforms enjoyed in pre­vious years without the influx of new plat­forms and the boost in subscriber numbers gained during the pandemic.

AI and Entertainment: a Q&A with Hub Research's Jon Giegengack

AI is rapidly changing the way people interact with entertainment, and companies are embracing AI to streamline operations and improve efficiencies in producing, marketing, and distributing content. Hub Entertainment Research released its first study on AI in Entertainment, revealing that while most consumers have heard of generative AI, very few understand how it works or what it's for. Jon Giegengack of Hub Research discusses the report's findings and implications in this Q&A with Streaming Media's Tyler Nesler.

The Rise of Automated Translation in the Localisation Industry: A Q&A With Maria Castañeda of Lokalise

Lokalise, a cloud-based localisation and translation management system, has observed a fascinating shift in how content is being translated and has some intriguing data on the rise of automated translations versus human translations. Their findings illustrate a significant increase in automated translations in 2024. Maria Castañeda, Lead Product Marketing Manager at Localise, answers some questions about these new insights.

Altman Solon Global Sports Survey - A Q&A With David Dellea

Altman Solon's David Dellea discusses the findings from their 2024 Global Sports Survey, with topics including the impact of younger generations' changing consumption habits on live sports, the role of AI in enhancing viewing experiences, the challenges of content fragmentation, and more.

Free Streaming and Sports

The second half of 2023 saw the launch of numerous premium brands and the rise of exclusive deals. What has happened in the FAST sports landscape since then? Let's find out.

Rebundling Fatigue, Ad Tolerance on the Rise, Says TiVo Video Trends Research Report

We're here to parse a new market report from TiVo called "Q2 2024 TiVo Video Trends Report: North America Consumers Getting Smarter as Fatigue Sets In Amidst the Re-bundling Marathon." The title is a mouthful, and the research doesn't deliver on everything it promises.

Q&A: Microsoft Worldwide M&E Strategy Director Simon Crownshaw Talks Gen AI

In this expansive interview with Simon Crownshaw, Microsoft's worldwide media and entertainment strategy director, we discuss how Microsoft customers are leveraging generative AI in all stages of the streaming workflow and how they're using it in content delivery and to enhance user experiences in a range of use cases. Crownshaw also digs deep into how Microsoft is building asset management architecture and the critical role metadata plays in effective large-language models (LLMs), maximizing the value of available data.

Dynamic Paywalls for Streaming Services

What would happen if we started to have dynamic paywalls for streaming ser­vices? Leveraging user data, machine learning, and generative AI could create offers based on con­sumption patterns. Some companies are dab­bling in this, but now we have the technology to really start developing it.

Boosting Streaming Profitability with IMAX StreamSmart

Streaming organisations must be able to accurately measure and swiftly assess the impact of workflow changes to validate their effectiveness. Therefore, they must have access to the right metrics that can reliably predict viewer perceptions of quality for achieving bitrate savings without compromising the viewing experience.

Accessibility and Localisation: How AI Can Create More Accessible Content for Larger Audiences

With key streaming services such as Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix trying to drive down production costs across the board, premium content providers have spent considerable time looking at how they can develop or license content which isn't produced in English but can offer global appeal.

European Broadcasters’ Journey Into the Streaming Era

Linear TV faces a structural decline in weekly reach and viewership while its audience ages. The model as we know it is running out of steam. Death isn't around the corner, though. It simply calls for an extensive transformation of broadcasting businesses to survive and thrive.

NBCUniversal SVP Monica Williams Talks Streaming the Olympics, Cross-Platform CX, and the Power of Metadata

In this wide-ranging interview with Monica Williams, NBCUniversal's SVP of digital products and operations for the company's content distribution business, we discuss how the proliferation of digital platforms across the OTT, CTV, and online ecosystems has brought new content distribution challenges, the boon of metadata for improving customer experiences, and the 17-day everything-must-go-perfectly marathon of distributing the Olympics.

AI and Streaming Media

This article explores the current state of AI in the streaming encoding, delivery, playback, and monetization ecosystems. By understanding the developments and considering key questions when evaluating AI-powered solutions, streaming professionals can make informed decisions about incorporating AI into their video processing pipelines and prepare for the future of AI-driven video technologies.

Games On! Programmatic Ads Compete for Eyeballs at the Olympics

FreeWheel is ready to support a streaming marathon for this summer's Paris Olympics, enabling programmatic buying for the first time for targeted ad-serving. Here's what this means for FreeWheel, NBCUniversal, advertisers, and premium sports streaming.

Q&A: Wurl’s Ria Madrid Discusses BrandDiscovery's Groundbreaking Generative AI for CTV Ads

A Q&A with Ria Madrid of Wurl - she discusses BrandDiscovery, their new tech that makes it possible for marketers to precisely match CTV ads with the emotion and context of what viewers are watching to create positive attention, using Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. Partners like Media.Monks are already driving impressive results for their clients through Wurl's solution, which uses scene-level contextual targeting to help advertisers align the emotional sentiment of their campaign creatives with content closest to the ad break.

All the News That’s Fit for FAST

News broadcasting is one of the most exciting and quickly growing areas for FAST development, highlighted by the recent announcement of the BBC/AMC 24-hour live FAST news channel. Other legacy media news broadcasters, such as Scripps, Sinclair, Hearst, and USA Today, have also entered the FAST news space, many of them with a focus on local content. What are some of the current trends and challenges for FAST news delivery? In this article, several leading industry commentators provide insight.