ABC, CBS, FOX, & NBC Are in Trouble

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Welcome back to Core Cutting Today where we dive into some of the biggest stories happening in the world of core cutting, including today ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC are in trouble. Their viewership is dropping, and it's also dropping on cable TV, but streaming is going up.

[00:00:14]We'll tell you what the latest numbers are from Neielen. Paramount is lawyering up, getting ready for a potential major battle over its deal to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. They're hiring some really big firms out there, getting ready to defend themselves with this.

[00:00:28]So, we'll tell you what's happening there. And the FTC is suing a company that said it could listen through your microphone on your phone, even when you're not using it or on your smart device, hear what you talk about, and then deliver the ads based on what they heard you say. With that though, those claims were in question, and now they're getting a fine from the FTC. We'll break this all down here in a minute. You can find these stories and more in the show notes and in the first pen comment. I love your support. If you like these stories, you can read them for yourself and come up with your own opinions. If you want to support us, hit that subscribe button or hit that thumbs up.

[00:01:03]Doing one or both really does help us because it lets YouTube know you enjoy what we do here. And hopefully we can help you break free from the high cost of TV and still watch the shows you enjoy. All right, let's dive into it.

[00:01:16]Neielson um this month released its gauge report. Every month they release a report. Now it's back. This is for March that just came out in May where they break down all the viewership habits and more. Now with this according to the report broadcast TV outlets including ABC, CBS Fox and NBC saw their viewership drop 2%. Not bad with that.

[00:01:38]And remember March Madness was happening. I'm sure that helped.

[00:01:41]Interestingly though, cable TV dropped 2.6% um in viewership year-over-year. So this is March 2026 through compared to 2025.

[00:01:52]But streaming skyrocketed 3.8%.

[00:01:57]Now with this we're increasingly seeing people leave behind traditional cable networks and traditional stream um broadcast TV networks for streaming. Now interestingly things like YouTube TV do count into viewership for those other you know broadcast and cable on here. So keep that in mind. I was a little surprised because March Madness was happening. You would expect that would help drive up, but apparently not.

[00:02:21]Viewership continues to erode. We talked about that um yesterday when you looked at the uh final episode, the late show ver versus the Johnny Carson from over 50 million to just under 7 million in viewership. You can see the continued decline here. Watch this closely. Now, I've been talking about the growing number of cable TV networks shutting down. Universal kids shut down last year and some HBO channel shut down. some SMAX channels shut down and many other ones you may not have heard of. Canada is starting to see many of their networks start to shut down. Disney's even pulled the plug on the Disney channel in some parts of the world pushing people to Disney Plus. I think that trend is going to continue. It just financially will not make sense to continue to all offer all these channels. All right, let's dive into the next story up. Paramount is getting ready for a legal fight. Now, they hope to close their deal with Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery. Now, officially they say third quarter, but according to a report from the rap, they may try to close us as soon as this July with it, but they are expecting a potential um legal fight. They brought in Jeffrey um Kesler, I hope I pronounced that right now. Kesler, co- um executive chair of the law firm Winston and Straw, which has a huge track record in winning big prominent major cases like this. Now, you've heard me talk about this. My prediction is this will pass. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some caveats there if maybe they're asked to sell some cable networks because they would own over 50 of them. But ever since War Time Warner and um AT&T and that whole deal to uh sell it all to them, uh AT&T went to court after the DOJ tried to block it and successfully won the right to buy them. Now, I think AT&T regrets that because they've now gotten rid of both Direct TV and Warner Brothers with this deal, but that set a precedent that's going to make it very hard in the court of law for this to be blocked. Now, it's possible. Now, I know a lot of people want to block it. A lot of people wanted to block the Netflix deal. Some people supported it. And I find it interesting that now Paramount's buying War Brothers Discovery. The people who support the Netflix deal are against Paramount. And people who supported the um or opposed the Netflix deal are now in favor of the Paramount deal. It's a it's an interesting flip there. Um and a lot of it has to do with different fears. Uh you know, the federal government raised concerns about Netflix. If you add HBO Max to Netflix, the dominant power of Netflix and streaming would be unrivaled, just absolutely massive and huge. Paramount Plus and HBO Max have struggled. The the hope now is merging those two wouldn't be as big of a disruptive and it'll make them more on par with Disney Plus and Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, for example, than a Netflix HBO Max work. But then on the flip side, there's political concerns about the viewpoints of the companies and who's going to win. And I really, you know, it's kind of one of those things. If you're on one side, you're happy. If you're on the other, you're not happy with it. I hate to get politics, but let's just be honest.

[00:05:30]That's kind of the truth of what's happening here with it. You know, Netflix is seem to is in publicly viewed as having a particular agenda and Paramount's viewed as having a different one. You can't ignore that. And with that, many Democrats have even raised the question, you know, if this gets approved and it closes and they start operating once a Democrat president takes control and the House and Senate maybe goes Democrat in the future, they may try to fully undo this merger here.

[00:06:01]We'll watch what happens. Now, I will say I do think that this is a different case than the Nextar Tea merger. I think that there's different um case law here.

[00:06:11]There's different uh president here, but it is a growing example of both of these of the mass consolidation in the world of media. We've talked about there are more streaming services than the market can support. There are hundreds and hundreds of streaming services. There's not enough people to support all those.

[00:06:30]Some will fail. We'll see which one happens. Now, I'm going to be watching this closely and please don't take anything I said as my endorsement one way or the other. I'm here to give you the information and be honest about it.

[00:06:42]You decide and you let me know what you think. All right. Have you ever felt like you talked about something and then suddenly all your ads were about that even though you never searched on it, you never um did anything on the internet about it, but you just thought about something or you said something.

[00:06:58]Well, Cox Media um uh Media Group to be exact and two other um companies were pushing that they could listen through your phone or through smart speakers for example and then deliver ads based on what they heard you say. Now the FTC is fined to three companies over $900,000 between the three with Cox Media Group getting the biggest fine. Now at issue here the FTC says the technology actually did not work. It's not so much that they're upset that they were potentially listening to you. It's that they made claims that they couldn't actually back up. Now, there's been a lot of arguments about it and a lot of people have looked into it and there is widespread speculation this kind of behavior is happening. But this group was the most vocal about it. Now, the FTC is saying, "Yeah, they promised things that didn't actually work." I'll be interested to dive into this deep someday maybe. But the FTC is cracking down on fake claims. And this one I thought was interesting because a lot of people feel like that happens.

[00:08:00]But according to the FTC, that claim by them to do it was actually smoke and mirrors.

[00:08:06]All right, let's keep moving along. It seems like there's a lot of political things, but this is interesting here.

[00:08:10]The FTC is asking for comments on Disney's request to make the view ex uh exempt from news rules. Basically arguing it's not a news interview program. The FTC or excuse me, the FCC has a growing number of rules and have had them for some time about practices in news and um laws that you have to follow if you're a news organization.

[00:08:35]They're cracking down on The View, claiming that it's not following it. But Disney argues it's not a news organization um or show with that and the View shouldn't be seen as a news one, but it's been widely seen as one of the most popular daytime news programs for a while and talk shows with it. So interesting.

[00:08:54]Keep an eye on this no matter what your viewpoints on the View. So let's take the view completely out of it. This lawsuit or FTC claim I should say and FCC I apologize today.

[00:09:07]We'll set a standard on what is a news organization and what is not. Look at all those um news channels like this one on YouTube. At what point do they have to follow the FCC rules and do not?

[00:09:18]We'll have to watch that closely and see what happens. Be very fascinated to see how this plays out. We'll be watching it. Today in TV history, 37 years ago, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade premiered. One of the most popular movies out there premiered on May 24th, 1989. One of the most popular movies in the Indiana Jones franchise here. Now, there's rumors that Disney may be about to do a soft reboot inter introducing a new star and bring Indiana Jones movies back. We'll see how that plays out. Hey, it was a little quiet weekend or day of news because it was Memorial Day yesterday. But few things here. Couple of predictions to keep an eye on. A lot of talk about a new Apple TV coming out this year. I'm a little hesitant because the rumors that what they're talking about this year is pretty much what they said was going to happen last year. They just moved it back a year. Very possible Apple does bring out a new TV that Apple TV this year, but it does kind of feel like Apple's almost forgotten about it.

[00:10:16]But there's growing rumors that something that they built that we know they built many years ago um may be coming back as Apple had wild success with their new cheap um Neo uh laptop way out did projected sale numbers and now there's rumors that Apple is now saying hm a cheap affordable u at least for them laptop did well what happens if we release that Apple TV stick we know Apple built an Apple TV stick that was going to take on the Fire Stick and Roku stick etc. and it was going to be a cheaper version of the Apple TV but they shelved it and kept doing the more expensive boxes and really sometimes it feels like they almost forget about it.

[00:10:58]You rarely hear them talk about Apple TVs at their convent at their conferences and different events though they have done some software updates recently.

[00:11:08]I'll be interested to see if they really do pull that off um or not. If they do go back and say, "Hey, we've already designed this. Maybe we make some tweaks to it and relaunch it. We'll see what happens. But a few other things to keep an eye on. Spectrum is trying to merge um out there with Cox um the uh internet and cable TV company. If that happens, that would make them absolutely massive with a little under 30 million combined subscribers. It'd be interesting to see how that um merger plays out. Keep an eye on Dish. They've been hovering on the edge of bankruptcy for some time.

[00:11:42]They now have a big deal with AT&T and SpaceX to sell their Spectrum to be able to bring in billions of dollars. The question is, where do they go from here?

[00:11:51]Wireless was going to be their future.

[00:11:53]Now they're not building their own 5G network like they were trying to. These are just a few of the stories I'm keeping an eye on, but let me know what you think. Will we get a new Apple TV this year? Will that Apple TV stick come out to compete with the Fire TV Stick and Roku Stick and Google TV and others?

[00:12:09]Leave me a comment. Let me know what you think.

[00:12:12]Well, until tomorrow, take care, be safe.