Cablefax

NBA Finals Numbers

Cablefax Staff — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As we head into the excitement of Game 4, ABC and ESPNare celebrating the most-watched NBA Finals Game 3 on the networks ever and the largest Game 3 audience since 1998, averaging 23.8M viewers, according to Nielsen Big Data + Panel. ESPN had an alternate telecast of the game with Pat McAfee that scored 1.1 million viewers, making it the most‑watched NBA alternate telecast ever on the net.

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Fiber Frenzy

Cablefax Staff — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Mediacom’s 2 Gig internet service is now available to more than 3.1 million households across its national footprint.

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Football Was Never Really Free

Amy Maclean — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There was plenty of talk at Wednesday’s House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on sports content moving behind a paywall instead of on broadcast. Of course, memories are short in Washington, and no one seemed to remember the many years of complaining that more content needed to move to streaming because the pay TV bundle was just too expensive.

NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt repeatedly argued that broadcast is the best place for consumers to watch their favorite games. Nobody mentioned that retransmission consent fees are essentially the hidden subsidy that makes billion-dollar sports rights deals possible. The money NBC is paying for the NBA isn’t coming from Peacock subscribers—it’s coming from your cable bill. In other words, sports media rights are still a mess.

The point of Wednesday’s hearing was to dig into the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which grants professional sports leagues a narrow antitrust exemption for broadcast rights, allowing them to pool individual team rights and negotiate collectively. More specifically, it was about the NFL and how it’s cutting deals with streamers such as Netflix and Amazon, while benefiting from the exemption.

NAB doesn’t want the NFL to lose that exemption. It just wants Congress to clarify that it applies to broadcast. But the league has been dabbling in other revenue streams, and taking away the ability to pool rights may create more headaches.

“I think the question Congress needs to ask itself is if the NFL cannot collectively sell streaming rights, how would Amazon acquire football? And then the corollary is something like, if Dallas decides they don’t want to participate, what happens to that package? It doesn’t exist, right?” Patrick Crakes, a former Fox exec who runs sports and media consultancy Crakes Media, told CFX. “Congress shouldn’t eliminate collective rights. They need to clarify that the collective rights are OK. They may want to just condition those. Maybe a minimum number of games need to be on broadcast.”

If the league lost the ability to pool rights beyond broadcast, it would make streaming packages like Amazon’s Thursday Night Football legally incoherent—Amazon would have to negotiate with individual teams, and any team that opted out would kill the package.

Democrats tried to turn the hearing into a referendum on media consolidation waved through under this administration. They repeatedly pointed to the government’s sign-offs on Paramount–Skydance, Disney–Fubo and NFL Network and Nexstar–Tegna—as well as the pending Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger which they claim is sailing through a politicized review process.

“This law absolutely deserves a serious re-examination. It was written for a media landscape that no longer exists. American sports fans are paying more, getting less and navigating a fragmented streaming environment that the 1961 Congress could not possibly have anticipated,” said Ranking Member Jerry Nadler (D-NY). “But you cannot examine the Sports Broadcasting Act in a vacuum and that’s exactly what the majority is asking us to do today. The same administration that suddenly discovered a concern for NFL fans has over the past year waved through one of the most aggressive waves of media consolidation in history.”

The merger of CBS Sports and TNT Sports under one corporate roof would create a sports rights portfolio only rivaled by ESPN, said Nadler, declaring that fewer competitors bidding for sports rights means higher bills for consumers even if they aren’t sports fans.

Republican members never took the consolidation bait, sticking instead to how difficult and expensive it is for sports fans to watch their teams. (Maybe the two sides can hammer out their differences tonight at Nationals Stadium for the annual GOP vs. Democrats Congressional Baseball Game).

“We’re here today to deal with the fundamental question: does this still work for consumers? Maybe it does… We know it’s working for the NFL,” said Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH), citing how in 1961 the NFL’s 14 teams received $3.37 million a team in the TV deal (adjusted for inflation) vs. $443 million for each of the 32 teams in the 2025 media deal.

NFL Sunday Ticket was frequently brought up, with Chairman Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) complaining that many fans can’t watch their favorite teams without the exclusive YouTube package. “When the beneficiaries of an exemption begin using it to restrict access, increase prices and strengthen their own market power beyond what Congress intended, lawmakers have an obligation to reconsider whether that exemption remains justified,” he said. “In my view, the NFL seems to have lost sight of the original purpose of the legislation and in fact they may even be in violation of the law right now.”

Speaking of Sunday Ticket, DirecTV got a nice bump by the committee including Texas bar and restaurant owner Jim Hallers as a witness. It’s been unsuccessful in brokering a deal with EverPass Media, the jv between the NFL and private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners, to distribute the package to businesses. Absent a deal, bars and restaurants will have to adopt a streaming-only distribution model instead of DirecTV’s satellite platform. Hallers testified that he has to buy EverPass streaming boxes and add wiring, infrastructure and internet to support 30 to 40 streams. “For a full-blown sports bar, we’re looking at anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 of equipment upgrades, and we better get cracking soon because football season is coming,” he said.

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Spectrum Reach’s Anoki AI Team Up

Cablefax Staff — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Charter’s Spectrum Reach is partnering with Anoki AI to give advertisers better control and transparency over streaming ads. The team-up will see Spectrum Reach integrate Anoki’s ContextIQ platform, which analyzes the exact context of CTV moments, across its streaming ad inventory, allowing brands to see in real time what content their ads appear alongside, including live broadcasts of national and local news, sports and entertainment events. Advertisers can set guidelines, such as prioritizing shows with a specific message or avoiding certain content topics. Ads are then matched to the most suitable ad breaks.

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ATSC 3.0 vs 5G Broadcast

Cablefax Staff — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Advanced Broadcasting Alliance, a trade association for Low Power Television (LPTV) and Class A broadcasters, isn’t seeing eye-to-eye with the LPTV Broadcast Association on spectrum. While the latter is asking the FCC to authorize 3GPP 5G Broadcast as a voluntary standalone transmission standard on LPTV spectrum, ATBA calls the move a “spectrum trap.” “The word voluntary does a great deal of work in the LPTVBA request—but voluntary does not mean harmless. A voluntary authorization can still create a regulatory precedent, fragment an industry, weaken an ongoing transition and give future spectrum-reallocation advocates exactly the argument they have been waiting to make,” ATBA said, warning that such a move is likely to cause the wireless industry to question why LPTV should hold spectrum at all since channels can run on the cellular standard of 3GPP. It argues that 5G Broadcast is already technically standardized within ATSC 3.0, making the LPTVA petition unnecessary. What’s more, ATBA argues that LPTVA’s leadership has a commercial interest in the matter. Frank Copsidas is CEO of XGN Global and X1 Mobileas well as Chairman/Founder of the LPTV Broadcasters Association. He penned a reply to ATBA on Tuesday, declaring that the org is all about respecting choices for LPTV licensees and will soon announce a way for its members to deploy ATSC 3.0 at a much lower cost. “XGN/X1’s vision is to bring a platform where LPTV licensees can actually make money while serving their local community. It is innovation at its best. And may we point out that ATSC 3.0 is licensed through private companies, while 5G Broadcast is a free 3GPP worldwide standard,” Copsidas wrote. “3GPP is not exclusive to cellular standards, but includes broadcasting, satellite and others as well. It provides one worldwide standard.” He also claims to have spent 17 months and significant personal funds on helping deploy ATSC 3.0 solutions for LPTV and it just didn’t work as marketed. Copsidas pointed to a Weigel Broadcasting filing at the FCClast week in which it declared that ATSC 3.0 makes “a free service expensive and a simple service complicated.” This back-and-forth comes as EchoStar founder Charlie Ergen’s SPAC revealed a deal to acquire a controlling interest in HC2 Broadcasting, suggesting he also sees the benefits of 5G Broadcasting.

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Media M&A Outlook

Cablefax Staff — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A group of M&A experts gathered at this week’s Kagan media and telecom summit to discuss consolidation, including how cable nets could drive future deals. While sports and news are still TV viewing drivers, S&P Global Ratings Managing Director, U.S. Media and Telecom Sector Lead Naveen Sarma thinks that “you need to have consolidation of general entertainment, and probably you need elimination of networks.” Sarma gave Fox Corp. a shout-out for building a small, targeted portfolio of networks and for doing “an incredibly good job” bringing in advertising and retrans revenue. The programmer grew its distribution rev by 3% YOY in 3Q26, driven by 5% uptick in its cable network programming segment, largely from Fox News Media. “I don’t think it’s necessarily the scale, it’s the assets that you have, and then the assets that are less attractive probably need to do consolidation as well as shrink the number of networks they have,” Sarma opined. In other words, it’s no longer about collecting as many nets in your portfolio as possible to drive up carriage fees. That said, broadcast sports can still be a boon in your portfolio, according to Sarma. “It isn’t a big driver of this transaction, but if you look at PSKY–WBD, the Warner networks clearly suffered the last couple of years. They also don’t have a broadcast network [and] their sports portfolio is relatively thin versus their peers. Now they’ve got CBSas protection. Does that lead to an improvement in advertising as well as in their ability to drive higher retrans revenues? We’ll see if that plays out that way.” – The $6.2 billion Nexstar–Tegna merger is still in combination limbo, as court battles play out, but Guggenheim Partners Senior Advisor Drew Marcus thinks the integration will move forward in the end. “The markets are certainly saying that Nexstar will prevail, either through agreeing to do certain things or negotiation,” he said. Asked whether the state AG challenge to the combo brings a new level of uncertainty to future merger deals, Marcus said media companies are in uncharted territory as objections to a deal usually come before the FCC and DOJ rule. Still, he thinks companies “want to be doing things” while Brendan Carris still head of the FCC.

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PSKY-WBD Regulatory Update

Cablefax Staff — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

While it’s expected that a group of state AGs will soon file a lawsuit to stop the $110 billion merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, the companies got some good news from down under. The transaction was cleared by competition authorities in Australia and New Zealand this week. Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Serbia and North Macedonia have also given the green light in recent weeks, according to a Paramount 8-K filing. Germany, Slovenia, Belgium, Czechia, New Zealand, France and Romania approved the foreign investment backing the deal. Meanwhile, the European Commission launched a probe of the investment from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds under Foreign Subsidies Regulations, with a decision to come by July 14. U.K. regulators began their formal review of the deal Tuesday. The initial phase must be concluded by Aug. 7. The Competition and Markets Authority will then decide whether to approve or launch an investigation. On this side of the pond, PSKY is still waiting to hear from the DOJ’s antitrust enforcers.

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AOI Supports Charter

Cablefax Staff — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

AOIwill provide its QuantumLink remote management software to serve as the control system for all connected 1.8GHz amplifiers across Charter’s Spectrum footprint. Expanding AOI’s role supporting the operator’s network evolution project, the deployment of QuantumLink software enables Spectrum’s machine learning and automation capabilities to boost network performance and resiliency.

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Fox One in the Skies

Cablefax Staff — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

American Airlines knows how important watching the World Cup is to fans, so it’s partnering with Fox One to make the DTC service available to AAdvantage members in-flight on all domestic flights. The Fox One pass must be redeemed while in-flight, unlocking 24 hours of streaming. The pass can be redeemed seven times in-flight during a calendar year. Fox One, which will stream all 104 World Cup matches, retails for $19.99/month.

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Optimum Mobile Momentum

Cablefax Staff — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Optimum boasted that it has surpassed 700,000 mobile lines. That’s up from 584,000 in 3Q25 and up from the 674,000 it just reported for 1Q26, a quarter that saw 51,600 net adds. That was the most net adds in six years. Optimum adjusted its mobile go-to-market approach in late 4Q25 to focus on driving multi-line adoption, broadband convergence and affordability. The operator has leaned in on that last point, noting that a survey conducted on its behalf found 79% of consumers have reduced spending in the past two months, with 30% reducing spending on either TV, mobile or internet. It offers three lines with unlimited data for $60/month.

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