Platform strategy now spans four business models at once: OTT, SVOD, AVOD, and FAST. This category covers recommendation engines, content discovery, CTV app experience, player SDKs, and the subscriber engagement data that tells you whether a feature actually worked.
YouTube has launched support for 360-degree live stream videos, according to a company blog post. The new feature will be showcased with select performances from the Coachella music festival. The company also announced it is implementing spatial audio for on-demand YouTube videos to create a more immersive sound experience.
Disney is reportedly considering a ban or strict limits on profit-driven live streaming at its U.S. theme parks, a discussion prompted by a recent "swatting" incident involving a streamer at Disneyland. The potential restrictions target influencers generating revenue through donations, advertising, or live shopping, and follow visitor complaints about disruption and privacy. While no official statement has been made for U.S. parks, Disney's international parks in Tokyo and Paris have already implemented similar restrictions on commercial or disruptive filming.
Amazon's Prime Video service experienced a broadcast outage during an NBA play-in game, which the company attributed to a hardware failure in a production truck. Media personality Bill Simmons criticized the streamer for the incident and for recurring audio-sync issues on its NBA broadcasts throughout the season. Analyst Kirk Goldsberry was also quoted expressing frustration with the technical difficulties from a major tech company.
Stream Hatchet, a subsidiary of GameSquare, has released its Q1 2026 Live Streaming Trends Report, now incorporating data from TikTok Live. The report finds that global live streaming viewership reached 17 billion hours, with TikTok Live accounting for almost half of the total. Excluding TikTok Live, the market saw a 0.2% increase in hours watched compared to Q4 2025.
Amazon has announced a second season of its Prime Video series 'Citadel' will be released on May 6. According to the article, a new trailer for the season suggests a more lighthearted tone and an increased focus on Stanley Tucci's character. The renewal follows the show's first season, which premiered in early 2023.
Sling has introduced new short-term passes for its live TV streaming service, presented as a way to watch content like the NHL playoffs. The streaming service now offers 1-Day, 3-Day, or 7-Day passes for on-demand access to live TV shows and sports.
eBay is launching a pilot "streaming as a service" program to connect sellers on its eBay Live platform with third-party hosts who can run livestreams on their behalf. The service, revealed by an eBay executive, aims to lower the barrier to entry for sellers who do not want to appear on camera. The program is expected to launch within six to eight weeks, but details regarding consignment fees or revenue sharing have not yet been provided.
Sling TV has introduced a new "Day Pass" product allowing customers to purchase short-term access to its Sling Orange service for 1, 3, or 7 days. Pricing is set at $4.99 for 24 hours, $9.99 for 72 hours, and $14.99 for 7 days. The article frames the new offering as a cost-effective way for users without cable to watch specific live events, such as the NFL Draft on ESPN.
Game 3 of the NBA Playoffs first-round series between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Toronto Raptors on Thursday, April 23, 2026, will stream exclusively on Amazon's Prime Video. The article provides viewing details for the game, which is part of a series where Cleveland leads 2-0.
Three NBA Playoff games on Thursday, April 23, 2026, will be streamed exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. The games, which include Knicks vs. Hawks, Cavaliers vs. Raptors, and Nuggets vs. Timberwolves, will not have a traditional TV broadcast. Access to the live stream requires an Amazon Prime subscription.
According to Parks Associates’ Streaming Video Tracker, the CTV platform market in U.S. broadband households remains concentrated, with Roku OS holding 28% and Samsung’s Tizen OS holding 23% of usage share. The report highlights that control of the platform layer is central to competition, as the OS determines content visibility, service positioning, and advertising delivery.
BBC Studios is preparing a spin-off of its "Dancing with the Stars" format. The new competition show, which is designed to find new talent, is set to launch in the United States on ABC and Hulu.
BBC Sport is canceling its Saturday football program 'Football Focus' after more than 50 years on the air, citing a shift in audience consumption to digital and on-demand platforms. The public broadcaster will adjust its linear schedule with other football programming and plans to expand its digital-first content on platforms like YouTube and the BBC Sport website. The move is part of a strategy to adapt how BBC Sport delivers content across all platforms in response to evolving viewing habits.
A leaked Paramount Skydance presentation detailed 2025 performance and 2026 goals for its streaming services. In 2025, Paramount+ grew global viewing hours by 22% to 10.4 billion, while Pluto TV's viewing hours grew 21% to 9.5 billion and reached 89.6 million MAUs. The 2026 goals for both platforms include double-digit revenue growth, driven by improved monetization and a focus on higher-value subscribers.
Channel 5's BVoD service, referred to as "5 streaming," has become the fastest-growing UK public service broadcaster (PSB) platform of the year. This growth was reportedly driven by a single factual scripted drama about Huw Edwards.
According to EY's annual "Decoding the Digital Home" report, which surveyed 2,000 UK consumers, 34% plan to cancel a streaming service in the next year. The study identifies attractive pricing, extensive libraries, and specific/exclusive content as key drivers for subscriptions. To reduce churn, the report suggests streamers should simplify the user experience, offer content aggregation, improve ad variation, and leverage AI for personalized discovery.
During Amazon Prime Video’s coverage of an NBA play-in game between the Charlotte Hornets and Miami Heat, the live stream briefly cut out in the final seconds of overtime, causing viewers to miss a key LaMelo Ball basket. The feed returned about a minute later, but the outage prompted public complaints from high-profile viewers including LeBron James and other fans criticizing the reliability of Prime Video for live playoff games.
FOX One announced it is adding eight FOX News Media and Red Seat Ventures podcast series as video podcasts available inside the streaming service, with episodes beginning to roll out on April 20. The move follows FOX’s February 2025 acquisition of Red Seat Ventures (to operate under Tubi Media Group) and is positioned as part of a broader industry push toward video podcasts for engagement and retention, alongside FOX One’s recent multiview feature added via a partnership with Skreens.
NBCUniversal Local’s Telemundo Station Group launched the Telemundo Puerto Rico (WKAQ) free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel on Prime Video, offering a 24/7 Spanish-language feed of WKAQ-produced entertainment and news programming. The channel includes simulcast and encore presentations across more than 80 hours of weekly original shows plus investigative and news content, and follows its mainland U.S. debut on Feb. 5. Prime Video also carries Telemundo Station Group’s four regional 24/7 news FAST channels and the streaming channels from 11 NBC-owned stations.
NBCUniversal Local’s Telemundo Station Group launched a free ad-supported (FAST) Telemundo Puerto Rico streaming channel on Prime Video in the mainland U.S. on Feb. 5. The channel carries simulcast and encore programming from Telemundo-owned station WKAQ, including 80+ hours of weekly entertainment content plus investigative series and news. Prime Video also carries multiple 24/7 regional news streaming channels from Telemundo-owned stations and streaming channels from 11 NBC-owned stations.
Comcast has launched two new unlimited plans for its Xfinity Mobile service, Mobile Plus and Mobile Select. The plans shift to a fixed price per line, a change from the previous tiered pricing structure, a move which the article suggests could boost average revenue per user (ARPU). The $45/month Mobile Plus plan includes video streaming up to 4K resolution, while the $30/month Mobile Select plan streams up to high-definition resolution.
Paramount is redesigning its streaming app to incorporate short-form viewing alongside traditional long-form programming, including a vertical video feed, personalized recommendations, and curated clips sourced from its content library. The company says it will use data-driven personalization to promote highlights and behind-the-scenes moments as a discovery funnel to increase engagement and convert casual viewers into subscribers, while also exploring advertising opportunities in the short-form format.
Layercake announced it has formalized and deepened its integration with Bitmovin, making Bitmovin’s encoding, playback, and analytics a core capability within its Streamcake media orchestration platform. The combined setup positions Streamcake as a control plane to automate and manage end-to-end workflows (ingest, encoding, packaging, DRM, delivery, and playback) for use cases including OTT, live sports, simulcast, and enterprise video.
Gray Media deployed a new cloud-native streaming platform across its 113 legacy TV markets, consolidating 1,300 digital touchpoints (websites, mobile apps, and smart TV apps) into a single architecture built with Quickplay and Google Cloud AI. The rollout centrally manages 269 live channels and 123 FAST channels, with distribution across platforms including Amazon Prime/Fire TV, Roku, Samsung TV Plus, and Vizio, and is positioned to support personalization, faster news delivery, and ad insertion.
Roku reported it surpassed 100 million streaming households worldwide in April 2026, defining the metric as distinct user accounts that streamed on the Roku platform in a 30-day period. The company said more than half of broadband-enabled U.S. homes use Roku streaming devices and highlighted its mix of free live linear channels, on-demand titles, and The Roku Channel originals. Roku stated its next priorities include new platform capabilities, advanced personalization, and international expansion.
Roku reported surpassing 100 million streaming households worldwide in April, defined as distinct user accounts that streamed on the Roku platform over a 30-day period. The company said its devices are used by more than half of US broadband households, with continued growth in Canada, Mexico, Brazil and the UK, and availability of Roku OS TVs and devices in 15+ countries. Roku positioned the scale as beneficial for advertisers and partners, citing Nielsen Gauge rankings for The Roku Channel and noting the recent launch of the $3 ad-free subscription service Howdy in the US and Mexico.
Paramount-owned Pluto TV announced it will add the series "Hart of Dixie," "Arrow," "The 100," and "Everwood" to its free, ad-supported on-demand and linear channel offerings, with free-category exclusivity for those titles. The first three series plus "My Wife and Kids" arrive May 1, 2026, and "Everwood" arrives June 1, as Pluto targets 18–34 viewers with additional library programming.
Amazon announced the launch of its new Fire TV Stick HD, priced at $34.99 in the U.S. The device is described as its slimmest ever, is over 30% faster than the previous generation, supports Wi-Fi 6, and can be powered by a TV's USB port. It ships with a redesigned user interface and includes the Alexa+ generative AI assistant for conversational search and discovery.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan outlines four 2025 priorities: reinforcing YouTube’s role in culture (including podcasts), expanding creator business tools and monetization, accelerating connected-TV viewing experiences, and deploying more AI features for creation and localization. The post cites that TV is now the primary device for YouTube viewing in the U.S. by watch time, with viewers watching over 1B hours of YouTube on TVs daily, and notes subscription scale including 8M+ YouTube TV subscribers and 100M+ YouTube Music & Premium subscribers (including trials). Planned initiatives include new CTV ad formats (e.g., QR codes and pause ads), interactive/second-screen TV features, “Watch With” live commentary experiments, wider availability of auto-dubbing in the YouTube Partner Program, and further generative AI integrations such as Veo 2 in Dream Screen.
NBCUniversal and Dolby Laboratories announced that Peacock will be the first streaming service to integrate Dolby’s full suite of premium picture and audio technologies, including expanded use of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos across more live sports in 2026. Peacock also committed to supporting Dolby Vision 2 and the Dolby AC-4 audio codec, which are expected to launch later in 2026.
YouTube is introducing “Stations,” 24/7 pre-programmed linear streams that function similarly to FAST channels, beginning with channels curated around artists performing at Coachella. The feature targets lean-back, passive viewing behavior as YouTube’s consumption continues to grow on living-room TVs, positioning the service closer to traditional linear-TV navigation patterns common in smart TV EPG environments.
Roku announced the U.S. launch of Howdy, a new ad-free subscription video-on-demand service priced at $2.99 per month, initially available on the Roku platform. The service launches with thousands of titles totaling nearly 10,000 hours from partners including Lionsgate, Warner Bros. Discovery, and FilmRise, alongside select Roku Originals, with plans to expand to mobile and additional platforms later.
BroadView Software has partnered with Uplynk to integrate enterprise broadcast scheduling with cloud-native delivery solutions. This collaboration aims to centralize channel management and support live and linear streaming operations for a global media client across multiple continents. The solution focuses on delivering a scalable streaming workflow from scheduling to distribution.
The article describes shifting video consumption patterns in France as streaming (SVOD) and YouTube usage grows while free-to-air linear television remains the largest overall viewing source. It highlights that changes are most pronounced among under-35 audiences, indicating an ongoing hybrid viewing environment combining linear TV and digital platforms.
LG Electronics announced a “premiumization” push for its LG Channels FAST service, including new exclusive programming and channels aimed at advertisers and LG TV viewers. Additions include the All Chewed Up FAST channel (launching March 30, 2026 in North America), LG Channels World Pup (premiering in June with matches through July), expanded exclusive original programming for Matthew Berry’s Fantasy Life, and a Mohr Stories video podcast FAST channel in partnership with Cineverse.
Samsung TV Plus is expanding into exclusive original programming, including the six-part docuseries "Hooligans: The ARCH Racing Project" starring Keanu Reeves and Gard Hollinger, produced by V10 Entertainment. The platform also expanded its partnership with creator Mark Rober for a two-hour live global event and launched MotoAmericaTV, an exclusive FAST channel featuring 200+ hours of live motorbike racing, citing a footprint of 100 million monthly active users.
JioHotstar has launched "Tadka," a new micro-drama segment integrated within its main app, featuring over 100 short-format shows. The launch is timed with the Indian Premier League (IPL) to enhance user retention and increase time spent on the platform through short-form content. This initiative also aims to facilitate deeper brand integration within storylines and deliver targeted advertising experiences.
The article details NASA+ preparations to live stream Artemis II and subsequent mission milestones, projecting cumulative viewership around 25 million and describing a distributed production workflow across multiple NASA centers using a virtual master control room. NASA says it uses AWS-backed infrastructure, Akamai as its CDN with plans to add additional CDNs, and will leverage YouTube to handle demand spikes while also pursuing broader distribution via partnerships with services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, plus content partners including PBS and Canopy.
HbbTV released version 2026-1 of its Conformance Test Suite, expanding to 3,439 test cases (2,907 approved) and adding 64 newly approved tests plus quality improvements to more than 180 cases. The update adds new approved coverage for CTA WAVE Media Source Extensions (MSE) API tests and Widevine DRM support, and integrates test cases previously only available in the UK to broaden regional applicability.
Tubi has licensed more than 600 movies and TV shows for its Canadian ad-supported, on-demand library from Disney, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, and Warner Bros. Discovery. The company cited its strategy of using deep catalog programming to drive rediscovery and repeat viewing, and noted reported 30% year-over-year growth in Canadian monthly active users since 2020 along with a long-term strategic partnership with Bell Media.
CivicScience data indicates a nearly 35% increase in intent to follow Major League Baseball (MLB) in the 2026 season compared to 2025, reaching 47% of U.S. adults. This rise is partly attributed to new rule changes, including the ABS challenge system, and an increased interest in sports betting, particularly among women. Furthermore, the article notes a shift in how fans access games, citing a Netflix exclusive opening-night game and some MLB teams moving to direct-to-consumer streaming.
Bitmovin released upgrades to its Player Web X web video player, adding vertical video support and new advertising playback capabilities aimed at publishers, news, and social media use cases. The update leverages a Load Control API to preload main content and streaming ads for faster transitions, and introduces a package/bundles architecture and Package API to enable deeper customization without modifying source code. Bitmovin also claims improved performance and footprint, including faster startup times and a smaller fully featured bundle versus comparable alternatives.
DAZN announced plans to launch a new division, DAZN Inflight, in 2027 to distribute DAZN live sports to passengers on aircraft and vessels, citing improving onboard connectivity, reliability, and bandwidth. The unit will be led by Aviv Giladi (president, DAZN Partnerships) and would compete with existing inflight live sports providers such as IMG’s Sport24, which distributes 24/7 sports channels to airlines and cruise lines.
BBC Sport reported major digital growth for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games, with iPlayer streams nearly tripling versus the prior Winter Games (83m vs 31.4m) while linear reach also rose to 26.3m despite a 25% reduction in broadcast hours. In a podcast discussion, head of major events Ron Chakraborty described reallocating resources from linear to digital and prioritizing iPlayer usability as viewing continues to shift online. The BBC also highlighted large increases in social video views and cited a new YouTube partnership expected to play a bigger role around the upcoming World Cup.
NETINT argues that as video pipelines scale, operational coordination (a “video control plane”) becomes a larger bottleneck than raw encoding performance, especially in event-driven architectures and Just-In-Time (JIT) transcoding. The article positions partner platform Scalstrm as a unified control plane across ingest, transcoding, packaging, and delivery (including origin/CDN functions), citing operational features like intent-based scheduling, backpressure, and failure isolation plus claimed cost/power/footprint reductions when orchestrating CPU/GPU/VPU resources.
Reuters is working with TVU Networks on a phased migration from satellite-based delivery to a cloud-managed, IP-based live news distribution model, with the first region already live and global rollout underway. The system uses TVU MediaHub for signal processing/routing and TVU NOC for monitoring and incident response, aiming to improve consistency, security, and reliability via geographically distributed redundancy, automated failover, and elastic scaling.
London-based developer Steven Irby launched ChannelSurfer.tv, a web interface that repackages curated YouTube channels and playlists into a linear-style electronic programme guide (EPG) so viewers can “channel surf” instead of relying on recommendation algorithms. The static Next.js site is hosted on Cloudflare, uses PartyKit, and refreshes EPG data daily via GitHub Actions from a curated list of ~200 YouTube channels and 40 music playlists, with an optional client-side bookmarklet to import a user’s YouTube subscriptions. Irby says the product is independent of YouTube, uses embedded YouTube videos, does not block ads, and he aims to expand to TV platforms like Fire TV, Apple TV, and Chromecast.
Amazon is planning its first major redesign of the Fire TV user interface since 2020. The update aims to shift the connected TV home screen toward a more modern, content-discovery-focused experience, positioning Fire TV more explicitly as a discovery hub.
NVIDIA announced an update to its GeForce NOW cloud gaming service focused on virtual reality, targeting gameplay streaming to VR devices at up to 90 fps. The post also notes that the game "Crimson Desert" will be playable at launch using GeForce RTX 5080-class performance in the cloud.
Accedo One and Magine Pro have officially launched their previously announced joint venture as Leyra, combining both companies’ SaaS businesses into a single entity. The Leyra offering unifies Magine Pro’s end-to-end subscriber lifecycle platform with Accedo One’s OTT technology and Accedo One Marketplace to provide an integrated OTT SaaS platform focused on engagement, retention, analytics, and simplified third-party integration.
