The New York Budgets

Author: Ryan McNom

  • Meta Is Blocking Links to ICE List on Facebook, Instagram and Threads

    Meta Is Blocking Links to ICE List on Facebook, Instagram and Threads

    In a move that’s sure to rile up the far-left activist crowd but makes perfect sense for anyone who values the safety of our nation’s border enforcers, Meta has quietly started blocking links to the so-called “ICE List” website across its major platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

    This decision comes amid growing concerns over online harassment and doxxing targeted at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel, who are on the front lines protecting America’s sovereignty from illegal crossings and criminal elements.

    The ICE List, a crowdsourced wiki-style site launched in June last year, purports to “hold accountable” DHS employees by compiling and publicizing their names, often pulled from public sources like LinkedIn profiles.

    Site creator Dominick Skinner, a self-described activist, claims the project is run by a small core team of five, bolstered by hundreds of anonymous volunteers who submit tips on ICE agents’ activities across U.S. cities. But let’s call it what it is: a thinly veiled attempt at intimidation, masquerading as “transparency.” Skinner himself griped to WIRED that Meta’s block is no surprise from a company led by Mark Zuckerberg, who he accuses of cozying up to President Trump—referencing Zuckerberg’s attendance at Trump’s inauguration and past political donations. “I think it’s no surprise that a company run by a man who sat behind Trump at his inauguration, and donated to the destruction of the White House, has taken a stance that helps ICE agents retain anonymity,” Skinner said.

    Skinner’s rhetoric reeks of the kind of liberal outrage we’ve seen time and again from those who demonize law enforcement while turning a blind eye to the real threats at our borders. ICE agents aren’t “terrorizing immigrant communities,” as Skinner alleges; they’re enforcing the laws of the land, deporting criminals, and stemming the tide of illegal immigration that strains resources and undermines wages for hardworking Americans. In a right-of-center view, this is essential work—pro-ICE all the way. These agents put their lives on the line daily, facing dangers from cartels, human traffickers, and yes, even domestic agitators who think doxxing is a form of “activism.”

    The block was first noticed by volunteers associated with ICE List on Monday night, with widespread confirmation by Tuesday morning. Attempts to share links on Facebook yield messages like, “Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can’t be edited,” which later updated to, “Your content couldn’t be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards.” On Threads, links simply vanish with a curt “Link not allowed.” Instagram users see, “We restrict certain activity to protect our community. Let us know if you think we made a mistake.” Interestingly, WhatsApp—another Meta property—still allows sharing, perhaps due to its end-to-end encryption focus.

    Meta spokesperson Andy Stone pointed to the company’s policy against sharing personally identifiable information (PII), specifically prohibiting “content asking for personally identifiable information of others.” When pressed on why the block came after six months of unrestricted sharing, Stone reiterated the doxxing concerns.

    This isn’t Meta’s first rodeo; back in the day, they shut down a Chicago-based Facebook group tracking ICE sightings after pressure from the Justice Department. Good on them for stepping up again—protecting public servants from harassment aligns with basic decency, even if it irks the anti-border crowd.

    The site gained notoriety earlier this month after claiming to upload a “leaked” list of 4,500 DHS employees. But a closer look reveals it’s mostly aggregated from public data—LinkedIn bios, social media posts, and the like. ICE List describes itself as “an independently maintained public documentation project focused on immigration-enforcement activity,” aiming to “record, organize, and preserve verifiable information about enforcement actions, agents, facilities, vehicles, and related incidents.” Sounds noble, but in practice, it’s a hit list that could endanger families and fuel vigilante actions. The Trump administration has rightly pushed back against such tactics, threatening prosecutions for doxxing and leaning on tech firms to curb these efforts.

    From a pro-ICE perspective, this blocking is a win for national security. ICE isn’t about haphazard “remigrations”—that far-right buzzword for mass expulsions without due process, which we’re firmly against here. No, ICE handles targeted, legal deportations of those who break our laws, like violent offenders and repeat border-jumpers. Remigration schemes, often peddled by extremists, ignore the rule of law and humanitarian considerations; ICE, on the other hand, operates within the framework of justice, ensuring removals are justified and orderly. Liberals like Skinner and his ilk want to abolish ICE altogether, chanting “no borders, no walls” while ignoring the chaos that invites—fentanyl floods, human smuggling, and overburdened communities.

    Social media reactions have been swift and divided, as seen on X (formerly Twitter). One user, @warriors_mom, shared the WIRED story, noting, “Users of Meta’s social platforms can no longer share links to ICE List, a website listing what it claims are the names of thousands of DHS employees.” Another, @snoopyicetea, pointed out, “TikTok isn’t the only app being censored in the US. Every Meta app is blocking links to ICE list.” Tech enthusiast @f1rede weighed in thoughtfully: “Meta is blocking links to ICE List (a crowdsourced wiki naming ICE/CBP agents) on Facebook, Instagram & Threads, citing PII/doxxing rules. Protecting people is vital — but so is public accountability. Should platforms block site links like this?” Meanwhile, conspiracy-tinged posts like @z_007_z’s linked it to broader U.S.-Iran parallels and Trump control, showing how quickly these stories spiral.

    Critics on the left cry censorship, but this is about safety, not suppression. Meta’s platforms have long battled misinformation and harmful content, and blocking a site that solicits tips on agents’ identities fits squarely under that umbrella. Skinner countered Meta’s rationale by noting his site has been crowdsourcing info for months, but that doesn’t make it right—public data or not, aggregating it for targeted harassment crosses a line.

    This episode highlights the ongoing tug-of-war between free speech and security in the digital age. With the 2026 midterms on the horizon, expect Democrats to seize on this as evidence of Big Tech’s “bias” toward conservatives, while ignoring their own calls to defund ICE. But for those of us with a right-center lean, it’s refreshing to see a tech giant like Meta prioritize the protection of our ICE heroes over the whims of liberal activists. After all, secure borders mean safer communities, and that’s a policy worth defending.

  • Warner Bros. Discovery Reportedly Exploring Sale as Media Landscape Shifts

    Warner Bros. Discovery Reportedly Exploring Sale as Media Landscape Shifts

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    A Warner Bros sign in Warsaw, Poland, on 6 August 2024. © Aleksander Kalka/NurPhoto via Getty Images






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    Paramount PARA +4.85% ▲, backed by billionaire Larry Ellison and his family, has officially opened the bidding for rival Warner Bros. Discovery WBD +3.40% ▲ — a potential massive merger that would dramatically change Hollywood.



    Warner Bros. Discovery’s board rejected Paramount’s initial bid of about $20 a share, but talks are continuing, according to two people close to the companies who were not authorized to speak publicly.

    One of the knowledgeable sources said Paramount was preparing a second bid.

    Warner Bros. Discovery owns HBO, CNN, TBS, Food Network, HGTV and the prolific Warner Bros. movie and television studio in Burbank.

    Ellison, one of the world’s richest men, is committed to helping his 42-year-old son, David, pull off the industry-reshaping acquisition and has agreed to help finance the bid, two people close to the situation said.

    The younger Ellison, who entered the movie business 15 years ago by launching his Skydance Media production company, was catapulted into the major leagues this summer with the Ellison family’s purchase of Paramount’s controlling stake.

    Since then, David Ellison and his team have made bold moves to help Paramount shake more than a decade of doldrums. Buying Warner Bros. Discovery would be their most audacious move yet. The merger would lead to the elimination of one of the original Hollywood film studios, and could see the consolidation of CNN with Paramount-owned CBS News.

    Representatives for Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery declined to comment.

    CNBC reported Friday that two companies have been in discussions for weeks following last month’s news that Paramount was planning a bid. Bloomberg reported Saturday that Warner Bros. Discovery had rejected Paramount’s bid of about $20 a share.

    Industry veterans were stunned by the speed of Paramount’s play for Warner Bros. Discovery, noting that top executives had begun working on the bid even as they were putting finishing touches on the Paramount takeover.

    One of Paramount’s top executives is a former Goldman Sachs banker, Andy Gordon, who was a ranking member of RedBird Capital Partners, the private equity firm that has teamed up with the Ellisons and has a significant stake in Paramount.

    Paramount’s interest prompted stocks of both companies to soar, driving up the market value for Warner Bros. Discovery.

    Paramount’s offer of $20 a share for Warner Bros. Discovery was less than what some analysts and sources believe the company’s parts are worth, leading the Warner Bros. Discovery board to rebuff the offer, sources said.

    But many believe that Paramount needs more content to better compete in a landscape that’s dominated by tech giants such as Netflix and Amazon.

    Paramount has reason to move quickly.

    Warner Bros. Discovery had previously announced that it was planning to divide its assets into two companies by next April. One company, Warner Bros., would be made up of HBO, the HBO Max streaming service and the Burbank-based movie and television studios. Current Chief Executive David Zaslav would run that enterprise.

    The other arm would be called Discovery Global and consist of the linear cable television channels, which have seen their fortunes fall with consumers’ shift to streaming.

    The Paramount bid was seen as an attempt to slip in under the wire because other large companies, including Amazon, Apple and Netflix, may have been interested in buying the studios, streaming service and leafy studio lot in Burbank.

    However, Netflix’s co-chief executive Greg Peters appeared to downplay Netflix’s interest during an appearance last week at the Bloomberg Screentime media conference. “We come from a deep heritage of being builders rather than buyers,” Peters said.

    Some analysts believe Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery could ultimately prevail because Zaslav and his team have made huge cuts during the past three years to get the various businesses profitable after buying the company from AT&T, which left the company burdened with a heavy debt load. The company has paid down billions of dollars of debt, but still carries nearly $35 billion of debt on its books.

    Others point to Warner Bros.’ recent successes at the box office as evidence that Paramount is offering too little.

    Despite the tumult at the corporate level, Warner Bros.’ film studio has had a successful year. Its fortunes turned around in April with the release of “A Minecraft Movie,” which grossed nearly $958 million worldwide, followed by a string of hits including Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” James Gunn’s “Superman” and horror flick “Weapons.”

    Meanwhile, Paramount has been on a buying spree.

    Just in the last two months, Paramount made a $7.7 billion deal for UFC media rights and closed two deals that will pay the creators of “South Park” more than $1.25 billion over five years to secure streaming rights to the popular cartoon.

    Last week at Bloomberg’s Screentime media conference, Ellison declined to comment on Paramount’s pursuit of Warner Bros. or even whether his company had already made a bid. But he did touch briefly on consolidation in Hollywood, saying, “Ironically, it was David Zaslav last year who said that consolidation in the media business is important.”

    “There are a lot of options out there,” he added, but declined to elaborate.

    After news of Paramount’s interest surfaced, Warner Bros. Discovery’s stock jumped more than 30%. It climbed as much as $20 a share, but closed Friday at $17.10, down 3.2%.

    Paramount also has seen its stock surge by about 12%. Shares finished Friday at $17, down 5.4%

    Warner Bros. Discovery is now valued at $42 billion. Paramount is considerably smaller, worth about $18.5 billion.

  • Amazon Outage Shuts Down Internet Access for Millions Across the U.S.

    Amazon Outage Shuts Down Internet Access for Millions Across the U.S.

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    Microsoft Digital Lifestyle Stock Photos, High-Res Pictures, and Images. © Getty Images
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    Monday’s widespread outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) AMZN -1.95% ▼ served as a stark wake-up call. For millions of users across the United States and beyond, the internet ground to a halt, rendering popular platforms like Reddit, Roblox, Snapchat, and even critical services such as online banking inaccessible for hours. The disruption, which began late Sunday night and lingered into the afternoon, exposed the vulnerabilities in our increasingly centralized online infrastructure. As AWS, the cloud computing arm of e-commerce giant Amazon, finally declared the issue resolved by late Monday, questions lingered about the reliability of the systems that power much of the modern web.

    The outage, described by experts as one of the most significant in recent years, affected over 2,000 companies and services worldwide. From social media giants to gaming empires and financial institutions, the ripple effects were felt far and wide. “This kind of outage, where a foundational internet service brings down a large swath of online services, only happens a handful of times in a year,” said Daniel Ramirez, director of product at Downdetector by Ookla, in an interview with CNET. “They probably are becoming slightly more frequent as companies are encouraged to completely rely on cloud services and their data architectures are designed to make the most out of a particular cloud platform.”

    According to AWS’s official status updates, the trouble began at 11:49 p.m. PT on Sunday, when the company first noticed increased error rates for services in its US-East-1 region—a massive data center hub in northern Virginia that supports operations across the US and Europe. By 12:26 a.m. PT, engineers had pinpointed the initial culprit: DNS resolution issues affecting regional endpoints for DynamoDB, AWS’s managed NoSQL database service.

    DNS, or Domain Name System, acts as the internet’s phonebook, translating user-friendly web addresses like “reddit.com” into the numerical IP addresses that computers use to connect. When DNS fails, it’s like losing the map to your destination—services are still there, but users can’t reach them. “It’s always DNS!” is a common refrain among tech professionals, as noted in reports from BBC News, highlighting how such seemingly mundane errors can cascade into widespread havoc.

    As the night wore on, AWS resolved the DNS problem, but new challenges emerged. Network connectivity issues persisted, forcing the company to implement throttling—temporarily limiting the power and performance of certain operations—to stabilize the system. “Over time we reduced throttling of operations and worked in parallel to resolve network connectivity issues until the services fully recovered,” AWS stated in its final update. By 3:01 p.m. PT on Monday, all services were back to normal, with full resolution announced at 3:53 p.m. PT.

    The timing couldn’t have been worse. Issues appeared largely contained as the East Coast started its workday, but reports surged dramatically after 8 a.m. PT when the West Coast came online. Downdetector, an outage-tracking platform owned by Ziff Davis, recorded a staggering 9.8 million user reports globally, with 2.7 million from the US alone. The UK followed with over 1.1 million, and significant numbers came from Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. At its peak around 10 a.m. PT, approximately 280 services were still experiencing lingering problems.

    Among the hardest hit were consumer favorites: Reddit went dark until around 4:30 a.m. PT, Roblox and Fortnite left gamers frustrated, Snapchat users couldn’t send snaps, and even Amazon’s own Ring doorbells and e-commerce site faced intermittent failures. Financial services like Venmo and various online banking platforms were disrupted, as were the PlayStation Network, Verizon communications, and YouTube. In the UK, banks such as Lloyds and Halifax reported issues, while government services like HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) were affected, per BBC reports.

    At the heart of the disruption lies AWS’s outsized role in the digital ecosystem. As the world’s leading cloud provider, AWS underpins roughly a third of the internet, offering scalable computing, storage, and database services that allow companies to outsource their infrastructure needs. This model saves businesses from maintaining expensive on-premise servers, but it also creates single points of failure. When AWS sneezes, the internet catches a cold.

    Comparisons to past incidents abound. Similar to the 2021 Fastly content delivery network outage and the 2024 CrowdStrike cybersecurity glitch, Monday’s event underscored the fragility of our interconnected web. “The reliance on a small number of big companies to underpin the web is akin to putting all of our eggs in a tiny handful of baskets,” explained a The NY Budgets analysis. “When it works, it’s great, but only one small thing needs to go wrong for the internet to fall to its knees in a matter of minutes.”

    The root cause, as later detailed by AWS at 8:43 a.m. PT, was traced to “an underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers.” This subsystem’s failure amplified the initial DNS glitch, leading to degraded performance across services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which provides virtual servers in the cloud.

    Experts like Luke Kehoe, an industry analyst at Ookla, emphasized the need for better resilience strategies. “The lesson here is resilience,” Kehoe told The NY Budgets. “Many organizations still concentrate critical workloads in a single cloud region. Distributing critical apps and data across multiple regions and availability zones can materially reduce the blast radius of future incidents.”

    Alternatives to AWS exist, but few match its scale. Microsoft’s Azure and Google’s Cloud Platform are the primary competitors, with smaller players like IBM, Alibaba, and even European upstarts such as Stackit (launched by Lidl’s parent company) vying for market share. Yet, AWS remains dominant, prompting calls from some quarters—particularly in Europe and the UK—for greater investment in sovereign cloud infrastructure to reduce dependency on US-based giants. As one anonymous government source confided to BBC reporters, discussions about a UK equivalent to AWS have surfaced, only to be dismissed with, “We already have AWS, over there.” Incidents like this, however, reveal why such complacency might be shortsighted.

    Amid the speculation, AWS and experts alike have ruled out a cyberattack as the cause. DNS issues can stem from malicious activities like distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, but there’s no evidence here. Instead, it appears to be a technical fault—possibly human error in configuration or a maintenance mishap at the northern Virginia facility, AWS’s oldest and largest data center.

    That said, outages like this can create opportunities for bad actors. Marijus Briedis, CTO at NordVPN, warned in a statement to CNET that hackers might exploit the chaos. “This is a cybersecurity issue as much as a technical one,” he said. “True online security isn’t only about keeping hackers out, it’s also about ensuring you can stay connected and protected when systems fail.” He advised users to be vigilant against phishing scams, such as fake emails urging password changes in the wake of the outage.

    Cloudflare’s CEO, in a light-hearted jab reported by BBC, summed up the relief felt by competitors: “AWS had a bad day.” For Amazon, however, the incident adds to a string of high-profile stumbles, raising questions about accountability in an industry where downtime can cost businesses millions.

    From a business perspective, the outage couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time for Amazon, with its third-quarter earnings report slated for October 30, 2025. Despite the disruption, Amazon’s stock (AMZN) showed resilience, closing Monday at $216.48—a 1.61% gain from the previous session. This outperformed the S&P 500’s 1.07% rise, the Dow’s 1.12% increase, and the Nasdaq’s 1.37% climb.

    However, the broader picture is mixed. Over the past month, AMZN shares have dipped 7.97%, underperforming the Retail-Wholesale sector’s 5.23% loss but lagging behind the S&P 500’s 1.08% gain. Analysts remain optimistic, with Zacks Consensus Estimates projecting full-year earnings of $6.83 per share (a 23.51% year-over-year increase) and revenue of $708.73 billion (up 11.09%). For the upcoming quarter, EPS is forecasted at $1.60 (11.89% growth), with revenue at $177.96 billion (12.01% rise).

    Recent analyst revisions have been positive, with the consensus EPS estimate rising 1.1% over the last 30 days, earning Amazon a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy). Valuation metrics show a Forward P/E of 31.2—above the Internet-Commerce industry average of 21.03—and a PEG ratio of 1.41, slightly higher than the sector’s 1.38. The industry itself ranks in the top 24% of Zacks’ 250+ sectors, suggesting strong fundamentals despite occasional hiccups.

    Investors will be watching closely for any mention of the outage in Amazon’s earnings call, particularly regarding AWS’s growth trajectory. As the cloud division contributes significantly to Amazon’s profitability, ensuring uptime will be key to maintaining investor confidence.

    Monday’s AWS outage wasn’t just a technical blip; it was a reminder of our collective vulnerability in a cloud-dependent world. As more businesses migrate to platforms like AWS for efficiency and cost savings, the potential for widespread disruption grows. While the internet has bounced back—for now—the event prompts a reevaluation of diversification strategies, regional redundancies, and even geopolitical dependencies in tech infrastructure.

  • Warner Bros. Discovery Signals Trouble Ahead for HBO Max Users

    Warner Bros. Discovery Signals Trouble Ahead for HBO Max Users

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    In the cozy ritual of unwinding after a long day—perhaps curling up with an episode of The Last of Us or bingeing a classic like The Sopranos—streaming services like HBO Max have become a sanctuary for millions. These platforms offer more than mere entertainment; they provide escapism, education through documentaries, and a sense of community around beloved stories. Yet, as the streaming wars rage on, the comfort of affordable access may soon be disrupted. Warner Bros. Discovery WBD -1.85% ▼, the powerhouse behind HBO Max, is signaling significant changes that could hit subscribers’ wallets and habits hard. CEO David Zaslav’s recent comments at a high-profile investor conference have ignited concerns about impending price hikes and a tougher stance on password sharing, potentially reshaping the user experience for the service’s 125.7 million global subscribers.

    HBO Max, which reverted to its original name from “Max” in July 2025 after a brief rebranding experiment, remains a titan in the streaming landscape. According to FlixPatrol data, it ranks as the fourth most-subscribed platform worldwide, trailing only Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+. This popularity stems from its prestige content—think Emmy-winning dramas like Succession and Euphoria, blockbuster franchises from the DC Universe, and a vast library of timeless films and series. A Reddit thread from late 2024, still buzzing with activity nine months later, captures the fervor: Subscribers rave about the “high-quality/prestige content,” the “rich library of older and favorite shows/movies,” exclusive originals, and solid value for money. One user summed it up: “It’s the only service where I feel like I’m getting premium TV without the cable bill.”

    But not all feedback is glowing. Some users gripe about technical glitches like buffering on certain devices, an overload of reality TV, and the occasional removal of older exclusives. These pain points, while minor compared to the praise, highlight the platform’s imperfections in a hyper-competitive market. Now, with Zaslav’s bold assertions, the focus is shifting from content quality to cost—and how WBD plans to extract more revenue from its loyal base.

    Zaslav’s Price Hike Tease: A Bet on Premium Content

    Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco on September 11, 2025, Zaslav painted an optimistic picture of HBO Max’s trajectory while dropping hints that could spell trouble for users. “People are really starting to love HBO Max. That’s the key,” he said, emphasizing the platform’s “differentiated offering” outside the U.S. and the influx of top-tier talent like Chuck Lorre (The Big Bang Theory), Bill Lawrence (Ted Lasso), and Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project). This creative firepower, Zaslav argued, gives WBD “real optional leverage” to keep hits in-house or license them elsewhere, bolstering its negotiating power.

    The CEO didn’t mince words on pricing: “We think we’re way underpriced.” He recalled the days when consumers shelled out $55 monthly for traditional cable packages, contrasting that with today’s streaming fees, which he views as a bargain despite the proliferation of services. “We’re going to take our time, because we’re really growing now and people are spending more and more time with us. But we think that there’s real upside to that. And it’s hard to replace quality content that people love,” Zaslav stated, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. This comes on the heels of the last price adjustment in June 2024, when tiers saw modest increases amid broader industry trends.

    Current HBO Max plans, as listed on the company’s website, include:

    PlanMonthly PriceAnnual Price (16% Savings)Key Features
    Basic with Ads$9.99$99.99HD streaming, 2 devices, ads during content
    Standard$16.99$169.99Ad-free (except sports/live), 2 devices, Full HD, downloads
    Premium$20.99$209.99Ad-free, 4 devices, 4K UHD, Dolby Atmos, offline downloads

    Prices exclude taxes, and live sports streaming is limited to two concurrent streams on Standard and Premium tiers. While these rates already position HBO Max as pricier than rivals—Netflix’s ad-supported plan starts at $6.99, Disney+ at $7.99—Zaslav believes the prestige factor justifies hikes. Analysts note that competitors like Peacock and Apple TV+ raised prices by $3 in recent months, setting a precedent. However, in a market where the average household subscribes to four services and spends about $160 monthly on entertainment (per a TiVo survey), further increases risk subscriber churn.

    WBD’s streaming segment is already profitable, posting $293 million in Q2 2025 earnings, a turnaround from last year’s loss. This financial health, coupled with content investments, emboldens Zaslav’s strategy. Yet, critics argue it’s tone-deaf amid economic pressures; one Slashdot commenter quipped, “Your service is not a necessity… worth exactly how much people are willing to pay.”

    Growth Projections: 150 Million Homes by 2026

    Zaslav’s confidence extends to subscriber forecasts. He projected HBO Max reaching “over 150 million homes next year,” building on Q2 2025’s addition of 3.4 million users to hit 125.7 million globally—mostly from international markets, with just 200,000 domestic adds. In regions like Europe and Latin America, HBO content dominates viewing on platforms like Sky, where it accounts for 50% of non-sports consumption. Fans there are clamoring for returns like Euphoria, The Gilded Age, and The Last of Us Season 2, all branded as HBO.

    This expansion aligns with WBD’s broader ambitions. The company, which merged WarnerMedia and Discovery in 2022, is set to split into two entities by Q2 2026: one focused on studios and streaming (led by Zaslav, including HBO Max and DC Studios), the other on linear networks. Streaming profitability is expected to top $1.3 billion in 2025, driven by global rollouts and bundled offerings like the Disney+/Hulu/HBO Max package at $16.99 (ad-supported) or $29.99 (ad-free). As of May 2025, combined Max and Discovery+ subs stood at 122.3 million, per Wikipedia data, underscoring steady growth despite U.S. saturation.

    The Password Sharing Crackdown: No More Free Rides

    Compounding the price concerns is WBD’s renewed push against password sharing, a scourge costing the industry an estimated $25 billion annually—a 2022 Citi report pegged Netflix alone at $6.25 billion in losses. Zaslav admitted at the conference that HBO Max “hasn’t been pushing” on this yet, prioritizing user engagement first. “We want them to fall in love with our content,” he said, echoing strategies from Netflix’s 2023 crackdown, which netted 5.9 million new subs post-enforcement.

    The groundwork is laid. During the August 2025 earnings call, Global Streaming and Games CEO JB Perrette detailed months of data refinement to identify “legitimate users.” Starting September 2025, messaging will turn “more aggressive,” requiring extra-household sharers to pay a $7.99/month “Extra Member Add-On” or face lockouts. “We’ve spent a lot of the last several months… making sure that our data sets on figuring out who is a legitimate user… [are] in the right place,” Perrette said, per an Insider Monkey transcript. Full impact is eyed for Q4 2025 and 2026 financials, potentially converting sharers into paying users.

    This follows softer nudges earlier in 2025, including profile transfers and voluntary add-ons. HBO Max defines a “household” as the account owner and cohabitants, with enforcement via IP addresses and device tracking—methods that have sparked privacy debates but boosted rivals’ revenues. For users, it means no more mooching on a friend’s login for House of the Dragon; expect prompts to subscribe independently or pay extra.

    Subscriber Backlash and Broader Implications

    These moves arrive amid a maturing streaming market plagued by “subscription fatigue.” Antenna research shows specialty services like HBO Max grew 12% year-over-year in 2025, but churn rates hover around 8% quarterly as costs rise. Reddit threads already buzz with frustration: “Another hike? I’ll rotate with Netflix,” one user posted. WBD stock, up 52% year-to-date to $16.17, reflects investor optimism, but consumer sentiment tells a different story. Zaslav’s $50 million-plus compensation package has also drawn ire, especially after content purges for tax benefits.

    On the flip side, HBO Max’s strengths—its 4K offerings, offline downloads, and exclusives—could retain loyalists. Bundles and student deals (Basic with Ads at $4.99/month via UNiDAYS) offer relief. As WBD eyes 150 million subs by 2026, the challenge is balancing profitability with accessibility. For now, Zaslav’s vision positions HBO Max as a premium powerhouse, but at what cost to its devoted fans?

  • MSNBC to Rebrand as MS NOW, Dropping Iconic Peacock Logo in Comcast Spinoff

    MSNBC to Rebrand as MS NOW, Dropping Iconic Peacock Logo in Comcast Spinoff

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    MSNBC to Change Name to MS NOW Under Versant. © Versant
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    MSNBC, the cable news network known for its progressive commentary and flagship programs like The Rachel Maddow Show and Deadline: White House, will undergo a significant transformation later this year, rebranding as MS NOW—short for My Source News Opinion World—and shedding the iconic peacock logo as part of its spinoff from Comcast’s CMCSA +1.20% ▲ NBCUniversal. The move, announced on Monday, August 18, 2025, marks a pivotal shift for the nearly 30-year-old network as it joins a new publicly traded company, Versant, alongside other cable assets like CNBC, USA Network, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and the Golf Channel.

    The rebrand, driven by Comcast’s $7 billion spinoff strategy unveiled in November 2024, aims to reposition MSNBC for a streaming-dominated media landscape while allowing NBCUniversal to retain its broadcast and streaming assets, including NBC, Bravo, and the Peacock streaming service. “The peacock is synonymous with NBCUniversal, and it is a symbol they have decided to keep within the NBCU family,” Versant CEO Mark Lazarus wrote in a memo to staff, as reported by NBC News. “This gives us the opportunity to chart our own path forward, create distinct brand identities, and establish an independent news organization following the spin.”

    MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler, in a separate memo, acknowledged the decision was “not made quickly or without significant debate” but emphasized that it enables the network to “set our own course and assert our independence.” She reassured staff that the editorial direction will remain unchanged, stating, “While our name will be changing, who we are and what we do will not.” The network is preparing for the transition by hiring nearly 100 journalists from outlets like CNN, Bloomberg, Politico, and The Washington Post to build an independent newsroom, severing its reliance on NBC News infrastructure.

    A New Identity Amid Controversy

    The rebrand replaces MSNBC’s name, rooted in its 1996 founding as a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC, with MS NOW, accompanied by a new logo featuring a blue background and a red-and-white striped flag. The original name, standing for Microsoft and National Broadcasting Company, became outdated after Microsoft exited the partnership in 2012. However, the decision has sparked internal skepticism and external criticism. A company insider told The New York Post, “It doesn’t set a great precedent for management to change the name after promising staffers it wouldn’t,” referencing Lazarus’s January assurance that MSNBC would retain its name. A former media executive quipped, “MS is the new BS,” while another insider criticized the names Versant and MS NOW as lackluster, suggesting, “Whoever came up with these names deserves to be shown the door.”

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    Making sense of MS Now, the corporate-mandated rebrand for the cable TV outlet that made its name as a left-leaning stalwart. ©  Astrid Stawiarz/MSNBC/NBCU Photo Bank

    Eric Schiffer, chairman of Los Angeles-based Reputation Management Consultants, noted that MSNBC’s “left-leaning” brand perception could benefit from a reset. “They are hoping that by rebranding, there’s a better chance to … reset in the minds of the public,” he told Reuters. The network’s new identity will be supported by a “massive marketing campaign unlike anything we have done in recent memory,” Kutler said, aiming to solidify MS NOW’s position as a destination for news and opinion journalism.

    Comcast’s spinoff, expected to conclude by the end of 2025, reflects a broader strategy to streamline its portfolio amid declining cable viewership and the rise of streaming platforms. NBCUniversal will retain its broadcast network, film and television studios, and Peacock streaming service, which are seen as growth drivers. Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts stated on November 20, 2024, that the transaction positions both Versant and NBCUniversal “for future growth” in a changing media landscape. Comcast President Mike Cavanagh added that NBCUniversal’s integrated media approach will be “fueled by our world-class content, technology, IP, properties, and talent.”

    Other Versant properties, including CNBC, Golf Channel, GolfNow, and SportsEngine, will also drop the peacock logo, though CNBC will retain its name, originally Consumer News and Business Channel, due to global licensing agreements. The spinoff, valued at $7 billion, aims to create a leaner entity focused on cable and sports content, with MSNBC—soon MS NOW—building a standalone news operation to compete independently.

    The rebrand has raised concerns about potential viewer confusion and dilution of MSNBC’s established brand equity, built over decades as a counterpoint to conservative outlets like Fox News. Posts on X reflected mixed sentiment, with some users mocking the new name as “generic” while others saw it as a chance to broaden the network’s appeal. Kutler’s memo addressed staff anxieties, framing the change as an opportunity to “assert our independence as we continue to build our own modern newsgathering organization.”

    As MSNBC transitions to MS NOW over the coming months, the network faces the challenge of maintaining its loyal audience while navigating a competitive media environment. The success of the rebrand will depend on its ability to leverage its new identity and expanded newsroom to deliver on its promise of “news, opinion, and the world.”

  • The NFL is acquiring a 10% ownership share in Disney’s ESPN

    The NFL is acquiring a 10% ownership share in Disney’s ESPN

    Stock Widget

    In a transformative deal that could reshape the sports media landscape for years to come, Walt Disney Co. DIS +1.85% ▲ and the National Football League (NFL) announced Tuesday that the NFL will take a 10% equity stake in ESPN, the sports media titan owned by Disney. In return, ESPN will acquire key NFL media assets including NFL Network, NFL RedZone (distribution rights), and NFL Fantasy, marking a dramatic shift in both the ownership and distribution of professional football content in the U.S.

    While the companies declined to assign a specific monetary figure to the agreement, industry analysts estimate the transaction’s value between $2 billion and $3 billion, making it one of the most significant equity-media swaps in sports history.

    The deal comes as ESPN prepares to launch its standalone streaming service, ESPN-branded DTC (direct-to-consumer) platform, expected to go live later this month with a $29.99 monthly subscription price. By gaining full control over NFL Network and related assets, ESPN enhances its already dominant sports portfolio and takes a significant step toward creating a comprehensive, 24/7 football experience under one roof—ideal for streaming-era consumption.

    “This isn’t just a media partnership—it’s an equity-based alignment of two of the most iconic brands in American sports,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger, in a statement. “Today’s announcement paves the way for the world’s leading sports media brand and America’s most popular sport to deliver an even more compelling experience for NFL fans.”

    ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro echoed the sentiment, noting that the combination of Disney’s innovation and reach with the NFL’s content will allow the companies to “create a premier destination for football fans.”

    NFL Films, NFL+ (the league’s direct-to-consumer app), and the NFL Podcast Network will remain under the NFL’s control, indicating the league still intends to preserve some degree of independence in content creation and branding.

    Importantly, ESPN gains access to seven live NFL games per year, which NFL Network has traditionally broadcast. The move gives ESPN another foothold in live broadcasting outside of its existing Monday Night Football and NFL Playoff packages.

    In exchange for its media assets, the NFL will receive a 10% ownership stake in ESPN, aligning the league’s financial interests with ESPN’s future success—especially as the network migrates more content to its direct-to-consumer platform.

    Though ESPN remains majority-owned by Disney (which has been exploring options such as spinning off or selling a minority stake in the company), the NFL’s new equity stake suggests a long-term strategic partnership rather than a transactional licensing deal.

    “By securing an ownership position, the NFL ensures it has a seat at the table as ESPN evolves into a digital-first network,” said Bob Dorfman, sports marketing analyst at Pinnacle Advertising. “This is smart hedging—if cable continues to shrink, the NFL will still win with streaming growth.”

    Multiple analysts believe this transaction positions both ESPN and the NFL for a dominant role in the future of sports entertainment.

    “This move signals the end of ESPN as ‘just’ a cable channel and the beginning of ESPN as a full-fledged, NFL-integrated streaming giant,” said Rich Greenfield, media analyst at LightShed Partners. “It’s a massive strategic pivot for both sides.”

    Greenfield estimates the NFL’s stake in ESPN is valued at approximately $2.5 billion, though the number will fluctuate depending on how ESPN is valued after its DTC product launches and matures.

    Citi media analyst Jason Bazinet called the deal “visionary,” suggesting that it may pave the way for similar stake-based deals with other leagues, such as the NBA or MLB, if ESPN continues to diversify and expand its equity partners.

    The NFL has long sought to grow its international footprint, and ESPN’s global distribution network could play a vital role in that effort. According to the league’s 2024 annual report, over 17% of NFL viewership now comes from outside North America, with growing markets in Germany, Mexico, and the UK.

    Combining the year-round content machine of the NFL—including fantasy, training camps, behind-the-scenes documentaries, and international games—with Disney’s global infrastructure gives both parties a powerful engine for fan engagement beyond the traditional U.S. football season.

    The deal is still subject to regulatory approval, though experts expect few hurdles. While ESPN is a dominant player in sports media, the NFL’s partial ownership does not cross antitrust thresholds, and both entities are likely to argue that the partnership enhances consumer options.

    “There will be scrutiny,” said Jessica Melton, professor of media law at NYU. “But because this isn’t a full merger and the league is maintaining other operations independently, it’s unlikely to face significant legal pushback.”

    With cable viewership declining and streaming competition intensifying, this strategic deal between Disney’s ESPN and the NFL redefines how sports content is monetized, owned, and distributed.

    For Disney, it’s a leap into the future—consolidating the crown jewel of American sports to supercharge its streaming ambitions.

    For the NFL, it’s a shrewd monetization play that preserves autonomy while aligning with one of the most powerful media companies in the world.

    As ESPN enters the streaming battlefield at $29.99 per month, this landmark equity swap could prove to be the single most important deal of the decade for sports media—and perhaps, the playbook others will soon follow.

  • CBS canceled ‘The Late Show’ due to tens of millions in annual financial losses — not because of Stephen Colbert’s politics, sources say

    CBS canceled ‘The Late Show’ due to tens of millions in annual financial losses — not because of Stephen Colbert’s politics, sources say

    CBS brass say they pulled the plug on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” because of its punishing losses — pegged between $40 million and $50 million a year — and claim politics had nothing to do with it, The Post has learned.

    The 61-year-old host got canned just days after he took a dig at the Tiffany Network over its $16 million settlement with Donald Trump over a controversial “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris as the network’s parent Paramount negotiates with the Trump administration regulatory approval for its $8 billion sale to independent studio Skydance.

    “I am offended, and I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company,” Colbert said of the truce in his Monday night monologue.

    “But just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.”

    ‘Gets no advertising’

    But scathing jokes at the expense of CBS brass wasn’t the problem, according to insiders. 

    Instead, the network’s bosses could no longer stomach the fact that Colbert has been plagued with an increasingly dire shortage of advertisers.

    That’s despite Colbert’s No, 1 ratings in his time slot and his status as a key face for the Tiffany Network. 

    In the end, Paramount’s co-CEO George Cheeks decided to kill the show, sources said.

    “Colbert gets no advertising and late night is a tough spot,” said a person with direct knowledge of CBS’s decision. 

    “Colbert might be No. 1, but who watches late night TV anymore?”

    Some Democrats voiced suspicion, citing the host’s left-wing leanings and CBS owner Paramount’s urgent need to gain an OK from the Trump administration for the merger with Skydance, the Hollywood studio behind the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.

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    People walk past the Ed Sullivan Theater, where “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is taped, in New York. (AP)

    “CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump — a deal that looks like bribery,” lefty Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote on X.

    “America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.”

    Skydance CEO David Ellison is the son of Donald Trump pal and tech billionaire Larry Ellison. 

    As The Post first reported, CBS just paid $16 million to Trump and has agreed to run millions of dollars more in MAGA-friendly ads to settle the president’s lawsuit alleging that “60 Minutes” deceptively edited its 2024 interview with Kamala Harris to make her look better.

    Trump, meanwhile, celebrated Colbert’s canning in a Friday morning post on Truth Social.

    “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” the president wrote.

    “His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”

    Fervent denials

    But despite Ellison’s Trump ties, sources said Skydance and its partners at Redbird Capital — the private equity firm that will help run CBS once the deal is cleared — only heard the news of the show’s impending cancellation just before it was announced late Thursday.

    “Skydance had nothing to do with this,” one person close to the decision said. 

    “Colbert loses $40 million to $50 million a year, so George Cheeks just decided to pull the plug.”

    The show’s dominance in its time slot belies sharp declines in viewership as younger viewers move away from traditional TV.

    “The Late Show” boasts nearly 2 million total viewers and 200,000 viewers in the key 25-24 “demo” — making it No. 1 in its time slot.

    Nevertheless, that’s a sharp decline versus the numbers it racked up in its heyday. 

    The ad data firm Guideline estimates that CBS’s late-night shows together drew $220 million in ad revenue in 2024 — just half the $439 million they drew in 2018.

    RedBird’s Jeff Shell, the former head of NBCUniversal who will run the network once the deal is done, has been crunching the numbers and finding that CBS is a “melting ice cube” with its losses and cost overruns, a source said.

    ‘Truth-based’ turn

    The plan is to enhance CBS Sports and invest in “truth-based” news at a network that conservatives have long ripped for its alleged liberal bias.

    A Paramount spokesman declined to comment and would not deny that massive losses were tied to the show’s cancellation.

    Trump’s lawsuit was impeding the approval of the deal by the Trump Federal Communications Commission. 

    The Post has learned that Ellison is now telling people that with the lawsuit settled the Skydance-Paramount deal will get FCC approval by mid-August.

    While Ellison is predicting imminent regulatory approval, it will come at a cost: FCC chairman Brendan Carr is likely to demand conditions to remedy what he believes is left-wing news bias in programming that violates agency “public interest” rules that govern local broadcasting as opposed to cable.

  • Disney is continuing to lay off employees, with its product and technology divisions being significantly affected

    Disney is continuing to lay off employees, with its product and technology divisions being significantly affected

    While Disney insists that the P&T division is critical to its future success, the layoffs nonetheless cut an additional two percent of the company’s workforce.

    This latest round of cost cutting is just one of a long series of cuts lasting several years. Indeed, it isn’t even the first round of layoffs this month.

    Early this month the company pushed out several hundred workers from its marketing for both film and television, television publicity, and its casting and development departments.

    It was the fourth round of layoffs in the last ten months and came about a month after 200 employees were eliminated in March.

    The layoffs in March hit Disney’s ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks unit. That round of layoffs even included the elimination of its once popular “538” website.

    Disney’s job shedding campaign has been going on for several years as the company struggles to reign in expenses in the wildly changing entertainment scene and as Hollywood and streaming continues to lose power over America. In August of 2024, for instance, Disney shed 140 jobs in its entertainment divisions, including ABC television.

    In 2023, the company had its largest layoff by dumping some 7,000 employees.

  • David Cope, Pioneer of A.I.-Generated Music, Dies at 83

    David Cope, Pioneer of A.I.-Generated Music, Dies at 83

    David Cope, a composer and pioneer in the field of algorithmic composition, who in the 1980s developed a computer program for writing music in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and other Classical masters, died on May 4 at his home in Santa Cruz, Calif. He was 83.

    The cause was congestive heart failure, his son Stephen Cope said.

    Before the proliferation of A.I. music generators, before the emergence of Spotify and the advent of the iPod, before Brian Eno had even coined the term “generative music,” Mr. Cope had already figured out how to program a computer to write classical music.

    It was 1981 and, struggling with writer’s block after being commissioned to compose an opera, he was desperate for a compositional partner. He found one in a floppy disk.

    The process was straightforward but tedious. Mr. Cope started by quantifying musical passages from his own work, rendering them as numbers in a database that could be analyzed by a pattern-identifying algorithm he created. The algorithm would then reassemble the “signatures” — Mr. Cope’s name for the patterns it found — into new combinations, and he would convert those combinations into a score.

    It wasn’t the first time someone had used a computer to create music. In 1957, Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson had employed a five-ton supercomputer at the University of Illinois to compose “Illiac Suite,” widely considered to be the first computer-generated score. But Mr. Cope’s program took things a step further: By scanning and reproducing unique signatures, his algorithm could essentially replicate style.

    After years of troubleshooting and fine-tuning, the program, known as Experiments in Musical Intelligence, was able to produce a full opera in a matter of hours. EMI, or Emmy, as Mr. Cope affectionately called it, was officially born. It was one of the earliest computer algorithms used to generate classical music.

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    Mr. Cope in “Opus Cope,” a 2021 documentary about his life’s work. (Jae Shim)

    Mr. Cope considered the program an invaluable creative resource. He trained it on compositions by Bach, Mozart, Sergei Rachmaninoff and other composers; released albums of EMI-composed music throughout the 1990s and 2000s; and used the program in classes he taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was a professor of music. In the years since, he has been celebrated as “the godfather of A.I. music.”

    In 1987, however, EMI’s compositions in the style of Bach were first performed to a stunned, silent audience. Some computer scientists dismissed his algorithmic compositions as insignificant; outraged composers met the project with bewildered resistance or outright hostility. In Cologne, Germany, after listening to EMI compositions imitating the music of Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms and Béla Bartók, one musicologist pointed at Mr. Cope and announced, “Musik ist tot” (“Music is dead”).

    By the late 1990s, Mr. Cope’s skeptical colleagues had a nickname for him — Tin Man, after the walking, talking metallic character in search of a heart in “The Wizard of Oz.”

    Still, there was a budding interest in the algorithm’s implications for human creativity. In 1997, Douglas Hofstadter, a cognitive and computer scientist at the University of Oregon, challenged Mr. Cope’s creation to a Turing-style showdown. The Turing test was named for the British mathematician Alan Turing, who proposed in 1950 that the way to evaluate whether computers had achieved human-level intelligence was to play what he called the “imitation game”: to see if a person interacting with a computer could tell it was not a human being.

    To test Mr. Cope’s algorithm, a pianist played three pieces of music in front of an audience of students and lecturers at the University of Oregon. One piece was composed by Bach, another was generated by EMI and a third was written by Steve Larson, a professor there.

    The New York Times likened it to “a low-key, musical version” of the famous chess match that had been played just a few months earlier by IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer and the grandmaster Garry Kasparov. At the end of the program, Dr. Hofstadter asked audience members to vote on which one was the real Bach composition. Most chose the EMI version.

    “EMI forces us to look at great works of art and wonder where they came from and how deep they really are,” he told The Times afterward. If it were possible to reduce music to little more than various combinations of riffs, he added, then “it would mean that, to my absolute devastation, music is much less than I ever thought it was.”

    David Howell Cope was born on May 17, 1941, in San Francisco, one of two children of Howell Cope, an accountant for John Deere, and Charlotte Evlyn (Schleicher) Cope, a piano teacher. Music was part of the fabric of the family: John Cope, an uncle, was a sound technician for movies like “Sunset Boulevard”; the singer-songwriter Warren Zevon was a younger cousin.

    The family moved to Phoenix when David was an infant, because his health was delicate — he was diagnosed with asthma and a distended hernia at birth — and a drier climate was thought to be beneficial. As a child, he often lugged around a red Radio Flyer wagon full of 78 r.p.m. records from the library; he adored Bach, but also gravitated to the music of Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff.

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    Mr. Cope and his wife, Mary Jane, in 2021.(Jae Shim)

    After attending Washington High School, where he played cello in the orchestra and started a quartet, David Cope and the Asteroids, he enrolled at Arizona State University. He graduated in 1963 and then studied music composition at the University of Southern California, receiving his Master of Music degree in 1965.

    Mr. Cope met Mary Jane Stluka, a concert pianist and piano instructor, while teaching at Cottey College in Nevada, Mo.; they married in 1967. In addition to their son Stephen, she survives him, along with three other sons, Timothy, Brian and Gregory, and four grandchildren.

    Mr. Cope went on to teach at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Miami University of Ohio before landing a position in 1997 at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he taught for the next 30 years.

    He wrote at least 10 books on classical music and composition, including “New Directions in Music” (1971), an influential survey of avant-garde music, and “Experiments in Musical Intelligence” (1997), on the EMI system; three memoirs; multiple novels, plays and books of poetry, including one collection of haikus written by notable Japanese poets accompanied by computer-generated poems; and a number of original musical compositions, including operas, symphonies, string quartets and piano sonatas.

    Over the course of his career, Mr. Cope aroused the ire of so many other composers that he developed a sort of immunity to it, and even reveled in the discomfort his computer-generated music caused. “I want the negative reaction,” he said in “Opus Cope,” a 2021 documentary about his life’s work. “I feed off it.”

    In a 2015 article published by the Computer History Museum, he was questioned about whether machines have the capacity to be creative, and he was adamant in his response: “Yes, yes, a million times yes.”

    He added: “Creativity is simple; consciousness, intelligence — those are hard.”

  • Private Equity Firm Acquires The Telegraph, Concluding Two-Year Sale Saga

    Private Equity Firm Acquires The Telegraph, Concluding Two-Year Sale Saga

    RedBird Capital Partners announced on Friday that it has purchased Telegraph Media Group for £500 million (nearly $675 million), concluding a protracted bid to acquire the news company.

    The deal makes US-based RedBird the sole controlling owner of The Telegraph, the right-leaning British news outlet founded in 1855. Per the deal, RedBird will invest funds in The Telegraph’s digital operations to help continue growing subscriptions and expand the outlet’s foothold in the United States, where RedBird already has a constellation of media investments.

    The deal comes after RedBird struggled for two years to acquire The Telegraph, stymied in large part by a conservative British government that restricted foreign governments from owning newspapers and capped foreign state-owned investment by a publisher at 15%. The UK’s Labour Party, which swept into power in July 2024, announced last week that it would relax restrictions on foreign investment.

    “This transaction marks the start of a new era for The Telegraph as we look to grow the brand in the UK and internationally, invest in its technology and expand its subscriber base,” RedBird CEO Gerry Cardinale said in a statement.

    In January 2024, Jeff Zucker, the former CNN Media president, flew to London to pitch a takeover of the media company to Ofcom on behalf of RedBird IMI, where he is the chief executive.

    The Telegraph went up for sale in 2023 after Lloyds Banking Group took control of unpaid debts from the Barclay family, which acquired the newspaper in 2004. The Barclay family regained control of the Telegraph in December 2023 with the help of a loan from RedBird IMI, an Abu Dhabi-backed joint venture. However, the British government blocked the transfer of ownership to RedBird.

    The Friday deal avoided that rule by providing IMI only a minority share in the paper.

    RedBird’s focus on the US market comes as other British media outlets, including the BBC, The Guardian, and The Independent, have expanded their US coverage, often to great success. According to a May report, The Guardian grew its overall revenue by 25% on year, while The Independent in January reported a 75% year-over-year audience increase.

    RedBird has major investments in media, entertainment, and sports in the UK. In 2024, the firm acquired All3Media, a British film and TV production and distribution company. The company also has a stake in the Premier League soccer club Liverpool and owns AC Milan in Italy’s Serie A. RedBird will also acquire the UK’s Channel 5 if Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance is approved.

    RedBird has also invested in Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity, LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s SpringHill Company, the YES Network, and has helped Skydance finance several productions, including Amazon’s “Reacher” and Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick.”

  • Why Is IMAX Popping Up Everywhere All of a Sudden?

    Why Is IMAX Popping Up Everywhere All of a Sudden?

    Tom Cruise had a major request. He wanted IMAX to show his latest “Mission: Impossible” movie — and only his movie — on its giant screens for three weeks. It is the kind of exclusive run that few films get.

    So Mr. Cruise went straight to the top. He reached out to IMAX’s chief executive, Rich Gelfond, who had some requests of his own. He wanted all the “Mission: Impossible” premieres, along with press screenings and influencer screenings, to be held at an IMAX theater. And he wanted Mr. Cruise to endorse the company’s screens during his global press tour for the film, which opens this weekend.

    “As a joke I said, ‘Tom, no matter what question the press asks you, you’ve got to answer IMAX.’ ‘What’s your favorite scene?’ ‘IMAX,’” Mr. Gelfond, 69, said in an interview. “He agreed to do that.”

    In order to get something from IMAX these days, even Hollywood’s top power players have to give some, too.

    As movie theater audiences wane and at-home streaming audiences grow, IMAX increasingly stands out as a bright spot in the theater business. The company, founded in Toronto, aims to give moviegoers a more immersive experience with larger screens, better sound and steeper seating, which brings viewers closer to the screen. It now has 416 locations in North America and 1,322 overseas. That is only 1 percent of all the screens in the world, but they often account for a larger percentage of a movie’s box office return, drawing significant crowds for a more expensive ticket than a typical theater seat.

    In the past two months, IMAX screens delivered $39 million to the global box office for “Sinners” (out of $321 million total), $30.6 million for “A Minecraft Movie” ($930.1 million total) and $30.5 million for “Thunderbolts*” ($330 million total). (“Thunderbolts*” and “Minecraft” each played in IMAX theaters for two weeks. “Sinners” was brought back to nine locations for a third week.)

    As a result, Hollywood studios are putting more emphasis on the IMAX brand, even making the IMAX logo in larger type than the title of the movie in some marketing materials. Disney started this last year with “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” and “Alien: Romulus.” For “The Amateur,” a small action movie made by 20th Century Studios this year, the tagline “Vengeance is bigger in IMAX” appeared larger than the movie title. Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” received similar treatment.

    “For some of these movies that have a franchise history — and are also available at home — the IMAX brand can help speak to the big-screen-worthiness of a film and the spectacle,” said Asad Ayaz, the president of marketing at Disney, which owns Marvel and 20th Century Studios. “It differentiates it from streaming, which is also a big business for us, so it can be helpful.”

    Yet not everyone in the movie business is thrilled with IMAX’s ascension. Some worry that its limited number of screens, and higher prices for admission, could turn moviegoing from a frequent activity into a luxury experience that further reduces overall attendance.

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    Imax Keeps Updating Itself at Breakneck Pace. (Courtesy of Imax)

    “It’s great to be able to provide premium experiences to people who want it,” said Greg Marcus, chief executive of the company that operates Marcus Theaters, the fourth-largest chain in the country, but with only three IMAX screens. “But 80 to 85 percent of our business is coming from traditional theaters. And so you have to be very careful to not put down the traditional experience in promoting the other.”

    Complicating matters further, most theater chains have their own large-format screens. Regal Cinemas has RPX. Cinemark Theaters has CinemarkXD, and Marcus has both UltraScreenDLX and SuperScreenDLX. AMC, the largest theatrical exhibitor, has several: Dolby Cinema, Prime and Laser.

    When a moviegoer buys a ticket to the majority of these large format screens, the exhibitor traditionally evenly splits the revenue with the studio. But when a moviegoer buys a ticket to an IMAX theater, the exhibitor and the studio must give a cut of their shares, often up to 12.5 percent, to IMAX. (Theaters also have to pay a yearly fee to IMAX for the upkeep of their projectors and screens.)

    Yet IMAX is the premium large-format option the studios promote more than the others.

    “Theaters are struggling, and what seems to really make a different to audiences is the premium format,” said Jeff Goldstein, the president of distribution for Warner Bros. “Each individual exhibitor doesn’t want to give up their brand, and I think their strategy is smart. Any way that brings audiences out for movie going is good, and I think IMAX leads that.”

    Mr. Gelfond bought IMAX in 1994 through an investment company he co-founded. At the time, IMAX was primarily known for theaters inside museums and other cultural institutions, showing what he calls “bears, whales and seals” films. It was not until 2003 that the company ventured into partnerships with Hollywood. When “Avatar” was released in 2009, it grossed $250 million on 282 IMAX screens. Hollywood noticed.

    IMAX expects to generate $1.2 billion in box office revenue this year, its most ever. But the company is still relatively small. It reported $87 million in revenue last quarter, and $8 million in profit. The majority of the company’s screens are operated by other theater owners as a joint venture, and they share revenue for ticket sales. In those cases, IMAX receives a cut of the box office only from the studios and not the exhibitors, yet it still controls the programming.

    The fact that IMAX works with theater chains does not stop Mr. Gelfond from insulting them. “Their premium screens are just regular screens that are just bigger,” he said. “We are investing in a great experience. They are investing in buying a standard projector and putting it on a bigger screen.”

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    Imax CEO Richard Gelfond. (AP Images)

    Not everyone agrees with Mr. Gelfond’s assessment about his competitors, including his competitors themselves. Yet his pugilistic style has gotten him far in Hollywood. Recently, he waded into the thorny world of Netflix and theatrical distribution. The entertainment giant has long eschewed releasing movies in theaters before its streaming service. Last month, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive, called the communal experience of watching a movie in a theater “an outmoded idea.”

    But IMAX reached a deal to show Greta Gerwig’s upcoming adaptation of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” a Netflix film, for two weeks in fall 2026 before it goes on the streaming service. That has left some industry insiders wondering whether theaters would be willing to play a Netflix film at all, even if they are contractually obligated to under their deal with IMAX.

    “It does cause a conflict in the sense that Netflix has been quite public with negative comments,” Adam Aron, AMC’s chief executive, said in an interview. “But to support Rich we are going to play ‘Narnia.’ And we’d love to be able to convince Ted Sarandos that Netflix would be advantaged if it embraced movie theaters.”

    Some say Mr. Gelfond’s direct relationships with some top Hollywood directors have often put him ahead of the studios when it comes to knowing filmmakers’ intentions. Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”) and Ryan Coogler (“Sinners”), both of whom have shot with IMAX cameras, and others have become evangelists for the brand. At the Cannes Film Festival this month, Mr. Gelfond revealed that Mr. Nolan would film the entirety of his next movie, “The Odyssey,” with IMAX cameras.

    His connections with some movie stars can help, too — and he’s happy to boast about them. Mr. Gelfond was quick to pull out his phone to share his text exchange with Mr. Cruise moments after the actor rappelled into the stadium at the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics last summer.

    “Beyond awesome!! You’re the best,” Mr. Gelfond messaged the actor. A minute later, Mr. Cruise responded: “Thank you, my friend. We are going to crush it next summer.”

  • AI-Generated Reading List in the Chicago Sun-Times Suggests Books That Don’t Exist

    AI-Generated Reading List in the Chicago Sun-Times Suggests Books That Don’t Exist

    The summer reading list tucked into a special section of The Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer seemed innocuous enough.

    There were books by beloved authors such as Isabel Allende and Min Jin Lee; novels by best sellers including Delia Owens, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Brit Bennett; and a novel by Percival Everett, a recent Pulitzer Prize winner.

    There was just one issue: None of the book titles attributed to those authors were real. They had been created by generative artificial intelligence.

    It’s the latest case of bad A.I. making its way into the news. While generative A.I. has improved, there is still no way to ensure the systems produce accurate information. A.I. chatbots cannot distinguish between what is true and what is false, and they often make things up. The chatbots can spit out information and expert names with an air of authority.

    Most of the book descriptions were fairly believable. It didn’t seem out of reach that Ms. Bennett would “explore family bonds tested by natural disasters,” or that Ms. Allende would pen another “multigenerational saga.”

    The technology publication 404 Media reported earlier on the reading list. In addition to nonexistent book titles, the section included quotes from unidentifiable experts.

    Both The Sun-Times and The Inquirer issued statements condemning the use of A.I. and in part blamed King Features, a Hearst syndicate that licenses content nationally. The syndicate produced the 56-page supplement called “Heat Index: Your Guide to the Best of Summer,” which also included things like summer food trends and activity recommendations.

    While the list did not have a byline, a freelancer named Marco Buscaglia took responsibility for the piece. He confirmed that the list was partially generated by artificial intelligence, most likely Claude.

    “It was just a really bad error on my part and I feel bad that it has affected The Sun-Times and King Features, and that they are taking the shrapnel for it,” Mr. Buscaglia said in an interview.

    It’s fairly common for media organizations, especially resource-strapped local newsrooms, to rely on syndicates to supplement coverage.

    Just two months ago, 20 percent of staff at The Sun-Times resigned as part of a buyout offer. On the newspaper’s homepage on Wednesday, there were two banners atop the website. One linked to the statement on the May 18 special section, and the other linked to a piece on how federal cuts threaten local journalism.

    Felix M. Simon, a research fellow in A.I. and digital news at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, said the technology was not entirely at fault. There are responsible and irresponsible ways to use A.I. for news gathering, he said.

    “We need better education for everyone from the freelancer level to the executive level,” Dr. Simon said, calling on people to look “at the structures that ultimately allowed this factually false article to appear in a reputable news outlet.”

    The special section was removed from The Inquirer’s website when it was discovered, according to Lisa Hughes, the publisher and chief executive of the paper. The section was also removed from The Sun-Times’s e-paper version, according to a statement, and subscribers would not be charged for the premium edition.

    King Features did not respond to requests for comment, but in a statement provided to The Sun-Times it said it had “a strict policy with our staff, cartoonists, columnists, and freelance writers against the use of A.I. to create content.”

    In its statement, The Sun-Times said that the incident should be a “learning moment.”

    “Our work is valued — and valuable — because of the humanity behind it,” the statement read.

  • David Lazer, Executive Who Entered the World of the Muppets, Dies at 89

    David Lazer, Executive Who Entered the World of the Muppets, Dies at 89

    David Lazer, who as an IBM executive in the mid-1960s hired Jim Henson’s Muppets to star in a series of short films that injected laughs into sales meetings — and who a decade later joined Mr. Henson’s company as a producer — died on April 10 at his home in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 89.

    His death, which had not been widely reported, was confirmed by Doyle Newberry, a manager of Mr. Lazer’s estate. He did not cite a cause.

    “What David brought to the company was class,” Brian Henson, Mr. Henson’s son and the chairman of the Jim Henson Company, said in an interview. “Even my dad would say you couldn’t call Muppets Inc. classy. Up until then, it was a bunch of beatniks making weird stuff.”

    In 1965, Mr. Lazer was making commercials and sales training films for IBM’s office products division and had learned the importance of keeping in-house audiences at the company interested during meetings. Intrigued by a reel of commercials and short films made by Mr. Henson, Mr. Lazer wanted to bring his “sense of humor and crazy nuttiness” to IBM, he told Brian Jay Jones for his book “Jim Henson: The Biography” (2013).

    The star of Mr. Henson’s early films for IBM was Rowlf the Dog, who typed letters to his mother on a series of IBM manual and electric typewriters in which he described his new career as a salesman for the company. He promoted real products; he also plugged an electric guitar from IBM’s “Hippie Products Division” that, improbably, dispensed coffee.

    In another short, an early version of Cookie Monster devoured a talking coffee machine.

    “The idea is that if you can give people a good laugh, they’ll listen better,” Mr. Lazer told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1985.

    Under Mr. Lazer’s leadership, the films intended for IBM audiences led to a broader business, Muppet Meeting Films. Companies bought the videos to motivate their employees — or at least keep them awake.

    One of those films features an executive-type Muppet delivering a motivational speech, in which he calmly praises the company as a family of “honest men.” But his tone grows more urgent, and his gestures become wilder, as he gets to his point: “I ask you to remember just one word, the one word that makes it all possible, and that word is sell! I want you to get out there and sell, sell, sell! I want you to sell your socks off!”

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    Mr. Lazer’s skills as an executive appealed to Mr. Henson, who asked him to join what was then called Henson Associates (and is now the Jim Henson Company) in 1975.

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    An undated photo of Mr. Henson and Mr. Lazer on the set of the Jim Henson Company movie “The Dark Crystal” (1982). Mr. Lazer was an executive producer. (Courtesy of The Jim Henson Company)

    Quoted in Mr. Jones’s book, Mr. Lazer recalled that he was shocked by Mr. Henson’s offer and responded by saying: “Oh my God! Oh, probably!” Three weeks later, he took the job.

    “Lazer was determined to bring the same polish to Henson Associates that he had brought to the IBM product line,” Mr. Jones wrote, “and as far as Lazer was concerned, the product at Henson Associates wasn’t the Muppets; it was Jim.”

    Brian Henson said that Mr. Lazer instituted one change very quickly; he didn’t want his father slipping into a cumbersome Muppet costume again after the last one, a towering, hairy ogre named Sweetums.

    “He said, ‘Jim, you’re never getting into a costume again,’” Mr. Henson said. “‘You can work hand puppets, but you’re never getting into a costume with a T-shirt and shorts again.’”

    David Lazer was born on Jan. 23, 1936, in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx and in Hempstead, N.Y., on Long Island. His father, George, was a haberdasher, and his mother, Cilla (Schneweis) Lazer, a Polish immigrant, managed the home. David became adept at photography as a teenager and won awards for his photographs in high school.

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    “The Muppets Take Manhattan” (1984) was one of several Muppets films Mr. Lazer produced.(TriStar/Courtesy Everett Collection)

    He joined IBM after high school in 1954 and, after serving for two years in the Army, where he received intelligence training, returned to IBM. He studied film at night at New York University.

    At Henson Associates, Mr. Lazer was a producer or executive producer of “The Muppet Show,” the television variety series that ran from 1976 to 1981 and won four Primetime Emmy Awards; the films “The Muppet Movie” (1979), “The Great Muppet Caper” (1981), “The Dark Crystal” (1982), “The Muppets Take Manhattan” (1984) and “Labyrinth” (1986); and a 1979 TV special, “The Muppets Go Hollywood.”

    Mr. Lazer’s corporeal image — curly hair, bushy eyebrows, well-tailored suit, tan — inspired the creation of a Muppet look-alike for some of the meeting films. In several of them, the David Lazer Muppet played a self-important businessman; in another, he portrayed one of three executives giving quarterly reports while stranded on an island. The Lazer Muppet reported rising coconut production and steady sand castle production.

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    The David Lazer Muppet, inspired by Mr. Lazer himself, was seen in a number of the short films he made. (Courtesy of The Jim Henson Company)

    As a human, Mr. Lazer made a cameo appearance in “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” squiring Liza Minnelli into Sardi’s, the famous theater-district restaurant, where she found that her caricature on a wall has been replaced by Kermit the Frog’s.

    Mr. Lazer played a critical role at the company after Jim Henson died in 1990. By then, Mr. Lazer had left his longtime position as executive vice president and, for a year or two, served as an adviser. To help the Henson family, he returned, as the company’s acting president.

    “During that period he was very much like a father figure to me,” Brian Henson said. “My father was my mentor in puppetry, animatronics and directing puppets, but David was my mentor in terms of running the business.”

    After Brian Henson was named president in early 1991, Mr. Lazer became vice chairman, a post he held until his retirement in 1994. Mr. Henson is now the chairman.

    Mr. Lazer is survived by a sister, Ann Lazer Harstack.

    At his first staff meeting at the Henson company, Mr. Jones wrote, Mr. Lazer baffled the Muppet designers and performers with a slew of flow charts and other paperwork.

    People were laughing at him. To them, he was a suit.

    So he tossed his papers onto the table and kept talking as if there had been no snickers about his IBM-style presentation.

    “It’s not the same, is it?” Jim Henson said to him after the meeting, referring to the looser atmosphere in the world of Muppets.

    “Oh no,” Mr. Lazer said. “It’s better.”

  • CBS News Chief Ousted Amid Tensions With Trump

    CBS News Chief Ousted Amid Tensions With Trump

    The president of CBS News, Wendy McMahon, was forced out of her post on Monday, the latest shock wave to hit the news division amid an ongoing showdown involving President Trump, “60 Minutes” and CBS’s parent company, Paramount.

    Ms. McMahon told her staff in a memo that “it’s become clear the company and I do not agree on the path forward.” Executives at Paramount informed Ms. McMahon on Saturday that they wanted her to step down, according to several people with direct knowledge who requested anonymity to share private discussions.

    Paramount is in talks to settle a $20 billion lawsuit brought by Mr. Trump that accused “60 Minutes” of deceptively editing an interview with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Many legal experts have called the suit baseless, but Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has said she favors settling the case. She is seeking federal approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to a Hollywood studio, Skydance.

    The situation prompted the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, to resign last month. He has told confidants that Paramount executives, cognizant of the settlement talks with Mr. Trump, had pressured him over the program’s coverage of the Trump administration.

    A new flashpoint between “60 Minutes” and its corporate bosses flared last week.

    For its May 18 season finale, “60 Minutes” had planned to air a segment, reported by Anderson Cooper, about the Trump administration’s order for mass firings at the Internal Revenue Service.

    George Cheeks, the chief executive of CBS and a co-chief executive of Paramount, considered an idea to broadcast an unrelated prime-time special on Sunday that would air instead of the network’s evening lineup, including the “60 Minutes” season finale, according to four people briefed on private deliberations.

    Leaders at the news division were uncomfortable with that idea. The prime-time special was not pursued. Mr. Cheeks did not ask “60 Minutes” to modify or eliminate the segment, one of the people said.

    By the end of the week, “60 Minutes” producers decided to cut the I.R.S. segment from the weekend’s show, but for journalistic reasons. The producers said they had learned of new information from the I.R.S. that required additional reporting. “Our team will continue to report on these new details and will broadcast the story in the future,” the show said in a statement.

    Within CBS News, it was widely expected that Ms. McMahon, who took over the news division in August 2023, would not be at the company much longer.

    Executives at Paramount had expressed concern about Ms. McMahon’s performance for months. Her detractors pointed to an overhaul of “CBS Evening News” that sent its ratings plummeting, and her handling of an October incident involving the “CBS Mornings” anchor Tony Dokoupil, who in an interview had challenged the author Ta-Nehisi Coates’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Ms. McMahon’s critics also believed that the reporting at “60 Minutes” had become politically biased, exposing the company to unnecessary criticism. And it was clear that Mr. Trump was paying close attention.

    On May 4, “60 Minutes” aired a segment that quoted some prominent lawyers criticizing the president for acting unlawfully when he issued executive orders targeting law firms.

    Mr. Trump’s lawyers perceived those quotes, and the segment as a whole, as an attempt by CBS to gain the upper hand in the settlement negotiations, according to a person with knowledge of the internal discussions. They then countered by conveying a threat to Paramount: Mr. Trump might file a new lawsuit, accusing Paramount and CBS of defaming him in the “60 Minutes” episode, according to two people familiar with knowledge of the talks.

    “CBS and Paramount’s attempts to subvert the legal process with lies and smears may necessitate additional corrective legal action, which President Trump reserves the right to pursue,” said Ed Paltzik, a lawyer for Mr. Trump.

    A mediation session late last month ended with lawyers for Paramount and Mr. Trump still far apart on the terms of a deal.

    Mr. Trump has regularly criticized “60 Minutes,” and declined to be interviewed by the program during last year’s presidential campaign. He has also continued to criticize the program’s reporting, which last month he deemed “fraudulent.” Mr. Trump has also urged his government regulators to strip CBS of its broadcast license. “CBS is out of control, at levels never seen before, and they should pay a big price for this,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post last month.

    CBS executives have added additional layers of oversight on the program in recent months, drawing frustrations from some top producers, including Mr. Owens. “In a million years, the corporation didn’t know what was coming up — they trusted ‘60 Minutes’ to report the stories and program the broadcast the way ‘60 Minutes’ saw fit,” Mr. Owens said during an emotional meeting with his staff in April. Any change to that arrangement, he said, created “a really slippery slope.”

    Mr. Cheeks said in a memo on Monday that Ms. McMahon would remain at the network for “a few weeks to support the transition.” She will be succeeded for now by a pair of veteran network executives: Tom Cibrowski, who was recently named president of CBS News, and Jennifer Mitchell, the president of CBS Stations.

  • A $34.5 Billion Merger Will Unite Cable Leaders Charter and Cox

    A $34.5 Billion Merger Will Unite Cable Leaders Charter and Cox

    The cable giants Charter Communications and Cox Communications said on Friday that they had agreed to merge, a colossal deal that would create one of the biggest TV and internet providers in the United States.

    The deal, which values Cox at roughly $34.5 billion, presents a test for President Trump’s antitrust enforcers. While many deal makers had expected the Trump administration to be more permissive than the Biden administration, many on Wall Street have been surprised by early signs that a tough-on-deals stance may persist.

    Charter and Cox argued that the deal would help them compete against big rivals, including “larger, national broadband companies” — read: Comcast, Verizon and others — as well as satellite service providers. They are also likely to argue that their cable networks don’t significantly overlap geographically.

    Charter and Cox signaled in their news release they were eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval of the deal. The announcement said the merger “puts America first” by returning customer-service jobs from overseas, echoing the president’s campaign language. It also underscored the value of bringing “hyperlocal, unbiased news” produced by Charter’s Spectrum News stations to Cox customers, an apparent gesture toward mollifying the White House, which has been critical of the press.

    Unmentioned in the news release was Axios, a scoopy Washington-based media organization owned by Cox Enterprises, the privately held parent of the cable business as well as firms in other industries, like agriculture and cars. The newly formed cable group would not own any national programming, the release said.

    Under the terms of the merger, Charter will pay cash and stock, with the combined company set to take on the Cox name and sell consumer services under the Spectrum brand within a year of closing. Cox Enterprises would become the new company’s largest shareholder, with a 23 percent stake. The group expects to cut $500 million in annual costs within a few years of closing the deal, from “typical procurement and overhead savings.”

    Charter’s stock rose more than 2 percent in early trading on Friday.

    It isn’t the first time the two have discussed a merger: They held talks 12 years ago, and John Malone, a telecom billionaire and major Charter shareholder, had named Cox last fall as one of the company’s potential transaction partners.

    Mr. Malone, an influential media mogul, has lately made several moves to reorganize his media holdings. Last year, Charter acquired Liberty Broadband, a telecommunications company partly owned by Mr. Malone. This year, he relinquished his seat on the board of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN and the Warner Bros. movie studio.

    The Cox-Charter deal is one of the biggest takeovers announced this year, along with Google’s planned acquisition of the cybersecurity provider Wiz for $32 billion. And it may show that, at least for some corporate leaders, uncertainty over the economy, driven in part by Mr. Trump’s trade policies, isn’t enough to deter them from major investments and acquisitions.

    But antitrust approval is needed, and the Trump administration, which moved early to block deals like Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks, has warned corporate America not to assume that all deals will pass muster.

    “I don’t have an ideological predisposition against M.&A.,” Andrew Ferguson, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, said last month. “It doesn’t follow, however, that I think it should just be open season” for deal-making, he added.

    Cable executives have tested regulators’ appetite for consolidation before. In 2015, Comcast walked away from an attempt to buy Time Warner Cable amid regulatory pressure from the Obama administration. The next year, the Obama administration approved Charter’s $65.5 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, but imposed restrictions in the process.

    One of Charter’s biggest rivals, Comcast, is pursuing a deal of its own. The cable and broadband giant announced late last year that it was spinning off its cable networks, including MSNBC, into a separate company. That firm, which was named Versant this month, is expected to make its debut this year.