In partnership with
Putting together this newsletter, it’s always interesting to see how the theme comes together. Some days it’s all about the Culture Wars, some days are filled with premiere dates and new show info.
Today brought the release of a lot of data that provides insight into what we watch and how we find it.
Consumers Are Spending More Than Ever On TV
I think the perception in the entertainment industry is that consumers are worried about the economy and have cut back on spending. But TiVo's newly released Q4 2025 Video Trends Report found that despite ongoing economic pressures, consumers continue to prioritize home entertainment. Households now subscribe to more than 10 video services on average, daily viewing surpassed five hours, and monthly entertainment spending climbed to $161 in Q4 2025.
Ad-supported streaming continues to gain traction: More than half of consumers (54%) now use ad-supported subscription tiers, while AVOD/FAST adoption reached 70% in Q4 2025, up five percentage points year-over-year. Together, AVOD and FAST services now account for 13% of total viewing time.
FAST audiences are becoming more engaged: The average FAST viewer now watches 7.5 channels, up more than two channels year-over-year. Pluto TV, Tubi, Roku Channel, and Amazon Prime Video remain the leading FAST destinations.
The TV home screen is emerging as a key discovery hub: Smart TV owners now spend 56.9% of their TV time on the device homepage, highlighting the growing role of home screens in both content discovery and advertising.
And given the complaints I hear from sports fans, I am not surprised by these statistics: Of the 77.9% who actively watch sports, only 62.8% of respondents are able to watch all of the games or events for their favorite sport with the sources they currently have. This year, 58.6% of sports viewers note that a Pay TV service is the primary way they consume sports content, up significantly from 40.3% in Q4 2024. They also noted that the number of services needed to watch their favorite sports increased to 2.7 (up from 2.4 last year), reflective of ongoing fragmentation in sports content.
July Will Be A Busy Month For The Food Network
Hunter Fieri, showing off his trademark vacant stare
The Food Network is rolling out four new shows in July, along with a brand-new Guy’s Grocery Games tournament and the return of a long-running series.
Here is what to expect:
Wednesday, July 8th:
Guy’s Grocery Games: Global Games
Host Guy Fieri invites eight all-star masters of world cuisines to compete in the new five-part tournament, for a chance to win the trophy and a $50,000 grand prize.
Kitchen Chaos
In what sounds like a clip show of wacky kitchen clips, Kitchen Chaos will dive headfirst into the wild, unpredictable world of food with viral moments of jaw-dropping culinary triumphs and spectacular meltdowns, from hibachi tricks gone wildly off the rails to bizarre and unhinged food recipes that must be seen to be believed. Along the way, professional chefs deliver hilarious reactions, insider tips, and practical takeaways that reveal what went wrong, what went right, and how to avoid culinary chaos at home. It's a fast, flavor-packed ride through the creativity, chaos, and comedy of food culture.
Monday, July 13th:
Pitmasters
A non-stop week-long battle set deep in the wilderness where teams of the most notable pitmasters will push the boundaries of what BBQ can be as they compete over live fire to prove they are the best of the best. They will be cooking from sunrise to sunset to sunrise again, fighting for survival and their share of up to $50,000 in prize money. Teams must manage fire, fatigue, and challenges within challenges to impress an elite panel of judges. Andrew Zimmern, Jess Pryles, Moe Cason, and Ernest Servantes use their vast BBQ knowledge to crown one team the Pitmasters Champion.
Thursday, July 23rd:
Restaurant Impossible: Last Call
The series will follow acclaimed chef Aarón Sánchez and Canadian restaurateur Jen Agg as they lead the charge to rescue struggling restaurants across North America. Their goal is not to formulate quick fixes; they will dig into real problems, adapt to a new and challenging restaurant industry, and find creative, unexpected solutions tailored to each business. While Jen tackles design and front-of-house issues, Aarón gets to work on the culinary side, each assessing exactly what needs to change for the restaurant to thrive. From horrendous Yelp reviews to feuding family members, each episode will reflect the varying challenges today’s restaurateurs face. Emotions will run high, and the stakes are critical as Aarón and Jen strategize each location’s rescue plan, all while navigating the greater changes happening in an industry being forced to evolve.
Sunday, July 26th:
The Great Food Truck Race
With four trucks that specialize in savory dishes and four sweet-themed trucks, the eight competing teams each represent a dynamic mix of flavors, strategies and culinary creativity in their quest for the win. Host Tyler Florence will lead the route starting in Nashville and through the Great Smoky Mountains, stopping in cities with vibrant food scenes - all while adding unexpected twists and turns from the very first mile. Every week, the teams must prove their cooking expertise, marketing savvy and selling skills in themed challenges to beat their rivals - and for the first time, the bottom two teams each week will go head to head in a taste redemption battle to see who earns the right to stay and who heads home. The season will culminate in an action-packed finale from the legendary Churchill Downs in Louisville, where only one truck will be awarded a life-changing $50,000 grand prize.
Clicking on this ad provides me with a bit of extra revenue to help support my work
The largest IPO in history is coming. Where will all that liquid money go?
SpaceX just filed for an IPO valued at up to $1.75 trillion. When that much capital becomes liquid all at once, where it goes next is the big question.
Meanwhile, spring art auctions in NY cleared $2.5 billion, with 15+ new artist records.
Prized, physical assets with fixed and scarce supply. When the ultra-wealthy get liquid, it’s one of the markets they reach for to diversify.
Masterworks lets you into that art market without needing the nine figures. Its members invest in shares of blue-chip artwork by artists like Banksy, Basquiat and Warhol.
The track record to-date?
$1.3B deployed across 500+ artworks
29 sales to date
Net annualized returns like 16.5%, 17.6%, and 17.8%, not including those unsold*
*Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. See important disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.
An Interesting Bit Of Marketing By Netflix
I Will Find You, the latest Harlan Coben adaptation for Netflix, premieres on Thursday, June 18th.
As part of the promotion for the series, Netflix has teamed up with Bookclubs, which organizes local weekly or monthly book club get togethers across the United States.
I think it’s a clever way to reach people who are very likely to be interested in another TV series from Harlan Coben. It’s not always easy to specifically reach book readers, but this is a great way to target that audience.
Odds & Sods
Devil May Cry has been renewed for a third and final season by Netflix. Here is the official logline: “In this animated adaptation of the popular Capcom game and from the vision of Adi Shankar, sinister forces are at play to open the portal between the human and demon realms. In the middle of it all is Dante, an orphaned demon-hunter-for-hire, unaware that the fate of both worlds hangs around his neck.”
In a textbook example of not reading the room, The true-crime docuseries The FBI Files, which aired on Discovery Channel from 1998-2006, is being revived by independent catalog operator Radial Entertainment. The show was most notable for having been made with the full cooperation of the FBI.
Alan Alda’s solution for the eroding trust of science? More improv.
BET announced today that Ms. Lauryn Hill will receive the Living Legend Icon Award sponsored by Sprite at the BET Awards 2026 show. It will broadcast live on Sunday, June 28th at 8 PM ET/PT, from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, with Druski as host.
ChatGPT And Claude Score Below 51% Accuracy On Streaming Availability
According to a new study, asking an AI assistant where you can stream a popular TV show or movie will provide an answer that is wrong nearly half of the time.
But according to new data from the streaming data and metadata platform Reelgood, a controlled accuracy analysis of streaming title availability data found that ChatGPT scored 43.76% and Claude scored 50.21% when asked where major television and movies titles could be streamed.
Click here to read my entire piece for Forbes, but in an interview I did with Reelgood CEO David Sanderson in April, he explained that the problem with using an AI assistant is they rely primarily on data from the web, which can significantly affect the accuracy of the answers:
There was one example we always talk about internally. It was some movie about Las Vegas. And when you asked one of the LLMs what the film was about, you were told something like "Oh, everyone is going to have a wild time in Las Vegas."
But actually, the movie was about the shooting that happened in Las Vegas. So that's a good example. You need accurate data behind it.
And the other thing is, with AI or chat experiences, if you want to know where a piece of content is available, a lot of their data is compiled from crawling the web. And they'll crawl a bunch of articles that say "Hey, this film is on Hulu."
But sites don't write a follow-up article that says "This film is now off Hulu.," And that can create incorrect data that the LLMs are presenting. We just did a study on this topic and found that when you use a standard issue LLM for questions like this, about half the time they're presenting incorrect data.
ReelGood says their accuracy rate when asked the same questions about title availability was 96.89%. Which is great news for the many platforms using their data. But I still wish there was somewhere to go to find out what was available and where.
JustWatch used to be a pretty good spot to start, but I have found it to be less accurate in recent months.
What’s Coming Tonight And Tomorrow
THURSDAY, JUNE 4TH:
Deestroying The Pitch Series Premiere (Tubi)
Maa Behen (Netflix)
Night Shift For Cuties Series Premiere (Netflix)
Poldi (Netflix)
Surviving Earth Series Premiere (NBC)
The Murder Of Rachel Nickell (Netflix)
The Witness (Netflix)
FRIDAY, JUNE 5TH:
Belle Collective Season Premiere (OWN)
Cape Fear Series Premiere (Apple TV)
Everything On The Menu With Braun Strowman Season Premiere (USA)
Groundswell (Prime Video)
Hannah Berner: None Of My Business (Hulu)
Her Husband's Double Life (LMN)
Mexico '86 (Netflix)
Office Romance (Netflix)
Pop Culture Jeopardy Season Two Finale (Netflix)
Teach You A Lesson Series Premiere (Netflix)
The Marked Woman (Netflix)
Totally Funny Animals Season Premiere (The CW)
Your Friends & Neighbors Season Two Finale (Apple TV)