Ankler Agenda

The Case Against Paramount-Warner — From the People Fighting It

It’s a bad week for David Ellison, with Paramount Skydance facing two concurrent lawsuits seeking to block its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery — plus a shareholder ca...

2026-07-16

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BONUS EP: Netflix’s Next Deal? Spotify Is Hiding in Plain Sight

Welcome to Netflix’s hard pivot. Faced with lagging engagement from its users and signs of audience disinterest in some of its top shows between seasons, Netflix’s next big thing ...

2026-07-14

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Nolan’s ‘Odyssey,’ Taylor Swift’s Wedding & the Summer of Spectacle

Monoculture may not be dead after all — it just needed Taylor Swift in a wedding dress and Christopher Nolan in IMAX. Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie ...

2026-07-09

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The Books Hollywood Is Obsessed With This Summer

Books run on word-of-mouth. So what are the people who shape what gets made, watched, read and bought reading? Elaine Low, Natalie Jarvey and Sean McNulty dig into The Ankler’s inaugural summer readin...

2026-07-02

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BONUS EP: Comcast Is Leaving Hollywood. What Now for NBCU?

Another Monday, another huge deal in Hollywood. Two weeks ago, Fox Corp. announced its intentions to acquire Roku for $22 billion. Now, it’s Comcast’s turn — in reverse. Today, the company revealed ...

2026-06-30

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BONUS EP: What Is Cannes Lions — and Why YouTube vs. Netflix Was All the Talk

Oprah flew in to close deals, FOX Entertainment CEO Rob Wade came to talk up his investment in creator-led programming and even the Teletubbies arrived, ready to party. Last week, a cross-section of d...

2026-06-30

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The World Cup’s Streaming Cash Machine

Leave it to the U.S. sports-TV machine to turn three-minute hydration breaks at the FIFA World Cup — a new feature to prevent players from collapsing in the heat — into a multimillion-dollar ad opport...

2026-06-25

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BONUS EP: Roku’s Charlie Collier on Fox Deal & Beating Big Tech for Ad Dollars

At Cannes Lions, the exec tells Ankler CEO Janice Min how the hardware behemoth became a streaming empire — 'We really do have almost Super Bowl-size audiences every day' — and makes his first public ...

2026-06-24

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BONUS EP: The Nithya Raman Interview: ‘Let’s Celebrate Making Things in L.A. Again’

Los Angeles mayoral candidate and Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman is acutely aware of what’s at stake as local Hollywood production craters — 42,000 jobs lost over two years between 2022 ...

2026-06-23

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Would You Rather: Spend $18B on Shows or $22B on Roku?

Would you rather spend $18 billion a year on content like Netflix does, or $22 billion once to buy the remote? That’s the bet Fox Corp. is making with its blockbuster acquisition of hardware and distr...

2026-06-18

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BONUS EP: Sean McNulty & Peter Kafka on Fox Buying Roku and What it All Means

Nothing like a $22 billion deal to start a week, as Fox was revealed as the mystery buyer for the Roku business — furthering Lachlan Murdoch’s company’s diversification from being heavily based in the...

2026-06-16

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The New Podcast Wars: Streaming Now

It’s a deal that would have been unimaginable a decade ago — maybe even two years ago. But last month, motivational speaker and On Purpose host Jay Shetty signed a reported $100 million agreement to m...

2026-06-11

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A24’s ‘Backrooms’ and the Rise of YouTube Filmmakers

“I would not be feeling good right now if I was sitting in my corner office over at Disney after this weekend,” one source tells Like & Subscribe’s Natalie Jarvey about the box office success of Backr...

2026-06-04

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Can L.A.’s Next Mayor Save Hollywood?

Angelenos are on the clock. The Los Angeles mayoral election is set for June 2, and even those who don’t live in SoCal should pay close attention to the outcome. Hollywood is taking center stage in a ...

2026-05-28

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Spidey, Nolan, Spielberg — Hot Movie Summer Is Here

The summer box office is already popping, with The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Michael raking in millions before Memorial Day — and with new movies coming from Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Marvel,...

2026-05-21

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BONUS EP: Markiplier, M3GAN and the Scary-Smart Business of Horror

People still want to be scared out of their minds together, and Atomic Monster president Michael Clear, M3GAN writer Akela Cooper and YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Mark Fischbach (aka Markiplier) are all ...

2026-05-21

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TV’s YouTube Era Wags the Upfronts’ Dog

It’s the end of Upfronts week, better known as Hollywood’s annual pilgrimage to woo Madison Ave. Formerly about broadcast TV schedules, Upfronts has become a showcase for a much stranger, fragmented T...

2026-05-15

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Disney's Super App Era Arrives. What Does It Mean?

Quarterly earnings season isn’t just MBA word salad. Earnings calls are where Hollywood’s biggest companies tell Wall Street what matters most — and where employees often learn what’s really happening...

2026-05-08

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The Fight For Wasserman Intensifies

The agency formerly known as Wasserman — made infamous in recent months by founder Casey Wasserman’s flirtatious emails with Jeffrey Epstein accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell — is up for sale. So who want...

2026-04-30

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L.A.’s Mayoral Race Becomes a Fight for Hollywood Jobs

The entertainment industry’s economic and existential tailspin is playing out on the political stage, as Los Angeles’ mayoral candidates curry favor with the Hollywood set before the June 2 primary. I...

2026-04-23

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Ankler Agenda

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