Why Future Today’s Fawesome Excels at Family-Friendly Unscripted Content

Future Today provides premium, unscripted content—for free—while major players such as Netflix still are still exploring the viability of live music specials and celebrity-driven contests. This puts Future Today ahead of the curve as large streamers remain slower to venture into live and interactive programming. In this Q&A, Vikrant Mathur, Co-Founder of Future Today, discusses how their FAST platform Fawesome provides family-friendly competition shows that present unique brand-safe pathways for advertisers, such as product placement, sponsored challenges, and brand integration.

Creating New CTV Ad Standards

IAB Tech Lab has recently released some new standards for CTV advertising, known as the Ad Format Hero Initiative. The organization asked and received more than 100 CTV ad format descriptions/concepts from the industry on classifying new formats. Next up, they ran an industry survey (completed 16 April 2025) to determine what should be prioritized. The Ad Format Hero Task Force selected eight formats based on the survey results. The idea is to create standards so that sensibly, engineering and operations teams don't have to reinvent the wheel every time they want to insert the right creative.

Nearly 90% of Advertisers will Use Gen AI to Build Video Ads, According to IAB’s 2025 Video Ad Spend & Strategy Full Report

Store Visits and Sales Are Now the Most Important KPI for Video Buyers; Expectations for Biddable CTV, and Live Sports and Events Rise

Deltatre Announces Acquisition of Endeavor Streaming

Deltatre, a leading international provider of streaming, digital, data, and graphics solutions for the sports, media, and entertainment industries, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Endeavor Streaming from Endeavor Group Holdings, Inc. 

Review: Meta's Video Codec Acid Test (VCAT)

Identifying which phones can handle AV1 decode is the goal of Meta's new VCAT testing tool, for Video Codec Acid Test, which is both the brainchild and the swan song of encoding legend David Ronca. In short, VCAT is an Android app for benchmarking battery drain and system health during HW/SW video decode operations on Android devices.

Under New Management, Brightcove VP Phil Green Talks New Chapter, Reimagined Platform

Today, video platform and solutions provider Brightcove announced what a company press release described as a "bold new chapter in its evolution" that integrates proprietary AI tech from Bending Spoons, which completed its acquisition of the venerable OVP in February 2025. In this Q&A, Brightcove VP, Media & Strategic discusses the company's recent evolution and how its February 2025 acquisition by Bending Spoons has impacted its approach.

Telestream vs. Encoding.com Lawsuit Goes Public with Reputations at Stake

Telestream, the veteran digital video software and workflow tech provider, is fighting a lawsuit brought by two former employees which may have salutary lessons for company owners planning a sale to private equity. The suit, brought by Greggory Heil and Jeffrey Malkin, co-founders of Encoding.com, against Telestream claims Unpaid acquisition consideration, wrongful termination, fraudulent transfer, and successor liability.

Riedel Communications Launches RefSuite Ecosystem for Sports Officiating, Coaching, and Production

Riedel Communications today announced the launch of RefSuite, a powerful new Managed Technology solution tailored to professional sports workflows. RefSuite combines hardware, software, cloud services, and 24/7 remote operations into one seamless ecosystem

Access Advance Reveals Royalty Rates for Video Streaming Services

In this interview, Jan Ozer speaks with Peter Moller, CEO of Access Advance, and Dylan Zhou, Senior VP of Licensing, about the recently announced royalty structure and initial participants in Access Advance's Video Distribution Patent Pool. The conversation outlines the codecs covered (VP9, AV1, HEVC, VVC), the targeted use cases (video streaming and content distribution), and how the royalty structure is designed to balance fairness and industry adoption.

Radial Entertainment Formed by Oaktree Through Merger of Shout! Studios and FilmRise

The newly formed global entertainment company will operate FilmRise and Shout! Studios brands, leveraging the power of its combined best-in-class film & tv distribution, production, and streaming capabilities

Nominate Now for the 2025 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards

What's your favorite streaming tool, tech, or service? What is the most important new innovation in the business in 2025? It's time to make your nominations for Streaming Media's 2025 Readers' Choice Awards, our annual industry awards program chosen by end users.

CTV Isn’t Just Another Screen—Why Brands Need a New Strategy for Shoppable Ads

The latest findings from BrightLine show that consumers are engaging with shoppable CTV ads differently and more intentionally—favoring rich, interactive formats like carousels and branded destinations. In this Q&A with Joshua Blum, Director of Research & Analytics at BrightLine, he delves into further detail about their recent findings and how platforms can adapt their shoppable TV experiences to adjust to these new behaviors.

DoubleVerify Uncovers ShadowBot Scheme Involving 35 Million Spoofed Mobile Devices

DV's Fraud Lab detected amateur-level fraudster mistakes behind a $2.5M fraud operation targeting CTV and mobile inventory

DIY Broadcast: How Underrepresented Sports Are Building Their Own Streaming Stacks

That's changing. With automated cameras, cloud production platforms, and AI-driven tools now capable of delivering the full suite of broadcast workflows—from live switching and graphics to clipping, highlights, and distribution—sports that once had no way to show themselves are building their own streaming stacks. They're not waiting to be picked up. They're going live—and taking control.

JustWatch Reveals Streaming Trends for LGBTQ+ Content in the UK During Pride Month

As Pride Month celebrations sweep across the UK, JustWatch - the world's largest streaming guide - has unveiled an annual analysis spotlighting the best streaming platforms for LGBTQ+ films and TV shows in the UK. This year's analysis showcases which services offer the richest selection of queer content, reveals the most-watched LGBTQ+ titles of the year, and examines how queer film and TV production has evolved over time.

Q&A: Celebrating Pride Month With Quickplay’s Paul Pastor 

Quickplay Co-Founder Paul Pastor has been using his platform as an out gay executive to advocate for more authentic and positive LGBTQ+ representation and inclusion in the tech world. In this Q&A, Pastor shares how he feels about the progress that's been made in LBTQ+ inclusion, why it's important to be your authentic self at work, what streaming media can do to engage in allyship, and how Quickplay is showing up for LGBTQ+ people, and more.

Netflix Makes Quietly Aggressive Aggregation Play

Netflix announced at Cannes Lions that it will distribute the channels and on-demand content of French commercial broadcaster TF1 to Netflix members in France, beginning next year. If successful, Netflix will have jumped a start on all its rivals who have so far resisted, or failed to entice, broadcasters anywhere to share their entire schedule and programme output with a third-party streaming platform.

DIRECTV and Lionsgate Team Up to Launch Lionsgate Collection

Unique and Proprietary Channel To Be Available Across All DIRECTV Satellite, Streaming and FAST Platforms

Twitch’s Dual-Layout Streaming: Technical Innovation or Industry Revolution?

As video producers, we all agree on one thing: we want to serve content in whatever format the viewer prefers. Until now, for live streaming in landscape or portrait, it's been a one-or-the-other proposition. That's changing. At TwitchCon Europe, amid the usual fanfare and cosplay, Twitch quietly announced a feature that could reshape the future of live streaming: dual-layout live streaming.

Warner Bros. Discovery Drops Linear Ballast to Float HBO Max

Having trailed the move a year ago, Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) chief David Zaslav has followed through on plans to split the company in half. The company is to separate into Streaming & Studios (HBO) and Global Networks (TNT Sports, CNN, B/R, Discovery) by mid-2026 effectively undoing the $43 billion merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery in 2022.