☀️DISNEY Woes Mount With Gaming, Tech
SONY enlists Joel Silver, Shane Black / Cable movies score on NETFLIX / Toby Emmerich enters TV
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LINKEDIN here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on Wednesday, March 25, 2026.
Where this sounds like an Onion headline . . . and, well, it kinda is — The Onion’s print circulation is now bigger than the LA Times.
Yes, according to Fast Company, paid print subs at The Onion are up to 65k (including distribution outside the U.S.), and its revenue was up 300% YoY in 2025.
LA Times print circulation was -20% YoY in 2025, hitting 63.5k. That’s the 2nd largest print decline of the top 25 newspapers in the U.S., only behind The Washington Post (-21%).
AND: In just the first week of March Madness, KALSHI has already doubled the amount of 💰 action bet predicted on the app than it saw for the entirety of last year’s tournament — with volume hitting $800M going into the Sweet Sixteen.
MEANWHILE: POLYMARKET’s big media bash in D.C. was a . . . disaster. It’s one thing to invest in engineering talent, but also very important to hire a great events team.
BUT: Stephen Colbert has lined up his next gig! Or at least one of them . . . writing a new LOTR pic at WB/NLC, with a working title of LOTR: Shadow of the Past and based on “Fog on the Barrow-downs,” the 8th chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, if that means somethin’ to ya.
YAH: Add CBS Mornings to the list of declining assets at CBS NEWS now 6 months into the Bari Weiss era, with Status reporting the morning show is pacing toward its smallest quarter of viewership ever (Status also has numbers for programming elsewhere at CBS NEWS for the inclined) — the Q1 prelim NIELSEN total audience numbers:
CBS Mornings: -15% YoY
ABC Good Morning America: +9% YoY
NBC The Today Show: +15% YoY
AH: CHARTER’s impending acquisition of COX got a favorable nod from the Supreme Court in the music piracy case that’s now been going on for 8 years, although it’s not a great day for copyright holders.
SONY MUSIC had previously won a $1B judgement against COX, alleging the company did nothing to prevent users from illegally downloading music even when SONY alerted COX to the behavior from some specific users.
But, the Supreme Court has reversed that judgement, saying “a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights.”
ALSO: META was found guilty of misleading users about the safety of its platforms and enabling the sexual exploitation of young users by a New Mexico jury, and ordered to pay $375M for violating NM consumer protection laws. META is appealing.
META also installed huge new C-suite stock incentives, encouraging them to get the stock price/company valuation to 6x within 5 years.
Now, the stock needs to actually start doing that in order to get the 💰 — and I don’t know that a bidding war involving the Ellison family is in the cards here . . . so I’m gonna go with using AI to cut headcount and increase margin as a significant go-to lever.
AND: Cue the layoff of a few hundred folks in META’s Platforms group this morning, according to The Information.
PLUS: Support is building to have the college football schedule begin the weekend before Labor Day most years, starting in 2027 (it would be based on wherever Thanksgiving / end of the regular season falls on the calendar in a given year), giving the (student) athletes more rest time in the schedule.
THEN: The NBA team salary cap is going up by $1M less than projected next season due to the drop in rights revenue from the collapsing MAIN STREET SPORTS (FAN DUEL SPORTS NETS). Granted, I think most teams will get by with $165M instead of $166M . . . but certainly noteworthy.
BTW: That $165M next season is a 50% bump since 2020. Thanks, NBCU, ESPN and AMAZON! (and their loyal paying subscribers.)
FINALLY: Just a reminder to always confirm medical staff is scanning the correct body part whenever you go in for an MRI/X-ray etc.
REAL MADRID medical staff performed an MRI on the wrong knee of its star player, Kylian Mbappé, after he reported developing pain. It took them a month to discover the mistake, during which time he played in 3 more matches (and yes, he still has knee issues).
IN THIS EDITION
See which classic cable TV network’s programming genre is finding nice success on NETFLIX so far this year, as Peaky Blinders fans show up for opening weekend and the streamer remakes a Jen Garner classic.
Yes — add OPENAI to the list of companies that have discovered “Do you know how expensive video production is?!”
DISNEY’s tech-inclined investments have also seen better weeks . . . but let’s look at the bigger challenges facing AI darling OPENAI that caused the end of the brief DISNEY / SORA deal.
ALSO: In terms of SORA #RIP — Erik Barmack recently laid out how Hollywood significantly hastened this week’s events.
Plus, SONY joins a crowded Christmas movie lineup, DISNEY enlists The Naked Gun team and much more in TV and film developments.
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
