Maybe that’s because the biggest development of the year just emerged in the final month and absolutely will not be resolved by New Year’s. Or maybe it’s because so many other developments this year feel like they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, be that the creator economy’s maturation or AI video’s sudden growth spurt or the even the measurement currency changeover that has supposedly reached a point of completion. 

Or maybe it’s just because I’m writing this on Dec. 10, days after Paramount decided to try to seize Warner Bros. Discovery out from under Netflix, that there’s still time for so much to transpire before the calendar turns over to 2026 – though those hypothetical events are unlikely to be resolved until the new year anyway. And on that note, here are some of the major developments that shaped up the future of TV in 2025 (and will take further shape in 2026).

The year corporations agreed to change hands

Obviously there were major corporation changeovers this year: Paramount-Skydance, Versant’s spin-off from NBCUniversal, Starz’s split from Lionsgate. But there was also a fair amount of M&A that has yet to be finalized. 

A+E Global Media has yet find to a new parent company. Disney’s deal to sell a stake in ESPN to the NFL has yet to receive regulatory approval. A U.S. version of TikTok is supposedly being carved out but has yet to be finalized as of this writing. And then the big one: whether Netflix or a hostile Paramount will end up with some or all of Warner Bros. Discovery (and what happens to whatever may remain).

Setting aside TikTok, the gist of these deals is that traditional TV isn’t a business companies want to be in anymore, so they’re getting out of it however they can. Or in the case of Paramount-Skydance, they seem to be getting into it if only until they can build up the streaming side enough to pull a Zaslav and eject from the legacy linear business. 

Including TikTok, the M&A activity is happening in a highly politicized environment in which the U.S. government is taking a heavy hand in people’s entertainment options. Cases in point: the TikTok U.S. “algorithm will also be controlled by America,” in the words of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Meanwhile the U.S. Federal Communications Commission got Paramount’s new parent company to give up on DE&I, remove bias from its journalism (whatever that means), and while the government did not compel Paramount to cancel Stephen Colbert’s late night talk show, that didn’t hurt. What concessions Netflix may have to make to secure Warner Bros. remains to be seen.

The year the creator economy matured

This year WPP Media predicted that advertisers would spend more money on user-generated content (i.e. creators) than traditional TV. The stat’s a little squishy because it’s not so much advertisers buying ads against creators specifically so much as buying ads on YouTube, TikTok, etc. But still, the point stands that the creator economy has become a mainstream market.

And it’s not just advertisers. This year Netflix loaded up on creator programming, adding shows from YouTube stars such as Ms. Rachel and Mark Rober. And free, ad-supported streaming TV services such as Fox’s Tubi have also added creator content to their libraries. 

And then of course there’s YouTube. The predominant video creator platform is also the predominant streaming service on TV screens. That’s not new. YouTube has had the highest share of watch time among streaming services for years, and this year it overtook Disney to have the highest share of watch time among all TV network and streaming service owners. And the fact that YouTube’s TV dominance is not new is what confirms as much as anything that the creator economy has come of age.

The year AI video became a thing

In 2023, AI-generated video was at best an obscure art project best exemplified by Will Smith eating spaghetti. And in 2025 AI-generated video has kinda passed the Will Smith eating spaghetti test. Which is worrisome.

AI-generated videos are becoming ultra-realistic. Google’s introduction of Veo 3 this year added sound and dialogue to videos, making it harder to detect when a video is fake. And there are so many fake videos now. There was the Ring camera-style video of bunnies hopping on a trampoline that overtook my TikTok over the summer. There was Kalshi’s Veo-generated ad that aired during the NBA finals. 

And then there are all the videos people made using OpenAI’s all-AI video app Sora, which have been cross-posted to other platforms. TikTok is even adding an option for people to dial back the amount of AI-generated videos it serves (though that option has yet to be enabled on my account as of this writing). But back to Sora, a week before its launch, Meta launched its own AI-generated video feed Vibes. Neither of these platforms have seemed to sustain the steep initial adoption curve, but both point to the fact that AI is overtaking video feeds and someday soon even platforms like Disney+. 

And of course, the day after I originally wrote this, Disney announced a deal with OpenAI to open up its character library for Sora users to make videos featuring the likes of Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and Darth Vader. Which raises all kinds of questions around the potential for ads in Sora, a future in which people prompt for entire AI-generated movies and shows on Disney+, the implications for other entertainment companies and AI platforms – all of which I’ll save for the 2026 preview edition of this newsletter in January.

The year of the sports-front

Live sports has been a pillar of TV’s annual advertising marketplace for decades. But this year it felt like it overshadowed every other TV and streaming inventory source to a greater degree than normal. That would have been helped by the fact that Amazon had NBA games to pitch, as did NBCUniversal. And then Disney and Fox had their forthcoming standalone – and sports-only in the case of ESPN and sports-heavy in the case of Fox One – streaming services to start selling.

It’s worth calling out some context here. I’m just talking about the upfront market. As much as streaming is siphoning more of the money that advertisers commit in the annual haggle, this is still a traditional TV-centric marketplace, and traditional TV centers around sports and other live programming. 

But live sports is becoming a bigger drawing in the streaming marketplace as well. That’s especially true as companies like Disney and NBCUniversal sell their live sports streaming inventory programmatically and ad tech companies like The Trade Desk and Magnite enable more automated and real-time buying of those impressions, allowing mid- and long-tail advertisers to get into the game. 

The year measurement currency changed

It’s happened. Nielsen will have phased out its legacy panel-based measurement system as the TV ad market’s currency of record by the end of this year. 

The moment didn’t come without a fair amount of handwringing. And I’m not just talking about this years-in-the-making measurement overhaul that was riddled with ups and downs, starts and stops, questions about costs and currency support and methodological accuracy. I just mean this summer when tensions flared among a number of TV networks and ad agencies that felt Nielsen’s new numbers weren’t stable enough to stake millions and billions of ad dollars against. Even the NFL was critical of Nielsen’s counting.

And yet here we are ending the year with an end of the TV and streaming ad industry’s measurement turmoil. JK – I’m sure next year will be its own special mess and not just on the measurement side. But I’ll leave that for the 2026 preview publishing in January. Thanks for reading and have a great end to 2025.