Fox Won: Did you, like me, sign up for Fox One to watch the World Cup? If so, you are in good company. According to data from the measurement firm Antenna, Fox One added 2.8 million sign-ups in June. That’s more than 2.5 times its previous best of 1.1 million in January, which coincided with the NFL Playoffs. The opening day of the tournament, June 11, drove 400,000 sign-ups on its own and 93% of its June gross additions were new subscribers. The sign-up news comes on the heels of some jaw-dropping Nielsen data, which found that the World Cup Final drew more than 62.8 million viewers in the U.S., making it the most-watched World Cup final and soccer telecast in American history. Given that Fox got a massive discount on these World Cup rights, paying only $485 million to broadcast it, it is safe to say that the entire event was a financial windfall for the company.
OpenAI’s Chump Change: On Tuesday, OpenAI announced its plan to renew its investment in the American Journalism Project by committing an additional—wait for it—$5 million in funding and $3 million in tech credits to the organization over the next two years, according to Axios. There was a time, when I was a younger reporter, that I would have celebrated such efforts, but now I can hardly contain my indifference. A few million dollars, over two years, from a company hurtling toward a trillion-dollar valuation hardly inspires adulation. In fairness, OpenAI is simply running a playbook perfected by Google, which for years kept local news publishers on a steady drip of financial support. The goal of these programs, to be clear, is purely optical: The money is too insubstantial to affect actual change, but visible enough to serve as a counterpoint in courtroom litigation.
FAST BI: Business Insider is coming to a television near you. The publisher, which has a massive footprint across YouTube that totals 38 million subscribers across its channels, debuted both a standalone streaming app and a FAST channel on Tuesday. At launch, the FAST channel will only be available on Xumo, my favorite platform, but has plans to expand to other FAST platforms in the near future, according to a spokesperson. The move, supported by the supply-side platform Magniate, is a no-brainer: For publishers with massive volumes of video inventory, as BI has, making that content available in more surfaces across the CTV ecosystem helps it reach new audiences and generate passive revenue. For all the headwinds BI has faced in the last year, its YouTube presence is a real asset, and it is heartening to see it make better use of it.
Hearst Hire: On Tuesday, Hearst Magazines named Chris Berend as its chief content and experience officer, a newly created role. Berend joins Hearst Magazines, which houses titles like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and Good Housekeeping, from NBCUniversal News Group, where he was its chief digital officer. The inclusion of the “experience” element of the title caught my eye, as it signals just how core to editorial strategy events and in-person activations have become in recent years. It will be exciting to see if Berend can supercharge a Magazines group that has ample brand recognition but waning influence with its core demographics.
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Jon Miller is the chief executive of the Integrated Media Company, a media company funded by the private equity giant TPG that has a portfolio of media brands including Fandom, TV Guide, Footballco, and Screen Junkies.
