Happy Tuesday 👋.

As the year wraps up, I’ve been thinking less about predictions and more about what actually shifted in streaming over the last twelve months.

2025 finally delivered profitability, the milestone the industry leaned on to justify years of spending. But once it arrived, it raised more questions than it answered about scale, cost, and what success even looks like now.

Let’s get into it 👇

Driving the news: I think 2025 will be remembered as the year streaming finally closed one chapter and exposed the next one. After years of promising that scale would eventually solve everything, the business reached profitability at an industry level. That milestone mattered, but not because it marked victory. It mattered because it ended the growth-era logic that had excused losses for more than a decade.

Morgan Stanley’s observation that linear TV spending still runs roughly double streaming spend captures the tension underneath all of this. Legacy television continues to shrink as an investment case, yet it still bankrolls much of the system. Streaming now generates profit, but it cannot fully support the media ecosystem on its own. To me, that imbalance explains why 2026 already looks like a year defined by consolidation, spin-offs, and asset reshuffling rather than renewed expansion.

What counts now: What stands out to me is that profitability did not replace the old scoreboard with a better one. It removed it. As Netflix and Disney move away from reporting subscriber counts, no single metric has stepped in to define success. Revenue per user, engagement, churn, and advertising yield all matter, but none translate cleanly across platforms with different bundles, pricing structures, and corporate parents.

That makes the business harder to read, not easier. Apple TV+ sits inside Apple’s broader services division, where streaming economics blur into hardware, music, and cloud revenue. Peacock still loses money, but points to cultural relevance as evidence of progress. Paramount+ leans heavily on a small set of franchises while preparing for structural change. I think all of these stories can be true at the same time, which is exactly the problem.

The messy middle: I see streaming caught between two realities. It no longer behaves like a high-growth experiment, but it has not settled into a stable utility either. Costs remain high. Global expansion delivers uneven returns. Advertising adds revenue while testing user tolerance. AI promises efficiency while introducing creative and reputational risk.

At the same time, linear television declines too slowly to fully fund the transition. Media companies now run two businesses at once, one shrinking and one stabilizing, without either fully replacing the other. That overlap constrains strategy and helps explain why even profitable years still feel provisional.Even profitable years feel provisional because no company has fully escaped that bind.

What this opens up: With subscriber growth no longer doing all the work, I think companies gain more freedom in how they structure products and partnerships. Bundles matter again. Sports function as anchors rather than churn machines. Franchises justify focus over volume. Mergers and asset deals regain legitimacy as tools for scale instead of signs of failure.

But that flexibility comes with a tradeoff. Focus only helps if companies actually choose it. The risk now is mistaking optionality for strategy and spreading resources across too many formats, tiers, and experiments at once.

The bigger picture: Profitability arrived in 2025, but it did not resolve the underlying questions around scale, cost, and value. As growth slows, those questions move from theoretical to unavoidable. My takeaway from the year is simple: the streaming business no longer gets to defer hard choices. It has to live with them.

For everything else, see below 👇:

Hollywood Stocks Had A Wild 2025 And Netflix Still Set The Pace
A year-end look at how Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount performed with investors. — (Georg Szalai and Etan Vlessing for The Hollywood Reporter) — Link

The Most-Watched TV Networks And Channels Of 2025
Ratings data shows which networks still draw mass audiences and where fragmentation has locked in. — (Michael Schneider for Variety) — Link

Why The Box Office Struggled In 2025 Even With Big Hits
Blockbusters alone did not lift attendance, underscoring how uneven theatrical recovery remains. — (Brent Lang and Rebecca Rubin for Variety) — Link

How Oneohtrix Point Never Scored Marty Supreme
Daniel Lopatin’s film work reflects how experimental composers continue to shape mainstream cinema. — (Jack Denton for Vulture) — Link

FaZe Clan’s Creator Exodus Spotlights A Key Business Risk
Top talent leaving FaZe Clan highlights how fragile creator-led brands become when incentives shift. — (Dan Whateley for Business Insider) — Link

The MTA Will Stop Selling MetroCards. Good Riddance
New York’s long-delayed transition away from MetroCards closes an era and exposes how slow change can linger. — (Mike Schnaidt for Fast Company) — Link

The 5 Weirdest Brand Collaborations Of 2025
From confusing to inspired, these partnerships show how brands chased attention this year. — (Grace Snelling for Fast Company) — Link

The Charts That Explain Tech In 2025
A data-driven snapshot of how platforms, devices, and markets shifted worldwide. — (Rest of World Staff for Rest of World) — Link

Beyond The Screen: The Rise Of The Experience Economy
Luxury brands bet that physical moments drive loyalty more effectively than digital reach alone. — (Chris Wisson for Luxury Daily) — Link

Meta Buys AI Startup Manus As Paying Users Surge
Meta’s acquisition points to where consumer-facing AI traction actually shows up. — (Angel Au-Yeung, Raffaele Huang, Kate Clark for The Wall Street Journal) — Link