Thursday Night Football‘s days on CBS and NBC are over … at least for the next five years. With the networks’ two-year deal expiring, rivals such as ABC and 21st Century Fox began bidding for the opportunity to offer TNF‘s new home. After weighing its options, the NFL announced Wednesday, January 31, that Fox Sports will broadcast the coveted package. The deal is for five years and is worth more than $3.3 billion, according to ESPN.
Although the NFL’s regular season ratings were down 9.7 percent during the 2017 season, games were still watched by an average of 14.9 million viewers, per ESPN. The viewership remains large enough to command huge contracts, and in fact, Fox’s Thursday Night Football deal is reportedly much larger than CBS and NBC’s before it. In 2016 and 2017, the networks each paid $45 million per game, which pales compared to the $60-plus million Fox is reportedly set to pay. That said, Fox’s deal includes expanded digital highlight rights and the company will partner with the NFL in selling the upcoming season’s streaming rights. Twitter and Amazon have each previously streamed Thursday games.
As Variety pointed out, 21st Century Fox’s live programming is depleted after the sale to Disney, so Thursday Night Football makes for a key addition. The media company seems happy with the deal it has struck, pricey though it may be.
“NFL football continues to be the most valuable commodity in all of media,” 21st Century Fox President Peter Rice said.
Although Thursday Night Football is valuable, the games remain controversial. Many players have been vocal in criticizing TNF, arguing that it gives them less time to recover and prepare for games compared to their usual Sunday schedule. (Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, for example, has publicly called it a “poopfest.”) NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell somewhat addressed their concerns in a conference call Wednesday, saying that the league will work with the NFL Players Association “to make the shorter week more attractive in a way that is better for our players.”
Fox will continue to broadcast Sunday games on top of Thursday ones. The network is under contract through the 2022 season to the tune of $1.1 billion per year.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.