Crypto News: The Peacock problem, Ellison’s HBO decision, Alex Cooper drama

Here’s a fun item to start your week: MrBeast, YouTube’s biggest star, is shopping the film rights to his forthcoming novel with James Patterson. It’s called Most Dangerous Game and it has some similar themes as his TV show, Beast Games, which itself is inspired by Squid Game.

If you are a documentarian and/or a climate activist, consider submitting a short documentary to Bloomberg Green Docs. The 2026 competition is open for submissions. Enter your film by August 14 to compete for a $25,000 prize.

Five things you need to know

My colleague Ashley Carman’s coverage of podcaster Alex Cooper and her husband took over the internet. Cooper and her husband skipped the team meeting where employees’ complaints were addressed.
Netflix is in talks to buy Radford, one of the largest studio spaces in Los Angeles. It could serve as the company’s new base of operations in Southern California.
South Korean police are looking to arrest the music billionaire who started BTS.
Meta is cutting about 8000 jobs — or 10% of its workforce — even as it boosts its capital expenditures to more than $100 billion this year. Google is going to invest up to $40 billion into Anthropic.
IHeart and SiriusXM are discussing a deal that would combine the largest radio station owner with the largest satellite radio company in the US.

Brian Roberts’ Peacock problem

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approved a sale to Paramount Skydance this past week, an inevitable but important moment in Hollywood history.

The filmmakers petitioning to block the deal are still hoping for lawyers and regulators to intervene. While attorneys general had success against Live Nation, preventing this deal is a long shot.

Assuming the deal happens, major questions face the three media giants that made a play for Warner Bros. Let’s start with the first to drop out of the race.

What will Brian Roberts do?

Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts knows he has a Peacock problem.

Comcast has been operating a streaming service for six years and is still figuring out its pitch to consumers. Peacock lost $432 million last quarter and has lost more than $11 billion since its debut. Comcast said it is “expected to approach profitability” in the current quarter.

The service has increased its share of viewing over the last couple of years with hits like Love Island and All Her Fault, Universal movies and a steady diet of sports. Peacock accounted for 3% of US TV viewing in February, a new high, thanks to the combination of the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics and the NBA All-Star Game. The service now has 46 million subscribers.

Yet Peacock struggles to get its new viewers to stick around. The company’s cancellation rate is the worst of any major streaming service — 9% every month this year, according to Antenna. Churn was on the rise even before its legendary February because Comcast decided to start selling the service via third parties like Amazon.

High churn means you need to spend time and money to lure the same customers back, on top of the service’s growing programming budget. (The company says its actual churn is more in-line with industry average.)

The performance of Peacock has prompted a lot of executives at Comcast and its rivals to wonder what Roberts will do next — not just with Peacock, but his entire media enterprise. Roberts is entering his late 60s and just named Mike Cavanaugh the co-CEO of Comcast. Even with his big new job, Cavanaugh is still in charge of NBCUniversal.

Roberts flirted with buying Electronic Arts and Warner Bros. Discovery, but he didn’t want to give up control of his media business. It’s also hard to do big deals if your stock is suffering. The company’s stock is down 11% over the last year and more than 40% over the last five years. Comcast’s main business, providing internet and cable to homes and businesses, hasn’t been doing as well as Wall Street wants.

Roberts has the balance sheet and the track record to be patient. He thinks he can fix his connectivity business, which just had a strong quarter. His theme parks are thriving. His studio is kicking ass. He spun off most of his shriveling cable networks.

But Peacock is still a third-tier streaming service. There is a risk in waiting too long to figure out its future. Comcast was already slower than its peers to invest in streaming and has been more conservative in its territorial expansion. If Comcast wanted to combine with another player, there is a dwindling number of dance partners. Comcast already sold its stake in Hulu and just watched two of its peers, HBO Max and Paramount+, join forces.

Comcast has splurged on sports, which has helped bring in new customers. But in order to keep those customers, it needs more entertainment programming that appeals to them. Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan will help, as he did at Paramount+, but he’s not coming over for another couple of years. Comcast also just poached another Paramount contributor, Mobland producer Jez Butterworth.

Who will David Ellison put in charge?

In merging two media companies that own very similar assets, David Ellison will have to pick between rival executives. His toughest choice will be deciding who should run his streaming business.

Ellison recruited long-time Netflix executive Cindy Holland to run Paramount+. Holland is a widely respected executive with great taste, strong filmmaker relationships and a serious axe to grind. She was unceremoniously dumped by Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, who elected to make Bela Bajaria his global head of TV.

Ellison is buying HBO, which is led by Casey Bloys, another widely respected executive with a track record nonpareil. If you ask agents and producers to name the best TV executive in the business, Bloys is the most common answer. (Some might say it’s a tie with his frenemy, FX chief John Landgraf.)

Will Ellison remain loyal to Holland and put her in charge? Or will he ditch her to keep Bloys?

Whatever Ellison decides, Bloys has plenty of leverage. His contract stipulates that he must report into the CEO of his company. Every other company in town would hire him if they could.

Bloys was open to working for Bajaria at Netflix because she has a massive remit and would leave him alone. He was open to working for Donna Langley at NBCUniversal for the same reason. Langley’s expertise is also movies — not TV. Holland and Bloys have the same specialty — premium, scripted TV — and Bloys has a stronger recent track record.

Ellison could offer Bloys a job where he reports directly into the CEO but doesn’t run the whole streaming business — much like CBS News chief Bari Weiss reports into Ellison and not CBS chief George Cheeks. Or he could let him walk. HBO has thrived under many different regimes.

If Bloys chooses to walk away, it would be very Netflix to try and steal him after missing out on buying HBO. For now, Bloys can sit back and see what everyone offers him.

What does Netflix do next?

This might be the most common question I get.

Netflix has already made some moves — like buying Ben Affleck’s AI company, pursuing a studio lot in the San Fernando Valley and announcing it plans to buy back a bunch of stock.

None of those transforms the business. They tweak the existing model. Netflix was about to complete the biggest deal in its history by a factor of 100. Surely it won’t just sit tight, right?

Netflix leaders are adamant that Warner Bros. was a unique asset that they felt they had to try and buy. Netflix didn’t aggressively pursue Paramount or any of the video game companies that came up for sale. It would certainly be interested in Disney or Universal, but neither of those companies is for sale (at least not yet).

Whether Netflix feels the need to do something big may depend on how the rest of the year goes. If the company continues to grow and satisfy investors, it doesn’t need to take a big swing just yet. It can keep waiting to see if its investments in live and video games bear fruit.

But boosting the amount of time people spend with the service and expanding into related businesses are two big priorities. Warner Bros. would have helped solve both.

The best of Screentime (and other stuff)

The most popular streaming shows of 2026

Netflix accounted for six of the 10 most-watched original streaming series of through March 29 so far, led by Stranger Things.

The finale of the streaming service’s most popular show attracted huge audiences in January, per Nielsen. The numbers are a little skewed because they include the final three days of 2025. Netflix released the show’s finale on New Years Eve. If you exclude Stranger Things, Bridgerton has been the most popular streaming original, thanks to the fourth season.

But both shows will soon be eclipsed The Pitt. The HBO Max medical drama has been one of the most popular shows week after week this year. It has boosted its audience from the first season and should soon take the crown as the most-watched title of the year to-date.

We crunched the Nielsen data for the first quarter of 2026.

We don’t yet have data for its final few episodes, but, based on its averages, it will top Bridgerton within the next data drop or two.

Here are a few other trends from the Nielsen data:

Only one of the 10 most-popular original series so far is new — Netflix’s Him & Hers. This continues a troubling trend from last year.
The audience for a few of Netflix’s bigger hits is shrinking. Bridgerton and The Night Agent lost viewers from the previous seasons. (The Lincoln Lawyer bucked this trend.)

Traitors might now be the biggest streaming reality show. The new season of Traitors was a bigger hit than the new season of Netflix’s Love is Blind.
TNT dramas are making a comeback. The Closer and Rizzoli and Isles — two crime dramas that aired on the TNT cable network last decade — rank among the 10 most-watched licensed titles. The Closer edged out consistent animation favorite Bob’s Burgers.
Male action movies ruled. The most-watched movie on streaming in the first quarter was Zootopia 2, the highest-grossing US movie of 2025. But then came three action films, The Rip, War Machine and The Wrecking Crew. Netflix released the first two while Amazon did the latter.

The No. 1 move in the world is…

Michael. The Michael Jackson biopic grossed $217 million worldwide in its first weekend, the biggest debut for a music biopic ever.

This movie is a good reminder that most people haven’t read the same articles as you, or just don’t care. Jackson has been accused of child abuse, allegations that date back decades and never really stopped. Much of the press coverage in recent months has been about the Jackson estate’s efforts to keep those allegations out of the movie.

Yet the business of Michael Jackson remains robust. This movie is a smash in the US and abroad. Its director and producer are going to take down huge paydays for their troubles, per Thomas Buckley.

Deals, deals, deals

T-Mobile and Germany’s biggest phone company are discussing the largest merger ever.
Xbox is cutting the price of its subscription gaming service, a sign that it’s unhappy with Game Pass’ performance.
YouTube is pushing a tool to detect deep fakes and booted the Looksmaxxing influencer Clavicular.
Comcast pared the losses in its broadband business.

Weekly playlist

My friend and colleague Shawn Wen has produced a new season of the hit podcast Foundering about the murder of tech executive Bob Lee. I admit that I am listening to fewer narrative podcasts than I once did — audiobooks instead — but this is a really interesting exploration of arguments we’ve all been having about crime (and California).