Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Monday, November 10th, 2025:
WHY THE SKY-ITV MERGER MUST NEVER HAPPEN
While a fair percentage of the readers of this newsletter are based outside the United States, most of the people reading this right now have only the very slightest knowledge of the UK's Sky and ITV. So the news that they are pursuing a merger doesn't mean much to them.
But it's a very big deal and incredibly bad for consumers and for the viability of the UK television industry. I was going to write up a breakdown of everything, but then I saw this new post from Ed Sayer at The TV Whisperer, who does a fabulous job of explaining the current situation and why the proposed merger is a terrible idea:
The logic being peddled is seductive. If you are fighting global behemoths like Netflix, Amazon or Apple, you need scale, right? In theory, yes. In practice, it is poison. When two large companies collide, the first things to be “rationalised” are always the people and the ideas that make each organisation distinct. The redundancy letters will be written before the press conference is over. Two commissioning heads become one, two digital teams are merged, two marketing departments are “aligned.” On paper this looks efficient; in reality, it replaces creativity with exhaustion.
Once the people are gone, the budgets follow. Maintaining two commissioning pots will be deemed “duplicative,” so the money is pooled, then quietly reduced. Before long, the new entity is indeed larger, but what appears on screen is smaller: cheaper shows, narrower ambition and a creeping sense that the numbers matter more than the stories. I have watched this happen too many times to mistake it for progress.
And that is the point I have been making in my coverage of the sale of Warner Bros. Discovery. Scale itself isn't the answer. The entertainment business isn't the same as making widgets. Traditional scale is another word for market consolidation. For the control and inventory of product to be in the hands of fewer companies, who can then use their semi-monopoly to control pricing.
But scale doesn't matter so much in an industry where the barriers to entry are low and there are multiple ways to distribute the product. The only thing scale does in the entertainment industry is allow companies to consolidate marketing, promotion and production costs.
And as Sayer notes, this particular merger has national implications in a industry where local production is already facing a number of challenges:
This debate is not simply about corporate structure; it is about national identity and public responsibility. Television remains one of Britain’s crown jewels, a calling card for our creativity and our culture, but it is also a public good. ITV is not just another entertainment brand; it is a Public Service Broadcaster with obligations that run deeper than quarterly profit. It must provide impartial news, regional coverage, children’s programming and stories that reflect the breadth of British life.
If a company such as Comcast were to take control, those obligations would quickly become a nuisance rather than a mission. A global conglomerate will not see the PSB licence as a badge of honour; it will see it as a cost centre. And every time the company wants to trim its commissioning budget, it will point to the “regulatory burden” of public service as the excuse, arguing that news, regional output and other non-commercial strands make it too hard to turn a profit. The result would be predictable: fewer risky commissions, fewer distinctively British voices and a slow erosion of the very content that justifies ITV’s licence to broadcast in the first place.
Selling ITV to a purely commercial operator is not modernisation; it is abdication. It hands cultural stewardship to an overseas balance sheet and calls it strategy.
I don't want to sound over-the-top. But this is one of the core debates of the entertainment industry over the next decade. Do we end up with 3-4 global media companies that own every important asset across the globe? Or do we find the path where everyone can thrive, and small, regional voices can continue to make the shows and movies that properly reflect their culture and experiences?
SOMETIMES IT'S THE MERGERS THAT DON'T HAPPEN THAT MATTER AS MUCH AS THE ONES THAT DO
Ted Linhart's excellent Ted On TV newsletter has a look back at a merger that could have changed the future of television. If it had happened:
In the mid-1990s New World Communications was a mid-sized local station owner affiliated with Fox that was on the verge of buying King World which owned Wheel Of Fortune, Jeopardy and Oprah at the time. If that had happened King World would not have been sold to CBS which then helped Paramount morph into the company it is today and playing a large role in traditional media’s future. Instead, New World was bought by Fox and solidified its O&O base and status as a full-fledged major network, no longer the struggling start-up.
Had New World bought King World and become a bigger company that did not sell itself to News Corp and instead stood on its own 1) It might have become a buyer instead of seller and been a major player today 2) Fox might have taken longer to become hit 100% strength and 3) Paramount would have been deprived of a significant revenue source.
WHAT I LEARNED FROM SAMMY DAVIS JR.
Atlantic has an excerpt of Questlove's forward to the reissue of the Sammy Davis Jr. autobiography Yes I Can, and it is a reminder of the struggles that very talented man had to find his place in the world. There has been talk of a film biography for a couple of decades and I hope it happens. Because it would be a way to reintroduce this complex performer to younger generations:
And then there was my discovery of his 1965 autobiography, Yes I Can, written with his longtime friends Jane and Burt Boyar. In straightforward and compelling prose, Sammy, then 40, tells the story of his vaudeville beginnings, his growth as an entertainer, and his movement through America. That year, at a Book and Author Luncheon, he gave a riveting talk, opening up completely about racial identity, religious discrimination, and social (in)justice, as well as the importance of writing the memoir:
You don’t know how frustrating it is to believe something sincerely and deeply in your heart and have to joke about it to be able to make it acceptable. The frustration of not belonging to either part of the color spectrum, neither being fish nor fowl, having your own people despise you, having the people you have adopted suspect you, to walk into a synagogue on the High Holy Days and hear the laughter and the snickering because they’re not fully aware that you’re sincere. How do you explain that? How do you penetrate that? Or to walk out of the house with your wife and hear a group of guys say—of your own color, incidentally—say “He thinks he’s white.”
The memoir was a chance to “cleanse, in part, my emotional soul,” he said. That tone—of pain, of surprise, of a stubborn refusal to be reduced or diminished—is everywhere in it. Sammy may have talked about being stuck between Black and white, between Christian and Jewish, but his existence joined one side to the other, not to mention pointing beyond a past of separation and stereotype.
If you want to see Davis at his peak, his first television special was by far his best, because it allowed him to show off his wide range of talents without saddling him down with a bunch of hackneyed variety TV tropes. In 1959, the CBC variety series Parade launched with a 30-minute spotlight on Davis and it is still amazing television. You can watch the entire episode here.
CELEBRITIES WILL NOT SAVE US
TV critic Nina Metz has a very thoughtful piece on the differences between celebrities of earlier eras vs. those of today. Most of whom are engaged in this PR dance where they try and portray concern without actually expressing an opinion:
Strategic ignorance. What a perfect phrase.
It brings to mind an interview with Keira Knightley last month for the digital outlet Decider:
Q: I saw you’re voicing Professor Umbridge in the new Harry Potter audiobooks. Are you aware that some fans are calling for a Harry Potter boycott, given J.K. Rowling’s ongoing campaign against trans people?
A: I was not aware of that, no. I’m very sorry. You know, I think we’re all living in a period of time right now where we’re all going to have to figure out how to live together, aren’t we? And we’ve all got very different opinions. I hope that we can all find respect.
In order to buy her professed ignorance, you’d also have to believe her managers, agents and publicists also had no inkling whatsoever of concerns around Rowling — and they’re paid to be aware of these very things, that’s their job. Or did Knightley and her team simply decided Rowling’s behavior wasn’t a deal-breaker? PR is all about spin, though, which requires more than that word salad of an answer.
I guess you could say it was “nicer” than Sweeney’s “when I have something to say, you’ll know it,” but they’re more or less the same genre of response; both actors made it clear exactly where they stand.
THE BENDING THE KNEE CHRONICLES, PART 224:
Deadline is reporting that recent highly inflammatory social media videos released by the White House and DHS feature numerous clips from various Warner Bros. Discovery titles. And for whatever reason (*cough* merger concerns), WBD has so far declined to file any copyright complaints over that usage:
In the DHS post, Robert Pattinson’s vengeance-soaked dialogue from the Matt Reeves directed blockbuster is thrown over images of masked and packin’ Border Patrol agents storming the streets and arresting men at Home Depots. “Fear is a tool,” a voice that if it isn’t Pattinson, sure sounds a lot like him says in the DHS post, which was also put up on IG by the US Border Patrol and its main frontman Greg Bovino.
In case, you still really aren’t getting The Batman 2022 connection, the video also features use of the Kurt Cobain-penned ‘Something in the Way’ from 1991’s game changing Nevermind album – a song used repeatedly in the Batman flick.
As the Deadline piece notes, the videos themselves has received very little attention on social media. But they have been covered extensively in the political press. Which I suppose was the main point.
ODDS AND SODS
* I wish I could figure out a way to afford to go to StreamTV Europe 2026 in Lisbon next June. The lineup sounds like everything I am interested in right now. But it's a little much for a guy making a living $40 at a time. But I am going to try and make the Stream TV show in Denver next June.
* In news that doesn't surprise me, the five-second rule for food has connections to both Genghis Khan and Julia Child.
* The Critics Choice Association unveiled the winners of its 10th annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards Saturday night.
TWEET OF THE DAY
WHAT'S COMING TODAY AND TOMORROW
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10TH:
* Bat-Fam Series Premiere (Prime Video)
* Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth (Hulu)
* Honest Renovations: A Holiday Home Makeover (The Roku Channel)
* Marines Series Premiere (Netflix)
* Sesame Street Season Fifty-Seven Premiere (Netflix)
* The Warfighters: Battle Stories (History)
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11TH:
* American Heart In WWI: A Carnegie Hall Tribute (PBS)
* Beat Bobby Flay: Holiday Throwdown (Food Network)
* Hoarding For The Holidays Series Premiere (HGTV)
* Mysteries Unearthed With Danny Trejo (History)
* Surviving Mormonism With Heather Gay (Bravo)
SEE YOU EARLY TUESDAY MORNING!