TV & Streaming
The Streaming Bundle Trap
Every new US streaming subscriber in 2026 came from a bundle. Bundled customers stay; solo ones leave. That rented loyalty props up $2.1bn a year — and the prop is weakening.
Blindside
The threats nobody is pricing — structural dangers hiding in plain sight, across 20 sectors of daily life and the economy. A live model, the most-exposed companies, and a plain why-it-matters for each.
TV & Streaming
AI Actors Quietly Replace Performers
A performers' contract approved by 91.4% bars strikes over AI until 2030. That four-year truce lets studios normalize digital actors, de-aging, and AI dubbing — and our model sees $522m in yearly performer pay quietly displaced.
TV & Streaming
AI Junk Floods Free TV Feeds
Machine-made junk is flooding free streaming's weakest-policed channels. Advertisers are pulling back, and prices are falling. FASTMaster models a $359 million yearly hit the market still calls a cleanup cost.
TV & Streaming
Fake TV Ad Traffic Bleeds Billions
Nearly one in five streaming ad views is fake, and AI is making it worse fast. When advertisers react like Procter & Gamble did in 2017, $2.6bn a year is at risk — money the forecasts ignore.
TV & Streaming
Sports Rights Outrun Subscriber Wallets
Leagues are raising sports prices far faster than streaming viewers will pay. The gap is now 2.6 billion dollars a year — and the companies bidding for rights have not priced in the day the math snaps.
Blindside
Blindside Weekly
5 structural threats the market isn't pricing — and where each one sits on the scale.
TV & Streaming
Streaming Hits Its Price Ceiling Abroad
Western streamers sell rising overseas prices as their next growth leg. But in India, Netflix earns $2.39-3.00 a month while a Reliance-backed rival charges $0.87. A $1.7 billion yearly gap is opening.
TV & Streaming
The Ad-Measurement Civil War
Television sold $20 billion of ads a year on one trusted count of viewers. Now three rivals can settle deals, NBCUniversal has defected, and Nielsen stands accused of hiding data. The market calls it a vendor spat. It isn't.
TV & Streaming
The Cable Fee Engine Stalls
Broadcasters' cable fees were a growth engine. Now pay-TV homes are falling 5.8% a year and price hikes can't keep up. A $1.2 billion yearly shortfall is hiding inside forecasts that still expect growth.
TV & Streaming
Streaming Becomes a Rental Habit
Young viewers now rent streaming one show at a time — subscribe, binge, cancel, repeat. Monthly cancellations have nearly tripled since 2019, quietly repricing $2.9bn of yearly revenue that services still value as if subscribers stay.
TV & Streaming
TV Operating Systems Become Tollbooths
The companies that run your smart-TV menu — Roku, Amazon, Samsung — have turned the home screen into a tollbooth, taking an estimated $2.6bn a year from the people who make and stream the shows.
Blindside
Blindside Weekly
4 structural threats the market isn't pricing — and where each one sits on the scale.