State of Streaming Podcast

Covering the topics, trends, people, and acquisitions shaping Streaming TV.

State of Streaming Podcast is a news podcast hosted by State of Streaming, with 42 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

State of Streaming hosts State of Streaming Podcast, a news show with 42 episodes published.

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  Episode #2

  How An NFL Legend Is Disrupting Sports Streaming | Shawne Merriman, Founder of Lights Out Sports TV

  Sep 10, 202625 minS5

  Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Shawne Merriman , three-time Pro Bowler and CEO of Lights Out Sports TV , to trace the journey from defensive end to streaming architect — and unpack the 5G broadcast technology he's been quietly building for a year that could fundamentally change the economics of live sports delivery. From the field to the production truck to the boardroom — how Shawne was taking notes the whole time. Shawne Merriman started asking camera operators questions during pregame warmups in San Diego. He went from NFL AM at 3 a.m. — the broadcast boot camp that became Good Morning Football — to Fox Sports, ESPN, the WWE Network, and MMA promotion. By the time he launched Lights Out Extreme Fighting on Fox Sports Regionals in the same timeslot UFC vacated, he had already spent years picking up intel at Fubo's offices, sitting in Pluto's LA suite when they had 12 employees, and watching the streaming industry build itself from the inside. 2:39 – Why Shawne was asking camera operators questions during pregame warmups 4:15 – NFL AM: the 3 a.m. broadcast boot camp that became Good Morning Football 6:14 – Pitching Lights Out Extreme Fighting to Fox Sports the day UFC left — and landing it Programmatic alone doesn't work unless you're Pluto. Direct ad sales is how you build a real business. FAST looked promising — until Shawne ran the numbers. Programmatic revenue doesn't scale for a sports property unless you're already at Pluto-level monthly actives. The model that actually works: direct-sold ads anchored by live sports, with enough complementary content on the platform to create a trickle-down viewing effect when the game ends. It's the same math Paramount+ is running with the NFL and Landman. Shawne's running a version of it with LXF, Glory Kickboxing, World Poker Tour, and high school football. 9:17 – How Shawne learned the FAST business from the inside — including what programmatic actually pays 18:32 – Why direct ad sales is the only way to meaningfully grow revenue for a live sports property 20:47 – The trickle-down effect: why live sports is the top of the funnel, not the whole funnel One signal to a million people. The 5G broadcast technology that could change live sports economics. The fundamental cost problem in live sports streaming: one million concurrent viewers means one million simultaneous CDN signals. Costs scale linearly with audience. Shawne has spent the last year and a half embedded with a company building 5G broadcast technology that flips that model — one signal delivered to millions via low-power tower infrastructure, with no congestion, no dropout, and built-in compatibility with the new chipsets coming to mobile devices. The announcement hasn't been made yet. But the math is already solved. 13:51 – Why CDN costs are the live sports streaming industry's biggest unspoken problem 14:54 – The 5G broadcast technology: one signal to millions, no congestion, no dropout 15:26 – How new mobile chipsets unlock billions of addressable devices as 6G comes online DTC wins. The platforms that figure it out first take the long game. Shawne called it three to four years ago: the streaming services that win long term are the ones that solve direct-to-consumer. Not because of price — most consumers will absorb a couple extra dollars. Because of experience. The navigational friction of jumping between Netflix, Paramount+, ESPN, and Hulu is the real complaint. Whoever solves the bridge — seamless access, unified data, direct fan engagement — owns the next decade. 11:00 – Why DTC is the only long-term winning strategy in streaming distribution 15:52 – How the closed network model lets platforms push products and rewards directly to viewers 17:06 – The math problem streaming is now in: responsible scaling, not growth at all costs How high school football is paving the way for high school sports streaming. St. Francis vs. IMG Academy. Shawne has exclusive broadcast rights, drone production planned, fan engagement built in, and conversations underway with multiple networks and platforms. He produced the East-West Shrine Bowl practices live for the first time in the event's 100-year history. High school sports is the next frontier — and he's building the production infrastructure for it. 21:37 – The St. Francis vs. IMG Academy game: why Shawne expects it to be the most watched high school football game in the country 22:00 – Fan engagement as the core production principle: if fans feel connected, viewers follow 22:30 – The East-West Shrine Bowl: 100-year-old event, first-ever live stream practices Connect with Shawne Merriman on LinkedIn · @ShawneMerriman on all platforms · Lights Out Sports TV Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

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  Episode #1

  How YouTube Gets Dragged Into Meta's $18.1B Teen Restriction Settlement | Mark Stenberg, Senior Media Reporter at Adweek

  Sep 8, 202623 minS5

  Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Mark Stenberg , Senior Media Reporter at Adweek , to unpack the real ripple effects of Meta's $17 billion teen settlement — what it actually means for media buyers, whether YouTube gets dragged into the same restrictions, where youth advertising budgets go if mobile supply shrinks, and why the microdrama format might be the most interesting disruption nobody is talking about yet. $18 billion sounds like a reckoning but it's only $1.2 billion a year for a company that made $60 billion last quarter. The coalition of state attorneys general asked for $200 billion. They settled for $12 billion cash plus a conditional $5 billion — spread over ten years. Meta's stock went up. The more interesting part isn't the number. It's the conditions: reduced notifications during school hours, dark mode after midnight, a two-hour daily usage cap for teens. And the conditional $5 billion only triggers if YouTube, TikTok, and Snap agree to implement the same restrictions — Meta's lawyers took hostages on the way out. 1:47 – The settlement breakdown: $12B certain, $5B conditional, $1B to the Texas AG 2:44 – The teen restrictions: notifications, dark mode, usage caps 7:09 – Why Meta's legal strategy was "if we're going down, we're all going down" The media buy remains unchanged. By and large, the answer from agencies is: we're establishing benchmarks and watching the next 6-12 months. The demographic affected is less than 1% of Meta's revenue. Teens don't have the disposable income of any other demographic. But if YouTube, TikTok, and Snap all get pulled into the same restrictions — and the entire social ecosystem adopts teen safeguards simultaneously — that's a different conversation entirely. The brands paying attention are the ones in fast food, gaming, and fashion. 3:35 – What media buyers actually said: benchmarks, not budget shifts 5:00 – Why less than 1% of Meta's revenue comes from this demographic 6:05 – Australia's under-16 social media ban and the broader legislative trajectory YouTube is different but those differences are disappearing. YouTube has never really been a social media company — it lacks the social graph, it's consumed more like television, and it's been more proactive on parental controls. But Instagram is launching Instagram TV. Microdramas are making streaming look like social. The distinctions that protect YouTube today are eroding. Mark's read: YouTube voluntarily adopts some teen-friendly policies to avoid bad press, but doesn't end up looking exactly like Meta. 9:16 – The CPM gap between YouTube mobile and YouTube on the living room screen 10:26 – Why YouTube's distinctions from social media are continuing to disappear 12:00 – Why YouTube lacking a social graph is one of its biggest internal challenges The biggest creators are acting like media companies. YouTube is paying creators to not talk to Netflix. Jay Shetty. Tom Segura. The talent wars are accelerating — and Mark wrote the cover story on it. The biggest YouTube channels are functioning as standalone IP. Spotify is a dark horse. Fast platforms and institutional capital are getting involved. In 12 months, Spotify will have video, YouTube will have podcasts, Netflix will have music. The platform distinctions we have today won't exist. 13:01 – Why YouTube is paying creators to stay off Netflix 13:36 – Mark's Adweek cover story: creators hitting an inflection point 15:00 – The talent wars: signing creators like unseen NBA prospects Microdramas: the addictiveness of social scrolling plus the IP of Hollywood. A company out of Tel Aviv is using AI to cut licensed Hollywood IP into five-minute, ten-clip highlight reels. A company out of Ukraine is building original IP for the format. The microdrama genre has been massive in China for years. Mark's thesis: if you combine mobile scrolling addiction with genuinely compelling short-form IP, that's a potential sea change — and the dominant player in that space hasn't emerged in the US yet. 16:17 – Why microdramas are the format Mark is most interested in right now 17:00 – The Tel Aviv company cutting Hollywood IP into bite-sized streaming 19:14 – Quibi was six years early. The format is now arriving on time. Read Mark's piece: What Meta's Teen Settlement Means for Media Buyers More from Mark at Adweek: adweek.com/contributor/m Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

  ListenShow Notes
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  Episode #11

  How Publishers Win the Live Sports Streaming Era | David Dembowski, Streaming TV Architect

  Sep 2, 202623 minS4

  Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with David Dembowski , Streaming TV Architect, to break down the business of live sports streaming through the lens of the Five D's — Digital, Data, Distribution, Discovery, and Delight — and why a 62-second streaming delay during the Super Bowl is more than an engineering inconvenience. It's a business problem that touches every one of them. Why a 62-second delay isn't a tech problem but a failure in customer delight. During Super Bowl 60, Stats Perform placed spotters inside Levi's Stadium and measured the gap between on-field action and on-screen delivery across every major platform. Streaming viewers waited up to 62 seconds. Peacock — the best-performing streaming platform — ran 48 seconds behind. Broadcast ran 19 seconds. When your most forward-facing digital platforms are creating a lag in the real-time experience, it shows up in the user experience, in sports betting, and in the ad product. 0:00 – The 62-second streaming delay stat from Super Bowl 60 1:39 – Why the gap between the game and the screen is a business problem across all five D's 19:08 – How latency directly impacts sports betting and prediction markets during live events How The Five D's: Digital, Data, Distribution, Discovery, Delight drive Streaming TV Success David's framework for how publishers need to think about their transition from broadcast to streaming-first businesses. Digital first means foundational infrastructure — not just putting content online. Data means addressability, reach and frequency, targeting and measurement. Distribution means meeting the consumer on the platform they prefer. Discovery means universal findability. And Delight means none of the first four matter if the experience fails the fan. 1:39 – The Five D's defined: why delight is the one that ties everything together 4:05 – What digital first actually means: foundational infrastructure, not surface-level streaming 5:04 – Why organizational structure is the number one challenge for traditional broadcasters going digital Why Walled gardens are coming down — and Peacock distributing on YouTube is the proof. For years, walled gardens meant social platforms. Now they mean content distribution channels. Peacock announcing distribution on YouTube is a generational shift — a legacy broadcaster meeting a younger audience where they actually live. David's read: organizations that understand the fundamental shift in consumption are tearing walls down. The ones that don't are watching Amazon double the NBA's national game count to 150 games and bring 30 new advertisers into sports who had never bought TV before. 10:47 – Why Peacock distributing on YouTube is a generational distribution bet 12:26 – How the NBA went from 75 to 150 national games by adding Amazon as a partner 16:14 – Who's winning in streaming: Amazon, Prime, and the Thursday Night Football model Discovery is still broken. Apple TV does a Friday night MLB doubleheader. If your team is on Apple TV that night, you have to subscribe on the spot to watch it. That's not a discovery problem — that's a discovery plus access problem. Universal discovery is the next challenge publishers need to solve, and Fox's acquisition of Roku is the most interesting move in that direction: an operating system with massive household penetration layered with content that can now be promoted and surfaced across it. 13:15 – Why universal discovery is the unsolved problem for sports streaming 14:09 – Apple TV's MLB model and why access barriers compound discovery problems 15:24 – The Fox/Roku acquisition as a discovery and distribution play What is 'Social Appointment Viewing'? Stadium seats are finite. Ticket prices are prohibitive. But the desire for shared viewing is growing — the World Cup proved it in neighborhoods, movie theaters, and bars globally. The relationship between live sports, sports betting, latency, and the dual-screen experience is the next convergence point David is watching closely. 17:58 – Watch parties and social appointment viewing as a growing trend 18:43 – The World Cup and Love Island as proof of concept for shared viewing experiences 19:08 – How latency becomes a critical problem when sports betting is on the second screen Connect with David Dembowski on LinkedIn Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

  ListenShow Notes
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  Episode #10

  How Sports Translate Live Games | Giovanni Galvez, VP of Sales at SyncWords

  Sep 1, 202621 minS4

  Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Giovanni Galvez , from SyncWords , for a special webinar replay recorded live — including a real-time demo where SyncWords translated the State of Streaming broadcast into Spanish, French, and German simultaneously while the conversation was happening. The topic: how platforms are using live localization to reach the 80% of the world that doesn't speak English — and how much audience they're leaving on the table by not doing it. Did you know that 80% of the world doesn't speak English? It's the viewership cliff your team missed. Streaming platforms are spending billions on sports rights and then broadcasting those events in a language 80% of the world can't follow. SyncWords' data shows the drop-off happens fast — within the first few minutes of a stream, when a viewer realizes the audio isn't for them and bails to find another outlet. Language isn't a nice-to-have accessibility feature. It's a churn lever. 1:17 – Telemundo had to publish a correction to their first-round World Cup viewership data — and why language is the context 2:03 – Giovanni's origin story: growing up in Washington D.C. translating Knight Rider for his family in real time 12:07 – Where drop-off actually happens in a live stream and why language is a primary driver Why is 'live localization' an entirely different technical problem than subtitling a pre-recorded show? A live stream has to be ingested, transcribed, translated via LLM, formatted for broadcast-standard caption protocols (608, DVB, WebVTT), synchronized to the video, and delivered — in under a few seconds, in multiple languages simultaneously, with the emotional tone of the original speaker preserved. SyncWords has been solving this for over ten years, and Gio walked through every layer of the gap live on air. 3:28 – What SyncWords actually does: closed captioning, live translation, voice dubbing, and live sign language 5:33 – The technical gap: LLM output, broadcast codec standards, HLS delivery, synchronization 7:12 – Why live dubbing is interpretation, not translation — and why the synthetic voice has to carry the emotion Jewelry TV launched a new Spanish-speaking market 24/7 without adding a new team - find out how. One of SyncWords' clients runs a 24/7 English-language home shopping channel. SyncWords takes that live feed and delivers it in Spanish — subtitles and voice dubbing — in real time. The brand built a whole separate Spanish identity around it. The operational lift to enter a new market went from building a production team to pressing go. That's the ROI case: test a market with existing content before betting the farm on it. 9:07 – How Jewelry TV built a Spanish-language brand on top of an automated English feed 9:48 – Reaching a new market without new operational lift 10:50 – How WWE uses market-specific commentators for major markets — and why automation is the entry point for everyone else 76% of people prefer to shop and spend in their native language. A California university added Chinese subtitles to its commencement live stream and saw viewer numbers spike — and announced they'd expand to more languages. A single house-of-worship event ran 80 simultaneous language outputs for the first time ever. The tier-one creator economy is just starting to apply this. When a Spanish-speaking viewer hears their favorite sport called in Spanish for the first time, they don't leave. They want to know what else they missed. 13:38 – Language as a churn lever: how localization keeps viewers engaged 14:17 – University commencements, house of worship, and the 80-language live event 15:21 – How The Chosen built global language communities using local scholars — and how SyncWords makes that available to anyone The live demo: this podcast was being translated into Spanish, French, and German the entire time. Gio revealed mid-episode that he had connected the State of Streaming live stream to SyncWords' system at the start of the session. The entire conversation was being translated and streamed in three languages simultaneously — without Tim knowing. The demo wasn't a setup. It was physics. 15:58 – Gio reveals the broadcast has been live-translating since the start 16:28 – Screen share: watching Tim speak German subtitles in real time 17:29 – What's coming at IBC Amsterdam: next-generation subtitle standards and one-click live translation for any language on earth Connect with Giovanni Galvez on LinkedIn · SyncWords Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

  ListenShow Notes
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  Episode #9

  How 'Durable Audience' Became the Creator Credit Score | Josh Stein, Attention Capital

  Aug 27, 202628 minS4

  Have a question? Send us a text! Read Josh's most recent piece on State of Streaming here Tim sits down with Josh Stein , Founder of Attention Capital , to unpack why capital markets keep mispricing attention, what makes an audience durable enough to finance, and why the creator economy is the next private credit boom — whether Wall Street knows it yet or not. Some attention compounds. Some decays. The difference is what's financeable. Josh spent the first decade of his career in investment banking at Bear Stearns and leveraged finance law at Cahill Gordon — then spent fifteen years applying those dark arts to media at Vice, Univision, and Guillermo del Toro's Murata Studios. The aha moment came early: help Dr. Phil build two New York Times number one bestsellers using the same infrastructure private equity uses to underwrite a cash-flowing asset. That's the thesis that became Attention Capital. 1:10 – From a speeding ticket outside Schenectady to pricing attention like an asset class 3:30 – Bear Stearns, leveraged buyouts, and what Wall Street taught Josh about building media businesses 6:00 – The pro bono moment that split the atom: finance discipline meets the creator economy What makes an audience durable? They show up unpaid, unprompted, and predictably returning. Most viewership is noise. Durable audience is the audience that comes back without being paid to, without being prompted by the algorithm — and does so predictably enough that you can model it. If you can model it, you can finance it. That's the entire framework in one sentence. 8:40 – What durable audience means and why most viewership doesn't qualify 9:32 – The difference between algorithmic traffic and a community that comes back regardless 10:42 – Why predictability is the bridge between audience and credit AQS: the Attention Quality Score does for attention what Nielsen does for viewership. Attention Capital's underwriting framework scores audience across three pillars — durability (does it return unpaid?), cohesion (is it a community or a collection of random people?), and conversion (does it reliably generate cash?). It's not analytics. It's underwriting. The question isn't what happened — it's whether Attention Capital gets paid back. 11:13 – How AQS differs from Nielsen: underwriting vs. analytics 12:57 – The four-quadrant framework: deterministic, stochastic, qualitative, quantitative 13:06 – Why these aren't venture bets — they're SMEs with three to five years of operating history The capital is for the hoodie company. And for getting off the hamster wheel. A creator with a durable audience and a brand deal is one missed deadline away from a crisis. The capital Attention Capital deploys isn't for the content — it's for the third and fourth lines of business the audience can support: the studio, the podcast, the merch line, the holding company spine that transforms Tim Rowe into Tim Rowe's company. That's the exit multiple inflection. That's the point. 15:03 – How the capital conversation actually starts: a time problem, not a money problem 16:00 – Growth capital for the third line of business and professionalizing the org 23:22 – Why a creator with three to five years of operating history is a boring, high-margin SME that can't walk into Chase TKO/WWE quit trying to be Netflix and made $2B. Building and maintaining a streaming platform is a pie-eating contest — win and your prize is more pie, more capex, more customer service, more churn. TKO solved it by owning what they're best at and selling the rights four ways: Netflix gets appointment viewing, NBCU gets cord-cutter repellent, ESPN gets anchor events, Paramount+ gets live differentiation. Brilliant business. Simple business. $2B in twelve months. 17:55 – Why TKO's distribution strategy is a masterclass in IP, audience, and distribution 18:30 – What streaming services each got from the WWE deal and why it works for all four 20:15 – Does the Paramount/WBD deal close? Josh's read. YouTube-native filmmakers are building durable audiences that translate to the box office. Talk to Me. Backrooms. Obsession. These aren't anomalies — they're physics. Build a durable audience around a specific type of content, then serve it to them in a new window. They show up. Josh's thesis: horror is the easy proof of concept. The really interesting test is when this model slips into genres that aren't so on the nose. 20:54 – Why film is where Josh is most excited about the Attention Capital thesis 21:06 – Talk to Me, Backrooms, Obsession: why YouTube-to-theatrical isn't a fluke 22:30 – What happens when this model moves beyond horror into other genres Connect with Josh Stein on LinkedIn · Attention Capital on Substack Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

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