ROKU CITY HAS FALLEN, Media Consolidation Spreads Like Wildfire

[This is a cross-post with ECVPodcast.com - I don’t talk about media a lot on Visu but after the absolute shitshow that was the UFC bread and circuses at the White House, I think it’s important for me to talk about it more.]

Roku the consumer electronics and streaming brand has been purchased by FOX for $22 billion. According to a Roku press release the deal works out to be “$160.00 per share in a combination of cash and FOX Class A common stock.” The release goes on to confirm that Roku’s “Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Anthony Wood will have an ongoing role at the combined company and will join the FOX Board of Directors following the close of the transaction.”

As of August 2025 Roku had 38% of the US market for connected TV’s, it’s closest competitor was Amazon Fire with 18%

FOX is getting not only the the electronics side of the Roku, which has TV’s, streaming dongles and speakers, but also the streaming platforms Howdy and Frndly TV. This give Fox access to the 100 million Roku users and a stronger footing back in the streaming game after selling their stake in Hulu during the sale to Disney. Fox did acquire Tubi back in 2020.

This is not the only story of media consolidation happening as Antitrust Division of the Trump’s Justice Department has cleared the Paramount/Warner Bros deal, claiming “not likely to result in harm to competition or American consumers.” The Ellison’s who own Paramount which include CBS, also own Skydance Media and a minority stake in TikTok. With the purchase of Warner they will also acquire CNN and a myriad of other film production companies, streaming services and sports networks including TNT Sports.

This is an accelerated return to the studio system of the 30’s and 40’s when a handful of large film studios also owned the method of release - the movie theaters. Back then the Big Five, Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox and RKO also owned their own distribution network. This meant that smaller production companies couldn’t get access to theaters without the say of the Big Five. In 1948 the US Supreme Court broke that system up (for the most part) in United States v. Paramount Pictures, et al.

The new studios run by Amazon, Disney, The Ellison’s and Netflix have figured out a way around the 1948 US Supreme Court case by buying themselves a President and thus a friendly DOJ. Trump’s Justice Department ludricrously claims that they looked at the Paramount/WB merger and found… “The evidence reviewed and carefully analyzed by the Division indicates that, post-merger, competition in SVOD [Streaming Video on Demand] is not likely to be harmed. To the contrary, the combined firm is likely to increase competition by offering consumers a more robust competitive alternative to the larger SVOD offerings.”

There has never been a more vital time for movie lovers to start investing in physical media as once again our access to films and tv will be decided by a handful of men that don’t actually seem to like movies or the artists that create them that much.