🎮 Game over for Game One
The Paramount–Skydance merger is claiming old icons: Game One goes dark as the new studio cuts deep to compete.
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This week, everyone’s tidying up their corner of the streaming world. Let’s dive in 👇
🎯 YouTube gets structured
Google launched its YouTube Activation Partners programme in France, certifying a list of agencies to manage campaigns across formats. It’s YouTube’s way of industrialising video buying and making sure advertisers stop improvising.
→ Meet the four French agencies steering YouTube’s next ad wave.
🧠 The face of DIRECTV, the brain of Ventura
The next generation of connected TVs may look familiar but they’ll think differently.
Last week, The Trade Desk and DIRECTV unveiled plans for a custom version of the Ventura TV OS, combining DIRECTV’s user interface & content offering with Ventura’s ad tech engine and App Store. The result? A platform that wears DIRECTV’s face but runs on Ventura’s brain, a flexible OS designed to be licensed by OEMs, retailers, and hospitality partners who want a plug-and-play smart TV solution with built-in monetisation.
But wait, could that mean DIRECTV own and operated devices will eventually run on Ventura? Why build this only for others to enjoy? How different will a non DIRECTV UX/UI look like on Ventura?
🇬🇧 Channel 4 joins the Super Aggregation race
Remember when I said broadcasters were becoming the quieter contenders in the super aggregation game? Channel 4 just made the jump.
From January 2026, Channel 4 Streaming will host UKTV’s “U” service, adding hundreds of BBC and UKTV titles to its library, the first time Channel 4 carries a third-party streamer on its own platform. Think Gogglebox meets Master Chef Australia meets The Office under one roof.
It’s collaboration, not consolidation and a glimpse at how British broadcasters are learning to play scale without losing identity. French broadcasters made similar moves last year with TF1, M6 and France Télévisions already carrying other French channel partners within their respective streaming hubs.
📺 ITVX moves into Amazon’s house
ITV’s ad-free tier is now a £5.99/month Prime Video add-on joining 77 other subscription partners. It’s a smart play for reach, discoverability and billing simplicity. Broadcasters’ hubs have never been really good at upselling to ad free tiers, Prime excels.
Extract of ITV’s FY 2024 results:
“We will prioritise our ad-funded proposition over our pay proposition to deliver the best return. As expected Subscription revenue was down as we consolidated subscriptions into ITVX. Partnerships and other revenue were lower as a result of the actions taken to drive viewing through ITVX”.
→ Read what ITV gains (and risks) by budding with Prime and what the UK (and EU) line up looks like 👇🏻
💰 Trading content for ads
Warner Bros Discovery is about to tackle the largest European Media & Entertainment market: the UK. Sky may have lost its HBO output deal but the group just gained a major new ad client. Starting 2026, Sky Media will handle ad sales for Warner Bros. Discovery across the UK & Ireland (across linear and streaming) in lieu of Channel 4. Sky Media, which includes AdSmart, captures over 20% of the UK’s commercial TV viewing share, making it one of the largest in the market. With this move, HBO Max is making sure they will kick a$$ right out of the gate.
🇩🇪 TV holds, YouTube grows, Streaming stalls
The ARD/ZDF Medienstudie 2025 just dropped: Germans still spend most of their video time with linear TV (55 %), but that share is slipping (down three points year-on-year). The winners? YouTube and social video, now capturing 19 % of total viewing time (up from 15 % in 2024).
Among 14- to 29-year-olds, the shift is even starker: only 12 % of their viewing goes to live TV, while YouTube + social video take 45 %, and streaming services (Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ etc.) sit at 32 %.
Meanwhile, ARD & ZDF’s platforms keep growing. Their respective weekly reach rose by 8 points and 6 points year-on-year, now surpassing Netflix in total population reach (even if Netflix still leads in usage frequency).
→ See more data points reshaping the German screen and check out this 2025 vs 2024 comparison.
🎮 Adieu Game One & co
Paramount France is pulling the plug on one of its most iconic thematic channels, Game One (with J-One and Paramount Network said to follow the same fate) by the end of November.
According to Tech&Co, the closures come as part of a massive restructuring hitting over 50 % of Paramount Networks France’s staff. The move follows the Paramount–Skydance merger, which aims to create a leaner, more competitive entity even if it means cutting into legacy brands that still turned a profit. It’s a tough ending for Game One, launched in 1998 as Europe’s first gaming-dedicated TV channel and still reportedly generating €2 million in net annual profit.
For French pop-culture fans, it’s the end of the channel that made Level One and TeamG1 cult viewing long before Twitch streams or YouTube uploads existed, back when community meant tuning in at the same hour, not logging into the same platform. Today, those fandoms have migrated online, built by creators instead of channels, proof that passion never dies, it just changes distribution.
🗳️Poll time:
That’s it for today. Enjoy your weekend and see you on Tuesday for a Deep Dive edition of Streaming Made Easy Premium.
More channels being axed by Paramount: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdr612yz8p0o