Happy Wednesday, y’all 👋. Some days in media feel small on the surface but signal a major shift underneath. This Sling TV story is one of them. It reads like a routine legal loss for Disney, but what it really previews is a future where cable is no longer a bundle, but a day pass. And that’s a different economic game.

Driving the news: Disney just lost its attempt to block Sling TV from selling one-day access passes to ESPN and other cable channels. The legal challenge hinged on whether Sling’s day-pass model undermines Disney’s existing carriage deals, and the court said it doesn’t. So Sling can keep offering cheap, temporary windows into traditionally bundled networks as this fight unfolds, with Emma Roth reporting for The Verge, while Disney continues trying to protect the unit economics of its linear business.
(Link)

The stakes: The core tension is time-based flexibility versus legacy revenue. Cable economics depend on predictable subscriber fees. Day passes introduce volatility. If consumers can dip in for a single game or event, the entire model that keeps linear networks afloat starts to wobble. For Sling, though, it’s a wedge: offer low-commitment entry, capture users who only want a taste, and maybe pull some of them into longer subscriptions.

The friction: Internally, Disney is balancing two incompatible truths. It needs ESPN to succeed in a streaming world, but it also needs to preserve the cash flow from cable while that transition plays out. That makes them defensive against any innovation that accelerates churn. Externally, the marketplace is pushing the opposite direction. Consumers expect à la carte everything. Live sports is one of the last anchors keeping people on cable at all, so a day pass that softens that anchor is strategically threatening. Add to that the fact that Sling benefits from consumer frustration that Disney cannot solve without breaking its own model, and you get a collision of incentives.

What this unlocks: If day passes hold up legally and commercially, other distributors could follow. That would pressure networks to rethink access models and pricing tiers. There’s also a branding angle: day passes reframe cable networks from locked-in utilities to event-driven experiences. That shift rewards companies that can package their content around moments, not months. It also accelerates the move toward direct-to-consumer streaming, because if consumers want flexibility, the owner of the IP can usually offer it more profitably than the middleman.

Bottom line: This ruling looks procedural, but it’s a crack in the wall. Distribution is becoming elastic. The companies that embrace flexible access will learn consumer behavior faster and adapt their revenue models sooner.

For everything else, see below 👇:

AI

1. Deloitte Predicts Generative-AI-Powered Search Will Triple Daily Use vs. Standalone AI Tools by 2026 — (Laurie Sullivan for MediaPost) — Link

2. TikTok Launches New Tools to Let Users Limit and Better Identify AI-Generated Content — (TikTok Newsroom) — Link

3. Warner Music Group Reaches Settlement in Udio AI-Music Lawsuit — (By Ethan Millman for The Hollywood Reporter) — Link

4. “The Great Meme Reset” Is Coming as AI and Platform Shifts Reshape Online Culture — (By Angela Watercutter for WIRED) — Link

Tech

5. TikTok Introduces “Unwind & Reset” to Help Users Recharge and Improve Digital Well-Being — (TikTok Newsroom) — Link

6. Cloudflare Releases Postmortem Detailing Root Cause of Major Service Outage — (By Richard Lawler for The Verge) — Link

Entertainment

7. Amazon Prime Video Tests AI-Generated Episode Recaps Across Select TV Series — (By Todd Spangler for Variety) — Link

8. Can the Muppets Can Reclaim Their Place in American Pop Culture? — (By Kyle MacNeill for GQ) — Link

Media Deals

9. Paramount Viewed as the Only Logical Winner in Three-Way Battle for Warner Bros. Discovery — (By Dan Gallagher for The Wall Street Journal) — Link

10. Paramount Held Talks With Middle-East Funds to Back Its Potential Warner Bros. Discovery Deal — (By Joe Flint and Lauren Thomas for The Wall Street Journal) — Link

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