Fox Acquires Roku for $22B as Right-Wing Media Consolidates
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- Fox Corporation announced a $22 billion acquisition of Roku, the connected-TV platform present in roughly half of all U.S. homes with broadband internet.
- Roku increasingly operates as an advertising platform whose operating system controls the television home screen, ranking and monetizing content using first-party viewer data.
- Fox already owns Tubi, the free ad-supported streaming service it bought for $440 million in 2020 and which now accounts for roughly 5% of U.S. streaming viewership.
- The Justice Department approved David Ellison's $111 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger, reportedly shutting down the antitrust review before staff attorneys could issue their final recommendation.
- Paramount reportedly refused to air a Freedom of the Press Foundation advertisement critical of its leadership and merger, citing a 'conflict of interest.'
- Cable and satellite TV penetration fell to just 36% of U.S. households in 2025, down from 85% a decade earlier, eroding the carriage-fee model that long subsidized Fox News.
- Ellison was spotted socializing with Jared Kushner at Washington's Cafe Milano the night before a UFC event on the White House South Lawn that streamed exclusively on his Paramount+.
Why it matters: Fox and Ellison now sit astride both sides of the streaming economy — Fox controlling the Roku-powered discovery layer and Ellison controlling CBS, CNN, and Paramount's content — meaning whichever outlet wins the next regulatory or ratings fight will do so inside an infrastructure owned by a single ideological camp. The DOJ's reported override of its own antitrust staff makes the Ellison deal's approval harder to challenge, while Roku's grip on the TV home screen gives Fox leverage over every competing service running on its platform.
