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Walter Cronkite broadcasting for CBS at the GOP Convention in Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami Beach, Florida, 1968.
Ben Martin | Archive Photos | Getty Images

There has been an enormous amount of focus in the media world over the last 18 months about how TV and movie entertainment are moving to streaming services. While Netflix has become a staple of television service in some 70 million American households, the addition of Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, Paramount+, and Amazon Prime has created a veritable buffet of entertainment choice for consumers. The recent merger announcement of Discovery with Time Warner, bringing together Discovery+ with HBO Max, has further underscored that the future of TV lies in streaming entertainment services.

Sports programming has gotten into the game. ESPN, which has been slow out of the gates into streaming, has recently signed renewal deals for substantial amounts of professional sports programming that give it flexibility to air those offerings on the ESPN+ streaming service. In addition, Amazon recently agreed to pay the NFL $10 billion just to air Thursday Night Football on its streaming service over the next ten years.

As entertainment and sports programming migrate to the streaming world, the cable and satellite bundles of channels are losing subscribers at an accelerating rate with viewers cutting the cord — or in the case of younger viewers, never subscribing to cable or satellite to begin with. So, while the streaming wars heat up, and legacy television channels lose both viewing audience and subscribers, no one is really focused on what this means for television news.

To understand the impending crisis for television news, one needs to understand the economics of the current television system. Television channels today not only derive advertising revenue from attracting an audience, but crucially important to their economics are the fees paid by cable and satellite operators for carrying those channels. For instance, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and Fox News get paid very substantial fees across every cable and satellite household in the United States of which today. Today, that means subscriber fees are paid to news channels covering over 75 million, down from close to 100 million at one point not long ago. The news channels get paid across every single one of those households even though only a small minority of households watch each of those channels. That creates a very substantial revenue base supporting the big TV news franchises — regardless of how many viewers the channel actually has, it is getting paid across all cable and satellite homes.

Similarly, local television stations, which are the backbone of local TV news are paid what are called “retransmission consent fees” from cable and satellite operators, which are very substantial payments for the right to carry those stations. Those stations also are paid across all the cable and satellite homes in a given local market, regardless of what percentage of those homes actually watch any given channel. Because of this unique payment system for legacy broadcast and cable channels, many consider this payment system to be the best possible economic model the television industry could have.

As we move away from consumers getting a bundle of cable or channels to an environment where consumers take a few streaming services that they pay directly for, the whole concept of collecting money across all homes goes away.

Entertainment content is making this transition, even though many industry analysts doubt that all entertainment streaming services will make it. Sports programming is beginning to make this transition as well. But there is a huge question mark about how news will be supported in this new streaming world. Any one news channel transitioning to a live streaming service would have to charge a very substantial fee to each home to make up for the cable and satellite carriage it is losing. News viewers may be the last ones to abandon the pay-TV bundle, but inevitably as the reach of that bundle shrinks, those fees will shrink along with it.

Complicating the picture further, there is substantial additional competition for television news, with Roku and Amazon both providing ample streaming news services. They do not have the star power or depth of content of the better-known TV brands, but do provide a reasonable news menu for those who are not political junkies or news channel brand loyalists.

TV news began as public service programming that broadcasters had to carry as a condition of getting a license from the FCC. The television news business eventually turned profitable, but it will soon face an existential crisis as to how to remain so.

There are some possibilities for preserving the economics of news channels and local news, beyond sending each channel out on its own to try to get sufficient direct-to-consumer streaming revenue from loyal viewers.

One possibility is to create a large bundle of national and local news, made available through a single packager. This is what Apple is doing with magazines and newspapers, offering scores of popular magazines and newspapers digitally for a monthly fee at $9.99 with Apple News+, but so far it has been underwhelming in terms of its adoption. And traditional media companies are going to be extremely wary of enhancing Apple’s power in the media marketplace as they increasingly compete in streaming entertainment.

Another possibility would be to find a more Switzerland-like player to act as a neutral distributor. News channels and stations are all in this predicament together — if they can’t get subscription fees from all cable and satellite households, they’d at least like to get fees from all news households, even those that don’t represent loyal viewership of their particular brand.

Certain companies may be able to go it alone better than others. Comcast and NBCUniversal have a broad array of assets including CNBC, the leading business news channel; MSNBC, the leading source of progressive-oriented political news; Sky News, the leading international news channel; NBC News Now, a streaming service; news offerings from digital streaming service Peacock; and a multitude of local stations and regional news channels. Providing a separate news bundle to households who otherwise subscribe to Peacock could drive broad uptake of news content while also driving enhanced distribution of the broader entertainment streaming service.

Fox is putting a lot of shoulder behind Fox Nation, a subscription news channel intended to satisfy the insatiable appetite among that news audience for right-wing, often extreme commentary. There may be a model here for Fox, but my guess is it is not a sufficient one to make up for the substantial financial decline the Fox News Channel will suffer with significantly diminished cable/satellite subscriber fee support.

The center of any democracy is a well-informed citizenry and a robust marketplace of ideas where quality news content can survive and thrive. Right now, there is no obvious answer to saving TV news as pay-TV subscribership declines, but let’s not allow quality television news to become collateral damage in the entertainment streaming wars.

Tom Rogers is Executive Chairman of WinView. He was the first President of NBC Cable.

Disclosure: Comcast-owned NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup. 

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Google pushes "AI Mode" on homepage

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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than  million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

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The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.

Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.

Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.

WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.

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