Sky and ITV formally signed their roughly £1.6bn broadcast merger on 6 July, with both newsrooms protected to 2030 and ITV's public-service status held to 2034. The deal now waits on regulators, as does Paramount's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, facing two EU clocks and a Senate revolt. TwelveLabs banked $100m the same week, the video-AI vendor layer compounding while the incumbents queue for clearance.
Every big move this fortnight is signed or cleared industry-side; the regulators clearing it are not.
Sky formally agreed to buy ITV's broadcast and streaming arm for about £1.6bn on 6 July, with both newsrooms protected to 2030 and ITV's public-service status held to 2034.
Sky formally agreed on 6 July to buy ITV (Britain's biggest commercial broadcaster) in a roughly £1.6bn deal for its broadcast and streaming arm. ITV keeps its public-broadcaster status until 2034.
Sky wants £200m in savings within three years, and regulators are now reviewing the deal. Culture secretary Lisa Nandy has the final say on whether ITV keeps its public-service status.
Paramount Skydance's $110bn takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery stalled on 1 July at three regulators: two EU clocks in Brussels and an unanswered FCC demand in Washington.
Paramount Skydance's $110bn Warner Bros. Discovery takeover hit three regulatory snags. Brussels pushed its merger deadline from 7 to 22 July, and a subsidies probe into Gulf financing is due 14 July.
US Senators asked the FCC (America's media regulator) to block the deal by 1 July over its 49.5% foreign ownership, but it stayed silent. All three clocks must clear before Paramount can close.
TwelveLabs raised a $100m Series B on 1 July, co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, as Amazon formalised AWS as its preferred cloud and headcount tripled to 178.
TwelveLabs raised $100m on 1 July, led by US venture firm New Enterprise Associates and South Korea's Naver Ventures. Amazon named its cloud division Amazon Web Services as TwelveLabs' preferred platform, and Red Bull Ventures backed a sports-video push.
Headcount tripled to about 178 in a year, showing how fast rights holders are outsourcing video AI to specialist vendors rather than building it themselves.
The European Commission's own page confirmed on 7 July that its AI content-marking Code is still 'undergoing an adequacy assessment', 26 days before Article 50 binds.
BelgiumThe European Commission confirmed on 7 July that its AI content-marking code, finished 10 June, is still under review by The Commission and the AI Board. Firms have until 22 July to sign it.
A binding EU rule on labelling AI content starts 2 August regardless. So far no broadcaster or media company has signed the voluntary code, leaving compliance stuck in limbo.
IAB Tech Lab consolidated agentic ad-buying under a single standard, AAMP, built on Anthropic's Model Context Protocol, with 3.0 software kits shipping in July.
IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Tech Lab folded rival ad-buying systems into one shared standard this July. The new standard, AAMP (Agentic Advertising Management Protocols), runs on Anthropic's Model Context Protocol.
Warner Bros. Discovery is rebuilding its ad technology on the same protocol, so the standard directly affects systems it has already committed to using.
ElevenLabs opened tender-offer talks at a roughly $22bn valuation on 2 July, a capital marker reported without any named media customer attached.
United StatesElevenLabs opened tender-offer talks on 2 July at a valuation of roughly $22bn, letting existing shareholders sell shares at the new price.
Unlike TwelveLabs' raise the same week, ElevenLabs named no media customer behind the figure. That makes this a capital-markets bet on voice AI, not a proven media deal.
Sideways, not up or down: no deal has collapsed, but three decision points cluster within eight days. If the European Commission fails to clear Paramount-WBD by 22 July, the 30 September ticking-fee window before the deal must close starts to bind; if the Foreign Subsidies Regulation probe reports against Paramount on 14 July, Brussels' merger-control and subsidies tracks become legally entangled rather than sequential. The tip point is FCC chair Brendan Carr issuing, or continuing to withhold, the 'may not close' notice Senate Democrats demanded over the deal's 49.5% foreign-ownership stake by 1 July; his silence is itself now a signal the agency intends to set its own timetable rather than Congress's.
AI-assisted, human-edited under the editorial responsibility of Bannermedia Ltd. Reviewed by Ed Woodcock on 7 July 2026. Editorial standards.
