In the shadows of a Paramount Skydance Warner Bros Discovery merger that absolutely no one wants, another merger story has reached its crescendo. Comcast-owned Sky has finally reached an agreement with ITV to acquire the latter’s television and streaming arm; subsequently spinning-off ITV Studios into a separate business. Weeks prior, Comcast would drop a bombshell of their own; announcing that they would spin-off NBCUniversal into its own separate business. If all goes according to plan, Sky will become part of a standalone NBCUniversal corporation by this time next Summer.
There’s a lot to unpack from this, and with all the regulatory reviews and possible plot twists, it’s too soon to form any concrete opinion other than “the Paramount Warner merger is still an apocalyptic disaster compared to this mess.” The corporate suits will talk about how a Sky-ITV combination will create “a commercial streaming champion for the UK” that will fight on equal ground with the Netflix’s and YouTube’s that have been running circles around the BBC. Anyone with a pair of eyes and common sense, however, will immediately recognize the hypocrisy of such boasts.
What good can a UK telecom and entertainment giant possibly do when it will all be controlled by the very people you’re trying to compete against?
This is exactly what I was talking about just a few months ago; how corporations trying to “beat” Netflix will be so absorbed by profits and power that they miss sight of what matters. This isn’t about preserving UK media in the face of Americanization; this is about one American corporation trying to compete against another American corporation by weaponizing the fragile broadcasting industry of another country...
Re: Crash Bandicoot Games with Caddicarus - Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN)
Not every AVGN episode is perfect, "the reviewer" acknowledges that they are unfamiliar with Crash Bandicoot, and I was expecting too much due to being very passionate about the franchise during in my "gamer phase", but this was weak nonetheless. They don't even try to properly critique any of the post-Naughty Dog games besides Wrath of Cortex and Crash of the Titans (on Nintendo Wii no less).
They shit on Crash Bash for being a Mario Party clone, yet they don't elaborate beyond "the mini-games suck".
The way they describe Crash and Cortex working together in Crash Twinsanity (regarded as the best post-Naughty Dog game) sounds as if they ignored the plot entirely.
I can tell you from experience that Crash Bandicoot Purple's fatal flaw was focusing too much on near-unbeatable mini-games instead of simple platforming; the second Crash GBA game also suffers from the same flaw. Yet, if you go by this video, you'd think the problem with this Spyro the Dragon crossover was that it had "nothing" to do with Crash Bandicoot.
No. Fucking. Shit.
The reason why Purple doesn't look like a Crash game is because it's actually the alternate colour counterpart (a la Pokemon) to Spyro Orange. Basic research flushed down the fucking toilet to make room for an unnecessarily large amount of toilet humor (and pointless cutaway gags) that this episode didn't need; nor the guest appearance, since Caddicarus ultimately contributes very little to helping newbies understand the franchise.
What makes a good Nerd episode, in my opinion, is when it combines informative, factual commentary and (fair) critique with (usually low-brow) comedy. This is an example of an AVGN episode that leans too heavily on the latter because the former is too shallow, and if masturbation jokes aren't your thing....
Again, my frustration with this video is simply because of the fondness I have for Crash Bandicoot; I wouldn't give a shit otherwise. There have been worse AVGN episodes in this regard, usually due to a lack of research.
Godzilla (personal bias, particularly against the GB game), ROB the Robot (an ultra rare example of The Irate Gamer episode being better; thank fuck that hatedom died down), Transformers (based on the Japanese-only series), Superman (which had nothing to do with the movie), Superman 64 (so bad it needed a remake), the Tiger Game.Com segment (though, in-fairness, the console speaks for itself), Bugs Bunny's Birthday Bash ("too easy"), McKids, Mega Man and so on.
Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery should spin-off (the rest of) their cable networks [#BlockTheMerger]
A group of 12 state attorneys general allege the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger would violate antitrust laws and are seeking a preliminary in
"Would the states drop their suit if Paramount agreed to spin off CNN?"
That is beyond fucking stupid for multiple reasons. Who even was the dumb fuck who "reported" that?
Spinning-off one single cable channel isn't good enough to justify a massive merger like Paramount Warner; not Nickelodeon (fuck the EU, by the way), not even HBO. In my opinion, not only would Paramount Skydance Warner Bros Discovery need to spin-off every cable network not named HBO, they would also need to break up that massive business as well.
And before you ask: that is exactly what Comcast's end game is after already spinning-off lesser NBCUniversal brands into Versant. They made the announcement weeks before that of the ITV-Sky merger (that potential UK giant would then become part of a soon-to-be independent NBCUniversal after its own spin-off from Comcast).
As a reminder, we have on the Paramount side: CBS, CBS Sports Network, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr, the BET Media Group (BET & VH1), CMT, Paramount Network (which is only good for Bar Rescue without Yellowstone, BTW), and the dozens upon dozens of spin-offs and rerun farms that nobody gives two shits about. On WBD's end: there's TBS, TNT, TruTV, TCM, Cartoon Network / Adult Swim, Boomerang, CNN, HLN, and the entirety of pre-merger Discovery Global (including TNT Sports UK, formerly Eurosport UK) .
This is an open and shut case. The leftover unscripted (Discovery Channel, MTV, etc), live event / sports (TNT Sports USA and International, CBS Sports), and news divisions (CNN, CBS News) of the two companies can be spun-off into their own separate, healthy, business. A second, separate business would then be formed around the remaining assets and scripted brands.
Alternatively, they could re-create the pre-merger Discovery Global and pre-AT&T Time Warner (minus Warner Bros) and spin-off those businesses. Though it is pointless without BET+, I'm sure Black Americans would welcome the potential sale of a smaller BET Media Group back to its people nonetheless. I also maintain that any genius can create a successful business by buying a niche brand (CMT, Logo, etc) and its program library.
Look no further than what happened to Court TV and the TNN revival.
My point is: there are so many opportunities that could be created if Paramount and WBD's cable networks were spun-off from the studio and streaming assets and broken up into their own separate businesses. A dozen or so businesses could be created depending on how you slice these cable channels. That would do more than put to rest the concerns of less alternatives and less competition a Paramount WBD combination would create.
Disney had to sacrifice and arm and a leg to acquire Fox; resulting in 21st Century Fox's news, sports, and broadcast assets being spun-off into the present-day Fox Corporation. Paramount Skydance wants the entirety of Warner Bros Discovery, unlike Netflix and Comcast, but its painfully obvious they too will need to make bigger sacrifices.
Then again, the next best thing would be if there was no merger at all, and WBD was broken up regardless (as it should have been in the first place).
Once in a while, trashy drama channels will do a video on someone who deserves it...
...and, depending on how you look at this, it's not who you think it is.
How the fuck did we go from the rise and fall of Adrien Broner, to some dime-a-dozen Kick loser leeching off what little relevancy he has left?
Bonus question: why don't we see these human garbage Kick streamers get beat up more often? It's the best content these pathetic wastes of life will ever create.
There's a reason why this video is age restricted.
For everyone who thought S9 of Rick and Morty was going to suck, I have good news...
S9 had a lot less shitty episodes than S8, which means S3 & S7 are still the worst.
Nothing left to do but to skip the obligatory emo season finale and hope S10 will be a full return to form for one of the few (few, few, very few) reasons I still tolerate this shitty country.
Netflix has cancelled as many great animations as they have renewed other shows for one season too many (looking at you, Paradise PD). They spend billions of dollars on a million originals, and tax subscribers with endless price hikes (among other things) so they can afford them all — only to give little-to-no promotion to half of them, while cancelling the other half. It’s a waste of time, and it’s a waste of money.
Disney, on the flip side, you’d think would do a better job. Yet here we are, seven years after the acquisition of 21st Century Fox, and the best Disney+ and Hulu could do was Marvel shows, Star Wars shows, Fox sitcom revivals, and sequels to The Amazing World of Gumball and Adventure Time that Cartoon Network’s animation-hating corporate owners wanted nothing to do with.
Say what you will about Amazon as a corporation, but there is one element about its services that I’ve seen very few people talk about: Prime Video is the best streaming service you’re not watching when it comes to animation. You already know what shows in-particular I’m talking about; I don’t even need to say their names. So, with The Ghost in the Shell now streaming worldwide, it’s time to not only pay our respects to Prime Video; but to spotlight some of the other shows the platform has given us.
Not only did New Japan Pro Wrestling put (one of) their secondary title(s), the IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship, on someone not even the Japanese crowd wanted; they had him beat the previous champion in the latter's VERY FIRST DEFENSE via a three-way match.
They then made their new champion look like a chump by having a literal, in-universe, turncoat who jumped ship to All Elite Wrestling attack him after the match. 23 DAYS LATER, that same turncoat beats the champion and wins the title.
The Wolf vs House of Torture feud was next level awful (as with ANYTHING involving H.O.T. G.A.R.B.A.G.E), but this is proof that NJPW creative still has a fetish for hot potato title runs; especially if it will put over AEW. It's painfully obvious by now that retiring the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship and bringing back the IWGP Heavyweight Championship was a publicity stunt to trick overseas fans into thinking that NJPW was changing for the better; rather than addressing still-existing problems.
What the "Forbidden Door" has done to NJPW is no better than the sorry state of TNA and their partnership with WWE. The same WWE that just did THAT on Raw the same night.
Every promotion in CMLL's alliance is a fucking joke. AEW is an overrated dumpster fire that ruins every pro wrestling company that comes into its orbit (*looks at Stardom*), and ROH (case and point) is its glorified C-show. MLW is dogshit, has been dogshit since COVID, and will always be dogshit. And RevPro isn't even the best wrestling company in Europe.
This is the answer to the WWE / AAA / TNA alliance?
Music cuts off before someone makes a quip or does something.
Repeat steps one and two.
Intense montage of action building to another music cut off and someone makes a quip or does something. Bonus points if it, or the entire trailer, is set to a song.
Title drop.
One random clip for the road.
Modern trailers and TV promos are so unoriginal. They don't do anything to stand out, let alone get me interested in whatever media they're trying to promote. As soon as someone does a creatively fresh trailer that goes viral, it too gets copied to oblivion.
Case and point: the trailer for Tubi's new adult animated series, Breaking Bear.
Try not to react challenge: succeeded
I do wish Breaking Bear all the best that it at least turns out better than the other animated garbage Tubi (FOX) has shat out. Alas, I've seen too many raunchy, juvenile lookalikes to get my hopes up that this show will be any better than even a certain, eerily-similar-looking, Comedy Central cartoon with a talking bear.
MuchMusic vs Much — The Confusing Tale of a Canadian Icon
The progression of MuchMusic’s digital network vs the degradation of the Much TV channel
“Great! Just what the internet needs: another rant about MuchMusic!”
Give credit where credit is due: reports of MuchMusic’s death are greatly exaggerated by the bias-peddling, lazy bloggers and clickbait content farm writers of the internet. Probably the same stupid Canadians who also believe Teletoon died in 2023.
We’re coming up to 5 years since Canada’s once-iconic music station and youth entertainment brand pivoted to social media via TikTok on 7 July 2021. MuchMusic now boasts being “the most-followed Canadian entertainment brand.” I already gave owner Bell Media their flowers on Tumblr as I was covering the recent rebirth of former corporate sibling and French counterpart MusiquePlus (now owned by Remstar) on 11 June 2026 using the exact same strategy as Bell.
The majority of MuchMusic’s audience doesn’t watch traditional television, as “much” as it is a broken record at this point to remind you. Relaunching the brand across the channel’s preexisting social media accounts and a brand new TikTok account — a social media network rooted in music — was brilliant. No paywalls, no geo-blocking, no FOMO. If you can watch YouTube and TikTok, you can watch MuchMusic right now. In an era where streaming television has become so fragmented, MuchMusic is one of the few legacy brands whose content can be accessed on any and every platform.
Compare and contrast the misfired relaunch of Comcast’s G4 TV a few years ago.
It will forever baffle me how Adult Swim not only produced original anime in the late 2010s, it was a corporate sibling to Crunchyroll (via AT&T Warner) during that time. Yet instead of THIS...
We got this...
Fena: Pirate Princess Season 1 has gorgeous visuals and thrilling pirate-versus-ninja fights, but it suffers from a convoluted and messy end
The worst part?
Canadian animation wasn't any better.
After a decade of failure since its acquisition by Corus, the “Unreal” station’s English feed gets a reality check.
Neither was UK animation
Britain is to animation what isekai is to Japan.
Neither was Australian animation
P.S
Any one who said Moonbeam City was an "Archer rip-off" can go fuck themselves.
Chainsaw Man wasn't the first, and it won't be the last. A rant about shitty endings and how to avoid them in the first place.
Chainsaw Man ends with Chapter 232, but the dream-like reset has divided fans. Many feel Denji’s journey was erased, while others see a deep
I know I'm late to the party, but that's because I stopped following the miserable, incoherent mess of a story Chainsaw Man had become a long time ago. When you've read as many shitty manga as I have, or watched their equally-shitty anime adaptations, you start to notice a few familiar flags.
Cool character designs, crap characters.
Dark settings that never get better.
Overdone cliches that don't improve the plot, nor rewards the invested with a satisfying payoff.
All of the above were just from Owari no Seraph of the End alone, but damn-near every bad manga or light novel turned anime series suffers from the exact same problems.
In fairness, it's a general rule of thumb that the more "popular" a series is with English-speaking geeks, the more said geeks will feel disappointed with its ending. These are the same losers who get too invested in "the lore" instead of the actual plot, and will become upset when a major plot point ruins their bullshit fan theories.
Part of me looks forward to the overblown backlash Gooseworx will receive after The Amazing Digital Circus' final episode premieres on YouTube. Part of me hopes I won't be part of the inevitable angry mob. I digress.
Hating the endings to Attack on Titan (a miserable post-apocalyptic fantasy drama) and Jujitsu Kaisen is one thing, but anyone who had a problem with My Hero Academia's endgame didn't read enough bad DC and Marvel comic books. And this is coming from someone who absolutely hated the final fate of Himiko Toga.
Nutjobs would have you believe in some "curse" affecting popular shonen manga. The reality is shonen manga, light novels, and their anime adaptations are the Japanese equivalent of any given trashy teen drama. At best, the "fans" of such media are already too juvenile and immature to truly understand the themes of whatever the fuck they were obsessed with.
"Overrated no Ko", on the other hand...
It was vindication for yours truly when I learned of the backlash to Oshi no Ko's ending. You'd think so-called "otaku" would've learned their lesson after Erased / Boku dake ga Inai Machi.
Alas, the reincarnation bandwagon hadn't yet lost steam when the anime version of this sorry excuse for seinen became a mainstream success. Neither OnK's murder mystery plot, nor its commentary on the dark side of the Japanese idol industry, needed to be put in the overdone "starting again in a new life" box. It showed a lack of confidence on the part of the author that they would pigeon-hole their story into the reincarnation / isekai genre. Sure enough, the unneeded supernatural bullshit played a role in the series' controversial ending.
By now, you should recognize some reoccurring themes and warning signs to know a piece of shit literature or bad anime series. Chainsaw Man's downfall boils down to fans getting too attached to certain characters, and the author becoming too good at ruining their own creation to notice. Chainsaw Man exhibited such patterns that were no different to most of the "literature" I've talked about in this post.
The real tragedy of Chainsaw Man, however, was that it ultimately fell into the same trap as Dragon Ball and Bleach before it by ending on a story arc that was inferior to what came before it. The key difference is that the Majin Buu saga and the Thousand Year Blood War still have their fans; the anime version of the latter wouldn't even exist otherwise. Part 2 of Chainsaw Man started off weak, progressively got worse, and made fans regret picking up the series in the first place by the end of it.
Had Chainsaw Man began and ended with its 97-chapter "Public Safety Saga", and maybe a few epilogues, it would've been considered a cult classic.
I have no doubt in my mind that other overrated "otaku bait" like Re:Zero and Spy X Family will meet the same fate. I'd like to believe the sudden drop-off in popularity for Go, Go Loser Ranger Reject and Kaiju No. 8 in the English-speaking world is a sign that some nerds are getting wise to the cookie-cutter crap being churned out by the "production committees" (for lack of a more accurate scapegoat). I'd say it's for the best given the ongoing discussion of too much anime being produced to meet unreasonable demands at the expense of fostering (even more) toxic work environments; all of which leads to said anime being of low-quality.
In both cases, the bad hand dealt to J.C. Staff that lead to the poorly-received second and third seasons of One Punch Man's anime was a blessing in disguise. Not only did the controversy highlight a serious issue in the Japanese anime industry, it killed the popularity of a once-promising superhero spoof turned bland, generic battle manga / webcomic.
I can't control what commercialized garbage gets greenlit for an anime adaptation, nor can I predict how bad the source material could get, but hopefully I will have given you some helpful tips in this post so that you too can smell bullshit from a mile way.
82 likes, 37 comments - television_jamaica on June 15, 2026: "Television Jamaica (TVJ) has enhanced access to FIFA World Cup 2026™ schedulin
Television Jamaica should've made it more clear (to casual plebs who can't be bothered to do any fucking research) that TVJ / 1Spotmedia was sharing the rights to the FIFA World Cup with Caribbean Premier Sports Ltd's cable TV outlet RUSH Sports and, in-fact, isn't the de facto official broadcaster of the World Cup in Jamaica. On this very Tumblr blog I showed you that TVJ would only air certain games live and others on a delay. It was a major red flag that none of the delayed games aired on TVJ Sports Network instead.
In all fairness, Jamaica's broadcast industry is among the backwaters of English-language television. You especially can't blame them considering the less complicated handling of the 2022 FIFA World Cup by the smaller CVM TV and its ill-fated Csport spin-off (ad overdose, aside). You would think Jamaica's biggest over the air broadcaster, with its own dedicated sports channel and streaming platform, would be the go-to for the biggest sporting event outside the Olympics.
I guess even Jamaican television couldn't help themselves to pay-walling their shit when it matters.
Compare and contrast the United Kingdom's broadcast rights being shared between its two biggest free public service broadcasters: BBC and ITV. How about another free-to-air outlet, SBS in Australia, broadcasting and streaming every single game? No app switching necessary.
Even the paywalled options in North America are somewhat more pleasant. Canada's Bell Media, for all their greed, has the decency to simulcast select games from TSN's coverage on their (private) broadcast network CTV and the newly-enhanced premium TV network / streaming service hybrid Crave. Finally, lest we forget Americans have the convenience of all games airing across the FOX broadcast network and FS1 streaming on Fox One.
It's bad enough I'm unfavorably comparing one country's business model to Bell fucking Media and FOX of all broadcasters, but it's embarrassing and disappointing that I'm comparing those two to Jamaica. Considering the inhumanity and scandals that have already plagued this year's World Cup in the United States (typical) and Mexico, I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore that FIFA spreads misery and woe every where it goes - even in the most purest(?) of nations.
Football executives, players and fans in Manitoba are reacting to the announcement by the CFL of major changes the league hopes will make th
The Americanization of what was already an American sport?
The Americanization of the Canadian version of the NFL?
The Americanization of the NFL's Canadian rip-off?
The Americanization of the NFL's Canadian bootleg?
Canadians are so fucking stupid.
The only time anyone should be complaining about the Americanization of football is in-regards to the FIFA World Cup needing a stupid concert on top of THREE opening ceremonies and a goddamn halftime show.
(Some) English-speaking countries that get to watch the 2026 FIFA World Cup of Sportswashing for free
Jamaica
TV channel: Television Jamaica TVJ
Streaming: 1Spotmedia
United Kingdom
TV Channel: ITV1, ITV4, BBC One, BBC Two
Streaming: ITVX, BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport
Australia
TV Channel: SBS, SBS Viceland
Streaming: SBS on Demand
I'd mock North Americans (Bell Media, Fox) because they need to pay for cable (TSN, FS1) and streaming options (Crave, Fox One), but free FIFA flexing feels fowl.
Reports of MuchMusic's death are greatly exaggerated. Reports of MusiquePlus' resurrection are very accurate.
I have to give credit to Canada's Bell Media for committing to the "new" MuchMusic. We're coming up to the 5th anniversary of MuchMusic's "return" on 7 July 2021 via TikTok and other social media channels. I didn't think this would last 3 years; what with the actual cable TV channel being worthless. You'd think by now Bell would at least rebrand "Much" as "CTV Pop Channel", or something.
Then again, this is the same Bell Media that thought replacing Discovery Channel Canada with "USA Network Canada" was a smart idea.
While "Much" celebrated its 40th anniversary in a dark cold abyss, MusiquePlus' 40th birthday won't be anywhere near as depressing. Current owners Remstar have been taking notes from what Bell Media has done with MuchMusic and decided to follow suite. MuchMusic's French-language counterpart was declared dead after Remstar Media Group flipped the channel into the female-targeting Elle Fictions on 26 August 2019.
Now, almost 6 years later, MusiquePlus is making its own comeback on social media.
It's clear Bell Media was on to something when they decided to reboot MuchMusic for the zoomers.
The number one reason why G4 TV's relaunch failed was the insistence of Comcast Spectacor on returning to cable TV, rather than stick to YouTube and Twitch. Why else do you think Machinima.com supplanted G4 as the de facto gaming entertainment network in the first place? Comcast should've tested the waters by launching a(nother) late-night program block on Syfy. Even that would've been a reach considering Syfy can't keep an original program on the air for more than 2-3 seasons; let alone stop themselves from airing generic action films and procedurals instead of actual sci-fi, horror, or fantasy.
Cut to Comet TV casually airing Stargate SG-1, Tales from the Darkside, Xena: Warrior Princess, and NWA Powerrr through both over-the-air broadcast television and the free livestream on their website.
MuchMusic and MusiquePlus cuts the middle man out: no paywalls, no geo-blocking, just content. Bell and Remstar were smart enough to realize that music television belongs to the streaming generation, and the former knew very well that MuchMusic - much like MTV - transcends traditional television. Nostalgia is powerful, and the best way to make use of brands with such an aura is to give back to the people who grew up on them without making them jump through hurdles.
If I were to revive The Hub Network, Machinima.com, or the English-Canadian Teletoon; I would use Bell Media's blueprint for MuchMusic. I'd also do something with the cable channel already, but that's another rant.
