Fox, MS NOW, and CNN cash out linear TV to fund streaming, memberships, and podcasts

Cable news is acting like cord-cutting is a slow leak, not a fire. Fox News, MS NOW, and CNN are investing in streaming, memberships, and podcasts while linear television still throws off cash and keeps audiences coming back. The approaches differ in flavor and mechanics, but the strategic logic is the same: treat cable less like a business endpoint and more like a distribution highway for a brand that can sell many things.

The clearest proof: Fox’s cable operations are still printing. Fox Corp.’s Cable Network Programming segment generated $1.74 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2026, up 6% year over year. Cable Networks’ earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) reached $884 million, underscoring that the traditional channel layer has meaningful staying power even as the overall pay TV platform shrinks.

That shrinking platform is real. MoffettNathanson estimates the industry-including virtual distributors such as YouTube TV ended the first quarter with roughly 62.2 million subscribers after losing just over 2 million customers during the quarter, although subscriber declines have begun to moderate. In other words: fewer pipes, but not necessarily fewer loyal viewers. Nielsen’s April Gauge report found news accounted for 29% of cable TV viewing, well ahead of cable sports at 9%. So cable’s audience attention is not collapsing in the way many investors feared. It is just being reallocated to whatever comes after the channel.

This is why media companies are going all-in on “brands that can create more products over time.” Jessica Reif Ehrlich, senior media analyst at Bank of America Securities, told TheWrap: “They’re all going on streaming, they’re all going digital,” adding that these are “brands that can create more products over time.” The phrase matters. It frames the investment not as a bet on replacing cable overnight, but as a bet on extending existing audience relationships into repeatable revenue streams.

Fox is building the broadest ecosystem. Fox News Channel remains America’s highest-rated cable news network, and Fox Corp. has used that position to expand far beyond television into Fox Nation, digital publishing, podcasts, books, live events, and its Fox One streaming service, which launched in August. Fox’s cable remains the financial engine behind that expansion, with distribution revenue up 5% as higher affiliate fees offset subscriber declines, and ad revenue also increasing 5%.

On Fox’s March 2025 earnings call, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said the company no longer views Fox News “as just a news service,” but as “one of the top five broadcast networks in the United States, even though we don't have the same distribution that broadcast has.” Under Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott, that idea has evolved into a consumer media strategy that treats the audience journey as a funnel. Fox Nation has grown from a streaming companion into a subscription business built around documentaries, opinion programming, true-crime series, and live events featuring Fox personalities. Fox News Digital extends the relationship through articles, newsletters, podcasts, and social video, while Fox News Books and branded events add more entry points.

The payoff is already measurable in projections and activity. Fox News Media projected approximately $500 million in 2025 revenue from businesses outside linear television, including streaming, digital, podcasts, and books. The company says these operations have delivered double-digit annual growth since 2020 while attracting audiences 30% to 50% younger than traditional television viewers. And engagement remains punchy: during the first quarter, Fox News Digital generated more than 6.5 billion social media video views, its highest quarterly total on record.

MS NOW is betting on a different conversion mechanic: turning loyalty into membership depth rather than just adding another stream. At Investor Day last December, MS NOW President Rebecca Kutler told investors that the network generated its highest revenue during the past five years despite continued cord-cutting, arguing that audience loyalty and financial performance matter more than Nielsen ratings alone. Later this year, MS NOW plans to launch its first direct-to-consumer membership offering.

Kutler described it as “not your typical streaming service or just another news subscription,” but rather “a membership community” built around deeper engagement with the network’s talent and journalism. The point is not simply access. It is community and recurring involvement, designed to capture more of viewers’ attention and spending over time.

That fits Versant’s larger transformation beyond cable. The Wrap reports that Versant has been using cash generated by legacy cable networks to fund acquisitions and digital investments aimed at reducing long-term reliance on pay TV revenue. Those investments span sports technology, AI-powered financial tools, and free ad-supported streaming. Executives frame the endgame as vertical depth and wallet share. David Pietrycha, Versant’s chief revenue and business officer, told TheWrap the goal is to “create more depth in the verticals, get more of our fans’ time and a bigger share of their wallets.”

CNN is running a third playbook: strengthening its place within Warner Bros. Discovery’s broader streaming portfolio rather than trying to recreate the cable-to-ecosystem pattern as a standalone machine. CNN’s momentum has shown up in the first quarter: its television and digital platforms delivered 30% year-over-year growth, while linear viewership grew by 35%. CNN All Access, launched in late 2025, bundles live and on-demand news, CNN Originals, premium digital journalism, newsletters, and live events into a single subscription offering.

CNN All Access is also strategically positioned against CNN’s earlier subscription misstep. Unlike CNN+, its previous attempt at an online subscription service that infamously shut down weeks after its 2022 debut, this offering complements Warner Bros. Discovery’s wider streaming strategy rather than attempting to recreate the cable experience as a standalone business. CNN’s product is designed to fit the parent company’s platform rather than replace cable entirely on its own. That matters, because Warner Bros. Discovery’s corporate strategy remains in flux.

Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, if completed, could reshape where CNN fits within a combined media portfolio, though the companies have not publicly detailed how their news assets would be organized. For executives at cable-adjacent media companies, the takeaway is blunt: cable may be shrinking, but the brand value is not. The question is whether you convert that loyalty into recurring, direct revenue before someone else does. The industry is already answering, channel by channel, product by product.