TV Upfronts 2026: AI Ads, EchoStar's Collapse & Hollywood's Vancouver Problem | Next TMT

Vancouver ate Hollywood — and TV's upfront revolutionAI is upending how television sells ads, EchoStar is breathing its last, and Vancouver just quietly became the world's animation capital. David Bloom reports live from Web Summit.Vancouver ate Hollywood — and TV's upfront revolutionAI is upending how television sells ads, EchoStar is breathing its last, and Vancouver just quietly became the world's animation capital. David Bloom reports live from Web Summit.00:00TV upfronts 2025: impressions are out, ROI is inNBC Universal, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery all pitched agentic AI ad systems this week — promising advertisers a direct line from ad exposure to actual purchase. But can legacy TV really close that attribution loop the way Amazon can?07:00Nielsen's measurement crisis and the TCL lawsuitAs Nielsen struggles to transition from analog panels to smart TV data collection, a new class action against TCL highlights just how murky — and legally fraught — TV audience measurement has become.08:00Vancouver ate Hollywood: the animation cluster LA forgot to buildSony Imageworks, Blue Ant Studios (Spider-Verse), and Disney Animation (Frozen 3) are all thriving in Vancouver — with government seed funding, workforce pipelines, and over 100 VFX companies. Meanwhile LA doubled its tax incentive and still can't keep productions home.15:00AI branding, copyright, and the EU's 15% fine cliffCompanies racing to market with AI-generated brands may find they can't copyright what they built — and in the EU, failure to label AI-created content can trigger fines of up to 15% of annual revenue.18:00K-pop Demon Hunters and the Netflix global hit formulaSony Imageworks didn't know what they had. Netflix didn't know what they had. Then superfans found it — and it became Netflix's most watched title. What the surprise runaway hit reveals about how global streaming actually works.26:00EchoStar's endgame: spectrum seized, $40B in deals, a SpaceX stakeDish lost another 366,000 pay TV subscribers. AT&T and Amazon bought $40B of its spectrum. The FCC — under Brendan Carr — effectively forced the sale. EchoStar walks away asset-light with a $10B SpaceX stake and Boost Mobile. Is this the next Yahoo?33:00Charlie Ergen, force majeure, and a very convenient escrowErgen tried to invoke force majeure to avoid paying $2.4B to tower vendors. The FCC required an escrow account. The whole saga — and what it says about doing business in the current regulatory environment.