Broadcasting & Streaming

Hamburg – September 16, 2026 -- NDR secured four Deutsche Fernsehpreis 2026 awards across satire, documentary and fiction categories, the German public broadcaster confirmed.

Satire team wins Best Entertainment Script for October 2025 extra 3 episode

Dietmar Jacobs and Christian Ehring received the Best Entertainment Script award for the September 16, 2026 extra 3 episode titled "Streit ums Stadtbild – Merz poltert." Extra 3, hosted by Ehring, marks its 50th anniversary in 2026 with a lineup expansion that adds comedian Michael Mittermeier, entertainer Riccardo Simonetti and actress Collien Fernandes alongside existing cast members Oliver Kalkofe, Maxi Schafroth and Sarah Bosetti.

Munich – – September 16, 2026 -- German public broadcaster ARD secured 9 awards at the Deutscher Fernsehpreis 2026, the highest tally of any network, alongside 32 nominations that outpaced all competitors by a wide margin.

ARD claims top honors across reality, drama and documentary categories

The reality format "Werwölfe - Das Spiel von List und Täuschung" won Best Reality Entertainment, marking ARD's first major recognition in the reality genre. The drama series "Hundertdreizehn" took Best Drama Series, while "Die Nichte des Polizisten" earned two awards: Best Fiction Screenplay for writers Rolf Basedow, Nicole Armbruster and Gabriela Sperl, and Best Fiction Editing for Anna Nekarda.

Munich – September 16, 2026 -- Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) won the Deutscher Fernsehpreis 2026 in the "Best Entertainment Reality" category for "Werwölfe - Das Spiel von List und Täuschung," a reality gameshow co-produced with SWR and WDR for the ARD Mediathek streaming platform.

Season one drew 5.9 million streams on ARD Mediathek

The format, produced by ITV Studios Germany under BR's lead responsibility, generated 5.9 million retrievals since its debut, according to AGF Zensus and Global Views data. It had already received the German Entertainment Award in June.

Format is licensed from board game "Die Werwölfe von Düsterwald"

The show adapts the tabletop game created by Philippe des Pallières and Hervé Marly, published by Asmodee, with DreamSpark holding the licensing rights. The premise places 13 participants in a village setting, where three secretly designated werewolves attempt to eliminate other players without exposure.

Xiamen – September 16, 2026 -- Pop Culture Group Co., Ltd (NASDAQ: CPOP) will consolidate its ordinary shares at a 15-for-1 ratio effective September 16, 2026, cutting its Class A Ordinary Shares outstanding from 14,069,656 to approximately 937,978.

Nasdaq-listed shares consolidate at 15-for-1 ratio starting September 14

The Xiamen-based entertainment company confirmed the share consolidation applies uniformly across its Class A, Class B and Class C ordinary shares, each carrying a par value of US$0.1. Post-consolidation trading begins at market open on September 16, 2026, with Class A shares continuing under the ticker "CPOP" but under a new CUSIP number, G71700135.

Osnabrück – – September 15, 2026 -- German regional publisher NOZ/mh:n-Gruppe has rolled out an AI-powered election assistant and a series of 17 live-streamed candidate debates to inform voters ahead of Lower Saxony's municipal elections on September 13.

AI bot draws exclusively on newsroom-verified candidate data

The noz-Wahl-Bot, built on the publisher's in-house AI system frag noz, is embedded directly into election coverage on noz.de and the noz News app. It answers voter queries using only NOZ's own editorial reporting and standardized questionnaires completed by the majority of local candidates. An automated LLM-as-a-Judge review process checks each response to prevent hallucinations or fabricated content, according to Senior AI Product Manager David Pinzauti.

Berlin – September 14, 2026 -- German Sunday broadsheet WELT AM SONNTAG will retire its blue masthead for the first time since 1952 as part of a full relaunch set for the print edition of September 12/13, 2026. The redesign marks the most significant change to the paper's title header in 74 years, according to publisher PREMIUM-GRUPPE.

New masthead drops blue background for white design shared with daily WELT

The white lettering on blue ground that has defined the title since 1952 disappears. The logo replaces the bold bar with the lighter WELT brand mark on a white background and introduces the globe symbol taken from the daily edition into the Sunday paper for the first time, visually linking the two titles within the print family.

Los Angeles – September 14, 2026 -- Vision Films will release the dystopian drama "Isolation" worldwide on Transactional VOD on September 14, 2026, through a distribution agreement with Legacy Distribution.

Deal expands independent film's reach across major streaming platforms

The film will launch on Amazon, Apple TV/iTunes, Google Play and most cable platforms in the US, Canada and UK on the same date. The agreement pairs Vision Films' VOD aggregation network, which handles over 800 titles, with Legacy Distribution's international programming and digital media distribution infrastructure.

Plano, Texas – September 14, 2026 -- Fox Corporation's planned $22 billion acquisition of Roku underscores the strategic value of controlling the platform layer that connects viewers, content, and advertisers, according to new data from Parks Associates.

Roku dominates US streaming hardware with 43% device share

Parks Associates' Tech Ecosystem Dashboard, based on surveys of more than 8,000 US internet households, found 43% report a Roku device as their most-used streaming media player. Among smart TV owners, 17% said their primary TV runs on Roku OS.

Fox deal would combine premium content with Roku's 100 million-household reach

Fox reports that Roku reaches more than 100 million streaming households globally. The acquisition would pair Fox's live sports and news programming and its Tubi service with Roku's operating system, The Roku Channel, Frndly TV, Howdy, advertising infrastructure, and first-party viewer data.

New York – – September 13, 2026 -- Brand Engagement Network, Inc. (NASDAQ: BNAI) and Cataneo GmbH will present an AI-enhanced version of the MYDAS advertising platform at IBC2026, targeting broadcasters and media companies still running on legacy on-premises systems.

MYDAS already processes inventory for more than 1,000 media brands

Cataneo's cloud-native MYDAS platform manages advertising sales, scheduling, traffic, content management, monetization, analytics, CRM integration, and real-time reporting across more than 1,000 media brands and over 200 broadcast and digital channels worldwide, including major U.S. film studios.

Mainz – September 13, 2026 -- German broadcaster ZDF and Swiss broadcaster SRF launched a new international leadership forum, the Streamium Days, bringing executives from public and private media companies across Europe together at ZDF's Mainz headquarters on September 7-8, 2026.

ZDF director calls turnout beyond expectations

Dr. Florian Kumb, Director Audience at ZDF, said the event exceeded expectations in every respect, citing the openness of discussions and participants' willingness to share knowledge and experience. He described the media industry as being in the midst of profound change, making cross-border learning and shared responses to digital transformation increasingly urgent.