Sinclair expanded The National News Desk, adding a 5 p.m. edition anchored by Taylor Murray in 12 markets and afternoon half-hours with Jan Jeffcoat in 21 others. Now on 90 stations and free online, it offers live, commentary-free national and regional news from Sinclair newsrooms.
CUTTING A DEAL Concern that Paramount might leave the state helped push Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta into a Monday settlement clearing David Ellison’s $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. The pact ended Bonta’s 12-state antitrust suit, filed in July, and removed the last major legal obstacle. Bonta said it was “not a vote of support” for the merger. Ellison then announced the combined company will stay headquartered in Los Angeles and remain in California, though Bonta noted the decree does not require that. The settlement instead sets film-output quotas and extra U.S. production spending ahead of an October close.
Funding Blacklist Squashed The legal fight over President Trump’s May 2025 executive order cutting federal funding to NPR and PBS has ended quietly, leaving a First Amendment ruling intact. Trump’s order, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” directed agencies to stop funding the two networks, accusing them of unfair, left-leaning coverage. NPR, PBS, and several local stations sued. In March 2026, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss of Washington, D.C., permanently blocked the order’s main funding bans. He found they singled out the broadcasters because of their speech and amounted to viewpoint discrimination. The government, he wrote, may not use the power of the purse to punish disfavored expression. The practical effect was limited. Congress had already rescinded Corporation for Public Broadcasting appropriations for 2026 and 2027, and CPB later dissolved. Moss’s decision did not restore that money. It did bar agencies from enforcing the executive order’s core funding cutoff. In July, the parties dismissed the remaining claims. The administration did not appeal. The case is now closed, with Moss’s ruling and injunction still standing. Public broadcasters remain without the federal pipeline that once flowed through CPB, but the court record now holds that a president cannot lawfully blacklist NPR and PBS from federal programs solely because he dislikes their journalism.
In early August, country songs occupied the entire Hot 100 top five for the first time ever: Langley, Morgan Wallen, Taylor Swift’s Toy Story 5 country return “I Knew It, I Knew You,” a Langley–Wallen duet, and newcomer Stella Lefty’s “Boston.” Country tracks have repeatedly held four, five, or six of the top 10 since.
For years country lagged pop and hip-hop on Spotify and Apple Music. By 2025–26 that gap closed. Country became one of the fastest-growing streaming formats. Langley’s Dandelion and Wallen’s I’m the Problem were among the most-streamed albums of the year across all genres. “Choosin’ Texas” itself was the most-streamed song in the U.S. in the first half of 2026.
Radio never left. Country radio is still huge, and those listeners also stream. Radio and streaming reinforce each other instead of competing. A song that wins country airplay then piles up streams, and vice versa.
The sound crossed over without fully becoming pop. Hits still sound like country—Texas, trucks, heartbreak, twang—but they sit next to pop production and TikTok-ready hooks. Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” in 2024–25, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Post Malone’s country turn, and Swift’s 2026 country single all pulled pop and hip-hop audiences into the format. Stella Lefty is the latest example of a new artist riding that blend.
Nashville’s machine is built for this. Labels like Big Loud and Columbia Nashville develop artists for both radio and playlists. Songwriters still dominate. Artists drop long albums packed with potential singles, then push one or two for a year. Wallen and Langley keep stacking catalog streams on top of new hits.
CULTURE SHIFT Line-dance videos, Western fashion, festival growth, and a broader “rural authenticity” trend made country feel current rather than regional. Younger urban listeners who once said they listened to “anything but country” now stream it.