Fox’s $22 Billion Roku Acquisition Continues Concerning Trend Of Media Consolidation

Fox Corporation’s $22 billion acquisition of Roku is being framed as a major streaming play, but the deal is about more than expanding the Murdochs’ digital footprint and controlling distribution pathways.

For years, Roku occupied a unique position in the streaming ecosystem. Unlike the studios and streaming services competing for viewers, Roku functioned as a largely neutral gateway, helping audiences access everything from Netflix and Disney+ to YouTube, Crunchyroll, and thousands of smaller channels.

Let’s be real. Fox isn’t buying Roku because it wants to sell streaming devices. It’s buying one of the most influential distribution platforms in television.

The acquisition gives Fox control of a company that reaches more than 100 million households worldwide while adding Roku’s advertising technology, operating system, and content discovery tools to a portfolio that already includes broadcast networks, cable channels, local TV stations, sports rights, and the free streaming service Tubi.

For platform users, the immediate impact may be minimal. According to Fox, Roku is expected to remain an open platform, and rival streaming services are unlikely to disappear from its devices.

The bigger significance is what the deal says about the continuing consolidation of the media business. We’re still deep in the thick of a nightmarish fight for ownership of Warner Bros. Discovery, while smaller stories pop up almost weekly, with studios, game developers, distributors, news outlets, and all parts of the screen industry pipeline being gobbled up by larger entities.

Over the last decade, a shrinking number of companies have gained increasing control over how entertainment is ordered, financed, distributed, and discovered. For creators, independent studios, and smaller distributors, that generally means navigating a marketplace with fewer gatekeepers and less competition among buyers. For audiences, it means greater homogenization of the kinds of stories being told on TV, both factual and fictional. The only people winning here are the owners.

Roku’s value has always been its position between audiences and what they want to watch. With Fox now poised to own both a growing library of programming and one of the primary ways viewers access that programming, another important piece of the entertainment ecosystem is moving under the control of a major media conglomerate.

Whether regulators see that as a problem remains to be seen. But with the way that the current DOJ is speed-running approval of the Paramount-WBD deal, it seems unlikely.