Media giant Fox Corp. on Monday announced a deal to buy streaming and smart-TV company Roku for $22 billion in a cash-and-stock transaction. Via the Washington Post:

It’s a deal that will plunge Fox deeper into the streaming wars as a major player in free, ad-supported streaming at a time when large streamers such as Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu have pivoted away from offering only subscription plans and have begun providing ad-supported subscription options.

The company sold its television and film studio, then called 21st Century Fox, to Disney for $71 billion in 2019, and announced a pivot to live news and sports. In 2020, Fox spent $440 million buying Tubi, a free, ad-supported streaming service with a devoted fan base. This new deal would put Tubi and the Roku Channel, Roku’s own free-to-stream, ad-supported offering, under one roof.

Roku’s chairman and CEO, Anthony Wood, said that Roku reaches 100 million households around the world and that the sale to Fox will allow the company to “accelerate our vision, scale faster and innovate more aggressively for viewers, partners and advertisers.”

You know, I was just thinking that what we really need in this country are even more media monopolies!