In American television in 2025, notable events included television show debuts, finales, and cancellations; channel launches, closures, and rebrandings; stations changing or adding their network affiliations; information on controversies, business transactions, and carriage disputes; and deaths of those who made various contributions to the medium.
Notable events January Date Event Ref.1MSG Network and its sister networks are removed from Optimum cable systems due to an unresolved carriage dispute between the networks and Optimum owner Altice USA. It is the first carriage dispute between the two parties since Altice purchased Optimum from MSG's parent company Cablevision in 2016.Reruns of Family Guy returned to Adult Swim for the first time since 2021 after striking a non-exclusive deal for the rights to older episodes. Adult Swim parent Warner Bros. Discovery's license to broadcast the program expired after The Walt Disney Company acquired the series' production company, 20th Television, as part of its 2019 purchase of most 21st Century Fox assets, with FXX and Freeform holding exclusive cable rights. The Cartoon Network programming block first aired reruns of the Fox animated series in 2003 (consisting initially of the original 1999–2002 run), and played a role in its revival, which has aired since 2005. (Adult Swim previously aired new episodes of Family Guy on a next-day basis in a TV-MA recut including crude material cut or censored from the Fox airings to comply with broadcast standards.) Reruns returned to Adult Swim with a three-day marathon, before airing in a regular weekday primetime slot on January 4. 5 The 82nd Golden Globe Awards airs on CBS and streams on Paramount+. Nikki Glaser hosts the ceremony, with notable winners including Best Motion Pictures Emilia Pérez (Musical or Comedy and Foreign Language), among its four wins out of ten nominations overall) and The Brutalist (Drama, among its three wins) and television series Shōgun (Best Drama Series, among its four wins), Hacks (Best Musical or Comedy Series, among two wins), and Baby Reindeer (Best Limited Series, Anthology, or Film, among its two wins). 6 FuboTV agrees to sell a 70% majority stake in its vMVPD business to The Walt Disney Company and merge with Disney's Hulu + Live TV business. The merged company will be led by Fubo's executive team and remain publicly traded, but with Disney holding majority control of its board. Both the Fubo and Hulu + Live TV services will continue to operate under their respective brands, with Fubo being responsible for carriage negotiations. The deal excludes the Hulu video on-demand service, which will continue to be exclusively held by Disney. As part of the agreement, Fubo settles its antitrust lawsuit with Venu Sports, the proposed sports-focused streaming service joint venture between Disney, Fox Corporation, and Warner Bros. Discovery, with the consortium planning to make a one-time payment of $220 million. (The Venu consortium later announced on January 10 that the service would not launch; DirecTV and Dish Network asked the New York district court to reconsider the case's dismissal on grounds that the antitrust issues remained unanswered and they could still be harmed by Venu's competition.) Fubo also reaches a carriage agreement for Disney's suite of channels. The merger is expected to be completed between 12 and 18 months, pending regulatory approval.8 Following the Southern California wildfires that began on January 7, CBS pulls a scheduled repeat of Fire Country for January 10 and replaces it with a repeat of NCIS: Sydney, while NBC still airs Chicago Fire as planned for January 8 alongside Chicago P.D. and Chicago Med.In Part 1 of a two-part crossover event, characters from FXX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia volunteer at the titular school of ABC's Abbott Elementary. The second part premieres on July 9, as part of Sunnys 17th season.9Major American networks cover the state funeral of Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29, 2024, at age 100.10Nexstar Media Group removes its local stations and national networks, including NewsNation and multiple CW stations, from Optimum systems due to a carriage dispute.13MSNBC announces it would temporarily expand The Rachel Maddow Show (which has regularly aired in the 9 p.m. ET slot on Monday nights only since 2022) to a five-night-a-week schedule through April 27 to cover the first 100 days of Donald Trump's second presidency, while Alex Wagner, who regularly hosts Alex Wagner Tonight in the slot Tuesday-Friday, would be placed on special assignments to report on the effects of Trump's policy decisions across the country and internationally. Both Maddow's and Wagner's primetime shows returns to their regular schedules starting on April 30.16In one of her last acts as FCC chair before the second Trump administration, Jessica Rosenworcel orders the rejection of three complaints and one petition against local TV stations. The affected complaints, filed by a conservative-leaning group, targeted network-owned stations in Philadelphia and New York City over perceived coverage and equal-time presentations of Kamala Harris' 2024 presidential campaign; the petition, from a pro-democracy centrist group, sought to revoke the license of WTXF/Philadelphia following station parent Fox Corporation's defamation lawsuit regarding statements made on Fox News about 2020 presidential election. Rosenworcel's successor as FCC chair, Brendan Carr, would reinstate the complaints, though not the challenge against WTXF (which the second group would later appeal), on January 22.LIV Golf announces a new deal with Fox Sports to air tournament coverage on Fox, FS1, FS2, and Fox Business; the broadcasts, which the league will continue to produce in-house, had aired on The CW since 2023.18Allen Media Group announces plans to begin a centralized weather forecasting, originating from the company's Atlanta-based The Weather Channel, for its local station group. AMG trumpets the move (which would ostensibly eliminate all local meteorologist positions, though some affected would be offered positions at TWC) as a way to efficiently improve the stations' weather coverage capabilities. The plan, however, comes amidst cost-cutting measures at AMG (which has included eliminations in employees and consolidations and cuts to local newscasts), and also receives criticism over the perceived loss of community engagement that local weather reports provide. Although development of the Atlanta-based regional production hub would continue, AMG notified at least six of the group's stations on January 23 that their locally based meteorologists would be retained. The TWC hub concept would quietly be implemented at a few other stations (such as WSIL/Harrisburg, Illinois and WTHI/Terre Haute) by late March.20Major American networks cover the second inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States. The inauguration was watched by 26.05 million viewers across all major broadcast and cable news networks, down from the two previous inauguration ceremonies: Joe Biden's 2021 ceremony received 39.87 million viewers and Trump's first inauguration in 2017 was viewed by 38.3 million. Fox News (which had the highest inauguration ratings among all networks, averaging 10.3 million viewers) was the only major news network to see an increase in viewership over Biden's 2021 inauguration.21WDJT/Milwaukee fires weekend meteorologist Sam Kuffel, after she criticized Elon Musk for a controversial arm gesture made during his speech at Donald Trump's inauguration the day prior on her personal and private Instagram account with profanity denouncing the gesture. Kuffel's dismissal by the Weigel Broadcasting-owned CBS affiliate came after her posts were pointed out to and publicized by local conservative talk show host Dan O'Donnell of WISN radio to pressure Weigel to terminate Kuffel for offering a political opinion as a station employee.28Rather than reportedly take a late-night slot as part of a reshuffling of CNN's daytime lineup, Jim Acosta announces he would instead be departing the network, where he has spent 18 years as a reporter (in particular chief White House correspondent) and as one of the hosts of CNN Newsroom. The proposal to move Acosta to a lower-rated timeslot was seen by critics as attempt to appease President Donald Trump, who had repeatedly sparred with CNN and Acosta over their reporting of him dating to his first administration (including White House press staff briefly suspending Acosta's press pass in 2018, which a federal judge ruled had violated the then-correspondent's due-process rights).30The FCC launches an investigation into PBS and NPR concerning whether corporate underwriting spots during their programs "cross the line" into traditional advertising. Federal guidelines, which both broadcasters' CEOs state they are in compliance, require that the spots cannot advocate a "call to action" directly promoting for-profit goods and services. The inquiry was seen as a step toward eliminating federal funding for public broadcasting, long supported by conservatives and endorsed by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, and, coupled with Carr's earlier revival of complaints regarding coverage of the 2024 election, as a broader attempt to use federal authority to coerce media coverage more favorable to the Trump administration.31Chuck Todd announces that he left NBC News after 18 years, a tenure that included moderating Meet the Press from 2014 to 2023. His departure came less than two weeks into the second presidency of Donald Trump, where Trump had criticized Todd, who was at times critical in his coverages of him. Todd has also criticized NBC News on air, following their 2024 hiring of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, saying she had deep creditibility issues.
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