The Week That Was In Worldwide Media - November 2, 2025


On this week's edition on "The Week That Was In Worldwide Media", we breakdown the Christmas music season kicking off in the United States, massive TV ratings for the World Series on both sides of the border, and several TV channels from The Walt Disney Company were pulled after their existing contract was set to officially expire due to an unresolved dispute over carriage fees!


Here's the breakdown of the top 3 stories of what happened this week in worldwide media:


Story #1: The Christmas music season begins in some U.S. markets

After KLO-FM/Salt Lake City, UT dropped their classic alternative format in favour of all-Christmas music on October 7th, some U.S. radio stations have officially made the switch to all-Christmas.

WAKW/Cincinnati, OH flipped the switch last Friday, as well as iHeartMedia's WMXL/Lexington, KY, both having the distinction of flipping the switch to all-Christmas annually on Halloween.

Townsquare Media's WTSS/Buffalo, NY and iHeartMedia's WNOH/Norfolk, VA both made the switch to all-Christmas on the early hours of yesterday morning.

SiriusXM and various radio stations around the world will make the switch to all-Christmas in the next 2 months.


Story #2: Big television ratings for the World Series in the United States and Canada

The 2025 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays has seen big viewership numbers on both sides of the border.

For Game 1 on October 24th, it had 12.4 million viewers watching the game on Fox, as well as an additional 6.4 million viewers across Canada watching on Sportsnet and Citytv.

Viewership was declining on both sides of the border for Games 2 and 3, the latter due to an 18-inning marathon that lasted 6 hours and 39 minutes.

Games 4 and 5 saw massive viewership in the United States, averaging over 14 million viewers per game on Fox, while here in Canada, 5.4 million viewers watched Game 4 on Sportsnet and Citytv, but for Game 5, it had an average of 6.3 million viewers on the same 2 networks combined.

For Spanish-language viewership in the U.S., Game 1 had an average of 1 million viewers, but since then, it averaged under 300,000 viewers for the remaining games due to the low carriage of Fox Deportes.


Story #3: Disney Channel, ABC, and several other Walt Disney Company TV channels pulled from YouTube TV due to a contract dispute

Just a day before Halloween, the TV channels owned by the Walt Disney Company have been dropped from YouTube TV, amid a carriage dispute.

It is the 4th carriage dispute for The Walt Disney Company since 2021, following previous disputes that the latter had with Charter Spectrum, DirecTV and Sling TV.

The dispute came less than an hour before their existing contract was set to officially expire due to an unresolved dispute over carriage fees and 1 day afer the company completed an acquisition of a 70% stake in it's rival Fubo.

The protracted fight is now depriving about 10 million YouTube TV subscribers of Thursday primetime programming on ABC (at least on the West Coast) and is threatening college football and other major sports telecasts.

It will also impact distribution of all 8 ABC O&O stations in the United States, but searches of Disney shows generate a tile but no link to watch them live.


My Observations for the week ahead

The United States elections will take place on November 4th, and CNN has full election night coverage starting at 5pm Eastern

Heather Hiscox will host CBC's Morning Live for the final time on November 6th live from the broadcaster's Toronto studios, exactly 20 years after hosting the morning news for the first time.


One reminder that the clocks went back 1 hour for most North Americans at 2am local time this morning, so change your clocks if you didn't do it last night.


And that concludes this edition of "The Week That Was In Worldwide Media", come back next week where we'll recap the top stories that happened in worldwide media!


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