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Paramount Global operates in three global business segments: TV media, filmed entertainment, and direct to consumer. The TV media business includes television production studios and various broadcast and cable networks, including CBS, 15 owned CBS affiliates, Paramount, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, and VH1. Filmed entertainment consists multiple film studios, most importantly Paramount Pictures. The film studios produce and distribute movies that they license to movie theaters and other media outlets. Direct to consumer includes the Paramount+, Pluto TV, and BET+ streaming services. Much of the content on Paramount’s streaming platforms is created by the production studios housed within the firm’s other two business segments.

Charter is the product of the 2016 merger of three cable companies, each with a decades-long history in the business: Legacy Charter, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks. The firm now holds networks capable of providing television, internet access, and phone services to roughly 58 million US homes and businesses, around 35% of the country. Across this footprint, Charter serves 29 million residential and 2 million commercial customer accounts under the Spectrum brand, making it the second-largest US cable company behind Comcast. The firm also owns, in whole or in part, sports and news networks, including Spectrum SportsNet (Los Angeles Lakers), SportsNet LA (Los Angeles Dodgers), SportsNet New York (New York Mets), and Spectrum News NY1. Charter plans to acquire cable peer Cox.

Alphabet, formerly called Google, maintains the largest online index of websites accessible through automated search technology. It generates revenue through online advertising, cloud services, and hardware. Google is now an operating segment of Alphabet. The company was founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page and went public in 2004. Google's AdWords is an auction-based program that lets businesses display ads along with particular search results. Google's AdSense program enables websites in the company's network to serve targeted ads, based on search terms or web content, from AdWords advertisers. Most of the revenue generated through AdSense is shared with network partners. In addition, Alphabet owns YouTube.com, the web-based video site. It has expanded into mobile telephony with its Android smartphone operating system, into cloud services, and most recently, into autonomous driving. About 52% of Alphabet's revenue is generated outside the U.S. On April 3, 2014, Alphabet's new nonvoting class C shares began trading under the ticker GOOG. Alphabet's publicly held class A shares switched to the ticker GOOGL. The effect of the new class C share issuance was a non-economic 2-for-1 stock split. On July 15, 2022, Alphabet executed a 20-for-1 stock split on its Class A, Class B and Class C stock. The stock split had no impact on the economic value of GOOGL shares.

The major U.S. stock indices are all higher at midday on Friday. Worries from yesterday -- after disappointing earnings reports from IT heavyweights like Meta and Microsoft -- have been offset a tad today by happier earnings news from the likes of Amazon.com and CrowdStrike. That's not to say that the word 'rotation' has disappeared from financial websites, but fear that the AI sky was falling seems less prominent today. All of that has pushed the ongoing U.S. government shutdown to below the fold, but an end to that event is surely something that would be welcomed news for many.