Good morning. Today, streamers need a minute to get used to a Nielsen methodology tweak.

Streaming TV’s ascendance over broadcast and cable isn’t as complete as it seemed, Patrick Coffee reports for the WSJ Leadership Institute.

Streaming accounted for 41.9% of U.S. TV viewing time in February, compared with 47.4% for so-called linear TV, according to unreleased Nielsen data described by people with direct knowledge of the numbers.

That’s a turnabout from Nielsen’s previous monthly Gauge report, in which the figures were almost the reverse, not to mention Nielsen’s announcement last year that streaming had surpassed broadcast and cable viewing for the first time.

Nielsen pushed back its planned public release of the February figures after streaming providers pushed for more information.

What they really want to know is how much of the change has to do with viewing behavior and how much has to do with a methodology change Nielsen has been promising and/or warning about.

I asked Patrick how he first heard about the delayed report.

Patrick: The ongoing Nielsen saga has so many moving parts that it’s almost impossible to follow in real-time, but it really reflects how important measurement, in every sense of that word, has become to marketers.

Ad executives have questioned Nielsen’s data for some time, and I heard about their new methodology around the same time my sources told me the February numbers would be very interesting, so I chased it.

So, do the lower numbers for streaming in the February report mean streaming actually lost share of viewing time, or no?

Patrick: I don’t think the numbers reflect any real change in consumer behavior beyond the fact that lots of people watched the Super Bowl and the Olympics, and 90% did that on linear TV according to eMarketer. But that doesn’t account for the size of this change.

Hernan Lopez of Owl Co. told me it’s pretty clear that Nielsen’s streaming numbers would have been lower a year ago if the firm had applied its new methodology at that time.

Do linear operators get to do a victory lap here?

Patrick: Not really. It’s good news because they can remind advertisers that tens of millions of people are still watching.

On the other hand, it also reinforces the consensus that live sports is the last thing holding traditional TV together.

ABC’s big bet to infuse its declining “Bachelorette” franchise with “Mormon Wives” buzz looks over before it even started, Ashley Wong reports.

The network pulled its heavily-promoted premiere of “The Bachelorette” on Sunday after TMZ published a video that appeared to show “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star and new Bachelorette Taylor Frankie Paul being violent toward her former partner with a child present.

“In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of ‘The Bachelorette’ at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family,” said a spokesperson for Disney, which owns both ABC and the “Mormon Wives” streamer Hulu.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the season would air at a later date.

The video seems to capture a 2023 incident that led to charges long ago, so the altercation itself was no surprise to Disney.

The broader drama around Paul was of course part of her appeal for the “Bachelorette” franchise. ABC had been giving Paul’s “Bachelorette” all the spotlight it could, moving the show to Sunday nights from Mondays and promoting it with a half-hour special after last Sunday’s Oscars.

That’s a pretty big sunk cost if the season never runs. But a reality show built around a single star carries more cast risk than an ensemble. And advertisers’ limited tolerance for messy headlines means Disney may not have had a choice.

As I mentioned in the newsletter earlier this week, Cinnabon had already called off marketing partnerships with “Mormon Wives” and “The Bachelorette” even before the video’s release. That triggered panicked meetings inside ABC, the former OK! magazine editor Rob Shuter wrote Tuesday on his Substack.

It’s easy to imagine the advertiser exodus building once the video got out.

Watch: The team on the Ringer’s “Bachelor Party” podcast was just settling into recording an episode about the new season when ABC’s announcement broke (2:30). [The Ringer]

OpenAI is planning to unify ChatGPT, its Codex coding platform and its web browser into a desktop “superapp,” aiming to simplify the user experience and continue with efforts to focus on engineering and business customers, Berber Jin reported last night for the Journal:

OpenAI hopes a unified desktop app (the mobile app stays unchanged) will let it streamline resources and better battle Anthropic for business users.

The move also reminds me how important the user experience has been for the whole AI revolution.

It’s easy to look past UX sometimes during the barrage of news about AI outputs and capabilities, not to mention the technology’s next-level costs, energy demands and risks.

But a highly accessible, conversational interface was one of the key reasons that ChatGPT broke through so quickly and powerfully.

And as AI forks into differentiated obsessions like coding, video generation, data analytics and raising armies of agents, the user experience might matter even more.

Attendees at Nvidia’s annual developer conference visited an on-site “Build-a-Claw” installation to explore what they can do right now with autonomous agents, my WSJ Leadership Institute colleague Isabelle Bousquette reports from the scene:

Bao and many others said they’re still reluctant to put claws to use in many real business instances, partly because of the security vulnerabilities that arise when you give claws your passwords and proprietary data.

But that also makes marketing one of the first areas worth exploring with claws, Bao said, because it relies more on publicly available information across the web and social media.

More AI (so much more): AI is simultaneously encouraging marketers to bring more of the creative work in-house and empowering agency staffers to leave and start their own firms. [Adweek]

Hachette canceled plans to publish the horror novel “Shy Girl” following allegations that portions of the book were written with generative AI. [WSJ] 

DoorDash is answering AI companies’ demand for training data by paying delivery workers to record non-delivery tasks like washing dishes or folding clothes. [Bloomberg]

Groups opposed to strict AI regulations are funding a flood of negative advertising to influence the 2026 elections. [WSJ]

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Amazon is working on a new smartphone, more than a decade after giving up on the Fire Phone. [Reuters]

Sprite followed up news of its return to the NBA with a rebrand and a revival for the “lymon.” [Creative Bloq] 

Major League Baseball named Polymarket as the league's official prediction market. [ESPN]

TV station owner Nexstar said it has closed its $6.2 billion merger with rival Tegna, less than a day after eight states sued to stop its consolidation of hundreds of local stations with one owner. [WSJ] 

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