Scale and profit are settled. Streaming is no longer the destination but the lever to grow the core business — and the broadcasters without one are now exposed.
As of June 2026, the premise that streaming is a growth engine in its own right no longer holds. Global consumer spending on video subscriptions and advertising has flattened since the pandemic — and in Korea the strain has already broken through. JTBC and its parent, the JoongAng Group, unable to withstand accumulated losses and the burden of sports and content investment, have filed for court-supervised corporate rehabilitation.
Streaming 3.0: The Screen Becomes a Lever — and JTBC Is Korea’s Warning Shot
The streaming 3.0 era has arrived — streaming is no longer the destination but a lever to grow the core business, and unless Korea restructures to keep downstream rights (IP, merchandise, live, advertising) onshore where its fandom is created, the value will keep leaking to global platforms
Jung Han