DirecTV and Dish are in advanced talks to merge in a deal that would create the largest U.S. pay-TV provider, with almost 20 million subscribers, people familiar with the matter said.

An agreement could be announced in the coming days, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. DirecTV is in talks to control the combined entity, which will be closely held, the people said.

DirecTV, founded in 1994 by Hughes Electronics, is owned by AT&T Inc. and TPG Inc., and has about 11 million customers. Dish, started in 1980 by billionaire Charlie Ergen, is part of his EchoStar Corp. and has about 8 million subscribers. EchoStar and TPG are expected to remain investors, the people said.

The companies are still working through details of how the combination might be structured, according to the people. While talks are advanced, they could still be delayed or falter, the people said. Bloomberg News reported talks between the parties earlier this month.

A representative for TPG declined to comment, while a representative for DirecTV said the company does not comment on “rumors and speculation.” A representative for Dish didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

While past discussions of a DirecTV-Dish combination have faced antitrust concerns, the shift from pay TV to streaming has changed the competitive landscape, potentially making the path easier this time. A deal would help them better compete with cable companies and streaming services such as Netflix Inc.

A merger of the two largest satellite-TV providers would come at a challenging time for the pay-TV industry, which has been losing customers. It would also cap years of speculation about consolidation in the satellite-TV business. EchoStar just closed its acquisition of Dish in December.

The pay-TV industry, including cable and satellite, had 104 million U.S. subscribers in 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. That has shrunk to fewer than 70 million this year as services including Netflix and Amazon Prime video have scooped up viewers.

In August 2021, to get the TV business off its books, AT&T moved DirecTV into a joint venture with private equity investor TPG in a deal that valued the company at about $16 billion. AT&T held 70% while TPG received 30%. Due to subscriber losses, AT&T took a $15.5 billion impairment charge in 2020 to account for the lower value of the operation.

Dish, meanwhile, has been seeking to transition from pay-TV to wireless services but has racked up significant debt to buy spectrum while the legacy business loses subscribers.

Davis writes for Bloomberg News.

We are at the apex of “Saturday Night Live” appreciation. Now entering its 50th year, “SNL” has never been more unquestioned as a bedrock American institution. The many years of cowbells, Californians, mom jeans, Totino’s, unfrozen caveman lawyers and vans down by the river have more than established “SNL” as hallowed late-night ground and a comedy citadel.

So it’s maybe appropriate that Jason Reitman’s big-screen ode, “Saturday Night,” should arrive, amid all of the tributes, to remind of the show’s original revolutionary force. Reitman’s film is set in the 90 minutes leading up to showtime before the first episode aired Oct. 11, 1975.

The atmosphere is hectic. The mood is anxious. And through cigarette smoke and backstage swirl rushes Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), who’s trying to launch a new kind of show that even he can’t quite explain.

“Saturday Night,” which opens in theaters Friday and expands in the coming weeks, isn’t a realistic tick-tock of how Michaels did it. And, while it boasts a number of fine performances, I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone hoping to see an illuminating portrait of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players.

No, Reitman’s movie is striving for a myth of “Saturday Night Live.” Michaels’ quest in the film — and though he never strays farther than around the corner from 30 Rock, it is a quest — is not just to marshal together a live show on this particular night, it’s to overcome a cigar-chomping old guard of network television. (Milton Berle is skulking about, even Johnny Carson phones in.) In their eyes, Michaels is, to paraphrase Ned Beatty in “Network,” meddling with the primal forces of nature.

In mythologizing this generational battle, “Saturday Night” is a blistering barn-burner. In most other ways (cue the Debbie Downer trombone), it’s less good. Reitman, who penned the script with Gil Kenan, is too wide-eyed about the glory days of “SNL” to bring much acute insight to what was happening 50 years ago. And his film may be too spread thin by a clown car’s worth of big personalities. But in the movie’s primary goal, capturing a spirit of revolution that once might have seized barricades but instead flocks to Studio 8H, “Saturday Night” at least deserves a Spartan cheer.

A clock ticking down to showtime runs as ominously as it might in “MacGruber” throughout “Saturday Night.” Nothing is close to ready for air. John Belushi (Matt Wood) hasn’t signed his contract. Twenty-eight gallons of fake blood are missing. And, most pressing of all, the network is poised to air a Carson rerun if things don’t take shape. An executive pleading for a script is told, “It’s not that kind of show.”

What kind is it? Michaels, himself, is uncertain. He’s gathered together a “circus of rejects,” most of them then unknown to the public. There is Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula) and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien). Also in the mix are Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun), who spends much of the movie complaining about the untoward things the cast has been doing to Big Bird, Andy Kaufman (Braun again), Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) and the night’s host, George Carlin (Matthew Rhys).

Most of them pass too quickly to make too much of an impression, though a few are good in their moments — notably Smith, playing up Chase’s braggadocio, O’Brien and Morris. Garrett Morris, the cast’s lone Black member, is in a quandary over his role — because of his race and because he was a playwright before being cast. Though “SNL” was revolutionary, it hardly arrived a finished product. Morris here is a reminder of the show’s sometimes — and ongoing — not always easy relationship to diversity, in race and gender.

It also wasn’t always such a break from what came before. When Chase faces off with Berle in a contest over Chase’s fiancee, Jacqueline Carlin (Kaia Gerber) — one of the movie’s few truly charged scenes — they seem more alike than either would like to admit.

It’s not a great sign for “Saturday Night” how much better the old guard is than the young cast. Along with Simmons’ Berle is Willem Dafoe’s NBC executive David Tebet. He provides the movie its most “Network”-flavored drama, seeing “a prophet” in Michaels and, despite wavering skepticism, urging him to be “an unbending force of seismic disturbance.” Also in the mix — and a reminder that the suits had newbies, too — is Dick Ebersol (a refreshingly genuine Cooper Hoffman ), a believer in Michaels but only up to a point.

Ultimately, this is Michaels’ show, and he’s played winningly by LaBelle, the “Fabelmans” star, even if the characterization, like much of “Saturday Night,” is a little thin. Sometimes by his side, as he races to get the show ready is the writer and Michaels’ then-wife, Rosie Shuster (the excellent Rachel Sennott), who you want more of.

It seems to be an unfortunate truth that dramatizations of “Saturday Night Live” inevitably kill it of laughter. That’s true here just as it was in Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” The exception to that, of course, is Tina Fey’s “30 Rock,” which was smart enough to abandon all the “SNL” mythology and focus on what’s funny.

This “Saturday Night” may have a legacy of its own; a lot of this cast, I suspect, will be around for a long time. And, ultimately, when the show finally comes together, it’s galvanizing. The cleverest thing about Reitman’s film is that it ends, rousingly, just where “SNL” starts.

“Saturday Night,” a Columbia Pictures release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language throughout, sexual references, some drug use and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 108 minutes. Three stars out of four.

In a stunning move that will likely disrupt the TV morning show landscape, Hoda Kotb announced Thursday she is departing NBC’s “Today.”

Kotb informed viewers of her decision during the program. She said in a note to the “Today” staff that she plans to stay with the network in a new role that has not been specified. She will step away from “Today” early next year.

“They say two things can be right at the same time, and I’m feeling that so deeply right now,” Kotb wrote in a memo to staff. “I love you and it’s time for me to leave the show.”

In her tearful remarks on the air, she cited a desire to spend time with her young daughters.

“I had my kiddos late in life and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of the time pie that I have,” Kotb said.

Kotb has been co-host of the program alongside Savannah Guthrie since 2018, when she stepped into the role after Matt Lauer was fired over what the network called inappropriate sexual behavior. She is also the co-host of the fourth hour of the program with Jenna Bush.

Kotb said in her note she considered departing for some time and came to the decision after her 60th birthday was celebrated on Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, where fans gather daily to watch the show on its street level studio.

“My broadcast career has been beyond meaningful, a new decade of my life lies ahead, and now my daughters and my mom need and deserve a bigger slice of my time pie,” Kotb wrote. “I will miss you all desperately, but I’m ready and excited.”

Kotb joined “Today” as part of the team that hosted its fourth hour and her presence across the franchise grew. She became co-host of a fourth hour with daytime TV legend Kathie Lee Gifford in 2008. The freewheeling atmosphere created by the pair was a departure for “Today” and became a pop culture sensation.

Viewers have watched her successfully battle breast cancer and adopt two children during her run on the program, where cast members often share the milestones and challenges in their personal lives.

Born in Norman, Okla., to parents of Egyptian descent, Kotb graduated from Virginia Tech before launching a career in local TV. After stints in Fort Myers, Fla., and New Orleans, she joined NBC News as a correspondent for “Dateline” in 1998.

Kotb’s departure comes at a time when the broadcast news divisions are looking to reduce costs. Many of the top anchors and hosts receive multimillion-dollar salaries based on audience levels that have diminished significantly in recent years as more consumers turn to streaming for news and information.

NBC News is expected to undergo significant cost and staff reductions after the presidential election in November. Cuts are coming to ABC News as well.

Earlier this week, CBS parted ways with “CBS Saturday Morning” co-anchor Jeff Glor as part of wider cost-cutting move at parent company Paramount Global. The program is likely to move forward with two co-hosts, Michelle Miller and Dana Jacobson.

CBS is also moving Norah O’Donnell off “CBS Evening News” and replacing her with two lower-salaried anchors, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois.

The morning programs are the most lucrative of the network news programs, but have diminished in ratings in recent years and no longer have the agenda-setting stature they long had in the media landscape.Still, their hosts are still the most recognizable faces in television, and viewers develop a deep connection to them.

“Today” has been in a tight ratings battle with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Network news executives will be watching closely to see if Kotb’s departure will shift any viewing habits. She is a fan favorite on the program, seen as bringing personal warmth to the set.