Amazon Prime Video subscribers aren’t the only streaming customers being subjected to longer commercial breaks lately. Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) Max has increased the amount of commercials it shows to US subscribers from approximately four minutes per hour to about six minutes per hour.

A US support page for Max currently says that subscribers to Max with ads “can expect about 6 minutes of ads per hour.” But PCWorld noticed this week that this differs from what Max used to claim, which as recently as February was “about 4 minutes” of ads an hour, per the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Some of Max’s geographies have smaller ad loads. For example, WBD's support page for Saint Kitts and Nevis says Max ad subscribers should expect about four minutes of ads hourly.

A 50 percent increase in the duration of commercials that US subscribers see puts Max’s ad load on par with that of Prime Video, which AdWeek reported last week also increased its ad load from four minutes per hour to six minutes per hour. For comparison, Netflix shows four to five minutes of ads per hour, according to earlier PC World reporting, and Peacock shows to five to seven minutes of ads hourly, per The Streamable.

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• Would you like to own CNN, TNT, and the Discovery Channel?
• Warner Bros. Discovery owns them now — but wants to get rid of them.
• WBD's move follows a similar one Comcast announced a few months ago. Because while cable TV networks still make money, they're a business in permanent decline.

No one wants to own cable networks anymore.

Would you like to buy some?

That is the pitch that Warner Bros. Discovery is making to Wall Street now that it has announced it's splitting itself into two companies: One will own Warners' movie and television studio and the HBO Max streaming service; the other — which it's calling its "global networks" unit — will own a bunch of cable TV networks including CNN, TNT, Discovery and the Food Network.

If that sounds familiar, it's for two reasons:

WBD has been contemplating this for a long time.

Last summer, it floated the same idea but didn't go forward with it. In December, it all but said it was going to do this, after all, by splitting itself up internally. Now it's doing it for real.

Comcast is doing the same thing.

Last October, Comcast said it would bundle almost all of its cable channels into a separate company (which it's calling Versant, for some reason) and hang onto its movie and TV studio and its Peacock streaming service.

Like Comcast, WBD insists that no, really, it's splitting off its cable TV networks so they can grow and thrive on their own, and you'd be lucky to buy a piece of them.

"The global networks business is a real business," WBD CEO David Zaslav said on the company's investor call Monday morning.

That is definitely true, since those cable networks continue to generate profits. It's also something you don't normally feel compelled to say when you're selling something people want to buy.

Because the big picture here is that both WBD and Comcast have concluded what investors — and people who watch things on TV — have concluded long ago: The cable TV business is a shrinking business, as more and more people cut the cord or simply never sign up for one. And the people who continue to watch cable TV are getting older and smaller in number.

The WBD split will generate all kinds of questions to ponder. Some of them are technical: How will WBD's $35 billion in debt be split up between the companies? How will the split companies approach future distribution deals with the likes of Comcast and Charter? How quickly could Comcast and WBD combine their two cable groups into one bigger cable group? Will the split help WBD's stock (it's up Monday — but note that Comcast also spiked when it announced its deal last fall, and has fallen some 20% since)?

Some questions the WBD split can generate may also matter to people who don't care about corporate finance. Such as: What does this mean for the future of CNN — the news channel that's struggling to find a lane in a loud and crowded media environment, but whose brand still has lots of potential value?

But the big takeaway is the obvious takeaway: The people who run the biggest collections of cable TV channels in the country would like someone else to own them. Because every quarter, the number of people who watch those channels and pay for those channels gets smaller.

Like I said late last year: These are garage sales. Maybe someone will want to own shrinking businesses that still throw off lots of cash (paging private equity). But the people who have them now think they'd be better off without them. Buyer beware.

Newsmax (NYSE: NMAX) stock got hit with another round of big sell-offs in Thursday's trading. The company's share price closed out the day's trading down 10.5% amid the backdrop of a 0.6% decline for the S&P 500 and a 0.9% decline for the Nasdaq Composite.

Sell-offs picked up as the day progressed as investors reacted to tariff and trade issues and other potential macroeconomic risk factors. While there weren't any immediate business factors pushing Newsmax stock lower, the stock may have faced some significant pressure due to news surrounding Tesla and CEO Elon Musk.

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As a network that primarily features right-leaning political content, Newsmax has sometimes been included in the basket of "Trump trade" stocks -- a group of stocks that some investors are betting will see positive catalysts in conjunction with the President's second term. After previously being a high-profile supporter of President Trump, Musk has recently ramped up criticism of Trump and the budget bill he supports. The Trump-Musk schism helped spur a 14.3% sell-off for Tesla stock today, and the pullback effect extended to other "Trump trade" stocks.

Image source: Getty Images.

Is the latest pullback an opportunity to buy Newsmax stock?

In the absence of actual business-specific news pushing Newsmax's share price lower, today's big sell-off could look like an overreaction. The stock is now down roughly 81% from market close on the day of its initial public offering (IPO).

Sell-offs have now pushed the company's market capitalization down to roughly $2.1 billion -- or roughly 12.3 times the $171 million in revenue it reported last year. The company is still growing revenue at a solid clip, with sales rising 12% year over year in the first quarter, but its current valuation still looks somewhat lofty given its rate of sales expansion. Factoring in the potential for the business to face significant negative judgments in outstanding civil suits, I think Newsmax stock still looks too risky right now.

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Shares of Newsmax (NYSE: NMAX) are plunging on Thursday. The media company's stock lost 9% as of 3:50 p.m. ET. The steep decline comes as the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) and Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) lost 0.3% and 0.8%, respectively.

There isn't a direct catalyst today, so here's a quick analysis of the company's stock.

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Newsmax saw its stock skyrocket nearly 1,800% in the first two days following its recent initial public offering (IPO), before falling roughly 90% over the next week. The conservative media company's viewership has been spiking, leading to the intense excitement around its stock. Newsmax's Q1 viewership jumped 50% year over year, and it is now one of the five most-watched channels in all of cable and the fourth-most-watched cable news channel. Along with its viewership, its revenue has grown considerably as well. The company's revenue jumped 26.4% from 2023 to 2024.

Image source: Getty Images.

There are plenty of reasons to be wary

That's about where the good news ends. The company is operating deep in the red, losing more than $17 million in the first quarter of 2025. Its viewership numbers are also less impressive when you consider that most cable news channels saw comparable major growth over the same period and that its biggest competitor, Fox News, is still miles ahead. All 15 of the most-watched shows on cable appear on Fox. And that 15th-ranked show has 3 times as many viewers as Newsmax's top-ranked program.

Despite this disparity, Newsmax stock carries a price-to-sales ratio more than 8 times that of Fox News' parent company. This seems divorced from reality to me. And if that weren't reason enough to stay away from this stock, Newsmax is facing massive litigation over its false statements regarding the 2020 election. The penalty it could face would potentially bankrupt the company.

Should you invest $1,000 in Newsmax right now?

Before you buy stock in Newsmax, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Newsmax wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

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Johnny Rice has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Two stocks that could benefit from President Donald Trump's popularity this year are Trump Media & Technology Group (NASDAQ: DJT) and Newsmax (NYSE: NMAX). The former was launched by Trump in 2021 when he created the Truth Social platform, while the latter features a conservative cable channel that the president has endorsed in the past. Newsmax recently went public, but Trump Media's stock has been around for a little over a year after merging with Digital World Acquisition Corp.

Which of these two stocks is likely to perform better this year and over the long haul?

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The case for Trump Media

Trump Media stock is more closely aligned with President Trump's brand and image. It involves his Truth Social platform and streaming business.

The company has also been looking at crypto as a growth opportunity, recently partnering with crypto.com, which plans to offer exchange-traded funds comprising both digital and non-digital assets. Among the possible ETFs that could soon be available are a "Made in America" ETF and a "Bitcoin Plus" fund. While the details of those funds are not known, Trump Media has applied to trademark investment products with those names.

Trump Media is also well-funded, finishing last year with $777 million in cash and short-term investments. That liquidity can give the business lots of runway to grow even as it's still burning through cash. The company's net sales totaled just $3.6 million last year, but with plans to offer more services and greater opportunities for monetization ahead, there could be strong growth on the horizon for the company.

The case for Newsmax

Shares of Newsmax went public last month and at a market cap of less than $2 billion, it's a cheaper option than Trump Media stock (worth nearly $5 billion). And the company also has a much more established business today, centering around its cable channel and website.

Last year, Newsmax reported more than $171 million in revenue, with its top line growing by 26% year over year. The company incurred a loss of more than $72 million but with strong gross profit margins of around 50%, there may be hope for the business to one day turn a profit as it scales its operations and adds to its subscribers.

With the company focused on conservative news, it could stand to benefit from President Trump's strong popularity. Newsmax rose in prominence during Trump's first presidential term as he soured on once-favored Fox News, which he called "unwatchable" back in 2020.

Which stock is the better buy?

Although both media stocks present risks and neither is a safe buy, if you're deciding between the two, I'd go with Newsmax.

At this stage, Trump Media doesn't seem to be much more than a meme stock. It isn't generating much revenue, and simply having a strong cash balance doesn't make it an investable business. It's a speculative buy, and year to date, it has fallen more than 36%. What's concerning is that even amid that decline, it still looks egregiously overpriced and has plenty of room to fall even lower.

Almost by default, Newsmax looks to be the better option right now. Its valuation is lower, and its business is growing quickly. But with steep losses, it's not a safe stock to own either. However, with an established business and more modest valuation, I expect it'll outperform Trump Media this year and beyond.

Should you invest $1,000 in Newsmax right now?

Before you buy stock in Newsmax, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Newsmax wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $566,035!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $629,519!*

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David Jagielski has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.