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• YouTube announced that it will hold the global rights to the Oscars starting in 2029.
• It’s a major victory as streamers compete over the finite number of marquee live events.
• Historically, the Oscars are one of the most-watched telecasts of the entire year.

Hollywood’s biggest night is going to a streamer.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Wednesday that YouTube will hold the global rights to the Oscars from 2029 through 2033.

While that means they’ll no longer be on ABC starting in 2029, ending a more than 50-year run of consecutive broadcasts on the television network, the Oscars will continue to be available for free worldwide — just on YouTube and YouTube TV. As part of the partnership, red carpet coverage and other behind-the-scenes content from before the award show is also included.

The news comes as streamers like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, and others, increasingly compete over live events to host on their respective platforms. Historically, the Oscars are one of the most-watched nights of TV, and in non-presidential election years, it is often the only non-sporting event to chart within the top 100 most-watched telecasts of the year.

“The Oscars are one of our essential cultural institutions, honoring excellence in storytelling and artistry,” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said in a statement. “Partnering with the Academy to bring this celebration of art and entertainment to viewers all over the world will inspire a new generation of creativity and film lovers while staying true to the Oscars’ storied legacy.”

Disney and ABC will continue to hold the rights to the Oscars through 2028, including the milestone 100th Academy Awards.

Outside of the Oscars, the Google Arts & Culture initiative will provide digital access to select Academy Museum exhibitions and programs, the academy said in a statement.

The agreement was also struck at a time when YouTube has evolved beyond a place people post and watch short clips and amateur videos on mobile and desktop to become a fixture in the living room. The monthly Nielsen Gauge shows YouTube grabbing the top spot in share of TV viewing among media companies for months running, with a 12.9% share in October, ahead of Disney (11.4%) and NBCUniversal (8.6%).

The nature of what people are watching has also changed. The streaming data analysis company Digital i found that videos lasting 30 minutes or more accounted for 73% of total viewing on YouTube in the US in October 2024, up 8% from a year earlier.

YouTube has encouraged this shift, rolling out new tools for creators to incentivize them to make serialized shows that look like what you think of as traditional TV.

YouTube’s living room-domination plans loomed in the background of its recent highly public dispute with Disney over how much it should pay the media company to carry its channels like ESPN and ABC News on YouTube TV. Google recently shared numbers showing YouTube TV was the No. 4 pay-TV service in the US.

Traditional media companies have tried to combat YouTube’s expansion by taking a page from the platform and striking deals with YouTube video creators and podcasters.

• Jimmy Carter was the first president to recognize Hanukkah with a menorah lighting in 1979.
• The first official White House Hanukkah party took place in 2001, hosted by George W. Bush.
• Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump have continued to host Hanukkah receptions.

The White House hasn’t always marked the Festival of Lights with menorah lightings and musical performances.

Official Christmas celebrations date back to the 1800s, but celebrating Hanukkah at the White House is a fairly recent development in US history.

President John Adams hosted the first White House Christmas party in 1800, and President Calvin Coolidge held the first National Christmas Tree lighting in 1923. Jacqueline Kennedy began the tradition of choosing a theme for the White House Christmas decorations in 1961.

Still, the first official White House Hanukkah reception wasn’t held until 2001.

Take a look at the fascinating history of how the White House Hanukkah party came to be.

President Jimmy Carter was the first president to recognize Hanukkah by lighting a menorah in 1979.

The menorah lighting was held on the Ellipse, a lawn south of the White House.

The secretary of the interior under Carter initially refused to issue a permit for a menorah on the White House lawn, citing the First Amendment, The Washington Post reported. But Stu Eizenstat, one of Carter’s advisors, argued that the National Christmas Tree’s permit should also be denied on the same grounds, and the event was allowed to proceed.

Since then, every US president has marked Hanukkah in one way or another.

A delegation of rabbis brought President Ronald Reagan a menorah during a Hanukkah visit in 1984.

Reagan maintained contact with Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement, throughout his presidency, even declaring his 80th birthday a National Day of Reflection, according to Chabad.org.

President George H.W. Bush and first lady Barbara Bush learned to play dreidel, a traditional Hanukkah game, in 1990.

Bush invited children to light Hanukkah candles and play dreidel at the Old Executive Building, which sits adjacent to the White House.

President Bill Clinton also celebrated Hanukkah by hosting groups of children in the Oval Office.

Children from local schools and synagogues were welcomed into the Oval Office to light the menorah and play dreidel with Clinton.

President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush hosted the first White House Hanukkah party in 2001. It was the first time a menorah lighting ceremony had been held in the White House residence.

The Bushes invited members of their staff and their children to participate in the ceremony, according to the archived Bush White House’s website. The menorah was lit in the Booksellers’ room on the ground floor, and a kosher buffet was served upstairs, The New York Times reported.

“Tonight, for the first time in American history, the Hanukkah menorah will be lit at the White House residence,” Bush said at the ceremony. “It’s a symbol that this house may be a temporary home for Laura and me, but it’s the people’s house, and it belongs to people of all faiths.”

The White House kitchen was made kosher for Hanukkah celebrations starting in 2005.

Making the White House kitchen kosher involves Saran Wrap, tin foil, and vats of boiling water to cover and purify non-kosher surfaces. The chefs use only certified kosher ingredients.

Matt Nosanchuk served as the White House’s associate director of public engagement and liaison to the American Jewish community during Obama’s second term. He told Business Insider that there used to be separate tables for kosher and non-kosher food at Bush’s Hanukkah parties, but one year, the labels were accidentally switched.

Rabbi Levi Shemtov, a Chabad rabbi in Washington, DC, who worked closely with the White House staff to prepare kosher food, suggested making the entire reception kosher to avoid confusion in the future, Nosanchuk said.

“Apparently, President Bush said, ‘Do whatever you need to do, it’s fine,’ and Rabbi Shemtov was like, ‘Well, you’re going to have to stay out of the kitchen for 24 hours before the party,'” Nosanchuk said.

Bush also began inviting different Jewish choirs and a cappella groups to perform at the event.

The Kol Zimra a cappella choir performed at a menorah lighting ceremony before the White House Hanukkah reception in 2004.

President Barack Obama continued hosting the White House Hanukkah party every year. In 2013, the party was split into two receptions: one in the afternoon and one in the evening.

The two identical receptions were hosted on the same day, so that the White House kitchen only has to be made kosher once.

“Given how crowded the previous parties had become, they decided to have two,” Nosanchuk said.

That was also the year Thanksgiving coincided with Hanukkah. Obama was presented with a turkey-shaped menorah known as a “menurkey.”

In 2013, then-10-year-old Asher Weintraub invented a “menurkey,” a menorah shaped like a turkey. He raised over $48,000 on Kickstarter to produce and sell them.

“Of course, I said we gotta invite this kid to the White House Hanukkah party,” Nosanchuk said. “We didn’t use the menurkey onstage, but we made sure the kid was up front on the rope line so that he could say hello to President Obama and present him with a menurkey. And President Obama loved the menurkey.”

Obama continued the tradition of inviting college and professional a cappella groups to sing at the event.

Mike Boxer performed with the Jewish a cappella group Six13 at the White House Hanukkah reception in 2016. He told Business Insider the performers usually sing in the foyer outside the party for about an hour, welcoming guests as they enter, and then have a private audience with the president and first lady.

Before meeting the Obamas, Boxer and his group were told to prepare 45 seconds of a song to perform for them. They chose a snippet from “A Hamilton Chanukah,” a medley of songs from the Broadway musical “Hamilton” rewritten with Hanukkah-themed lyrics.

Boxer said that their private concert featured some unexpected guests.

“We look over, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor are peering through the door,” he said. “Barack Obama goes, ‘Come in, come in.’ One of them said, ‘I love this stuff.'”

Notable American Jewish leaders and rabbis were also invited to deliver remarks at the two ceremonies.

In his public engagement role at the White House, Nosanchuk was responsible for the guest list of the Hanukkah reception. Every year, the list was built from scratch to include as many new people as possible.

“I went out of my way to invite people who had never been before, who had done interesting and important and valuable work in the Jewish community or in their broader community,” he said. “There were a wide array of constituencies and groups and individuals who we wanted to engage with and touch during these holiday receptions. The Hanukkah receptions were a subset of that larger group.”

Mordechai Levovitz attended the White House Hanukkah party twice during Obama’s presidency and was impressed with the event’s broad representation of the Jewish community.

Levovitz is the founder of Jewish Queer Youth, a nonprofit serving LGBTQ+ youth from Orthodox, Hasidic, and Sephardic homes. He was invited as a representative of the Jewish LGBTQ+ community, along with other leaders of Jewish LGBTQ+ organizations.

“It was really nice to see great LGBTQ representation there,” he said of the Hanukkah parties he attended. “I felt seen. I saw leaders of every Jewish LGBTQ organization there, and they saw me.”

He told Business Insider that the White House knows how to throw a good Hanukkah party.

“Any Orthodox Jew knows that kosher food can really go either way, especially kosher catering. This caterer does an amazing job,” he said. “There’s a room with a huge smorgasbord of food, and then there’s a cutting board on the side giving out the lamb chops, and that’s where the line is. They are delicious.”

President Donald Trump continued hosting Hanukkah receptions at the White House during his first term, but didn’t invite Democratic lawmakers.

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, is Jewish. She converted before marrying her husband, Jared Kushner.

The New York Times reported in 2017 that Trump broke with tradition by excluding Democratic lawmakers from the guest list of what had previously been a bipartisan event. 

In 2020, the Trump White House held indoor Hanukkah parties despite CDC warnings against large gatherings. Trump only attended the evening reception.

Then-chief of staff to first lady Melania Trump, Stephanie Grisham, told Business Insider in a statement that masks would be required and provided at the events, hand-sanitizing stations would be set up, chefs would serve food from behind plexiglass barriers, and that the guest lists were “smaller.” She did not respond to Business Insider’s questions about the exact number of invited guests. 

The Times of Israel reported that Trump attended only the evening Hanukkah reception, where he falsely claimed that with the help of “certain very important people, if they have wisdom and if they have courage, we are going to win this election.” Joe Biden had already been declared the winner the previous month.

Three days after the party, vice chairman of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee Tom Mountain was hospitalized with COVID-19, which he attributed to his attendance at the event.

“Let’s put it this way: When I went down to Washington, DC, for the White House Hanukkah event, I was perfectly fine,” Mountain told NBC affiliate WJAR. “And three days later after that event, I was in the hospital … ready to be put on a lifesaving ventilator.”

In 2021, second gentleman Doug Emhoff led the menorah lighting at the White House Hanukkah party and spoke about his Jewish heritage.

“To think that today, I’m here before you as the first Jewish spouse of an American president or vice president celebrating Hanukkah, in the people’s house, it’s humbling, and it’s not lost on me that I stand before you all on behalf of all the Jewish families and communities out there across our country,” Emhoff said. “I understand that, and I really appreciate it.”

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency‘s Ron Kampeas reported that invitations to the in-person White House Hanukkah party on December 1 were sent out a week before the event, and that holiday plans took shape relatively last-minute due to COVID-19 concerns surrounding in-person events.

In 2022, the Bidens added a Hanukkah menorah to the White House Christmas decorations for the first time.

Located in the Cross Hall, the menorah was built by White House carpenters using leftover wood from a Truman-era White House renovation.

In addition to the regular White House Hanukkah gathering on Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff hosted the first-ever Hanukkah party at the vice president’s residence.

Trump once again hosted the White House Hanukkah reception in 2025 when he returned for his second non-consecutive term.

“As president of the United States, I will always support Jewish Americans,” Trump said during the celebration, “and I will always be a friend and a champion of the Jewish people.”

Outside the White House, menorah lightings are still held on the Ellipse, and the event has continued to grow in scale.

The National Menorah is now a 30-foot-tall structure that requires a lift from a cherry picker to light.

This year’s National Menorah Lighting, broadcast on C-SPAN, took place on December 14.

• Rohit Prasad launched Amazon’s AGI team two years ago.
• Prasad led Amazon efforts to develop leading AI models.
• Amazon will reorganize its AGI and AI model work under AWS executive Peter DeSantis.

The executive who led Amazon‘s efforts to build top AI models is out.

Rohit Prasad, SVP and head scientist, is leaving two years after launching a new Artificial General Intelligence group.

CEO Andy Jassy said Prasad plans to depart at the end of the year. Prasad was elevated to report directly to Jassy in 2023 to lead the AGI team, which was tasked with developing Amazon’s “most ambitious” AI models, Business Insider reported at the time.

Since then, Prasad helped launch Amazon’s Nova family of AI models. Although Nova models earned some praise for their efficiency, they still trail frontier models such as OpenAI’s GPT offerings, Anthropic’s Claude Opus, and Google’s Gemini.

As part of the shake-up, Amazon is creating a new organization under Peter DeSantis, AWS‘s SVP of Utility Computing, Jassy said. The group will oversee Amazon’s AGI and AI model initiatives as well as its silicon chip and quantum computing efforts.

Jassy also said that Pieter Abbeel, the co-founder of robotics startup Covariant, who joined Amazon last year, will now lead the company’s frontier AI model research team.

Prasad’s departure is the latest in a series of leadership changes at AWS. Over the past year, the company has seen several executives depart, including VP of AI Matt Wood and VP of generative AI Vasi Philomin, while bringing in new talent such as former Microsoft executive Julia White as chief marketing officer.

AWS also recently hired David Richardson as VP of AgentCore and Joe Hellerstein as Vice President and Distinguished Scientist, and added Chet Kapoor as VP of security services and observability.

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• Netflix and Paramount are battling over Warner Bros. Discovery.
• Both say they’re the best owner for some of Hollywood’s crown jewels.
• Scroll down to see BI’s team unpack what the fight means for viewers and media at large, live Thursday at 1:30 p.m. ET.

Hollywood’s latest clash of the titans: Netflix versus Paramount.

The two companies are battling to buy Warner Bros. Discovery (or, in Netflix’s case, just its streaming and studios assets).

The fight pits Paramount’s David Ellison, backed by his father Larry’s billions, against entertainment’s reigning champion of paid streaming.

WBD accepted Netflix’s bid, but it’s far from over, as Paramount went hostile last week with its own $108 billion offer. The WBD board on Wednesday recommended that shareholders reject that hostile offer. Now, it’s Ellison’s move. Will he sweeten his bid?

There are many facets to this story — and why it’s happening now — ranging from politics and antitrust to the rise of the creator economy.

Business Insider’s chief media and tech correspondent, Peter Kafka, and deputy media editor Nathan McAlone will answer the key questions about the deal and its implications, live on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. ET.

Email your questions to Nathan McAlone.

• Ray Dalio and his wife are joining the list of billionaires backing the president’s Trump Accounts.
• Through Dalio Philanthropies, the couple will donate $250 to 300,000 Connecticut children.
• BlackRock also announced it would provide a $1,000 match for all eligible US employees.

Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio has joined the list of billionaires backing President Donald Trump’s new plan to give $1,000 to every child born in the next three years.

Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, and his wife, Barbara, will donate $250 to about 300,000 children in Connecticut who live in zip codes where the median family income is $150,000 or less, Dalio Philanthropies said in a press release.

“Barbara and I believe strongly in the importance of equal opportunity and believe this initiative is an important step in that direction,” Ray Dalio said in the release. “I have lived the American dream. At an early age, I was exposed to the stock market, and it changed my life. By providing children with savings accounts that compound over time, we are providing them with early insights into financial literacy and a path towards financial independence.”

BlackRock, too, announced on Wednesday that it would “offer an employee match to the US government contribution of $1,000 for all eligible US employees to Trump Accounts.”

Several other business leaders, including Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, have also committed to contributing funds to the accounts of their employees’ children, according to Invest America, the federal program spearheaded by Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner that is now commonly known as “Trump Accounts.” BNY, a financial services company, also announced last week that it would match Trump Account funds for its employees.

Since June, some of the country’s wealthiest individuals have been lining up behind Trump’s plan to provide a one-time, tax-free federal grant of $1,000 to every American child born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028. The accounts will be in the child’s name, but their parent will remain the sole custodian until the child turns 18. Others can contribute up to an additional $5,000 tax-free to those accounts every year.

The program will officially launch on July 4, 2026.

The Dalios’ donation follows a substantial commitment from Michael and Susan Dell, who pledged to deposit $250 into the accounts of 25 million American kids — about $6.25 billion — earlier this month. The payments will be automatically deposited into the account of any child who fits the criteria and opens a Trump Account.

Dalio Philanthropies and BlackRock did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics published the final national employment report for the year.
• Economists think the job market is stagnant.
• Unemployment was above 4.5%, wage growth has moderated, and job growth remains unequal among industries.

This week brought a vanishingly rare jobs report on Tuesday after the longest government shutdown in history threw a wrench in federal data collection, and it was a mixed bag.

The new data emphasized trends we’ve been seeing this year, including unemployment inching up and a tougher market for many job seekers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics delayed the report from December 5 to extend data collection and processing after its activities were affected by the government shutdown that lasted from October to about mid-November.

The new data allowed economists, job seekers, reporters, and more to understand how job growth looked in both October and November; the BLS didn’t produce an October jobs report last month. While the report was missing items like the October unemployment rate, it gives us a fresh look at the labor market.

Here are four takeaways from the latest jobs report.

The job market is still frozen

Both Nicole Bachaud, a labor Economist at ZipRecruiter, and Laura Ullrich, the director of economic research in North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab, described the job market as still stagnant.

The US economy added 64,000 jobs in November, surpassing the 50,000 expected. That comes after a big net loss in October, largely because federal workers who took the deferred resignation offered as part of the DOGE job cuts earlier this year finally appeared in the data after the deferment ended.

Data published by the BLS last week showed job openings have been trending upward as of October, although they’re still far below what job seekers were accustomed to a few years ago. Workers’ confidence has also been low, as October’s quit rate was the lowest since 2020.

“Job growth has been very slow over the course of 2025, and it doesn’t seem like we’ve turned around quite yet to translate the pent-up demand for hiring and the recent increase in job openings into actual hires,” Bachaud said, adding that uncertainty over tariffs, inflation, and geopolitical issues has added to companies holding back on hiring plans.

“That’s the big question mark — when is that uncertainty going to finally ease up?” she said.

Healthcare’s job growth masks weakness in many other sectors

The better-than-expected growth in November was largely helped by job growth in healthcare, so Ullrich said this “doesn’t show a whole lot of strength in the macro labor market.”

Healthcare and social assistance sectors together had a net gain of 64,000 over the month. Most industries had a decline or a small rise in employment. Manufacturing, for instance, has continued its ongoing net loss.

Healthcare has been a bright spot throughout the year, and Bachaud said there will still be demand for workers as the population ages. However, it could be challenging for job seekers to pivot into these positions. Ullrich said many jobs in the sector typically require certain training and education.

“Construction is the other industry that we saw really strong growth in, as there is demand for continued skilled trades,” Bachaud said. Construction added 28,000 jobs, with the largest growth from specialty trade contractors.

Employers still have the upper hand

Wage growth has gradually cooled and reached the lowest point so far this year in November. Average hourly earnings rose 3.5% from a year ago.

The generally softer job market has made it harder for workers to negotiate higher wages. Ullrich said physicians have better wage-setting power than roles that aren’t seeing a lot of openings and where talent is waiting on the sidelines for a role.

She said employers can probably offer lower raises to current talent, too, since more people are staying put.

“If you know people aren’t quitting, you might not have to offer them the same bump in pay that you would if the quits rate was higher,” she said. “That being said, there’s still very tight competition for certain roles.”

Unemployment is the highest since 2021

The October 2025 unemployment rate won’t ever be released because that data, typically gathered from a survey of around 60,000 households a month, couldn’t be collected during or after the government shutdown. However, unemployment had been trending upward before that, and November was the same story.

November’s unemployment rate was the highest since September 2021 and slightly higher than expected. Still, the Bureau of Labor Statistics warned of data issues with unemployment and related figures over the next few months due to the missing October household survey, so economists and others will have to see how the rate continues to pan out.

Despite the data challenges, Bachaud said the higher unemployment rate and stickier long-term unemployment, where people have been out of a job for at least 27 weeks and actively searching, indicate that it has become harder to land a job.