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“For Fox,” Mike Florio says, “the $485 million paid for the English-language World Cup broadcast rights in America may be the best investment the network has ever made.”

If $485 million sounds low to you, that’s because it is. Last month, the NYT’s Tariq Panja wrote the definitive story about the “astounding bargain,” explaining that “a decision to stave off litigation between Fox and FIFA turned into a bonanza worth hundreds of millions of dollars in discounted World Cup rights to the broadcaster.”

A “bonanza,” indeed. “Fox and Telemundo are off to a blazing start in the TV ratings for the quadrennial soccer tournament, delivering big increases over the 2022 World Cup held in Qatar,” the LAT’s Stephen Battaglio wrote last week, highlighting “the enduring power of live sporting events and their ability to draw mass audiences.”

Friday afternoon’s US win over Australia attracted more than 20 million viewers across both Fox and Telemundo, according to preliminary Nielsen numbers. That figure will rise when final numbers are released on Wednesday. Fox expects Friday to rank as the most-watched World Cup day in English-language US history… and there are still four more World Cup weeks to go.

Battaglio noted that “sports media pundits have been citing the addition of out-of-home viewing and internet-connected televisions to Nielsen data as the reason sports ratings have been on the rise.” TV executives, though, say those viewers have always been watching, and now the ratings are a more accurate reflection of the true audience size…

>> The Ankler’s Erik Barmack says “Telemundo is smashing records on the Spanish-language feed — proving why U.S. rights sold in two separate packages may not last.”

>> Awful Announcing’s Matt Clapp went deep on the US-Australia viewership #s here.

The WSJ’s Isabella Simonetti is out with a new profile of Tony Dokoupil and the “growing pains of his quick transition” into the “CBS Evening News” anchor chair amid turmoil at the network.

My favorite quote of Dokoupil’s: “I think all journalism has a trust problem. If we’re the yogurt industry, and 70% of people didn’t trust yogurt, it would be a crisis. I think it’s a crisis for journalism.”

Here’s a gift link to the article. Dokoupil is also quoted talking about management: “When it comes to Bari Weiss, she’s the editor in chief, she runs a 9 a.m. meeting and has lots of ideas,” he said. “When we like the idea, we use it. If we don’t and if it doesn’t work for our show, we don’t.”

“I’ve never met David Ellison,” he added. Ellison has “never had a comment about my show. He’s never called me to complain about coverage. If he tried to, it wouldn’t have an impact.”

The Journal story also features the first on-the-record response from Weiss to the meddling accusations made by Scott Pelley and Cecilia Vega.

She said, “What’s being called ‘editorial interference’ is in reality the job description of an editor in chief.”

Dokoupil said of his fired “60 Minutes” colleagues (who literally worked across the street), “When they make comments like that, I pay attention. But I can only speak for what’s happening on this side of the street, and it’s not the experience that I’ve had.”

That’s the eye-catching headline on this column by The Hill contributor Becket Adams. He says, “Conservative media often direct a lot of ire at the ‘mainstream press’ for getting it wrong — and they are often right. But it is only fair to acknowledge that conservative media get it wrong, too. And when it comes to President Trump’s disastrous attempt this year at playing war chief, a whole lot of conservatives got it wrong, this author included.” Read his remarkable and admirable mea culpa here…

Cannes Lions: The marketing festival gets underway in Cannes today. The NYPost’s Alexandra Steigrad has a preview here.

“Regime Change” roll-out: NYT’s Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan will be on “The View,” “The Daily Show,” CNN, and MS NOW this week.

NBA Draft: The draft begins Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN and ABC. The Washington Wizards have the first overall pick.

Larry David is back: HBO launches “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness” on Friday.

Getty Images shares are up almost 100% this morning “after the photography repository announced a licensing deal with OpenAI,” Bloomberg’s Mark Bergen reports.

Images from Getty’s library “will appear in the search and discovery features of ChatGPT, marking a key reversal for the firm.” It did not “disclose any details over whether Getty’s images would be used to train future OpenAI models,” Bergen adds. The beleaguered stock has recovered six months of losses thanks to the announcement…

Paramount said this morning that its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery has cleared two more regulatory hurdles: “Canada’s competition law waiting period expired as of June 20, terminating the final statutory barrier to closing in that jurisdiction. Also, on June 19, the Competition Commission of South Africa approved the merger, underscoring its pro-competitive merits.”

>> Also from over the weekend: “Three Democratic senators have urged the FCC to put the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger on pause over concerns about foreign investors,” Fox’s James Cirrone wrote…

Last week’s decision by Amazon to dump the film “shocked the filmmakers,” who had felt supported by Amazon MGM Studios “up until that point,” the NYT’s Nicole Sperling wrote the other day.

The film is a critical assessment of OpenAI chief Sam Altman, and Amazon “announced plans to invest $50 billion in OpenAI this year,” Sperling noted. “OpenAI also has a deal to use Amazon’s cloud computing services.”

So: Will some distributor without an OpenAI relationship pick up the project? Several potential buyers “have passed on acquiring it,” Variety’s Elsa Keslassy and Alex Ritman reported over the weekend. But “Mubi is pursuing the film, with Neon also possibly circling,” amid talk that it could be an Oscar contender next year…

An Iowa anchor’s sign-off went viral over the weekend after he used his farewell to call on local news stations to “be more than trends or sanitized news.”

KWQC’s Dustin Nolan said, “We have to take people out of their bubbles and comfort zones and make them think about the world we all live in.” His comments seemed like a critique of the TV status quo, leaving viewers wondering why exactly he was leaving his job. It was enough to garner pick-up from half a dozen national outlets yesterday…

“Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera has said one of its journalists was killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza on Saturday, becoming one of the at least 260 Palestinian journalists to have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023,” The Guardian reported. “Ahmed Wishah, a cameraman for the network, was killed in a strike targeting a house in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, the broadcaster said.” Al Jazeera paid tribute to Wishah here.

>> Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan has died at age 100. His wife, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, announced the news in a statement, and the “Today” show led this morning’s broadcast with a remembrance. (CNN)

>> New this morning: Peter Hamby is joining Puck full-time as chief national correspondent, “leading the outlet’s coverage of the presidential election,” and launching a 2028-focused show.

>> The Atlantic’s flagship podcast, Radio Atlantic, is expanding to video: “Adam Harris will host a new video episode on Mondays that promises to focus on ‘the stories that set the agenda for the week,’ complementing the current Thursday show, hosted by Hanna Rosin.” (Semafor)

>> “Both sides involved in an ongoing antitrust lawsuit over Nexstar Media Group’s $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna have asked a federal judge in Sacramento to schedule the matter for a jury trial in July 2027.” (The Desk)

This investigation is one of the WSJ’s most-read stories right now: Polymarket paid “dozens of mostly college-age creators” to “film themselves making fake trades and sometimes scoring fake wins,” Katherine Long, Caitlin Ostroff, Neil Mehta and Brenna T. Smith reveal.

This reporting is both stunning and infuriating. And it came about despite the fact that Polymarket — as the story discloses — “has a data partnershi