The bland headline from Antenna’s latest State of Subscriptions 2026 report reads “Specialty SVoD continues to grow”—as US-only subscriptions increased 14% year on year to 42 million. Last time out, we wrote that Specialty SVoD—defined as services built around specific audiences or genres, such as Crunchyroll for anime or Shudder for horror—were losing steam as sports subscriptions contracted in Q2 2025. At the midway point of 2025, the narrative was that growth in Specialty SVoD had slowed to 12% year on year, down sharply from 22% in mid-2024. A year later, growth has recovered to 14%, although Premium SVoD—defined as the top 10 mainstream SVoDs in the US market— has fallen from 10% to 6% growth year on year, according…