# Dan Rayburn
> Streaming Media Industry Analyst, Writer and Consultant; Chairman, NAB Show Streaming Summit
- Profile type: Person
- Profile status: baseline
- Last updated: 2026-05-03T00:00:00.000Z
- Canonical URL: https://thestateofstreaming.com/people/dan-rayburn/
- Also known as: Daniel Rayburn
## Summary
Dan Rayburn is a 30-year veteran of the streaming media industry whose podcast, blog, and conference programming sit at the center of the streaming-tech beat. As chairman of the NAB Show Streaming Summit and a former Frost & Sullivan principal analyst, his weekly readouts on Q1 earnings, NFL rights renegotiation, and live-sports streaming production are the canonical primary read for the operator side of the business.

## Profile facts

- Current title: Streaming Media Industry Analyst, Writer and Consultant; Chairman, NAB Show Streaming Summit


## Career trajectory

- 2003-01-01 — Principal Analyst, Streaming Media at frost-sullivan. 15-year tenure as a principal analyst; published market data and analysis across streaming media, mobile, broadband, and last-mile networks.
- 2018-01-01 — Chairman, NAB Show Streaming Summit at nab-show. Co-founded the two-day Streaming Summit with the NAB; runs in Las Vegas and New York annually.
- 2020-01-01 — Host, The Dan Rayburn Podcast. Weekly streaming-media-industry-news show; 30-minute readouts of the week's most-relevant deals, earnings, and product launches.


## Media appearances

- 2026-04-21 — keynote: NAB Show Streaming Summit 2026 — Chairman's program, NAB Show / NAB Streaming Summit (https://nabstreamingsummit.com/)
- 2026-05-02 — podcast: Dan Rayburn Podcast — Comcast Q1 2026 + Charter Q1 2026 readout, The Dan Rayburn Podcast (https://www.danrayburnpodcast.com/)
- 2026-04-23 — article-quote: WBD shareholder vote — same-day analysis, LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7453501997229490176/)

_This page uses only public-professional information: published podcast episodes, public conference programming, on-the-record commentary, and public-professional social profiles. No personal contact information, family details, or non-professional activity is included. No AI-generated portrait is used._

## Key facts

- Chairman of the NAB Show Streaming Summit, which he co-founded with the National Association of Broadcasters in 2018; the two-day summit runs in Las Vegas (NAB Show) and New York (NAB Show New York) each year. — NAB Show Streaming Summit: https://nabstreamingsummit.com/
- Was a Principal Analyst at Frost & Sullivan for 15 years, publishing market data and analysis on streaming media technology, mobile, broadband, and last-mile networks. — DanRayburn.com: https://www.danrayburn.com/
- Has been quoted more than 2,000 times by media outlets and has appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, BBC News, and NPR; testified before both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives on net neutrality, telecom mergers, and content delivery architectures. — DanRayburn.com: https://www.danrayburn.com/
- Hosts The Dan Rayburn Podcast, a weekly streaming-media-industry-news roundup; recent episodes cover Comcast Q1 2026 Peacock additions (2M to 46M subs) and Charter Q1 2026 pay-TV losses of 51,000 (vs. 167,000 in Q1 2025). — The Dan Rayburn Podcast: https://www.danrayburnpodcast.com/
- Is a founding board member of the Streaming Video Alliance and a guest lecturer at academic institutions; serves as a technical advisor to U.S. Department of Defense agencies on video-distribution architectures. — DanRayburn.com: https://www.danrayburn.com/
- On April 23, 2026, posted on LinkedIn an immediate readout of the WBD shareholder vote — that stockholders had overwhelmingly approved the Paramount Skydance merger and that the deal still requires DOJ and European regulatory approvals. — LinkedIn (Dan Rayburn): https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7453501997229490176/


## Related

- comcast corporation (Recurring subject of weekly readouts (Peacock, Comcast Q1 2026)) — https://thestateofstreaming.com/companies/comcast-corporation/
- warner bros discovery (Recurring subject of merger-tracker readouts) — https://thestateofstreaming.com/companies/warner-bros-discovery/
- netflix (Recurring subject of live-sports-streaming critiques (MLB stream)) — https://thestateofstreaming.com/companies/netflix/


## External coverage

- DanRayburn.com: Dan Rayburn — personal site (https://www.danrayburn.com/)
- Dan Rayburn: The Dan Rayburn Podcast (https://www.danrayburnpodcast.com/)
- National Association of Broadcasters: NAB Show Streaming Summit (https://nabstreamingsummit.com/)
- Streaming Media: Dan Rayburn — Streaming Media articles (https://www.streamingmedia.com/Authors/4256-Dan-Rayburn.htm)
- LinkedIn: Dan Rayburn — LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/danrayburn)

## Profile
Dan Rayburn is the operator-side voice of the streaming-tech beat. The combination of his weekly podcast, his NAB Show Streaming Summit chairmanship, and a 15-year analyst tenure at Frost & Sullivan makes his commentary the canonical first read on streaming infrastructure, live-sports rights renegotiations, and CDN economics — a beat the trade press rarely covers with the same fluency on the technical layer.

The podcast cadence matters editorially. Same-day post-earnings readouts on Comcast's Q1 2026 Peacock numbers (2M added, ending at 46M; $2B in revenue), Charter's slowing pay-TV bleed (51,000 residential losses in Q1 2026 versus 167,000 a year earlier), and the WBD–Paramount Skydance shareholder vote each appear on his feed within hours of the disclosure, with the technical-architecture context the wire services don't bring. His critique of the Netflix MLB opening-night stream production and his readouts on the NFL's $110B domestic broadcast renegotiation seeking a roughly 50% increase ahead of 2026 are framings we cite when those stories cross our slate.

His congressional-testimony track record on net neutrality and telecom mergers, plus his founding-board role at the Streaming Video Alliance, give him standing on the standards side as well as the deal side. He is one of a small number of named-voice analysts whose framing is worth quoting on first reference rather than corroborating after the fact.

## Tags

- streaming-media
- analyst
- podcast
- nab-show
- live-sports-streaming
- ott
- video-distribution

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