TikTok has signed a deal to sell its U.S. business to three American investors — Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX — ensuring the popular social video platform can continue operating in the United States.

The deal is expected to close on Jan. 22, according to an internal memo seen by The Associated Press. CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees in the memo that ByteDance and TikTok have signed binding agreements with the three investors.

Half of the new TikTok U.S. joint venture will be owned by a consortium of investors — among them Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX will each hold a 15% share. Another 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors and 19.9% will be retained by the China-based ByteDance, according to the memo.

The U.S. venture will have a new, seven-member majority-American board of directors, the memo said. It will also be subject to terms that “protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.”

U.S. user data will be stored locally in a system run by Oracle.

TikTok’s algorithm — the secret sauce that powers its addictive video feed — will be retrained on U.S. user data to “ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” the memo said. The U.S. venture will also oversee content moderation and policies within the country.

The deal marks the end of years of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed — and President Joe Biden signed — a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if it did not find a new owner in the place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January 2025 deadline. For several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration tries to reach an agreement for the sale of the company.

Three more executive orders followed, as Trump, without a clear legal basis, continued to extend the deadline for a TikTok deal. The second was in April, when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump’s tariff announcement. The third came in June, then another in September, which Trump said would allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States in a way that meets national security concerns.

This story was originally published by The Associated Press.

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There’s no better way to get into the holiday spirit than cozying up and laughing along to your favorite Christmas skits.

With that in mind, why not tune in to A Saturday Night Live Christmas? The annual two-hour special will stream ahead of SNL‘s Christmas show, hosted by Ariana Grande. The holiday event will be available starting tonight, Dec. 18, at 9 p.m. PT/ET and features a hefty compilation of the show’s most iconic holiday sketches going back to 1975, featuring cameos from cast members past and present like Eddie Murphie, Fred Armisen, John Belushi, Beck Bennett and Pete Davidson. You’ll also see cameos made by musicians like Justin Timberlake from past sketches.

Since the program will be broadcast on NBC, cord-cutters can stream the holiday special live on any live TV streaming service that carries the network, which includes DIRECTV, Fubo, Sling and Hulu + Live TV. Below, we’re showing you how you can tune into the holiday special for free using the services mentioned above. Keep reading to find out more.

Where to Watch A Saturday Night Live Christmas Special for Free

DIRECTV is a great option for those looking to watch the holiday flick. A standard subscription to DIRECTV, which gives you access to watch NBC, will run you just $49.99 a month for the first month right now under the service’s ENTERTAINMENT plan. If you’re unsure about committing to a new subscription, you can simply try the service out for free for five days, which will give you plenty of time to watch the film.

You’ll get access to live TV, local networks such as CBS, ABC and PBS, and you can also watch a slew of entertainment networks, including AMC, Bravo, E!, FX, FXX, Freeform, HGTV, Hallmark Channel, Lifetime and Paramount Network. That’s more than 90-plus channels that you can tap into.

Another way to watch the holiday film via NBC is on Fubo, which has a week-long free trial available here. This will give you just enough time to watch the holiday football movie multiple times over. Fubo’s package includes a free DVR so you record the broadcast to watch all the performances back on-demand. Continue with one of Fubo’s streaming deals or cancel before your free trial is up to avoid being charged. See details here.

Sling Blue is one of the easier ways to watch the Christmas special and costs $50.99 a month. Sling Blue includes 40+ channels beyond NBC including Fox News, CNN, TNT, NFL Network, Bravo, FOX News and more. With your subscription, you’ll have access to the holiday special, along with all the live sports and news you could ever want. Unfortunately, Sling Blue does not have a free trial option.

For the most content for your coin, Hulu + Live TV. A subscription, which includes NBC, will run you $82.99 per month. The service has a three-day free trial for new and eligible returning subscribers, so you can watch the SNL special and cancel your subscription at any time within those three days.

If you do choose to stick with your subscription, which we’d recommend, you’ll have access to more than 95 live TV channels and Hulu’s extensive library, which includes a ton of holiday entertainment. And, unlike the rest of the options, you can also expand your content library by bundling Hulu + Live TV with Disney+ and ESPN Unlimited. 

Contemporary Christian Music artist Phil Wickham’s voice is instantly recognizable to many music fans due to his hits including “Battle Belongs,” “This Is Amazing Grace,” and this year’s 16-week Christian Airplay chart-leader “What An Awesome God,” which also made its debut on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100.

Starting Friday (Dec. 19), however, audiences will experience Wickham’s voice in an entirely new dimension.

Wickham portrays the voice of David in the new animated film David, which opens in theaters Dec. 19 and is distributed by Angel. The film, created by Sunrise Animation Studios’ Phil Cunningham, chronicles the Biblical story of David, as he ascends from the obscure role of a shepherd, triumphs over the giant Goliath, overcomes the jealousy and rage of King Saul, and rises to the role of King, but also doesn’t shy away from the characters failures, such as committing murder.

Actor Brandon Engman portrays the character in his youth, while Wickham voices David as an adult. For Wickham, stepping into the role was both unexpected and deeply meaningful.

“I’ve always wanted to voice a character since I was eight, singing along to The Lion King soundtrack,” Wickham tells Billboard, adding, “It’s a testament to how incredibly talented the whole team is that put this whole thing together. So much blood, sweat and tears from hundreds of people and for me to voice a character I care about a lot is a dream come true.”

Wickham first heard about the opportunity from a friend of a friend, who mentioned that Wickham’s name had come up during internal discussions about casting the vocal role of the adult David.

“He was like, ‘I don’t know if Phil can act at all,’ but he told me about that conversation and told me to call them if I was interested,” Wickham recalls.

Wickham’s first step into the process was a Zoom audition. Rather than taking on an easy scene for the initial audition, Wickham had to read the part of David in a moment of intense emotional conflict: when David is in confrontation with King Saul.

“Saul, who’s become kind of a father figure to David, he’s overbearing and a warrior. He turns on David because he finds out David was the one anointed to be the next king. Saul wants to kill David and David is reacting to this moment,” Wickham explains.

Casting director Ned Lott guided Wickham through the scene, emphasizing David’s unique position at that moment in his life.

“He was like, ‘David has commanded armies now, he’s very capable, but he’s also a shepherd at heart and has compassion. He loves this King and would never want to take a hand against him, and you’ve got to react with all that stuff in mind,’” Wickham says. “Then I hear Saul’s voice that was already prerecorded and it’s this epic, booming actor. I remember getting intimidated and saying the lines almost kind of whiny and scared.”

Lott encouraged Wickham to approach the scene from a different emotional perspective.

Wickham says, “He was like, ‘Picture talking to someone you’ve had a longstanding trust and relationship with, but maybe he’s gotten to the point in life where he’s a little senile and thinks you did something horrible that you never did and you’re trying to calm him down and reason with him. You still respect him, but you also know he can’t take you. You have the upper hand.’ That really lit something in my heart and he let me go through the whole scene again, and afterward, he was like, ‘That felt special.’”

A week later, Wickham received a call that confirmed his casting.

“Ned said, ‘Phil, what is your middle name again?’ and I said, ‘David,’ and he said, ‘Well how would you like for that to be your first name in the animated movie?’ So that was awesome.”

Recording sessions took place in Burbank, California, where Wickham recorded his vocal part to storyboards and other film art. Along the way, Wickham discovered just how physical voice acting can be.

“If I was supposed to sound like I was struggling against the flow of an army trying to go the other way, I literally had someone holding me back in the studio and I was trying my hardest to get to the microphone,” he says. “And there’s a moment where the character chokes on water and I literally and drinking water and there’s a bowl there for me to spit it out so it really sounded like it.”

Though Wickham is a Grammy-nominated artist with years of studio experience, he says singing as David proved to be the most difficult part of the project.

“I couldn’t lean on so many quirks and habits I’ve made over the years as a singer, like I lean on certain vowels or notes,” he says. “When I would lean into my habits as an artist, it was like, ‘Now you sound like how you’re recording your records and that doesn’t sound like David.’ Telling the story through song and carrying the emotion was way more important than getting a great pop vocal. I had to set aside all I had gotten used to, and even ego aside as an artist, because I’m like, ‘Man, as a singer, I could sing this so much better,’ but David, his voice would be so full of emotion that I was almost like talking the lyrics.”

In addition to voicing David, Wickham also has one of his songs featured in the film’s closing credits. The song, titled “Psalm 8,” further connects his voice to the movie’s story arc. While Wickham says he’s unsure whether traditional acting is in his future, the experience made him open to doing more voice acting.

“There’s something about hiding behind an animated character that made it very fun and free,” he says, adding, “Maybe if it’s a full character in a film or a couple of lines in a videogame or something, I wouldn’t mind doing that,” he says.

Wickham says he hopes David ultimately offers audiences more than simply entertainment.

“I hope that this David movie is just another kind of hinge point in people’s lives to help them understand or see maybe even for the first time that they’re not alone, that like David says, that the Lord is my shepherd, that we can place our lives in the hands of the good shepherd and that he cares for his sheep. I hope people are blessed by this movie and not just in an entertaining way, but a deep spiritual way, too.”

Few viral moments were as far-reaching or internet-breaking in 2025 as the Coldplay kiss cam scandal — but only one person can speak to the life-altering experience of being the woman caught in the center of it all.

That individual is Kristin Cabot, the former Astronomer executive who was caught on the jumbotron cozying up to her then-boss, the company’s now-resigned CEO Andy Byron, during the rock band’s August concert in Boston. And after months of staying out of the public eye — and enduring verbal abuse and threats both online and in person — she’s finally telling her story in a New York Times piece published Thursday (Dec. 18).

“I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss,” Cabot told the publication. “And it’s not nothing. And I took accountability and I gave up my career for that. That’s the price I chose to pay.”

“I want my kids to know that you can make mistakes, and you can really screw up,” she continued. “But you don’t have to be threatened to be killed for them.”

In the months since the incident unfolded at Gillette Stadium, the public — which was quick to discover that Cabot worked as an HR executive under Byron, and that both were married to other people at the time — has been quick to brand the pair as adulterous villains. But Cabot, while acknowledging that it was inappropriate to dance the way she did with her boss, explained that there is way more to the story than people realize.

For starters, she and her husband had already separated when she went to the concert with Byron and some friends. Cabot says she had also previously bonded with Byron over the strain in her marriage, as he’d told her he was “going through the same thing.”

Despite developing feelings for Byron, Cabot said she felt she could keep them in check. The Coldplay concert, she says, was the first and only time she and her former boss ever kissed.

“Some inside part of my brain might have been jumping up and down and waving its arms, saying, ‘Don’t do this,’” Cabot recalled. “I was like: ‘I got this. I can have a crush. I can handle it.’”

When her image flashed on the big screens that are a feature of Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour, Cabot recalls feeling “embarrassed and so horrified,” immediately retreating with Byron to figure out how to best inform the Astronomer board of their transgression. But when the already difficult moment started going viral on social media, their problems multiplied.

Adding fuel to the fire was Astronomer’s crisis-control strategy of recruiting Gwyneth Paltrow — Coldplay frontman Chris Martin’s ex-wife — to film a tongue-in-cheek video pointedly not addressing the matter head-on. “I’ve been hired on a very temporary basis to speak on behalf of the 300-plus employees at Astronomer,” she said sarcastically in the video. “We’ve been thrilled so many people have a newfound interest in data workflow automation.”

Martin has also poked fun at what he’s called the “debacle.” But after being doxxed, harassed, labeled a “slut” and sent countless death threats — not to mention feeling like her children might be unsafe — Cabot just wants people to remember that everyone messes up, regardless of whether their mistakes are put on blast to the world.

She wonders, “Can we start a conversation where there might be room for a different version of this story?”