Thirty years ago, I had the craziest job of my career.
It was with Netguide, a glossy magazine that fancied itself the TV Guide of the Web. As if this medium could be distilled inside a glossy magazine.
I thought it was silly. I wrote, “The Internet isn’t a new medium. It’s an Extra Large.”
Today it’s more than that. It’s the only medium. By 2030, only those who have learned to extract a profit from this medium will still be in business. The rest will be the walking dead.
We got two tastes of this future over the last week. First came the Colbert-Talarico interview, seen by maybe 2 million on TV and 10 times that number on YouTube. Second was Netflix’ decision, taken just last night, to let Paramount have Warner Brothers Discovery.
It shocks me how, even at this late date, smart people still don’t understand what I said a generation ago. Obviously, Larry Ellison doesn’t. Neither do the people Washington calls “the media.” The same with liberal critics who are dead certain Netflix’ decision means we’ll only see fascist propaganda in the future.
Here I’m reminded of another old story, that of Enron. They made bank with rigged “markets” in natural gas and electricity, then thought they could do the same with Internet bandwidth. Wide Division Multiplexing guaranteed they couldn’t. By the time they realized their mistake they were dead.
That’s what Ellison has now walked into.
What was called Atlanta’s “monopoly” newspaper when I moved here in the early 1980s closed this year. Broadcast TV is dead. Anyone with one of those square antennas knows it’s only fit for pre-school kids, for the bed-ridden elderly, and for religious fanatics. Cable is rapidly becoming the same wasteland.
Ellison’s End
Ellison and his idiot son David think they can force crap down the throats of Americans. Forget the “news division.” The tell is in the programming Paramount’s now putting on. FBI? CIA? Sheriff f’n Country? Taylor Sheridan’s audience is limited, and it’s already becoming saturated.
Substack and YouTube are where it’s at. You don’t need a big budget for streaming. With AI, you can do it in your dining room. Just as I’m writing, publishing, and distributing this in my dining room.
Do we yet have any Clue as to what this means? The gatekeepers, the suits who once decided what people watched, are all gone. The new moguls are those who can create what the Internet considers great content. We talk endlessly about “the algorithm” but that’s just a validation. It’s like we’re pretending Nielsen is the network. It’s the measuring stick.
What Netflix just did was tell Ellison to open his mouth and swallow a dump truck load of fecal matter. Netflix can replicate everything that now exists on cable TV. What began as a channel, then became a network, is now the whole service. They can build dozens of new, AI-equipped studios for a fraction of what Paramount is paying here.
Oh, and CNN was never part of the deal for Netflix. Netflix didn’t bid on it. They didn’t want any of the cable assets. Cable was always going to be spun off. Paramount is now stuck with it.
The Same Problem
We’re still left with the same problem I saw coming when I was at Northwestern in 1978. Content does not exist in a vacuum. It needs a business model that can separate those who make stuff from those who market it. Someone needs to handle the back end, the money, the promotion, the production costs. AI can no more do creative accounting than ask creative questions.
Netflix can do that. Google can do that. Amazon can sort of do that, as the marketplace for streaming. If David Ellison had any sense he would have gone after Roku. Is Comcast still in the league? Disney? I don’t think so.
But there are huge opportunities here for entrepreneurs to build great companies. Mr. Beast needs some friends. There are audiences out there who will pay for reliable news content, who will gladly invest in things they consider credible.
Will you create them for us? (I’d rather be writing a story.)
