Scott Galloway is a post-media celebrity. (Caricature by ChatGPT.)
For nearly 30 years, practically since I started talking about it, Scott has been making himself a celebrity for the post-media world. He has a Substack. He has a podcast. Scott also writes columns and talks on TV. We disagree little on questions involving the tech industries. (I’m a bit more hopeful.)
The point is you probably know his name. A lot of people give him money to read what he has to say, and to listen to it. He can sell advertising because he has a large defined audience.
Before other media died, we would call someone like him an influencer. Some influencers got there through blogs, but most got there through a visual medium – TikTok, Reels, YouTube. They rose organically, based on their personalities, the lessons they were teaching, their relevance to the audience and their ability to connect. The difference is there were no “gatekeepers,” no guys and gals in three-piece suits, to keep them out.
This has been going on for so long that people have built entire careers. Marc Maron may be retiring his podcast, but he’s now famous enough that he doesn’t need it, and old enough to retire.
Notice what is needed to make a success of this. You require a defined beat, a point of view, a soupcon of knowhow and the ability to run your own business. There are a ton of skills there beyond journalism. That’s why journalists are so scared of trying it. But journalism is where it starts.
Where This Goes
One of Scott’s recent columns, which tracks with what I wrote here last week, involves Netflix’ decision to walk away from its WBD deal and let Paramount take it. Scott offers more background than I do, going back to the original deal where Warner Brothers bought Time, skipping over Ted Turner to the AOL deal, then continuing into the AT&T purchase and Discovery’s purchase.
In the end we make the same point, that Netflix was fortunate to get out, and that Paramount will be wrecked by this. He also makes a secondary point, that this will also wreck Oracle, because Larry Ellison is guaranteeing the debt attending the purchase, while Paramount is absorbing an additional $33.5 billion of WBD debt it was trying to work off from the Discovery days. Given Oracle’s own capital spending commitments, this should lead to Ellison losing control of Oracle, moving his flag to his son David’s Paramount business, and going down with that ship. (It won’t matter much. The elder Ellison is 81.)
Scott concludes with a point I made in January, that at the end of this Netflix will remain vulnerable to the Cloud Czars, along with Comcast and Disney. The Clouds are the competition, the gateway, and the only way to reach an audience. They host you, compel you, and can casually dispel you.
Scott’s view is that Netflix will buy Disney, which has a better balance sheet than Paramount and will be affordable. (Netflix is now worth more than twice as much as Disney.) I don’t know. Comcast would cost a lot less, it also owns theme parks, it has a large library of old shows, its cable network is essential last-mile infrastructure, and it might prove more amenable.
