Jim Louderback argues TV is dying as creators move to mobile platforms. YouTube is commissioning original content from creators, while ultra-short "microdramas" generate major revenue in emerging markets. Next comes AR glasses with AI companions and immersive home environments.
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YouTube is now the everything video, right? So it's on TV, it's— and X. Well, yeah. And but, but it's all over the place. I think legacy media will continue to exist. It's starting to embrace creators. Look, we had peak TV. Remember peak TV from 2 years ago? All these people made TV shows because we were all home during COVID and then now we're all out doing stuff and on our phones and nobody's watching TV anymore. I mean, they are, but they're watching YouTube in all these different formats. but YouTube is now leaning into creators and now traditional TV is going like, well, we want, you know, we want not only to want to put MrBeast in a video, we want to produce for us. We want, you know, we want, um, you know, we want all of these folks to produce stuff for us rather than just saying, oh, you're going to show up in it in my video shows. And so we're going to reach a point where we have peak creator TV and then that's going to crash. I think, um, It's, it's an interesting question because a lot of traditional video media, Hollywood and TV, is predicated on the television being the best screen in the house, the best screen in your life. But guess what? Around the world, most parts of the world, what you have in your pocket is the best screen in your life. So the videos that are created and optimized for this, the way we do it and hold it, There's so many interesting things happening there. So microdramas, right? Those microdramas, Drama Fever, I think some others, real short, taking off. They're making so much money in certain parts of the world where people consume with this. But you go look at YouTube. What's YouTube focused on these days? That screen. So there's a lot of opportunity to engage people with video content here, and then You know what? This, this is going away and we're going to end up with other media. And so it might be the glasses that you have, which Apple's going to come up with glasses. And so if that's the case, I want a Pokémon with me at all times that gives me advice. I want Mimikyu, but it might be Snorlax depending on how tired I am. But, but the other thing is, it's like, okay, I'm walking into a, like, I'm, I'm at Web Summit. I'm walking around. I'm like, oh, do I know you? And up on my glasses comes, did it, did it, did it, you went to high school together, dumbass. And I'm like, Oh yeah, that's right. So those sorts of things and ways to engage are going to be really interesting. If there is a world— I'm not saying it's our world, but there's a world where the Sphere, which is this amazing immersive experience for 18,000 people, gets to the point where every one of our houses, instead of our media room or our home theater, we have a home Sphere where we can sit and have these engaging, interactive, like experiential stuff, 360 with our families, our friends, or ourselves. So we're going to see new forms of media developed. We're not done making media. They're going to be different forms in different ways. You look at like OpenAI, just, they just gave $6 billion worth of their stock to Jony Ive, who invented the iPhone, to start building devices for AI that are unobtrusive, that don't have a screen, that interact in different ways, that do different things. I don't know what they're going to be. I'm going to buy one, I'm sure. But there's so many interesting new ways that media is going to develop. So to say like, oh, you know, winners, losers, this and that, I don't know what they are, but I know that they're going to be really, really fun and interesting and engaging and
