TV Is Dying. Streaming and Creators Just Won

YouTube is getting bigger. And the Netflix of the world, the so called premium channels, now realize that there's a lot of premium content right here on YouTube and they want to dive right in and take a piece of that for themselves. Old media retreat platforms advance, NBC is shrinking, YouTube is surging, and Netflix is muscling its way into podcasts. According to the wrap, NBC News cut about 150 jobs and disbanded its sports specialized teams behind NBC, BLK, Asian America, Latino and out. The verticals will stay, but the journalists won't. Executives call it a difficult day, but it mirrors a larger retreat from DEI commitments across traditional media. Meanwhile, a Hollywood reporter says YouTube has overtaken every other platform for TV screen viewership and is doubling down on live sports and creator payments. That's good. And the New York Times reports Netflix will now stream 16 Spotify video podcasts, including the Bill Simmons podcast and rewatchables. Shifting podcast power away from YouTube, the trend is unmistakable. Legacy news cuts back, tech platforms consolidate control and creators professionalize the space. The attention economy is migrating, not dying. And the audience will follow whoever tells the most engaging stories. Okay, so what's the real message here, NBC News? Legacy media maybe not dying, but getting smaller, smaller, smaller. Every day, YouTube is getting bigger. And the Netflix of the world, the so called premium channels, now realize that there's a lot of premium content right here on YouTube and they want to dive right in and take a piece of that for themselves. Let's go a little bit deeper now. No big news flash that legacy media is dying primarily because audiences now have a gazillion choices. So it is inevitable that the audiences for traditional broadcast media will get smaller, therefore the revenue pies get smaller, therefore the headcount has to get smaller. I mean, that's just simple math and capitalism combined. No change there. It's interesting, NBC so pointedly is getting rid of any kind of news that has even the slightest whiff, the slightest aroma of being associated with DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion. Again, no huge news about YouTube being dominant. It has been number one as far as all streaming media and all audiences for a while now, but it's continuing to get stronger. It's move into live sports is kind of a big deal since live sports is, is the one thing traditional broadcast media still holds on to. And that's the one area where they, they still do well in the ratings. And YouTube says, well, we want a piece of that too. I was intrigued by reports that Netflix is now doing deals with Spotify to take their most popular video podcast. It does Bring up the question of, like, what is a podcast? What is a TV show? What is a movie? At some point, all of these terms become utterly meaningless. And it's simply, are you telling a story that is just text, meaning a book? Are you telling a story that's just audio, meaning an audiobook or a radio show? Or are you using video to tell your story? If so, the one thing we're seeing consumers say loud and clear around the world, we don't care whether it has the stamp of approval of big network executive from a TV broadcast network or a cable network, or some honcho at Netflix or even Jeff Bezos himself for Amazon prime audience are saying, we don't care. We want to watch what we want to watch. And Netflix, to its credit, is realizing, hey, maybe we don't have a monopoly of good ideas. Maybe the old TV networks, the old production facilities, don't have a monopoly. Let's get that Bill Simmons podcast. That's what they're doing. And he is extraordinarily popular podcaster and influential in the whole podcast space. Now you're gonna be able to see his show on Netflix. If I were Netflix, well, if I were an NBC news executive, I would be polishing my resume every day, or a reporter in any legacy media. I would be spending about eight hours a day on LinkedIn looking for a new job or starting my own media company. But even Netflix, I mean, Netflix has been an extraordinary success story. They are, you know, they are worth just a tremendous amount of money barreling on towards a trillion dollars. And their audiences are big. Subscriber growth is great. It's always nice to have people value your content to the point where people are paying monthly fees. Now, YouTube has some of that, but nothing like Netflix. But I'd still be very nervous about YouTube if I were Netflix and podcast in general, because at some point, Netflix is a middleman. And there was certainly a lot of talk over the last 25 years about how the Internet will cause all this disintermediation and allow creators to deal directly with their viewers, their consumers, their customers. Yeah, it's happened in a lot of ways. Certainly local. Local stationary stores have gone out of business and local bookstores have gone out of business, but there become new intermediaries, which is what Amazon is and it's what Netflix is. But at some point, if these creators, and some of them are quite savvy business people like Mr. Beast, if they create their own apps, their own ecosystem, their own connection with viewers through email or anything else through push notification, not only are they not going to need NBC, not only are they not going to need Netflix, but they might not even need YouTube. So none of these big media companies can really afford the luxury of being complacent, because change is happening faster and faster across the media landscape. And the only thing that seems to be consistent is if you are a creator and you're so good that people want to watch you, listen to you, consume your content, especially if you have millions of people who want that, you got the power and money will flow to you. That's the only thing I see that is remarkably consistent. Everything else is kind of in a state of flux.