The broadcasts of the 20th century shall pass
And give rise to the streaming creators of the 21st
Good morning.
Before we get to things today, I want to wish a happy birthday to my sister. You’re an amazing person and mother and I admire everything you do.
I also want to wish a happy birthday (just passed) to my friend, Kevin. I don’t smoke anymore, but there’s still no one I’d rather walk through the snow with to a Sunoco to grab some packs of Camels. See you at the Ister, buddy.
OK, let’s get to it.
A pair of…uh…pieces of…uh…content that are kind of related caught my eye—or, I guess my ear also—this week.
The first was a conversation Dylan Byers had with Julia Alexander on The Grill Room podcast. The two of them talked about the changing nature of news and news delivery. The crux? Why watch CNN for breaking news when you can get clips on YouTube or TikTok?
They talked about the current state of things at CNN and other broadcast news operations and how there may, honestly, not be a reversible course for where things are going. Which is to say, what network news or even daytime programming looks like may be drastically pared down from what it has become.
Why put Around The Horn on the air when you can show more Pat McAfee or potentially another new generation creator with low production overhead?
This ties to, I think, a Hollywood Reporter piece covering a Deloitte survey containing the stat that, “56 percent of Gen Zs and 43 percent of millennials surveyed find social media content ‘more relevant than traditional TV shows and movies,’ and roughly half feel a stronger personal connection to social media creators than to TV personalities or actors.”
There’s more and more evidence of this everywhere you look. And there’s even more damning evidence in the Hollywood Reporter piece.
“If the entertainment industry is in a battle for time and attention from consumers, many of the largest entertainment studios and streamers are finding themselves having to compete with giant tech platforms stacked with creators catering to every niche possible. The survey found that younger consumers simply trust creators more, and feel a more personal connection to them, which in turn bolsters advertising engagement. And tech platforms laden with AI recommendation tech are further spinning up the consumption flywheel, adding another challenge that traditional entertainment companies may have a hard time matching.”
O, to be laden with AI recommendation tech and to spin up the consumption flywheel with those one wishes to entertain!
In all seriousness, that’s a pretty direct summary of the challenge of this current moment. Anyone can create a content ecosystem around themselves and their personalities now and cater to specific audiences within a coverage area.
Now, they are at the whim of algorithms and said AI recommendation tech and may not partake as much in the consumption flywheel as much as they like, but they can get in the game and, more importantly, they can take attention share away from brands whose potentially reached peak awareness a decade or more ago.
The Deloitte survey also found that “consumers across the board are increasingly dissatisfied with the value provided by paid streaming services.”
Yeah, I’m with you! I couldn’t watch the Oscars on Hulu with my Disney+ all-access account even though they said I could. And I had to buy Diner (1982) and Straight Time (1978) and Five Easy Pieces (1970) and Nashville (1975) from Apple because I could never find them in any library.
Those are classic movies for young, contemporary consumers!
One YoY traffic quote + a chart
“Year-on-year the picture was more mixed. The AP was the fastest-growing top-ten site compared with February 2024, increasing its traffic by 76%, followed by the BBC (up 30%), People (7.1%) and The New York Times (452.4 million, up 6.4%), which remains the most-visited news site in the US. The other six top-ten sites lost visits, although Fox News (260.5 million) dropped less than a percentage point. The biggest year-on-year decline in the top ten was seen at aggregator MSN (196.4 million, down 8%) and USA Today (also down 8%).”
This is from a PressGazette piece looking at traffic trends among the top news publishers month-over-month and year-over-year in the month following Donald Trump’s inauguration. The performance of the AP and the BBC (maybe it's the new site?) suggest that people may value straight reporting as a product after all. Want to guess what one of the top 10 fastest-growing websites in the U.S. was in February? Yep, Substack.com.
Click on these links to spare some traffic for the poor
This is a good little “how the sausage is made” piece from Digiday looking at how the company that owns Inc. and Fast Company is playing with its paywall logic in the face of declining and unreliable traffic.
Brian Morrissey had some good insight in his newsletter this week about deals ( like the Yahoo sale of TechCrunch below) that are being discussed for media brands where money can be made off what remains of a brands “carcass.” The media brands of the 1900s and the transitional, turn-of-the-millennium brands will pass away and give rise to the brands at the heart of this developing century.
More from Dylan Byers: Over at Puck, he has a good piece on some of the current executive hires happening at CNN.
In case you missed, last week Yahoo sold TechCrunch to an investment firm named Regent.
Even more Dylan Byers: On the Grill Room podcast last week he talked to Caitlin Thompson who is trying to make tennis more accessible and vibrant through her quarterly magazine, Racquet.