My Presentation at Futureweek Forum

The State of Media in < 25 Minutes

• Last month, I presented at the FutureWeek Forum in London. The organizers were kind enough to send me the video, so I’ll share it here.

• My goal was to provide a framing for what is happening in the media business today and what may come next—in less than 25 minutes. This pulled from my writing on The Mediator and previous talks, but I’m constantly trying to refine my thinking and the message. I discussed:

• How the current state of media was defined by two general purpose technologies, digitization and the internet, which caused the cost to move bits to functionally head toward zero.

• The four tectonic trends that dominate the media business today:

1. Stagnation of time spent, which puts a cap on real growth;

2. Fragmentation of attention, due both to an explosion of content supply and a changing consumer definition of quality (which is shifting away from high production values);

3. Disintermediation of traditional intermediaries as technology systematically makes it easier for creatives and creators to reach consumers directly;

4. Concentration of power in a handful of platforms and attention in a few megahits, owing to the amplifying effect of positive feedback loops on the internet.

• Importantly, all of those dynamics are a lagging indicator of the last disruption.

• GenAI is another general purpose technology that may cause the cost to make bits to move toward zero too, triggering another disruption.

• The good news is that when one input into the production process becomes abundant, other things become scarcer and more valuable. I finish by trying to answer this question: What will be the new moats as content moves toward infinite?

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Here’s the full presentation:

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