Why "MOAR Content" Alone Won't Save Legacy Media: 9 Predictions for 2026

2026 will be the year of “more content”. Really, it will be the “the year of MOAR content”—reflecting the popular internet slang for “humorously or emphatically demanding additional material”.

Take the current bidding war for Warner Bros. studios and streaming. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison wants Paramount to be perceived as “a land of abundance.” He wants “more content, not less”, believing the acquisition will put him in “the top three, not the bottom three.” Netflix’s announcement of its deal with Warner Bros. pitched investors that “the deep film and TV libraries and HBO and HBO Max programming” will give Netflix members “even more high-quality titles from which to choose”.

Both believe “MOAR content” will enable them to compete with YouTube, which has seen its share of TV consumption grow 2.1% year-over-year. Other key players like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have seen their shares decline, and Netflix has grown at 30% of YouTube’s pace. YouTube also has benefitted from the emergence of generative AI: Shorts have become the primary destination for AI-generated content, averaging over 200 million daily views—up 285% since last March—and in the U.S., Shorts now earn more revenue per watch hour than traditional in-stream on YouTube.

This content is also growing in popularity in traditional in-stream on YouTube as more creators experiment with an “orchestra” of generative AI tools. “AI slop” is a pejorative label for this content, which “feels” more prevalent on social media but there is no data to support that. However, generative AI tools on gaming platforms are driving community features and creation tools that build deeper, personalized relationships between platforms and users.

All this lays the foundation for two simple questions for 2026:

1. How will the supply side of the media and entertainment marketplace evolve?

2. How will the demand side of the media and entertainment marketplace evolve?

Supply Side

1. Power law concentration accelerates

In “Why Advertisers Always Beat Creators in AI Content Economics?”, I wrote about how algorithm-driven platforms like YouTube and Instagram will always be incentivized to favor advertiser-creator content over pure creator content. For example, only 3 million of YouTube’s 67 million creators (4.4%) monetize their content. This is also true on Netflix: 136 of the 7,508 TV Show titles (2%) drove 30% of total viewing and 255 (3%) of 8,674 movie titles drove 42% of total movie viewing in the first half of 2025.

Creators and executives I spoke with at the end of 2025 all predicted that this power law dynamic will get worse in 2026. Netflix’s algorithms will favor less content if they end up acquiring Warner Bros. The more AI-generated content floods the zone, the smaller group of creators who will reap the benefits from power laws. “MOAR” content competing for fixed attention makes hits valuable, and everything else worthless.

My 2025 Predictions Scorecard Andrew A. Rosen · Dec 18 Read full story